The Undersung
Our critics on great artists who mightve been lost to the canon.
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Did you know theyre doing spoiler alert warnings in books now?
Its interesting to imagine what prompted this forewarning.
Had readers been rage-tweeting about plot points of novels being spoiled by scholarly intros?
Or was the publisher, Penguin Classics, merely protecting itself from hypothetical complaints?
Im embarrassed by the implication in either case were readers, not babies!
Mostly becauseRomance in Marseilleplays it safe in no other ways.
Well, I made my bed.
Upon arrival, both lower legs have to be amputated.
Its history is a rats nest of logistical bloopers.
Then he moved to Morocco and took it up again, reworking the story and retitling itSavage Loving.
(He was not an ardent organizer of his own work.)
The shorter one wound up at Yales Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Its about bodies, disability, sex, Islam, slavery, and capital.
All of this in 130 pages custom-designed, it would seem, for the modern obliterated attention span!
McKay recognized the stowaway as a piquant racial metaphor for the philosophical condition of the fugitive.
Life is a tragic joke, is Lafalas operating thesis.
Hes set upon by a wide range of mercenaries, most of whom he cheerfully repels.
At a cafe he spots Aslima the prostitute who originated this whole fiasco and confronts her.
They call a truce and become joyfully re-entangled, but the prostitutes motives are murky.
The hardiest hustler on the shore, Aslima is a canny handler of the local male population.
Is she aiming to regain Lafalas trust only to rip him off again?
Is she in it for love this time?
Will she return to Africa with Lafala, as he wishes?
Only chapters eight through 23 will tell.
Prose-wise, there are a lot of superlatives to be highlighted in those chapters.
Home to Harlemgot mixed reviews.
Langston Hughes loved the book.
DuBois wrote that it nauseated him and made him feel like taking a bath.
LikeRomance in Marseille, its a picaresque starring a working-class single man.
UnlikeRomance, the world its characters, its economy is entirely black.
