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"For those of us who are used to handling manuscripts -- sometimes to examine them line by line, more often to flip through the pages -- it's a privileged moment indeed when we realize that we are dealing with a text destined for that small shelf of memorable literature certain to be printed and reprinted over the years. The telltale signs, for me, are trembling hands, eyeglasses clouding over -- the psychological equivalent of a thunderclap. The book you have in hand now provided all of these emotions. "-- From The Foreword By Herbert R. Lottman SUCH SWEET THUNDER opens in 1944, somewhere in France, near the fighting. Amerigo Jones, a young foot soldier, is invited by a buddy to bed down with a French girl who has put herself at the service of a black United States infantry unit. But when Amerigo half-reluctantly goes to her he sees not a hardened prostitute, but a sad and bewildered innocent. In a daze, he watches her features take on the aspect of Cosima Thornton, the great obsession of his youth in his native Kansas City. This moment of connection serves as the springboard for a unique and compelling novel that deserves a place of prominence in American literature. Amerigo drifts back in time, so far back he recalls suckling at his mother's breast. We see life through the eyes of the boy at each stage of his development as he struggles for independence, respect, understanding from his friends and elders, and above all, love. Set during the segregated 1920s and '30s,Such Sweet Thunderis laced throughout with references to the struggle for justice and freedom, with many allusions to the white man and the white man's strange, brutal, and just plain crazy ways. But Amerigo also learns about sexuality, love, art, literature, and life itself -- the standard themes of the European bildungsroman. Amerigo is a dreamer, and yet it is clear that many of his dreams will go unfulfilled, not because of who he is but because of the color of his skin. Such Sweet Thunderis a jazz song of a book, a river of sound, something like an epic poem. Carter dedicates the novel to Duke Ellington, and it is replete with references to the influential musicians of the Kansas City jazz scene of his youth -- Count Basie, Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, and the young Charlie Parker. And there are references to Louis Armstrong, whose scat singing is a lot like the extended dialogue riffs between the book's characters. Jazz musicians in Kansas City during the Depression created an influential big band sound, and in a way Carter has structured his book similarly. It has an orchestral feel -- it's big; it's got sweep; the characters are like musical instruments, carrying their own themes; there are solos, set pieces, drama, comedy, and pathos -- and all are arranged to transport the reader on an evocative and emotional journey. Carter has written an unprecedented literary portrait of African American life, but at the heart of this grandly told story is a boy, Amerigo Jones, full of life and humor and as desirous and deserving of love as any child. Part of the greatness of Carter's achievement is his ability to write the way a young boy truly experiences the world. And his depiction of the noisy, jostling, mysterious, fascinating world rich with warmth and fun, danger, and uncertainty in which Amerigo must find his way is as overwhelming and unforgettable as any to be found in literature.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Written in 1963 and shelved, this hefty, astonishing novel by a black American expatriate who died in 1983 tells-in electric modernist vernacular prose-the story of a black child's life in Jim Crow America. In France during WWII, soldier Amerigo Jones thinks back on his youth in the 1920s and '30s in a black community resembling the author's native Kansas City. At first, the members of his extended family are presented as a chorus of voices fading in and out: his lovely, luxury-craving mother, Viola; his stern, dapper bellhop father, Rutherford; his grandmother and a bevy of aunts. After this short stream-of-consciousness section, the novel settles into a fluent, easy chronological narrative weighted toward the dreamy, determined Amerigo's early childhood, but stretching all the way to his graduation from high school. Through a steady accumulation of detail ("Five o'clock. Supper: hot dog sandwiches, salad, and beer for them and strawberry soda-pop for him"), sustained lyricism ("Fat round A's, B's, and C's spread out over the ruled spaces of his mind"), flights of fancy ("And he was the Swan Prince! `Wauk! Wauk!' He cried plaintively, his heart beating violently") and, especially, reams of swinging dialogue (" `A man reads this paper an' gits fightin' mad! Waitaminute!' "), Carter paints an uncommonly rich picture of black American family life in the early 20th century. Like the composition it is named for, a Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn tribute to Shakespeare, it is a marvelous blend of jazz rhythms and high literary tradition. (Apr. 15) Forecast: Carter may be neglected, but he has never been entirely forgotten. An essay on his only previously published work, The Bern Book: A Record of the Voyage of the Mind, about his life as the only black man in Bern, Switzerland, was included in Darryl Pinckney's Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature (2002). This novel could very well spark a revival of interest in this underappreciated writer. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
Evoking African-American childhood uniquely and on a grand scale, Carter's long-vanished magnum opus, for which he first sought a publisher in 1963, finally finds its worthy way into print 20 years after his death. Amerigo Jones is a young and innocent black soldier in France during WWII, when the prospect of spending a night of guard duty with a willing French girl triggers a memory of the one he left behind in Kansas City, and all his childhood comes washing over him like a riptide, pulling him back. From the beginning, his family and neighbors had special plans for him; although they lived in one of the poorest (but integrated) parts of the city during the middle of the Depression, Amerigo was brought up by his hardworking mother and father, Viola and Rutherford--only 16 themselves when their baby was born--to do the right thing. Being left alone all day while still too young to go to school did result in a day of misadventure, culminating in a trip with a gang of other kids to a soup kitchen, but when school began Amerigo took to it like a pearl to an oyster. With many of the same teachers his parents had, he impresses people, including the editor of the weekly black newspaper, whom he tells that he wants to grow up to be president. As years pass and many of the neighbors move on, he and his family remain, never far from the edge of poverty but still proud. Amerigo, a witness to murder, mayhem, and every seamy side of human nature, alters his vision of the future somewhat while still aiming high. But when he gets to high school--as the drums of war beat ever louder--he learns the bitter limits of his ambition. In need of some editorial trimming and polishing, perhaps, but this diamond in the rough is still an extraordinarily honest and compassionate child's-eye view of a world too seldom seen in American fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Amerigo Jones is a young foot soldier in World War II, fighting in France, when a friend offers him a French girl who is sleeping with black soldiers. The occasion prompts the dreamy young man to drift back into his childhood and memories of Cosima, the love of his youth. The reader is treated to vivid recollections of life in the alley dwellings of pre^-World War II Kansas City. For Amerigo and his parents, it is a life of poverty constricted even further by racial discrimination. But it is also a life of joy and the slow, steady rhythms of family, neighborhood, and church. Amerigo remembers the exhilaration of running with some bad kids, breaking out of the confines of the backyard, and the ecstasy in church of voices blending into "One Great Voice." The newspapers and neighborhood are full of news of Satchel Paige and the NAACP's efforts to end lynching, as young Amerigo dreams beyond the boundaries of racism. Carter, author of The Bern Book (1973), a memoir of his life of self-imposed exile, wrote this novel in 1963. The book wasn't published because it didn't fit the mold of black literature in the 1960s. Readers will appreciate its dreamy, nostalgic quality and lyrical writing, which evokes urban life before the war and offers a stirring portrait of a young boy growing up. --Vanessa Bush
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Completed in 1963 by an American expatriate living in Switzerland, this portrait of an African American childhood in Depression-era Kansas City, MO, has only now been published, 20 years after the author's death. Carter follows the life of Amerigo Jones from infancy to his last year in high school, during which he is dominated by his attractive but sometimes foolish mother, Viola; his strict, hard-working father, Rutherford; and his first love, Cosima, who chooses wealth and position over Amerigo's devotion. Amerigo's journey is surreal at first, as the voices of his childhood float in and out of consciousness, blurring his early years. Infused with the sounds and spirit of Kansas City jazz, the narrative becomes more traditional as Amerigo grows older and his family must face the hardships of poverty and the overt and rampant racism of 1930s America. The author's gritty style was ahead of its time, which may be why the book languished in obscurity for so long. While the length and confusing first pages may intimidate some readers, those that stay will find a satisfying read. For most public libraries.-Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L., IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.