Man Walking on Eggshells

Not quite the ""hard-boiled"" work that the Old School editors proclaim in their preface, this 1962 reprint is instead an affectingly sentimental portrayal of virtuosic, restless jazz musician Raymond Douglas, from his birth in East St. Louis during a tornado in the late 1920s to his apotheosis as a ""modern-day Moses among the Negro people"" in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Patterning Douglas on Miles Davis, Simmons (Corner Boy) episodically relates both the rewards and the frustrations of this horn player and composer as he faces 40 years of tribulations: his bossy mother's distrust of musicians; constant harassment by the white police; a marijuana habit; the death of his first wife during childbirth; and a falling-out with most of his childhood friends when Douglas chooses music and family over black militancy. The consistently percolating dialogue, which bubbles with wit and pathos, is this novel's strong suit. Less clear are all the dimensions of Douglas's character. Fuller descriptions of the power of its music--its changing style over the years, its tonal moods and subtleties and its ability to stir feelings of both longing and transcendence--would have made Douglas a more poignant figure, not to mention a more credible national spokesman on racial issues. Furthermore, as Simmons's own introduction suggests, the title confuses: by novel's end, what has been conveyed is less a man walking on eggshells than a man buried alive trying to dig his way out into fresh air and freedom. (July)