Train Whistle Guitar(1974) by Albert Murray

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Train Whistle Guitar (1974)

by Albert Murray

Gasoline Point, Alabama

Alabama: 16/18

    I know I've been saying this since I reached the halfway point, but I will be glad to see the end of Alabama.   Train Whistle Guitar, by noted African American critic and novelist Albert Murray, was a real discovery.  I'm not a jazz guy, so I haven't read any of his criticism, but I was vaguely aware of his influence on multiple generations of subsequent critics and scholars, and the fact that he lived long enough to see himself canonized.  Among his works of criticism, Train Whistle Guitar was the first in a series of novels following the childhood and adulthood of a Murray-like character named Scooter, who Wikipedia describes as an "alter-ego."

  Train Whistle Guitar is the rare 1,001 Novels: A Library of America that shows any kind of interest in modernist technique, specifically, there is no third person narrator voice giving the reader explanatory paragraphs- you are just in the world with Murray.  Reading this book in Court and at jail, it was clear I should have taken more time with it, so that I could focus on the technique, but alas.