PITHY BOOK REVIEWS (Lon Clay Hill, Jr.)
{2018}

"I, who cannot fly, would reach the distant mountains…"
(lchj)

For the past seven decades or so, I have been a bibliophile — and have shared the results of my readings in various venues as both a teacher and as a private citizen. However, as time's long shadow is cast more obviously upon both my strength and my always poor typing skills — it is clear that I cannot render the horde of thoughts that continually cross my mind while I am reading into any semblance of their actual complexity and occasional nuance. And, yet, like many others, I believe that I have thoughts that are still worth saying…

My philosophical hero, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) — the passionate atheist who in spite of himself was more prophetic than most Christians and Jews of his time — says somewhere words to the effect that he aspires to say:

"More in a sentence than many writers say in a book — more even than can be said in a book."

Aphorisms are dangerous because are necessarily incomplete. They invariably encapsulate assumptions — often unspoken — that are impossible to put into linear prose. But they can be very useful because they suggest the boundaries and limits of our understanding and also because they at least hint of the directions we might travel to extend that understanding.

I, of course, was not given the linguistic gifts of my favorite authors of aphorisms (Nietzsche and Pascal), but each of us from time to time may have an opportunity to live our kites into the winds…

THE REVIEWS:

Review#1 (20 May 2018)


Tayari Jones (2018) An American Marriage: A Novel. HarperCollins Publishers. 306 pages.

This novel explores a very painful love triangle involving a marriage between a young 'black' Afroamerican man (Roy) and a young 'brown', upper class Afroamerican woman (Celestial) whose marriage falls apart after Roy is imprisoned during their honeymoon for a crime which Celestial knows he did not commit. Celestial, however, becomes impatient — after all she is also suffering from a crime that she also 'did not commit' — and gradually drifts into an affair with her longtime childhood friend (Andre). The book has received critical acclaim and was chosen as an Oprah Winfrey book and has, in my mind at least, both very sensitive and dramatic contours which have made it a book remarkably worthy of note. However, in spite of all these merits it appears to me that Ms. Jones blurs a critical ethical boundary. At the most fundamental level I do not believe that we humans get to choose our responsibilities — rather our most fundamental responsibility is to choose our response to those responsibilities inherent in the realities which we face and experience. It is true, that 'Celestial', the strongest voice in the book is not to be equated with the author's perspective. When ignorant Roy returns to the scene several years ahead of the original 12 year sentence it does suggest that Celestial has not taken the long look. But, on the whole it seems to me that Celestial's self-consciousness dominates the narrative to such an extent that it elides the actual responsibilities-and-lives of both males.

All of this is not to say that our understanding of our responsibilities does not change with time — of course it does. Likewise the choices that we make influence subsequent responsibilities that emerge with time. I also congratulate the author on her bold assertion that her novel — which in so many ways transpires within an Afroamerican self-consciousness — is truly an 'American' novel. [Indeed, much of her novel reminds me of the self-consciousness that I encountered over 50 years ago within the 'black' and 'tan' community/communities of New Orleans.] Still, like James Baldwin, she is fundamentally right — the color lines and racial injustices which she describes in her characters are truly 'American' inventions which continue to beset a 'Nation' still at war with the Declaration of Independence and those Christian principles which both politicians and their supporters all-too-often overlook with ignorance, smugness, and pride.

Miramar,FL (20 May 2018)