According to National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Murray (The Hero and the Blues; etc.), the central character of his three novels, Scooter a.k.a. Jack the Rabbit, "has to be nimble or nothing. He's got to be resilient... he's got to be able to improvise on the break." This characterization of life in the "briarpatch" also describes the author's complex voice in this immensely satisfying collection of fiercely individualistic, often perversely positive prose pieces, addresses and interviews. A tireless iconoclast, author of numerous works of cultural critique and a retired college professor, Murray, who prefers the term "Negro" to "black" or "African American," shatters orthodox assumptions about subjects ranging from the Harlem Renaissance to "folk art" ("a product of the…no less authentic but least informed and crudest aesthetic sensibility"). He also thwarts common expectations in his critique of authors ("Old Faulkner became and still is my very own idiomatic old Uncle Billy"). Designations like "liberal" and "conservative" don't apply to Murray's finely tuned creativity; in fact, with his exquisite literary sensibility, Murray does not identify himself as political, unlike many contemporary critics. Central to his analyses is what he calls the "blues idiom.... inherited from our captive ancestors." Therein he finds "a context which enables one to deal with the tragic, comic, melodramatic, and farcical dimensions of existence simultaneously"—at which Murray is more than proficient. His writings on Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are gifts to the reader. Among these 17 pieces, only two have been previously published (in the Georgia Review
and Callaloo). Murray, now 81, is currently finishing a collection of his correspondence with Ralph Ellison, who was an upperclassman at Tuskegee when Murray arrived. (Nov. 21)
