- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Murray's 1973 book analyzes the connection between blues, literature, and the African American's place in society.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"[Albert Murray] is possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's Imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling."
-- The New Yorker
In this visionary book, the author of the legendary Stomping the Blues takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way we read all literature. Albert Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences. Both place a high value on improvisation. And both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity.
Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright, The Hero and the Blues is at once an homage and a manifesto for a new black aesthetic. Erudite, eloquent, appreciative, and iconoclastic, it is further evidence of Murray's ability to turn the essay into a kind of poetry -- as enchanting as it is instructive.
"The size of his reputation is incommensurate with his quality .... Murray is as close to a classic nineteenth-century man of letters as one might find in this country today."
-- Boston Globe
-- The New Yorker
In this visionary book, the author of the legendary Stomping the Blues takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way we read all literature. Albert Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences. Both place a high value on improvisation. And both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity.
Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright, The Hero and the Blues is at once an homage and a manifesto for a new black aesthetic. Erudite, eloquent, appreciative, and iconoclastic, it is further evidence of Murray's ability to turn the essay into a kind of poetry -- as enchanting as it is instructive.
"The size of his reputation is incommensurate with his quality .... Murray is as close to a classic nineteenth-century man of letters as one might find in this country today."
-- Boston Globe
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Put on your time-annhialating hats, kids,
This review is from: The Hero And the Blues (Paperback)
This is a complicated essay; like the previous reviewer mentioned it might be a good idea to have some Thomas Mann and Hemingway under your belt. That being said, this is the most witty, insightful, coherent and thought-provoking essays I have ever read. Not only is Murray's style pure thrilling joy to absorb, but his examinations into aesthetics, the blues, tragedy, and improvisation are masterful. This book entirely changed the way I view the role of literature and art in life. That is about all I can say. Murray knits a view of confrontation with life in art that nimbly leaps between Hemingway and Duke Ellington. I found his conclusions about the role of the blues and books in life endlessly compelling. I consider this book to be a treasure, from one of the unsquarest cats I've ever read.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Put on your time-annhialating hats, kids,
This review is from: The Hero And the Blues (Paperback)
This is a complicated essay; like the previous reviewer mentioned it might be a good idea to have some Thomas Mann and Hemingway under your belt. That being said, this is the most witty, insightful, coherent and thought-provoking essays I have ever read. Not only is Murray's style pure thrilling joy to absorb, but his examinations into aesthetics, the blues, tragedy, and improvisation are masterful. This book entirely changed the way I view the role of literature and art in life. That is about all I can say. Murray knits a view of confrontation with life in art that nimbly leaps between Hemingway and Duke Ellington. I found his conclusions about the role of the blues and books in life endlessly compelling. I consider this book to be a treasure, from one of the unsquarest cats I've ever read.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better do your homework,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Hero And the Blues (Paperback)
This book is a great example of Murray's witty and lucid writing style. However, you'd better read up on your Mann, Hemingway, and Faulkner before you read this.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > Arts & Photography > Music
- Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > Art
- Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > History
- Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > Music
- Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > African American
- Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > History & Criticism
