Night Song (1961) by John A. Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Night Song (1961)

by John A. Williams

New York: 60/105

Manhattan: 16/34

   The Manhattan chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project has been boring.  I think... this stems from the fact that editor Susan Straight is trying to give equal wait to the different cultural and socio-economic groups and books about the lower tiers of the socio-economic scale have a depressing sameness (so do books about the higher tiers of the socio-economic scale, of course).   How many times can one reader be subjected to the similar struggles of day-to-day life from the POV of poor, uneducated people. I believe the answer for this project is going to be something like 300 to 400 books.  Compare that to the sweep of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which has books from all times and places but few that chronicle day-to-day life from the perspective of the working poor.   It's so rare that the times and places where it does happen: English Kitchen Sink books from the mid 20th century, the French naturalists of the 19th century- come readily to mind.

   Night Song is more along the lines of what I'd like to read- a thinly veiled bio-fic about a thinly veiled Charles "Bird"  Parker:  musician and prodigious heroin addict.   Williams, who died in 2015, had a decades long reputation as an underappreciated writer from the "second Harlem Renaissance," but he rejected those comparisons and put together an iconoclastic career- including a critical biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that was unfortunately published in the aftermath of his assassination.   One interesting facet of this book, which is worth reading simply for its portrayal of the Greenwich Village jazz scene in the 1950's, is that Williams includes a white character who has interior thoughts which is extremely rare in books written by African American authors.  In African American fiction from New York white people are either absent, present as villains or presented as well-meaning do gooders who are more of an annoyance than a help.   My sample here is the 40 or so books out of the 60 books I've read out of New York.  

   Night Song is sure to be in my top 10 for New York.