Such Sweet Thunder

Starred review from March 17, 2003
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.

April 15, 2006
Carter's coming-of-age novel, set in the African American community of Kansas City, MO, in the 1920s and 1930s, was completed in 1963 but not published until 2003, 20 years after Carter's death. This new paperback edition, a revision that restores material deleted from the 2003 text, is tightly (or narrowly) focused on the childhood and adolescence of Amerigo Jones. Everything is filtered through Amerigo's consciousness, and the larger issues of the day -voting rights, segregation, and lynchings -are reflected in the opinions of the adults that Amerigo encounters in his neighborhood. The book is obviously autobiographical, and Carter's memory is prodigious, conjuring up the pungent smells of the food, the scratchy sounds of Bessie Smith and Fats Waller recordings, and the faded colors of an old dress. The mood of nostalgia is overwhelming, and for readers with ties to this time and place, the emotional impact will be profound. However, the thick layering of detail stalls the pace of the narrative. The result is a sensory feast but a very slow read. Appropriate for regional collections, whether public or academic." -Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles"

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