10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The ugly side of race and sexuality, September 8, 2005
This review is from: Love the One You're With (B-Boy Blues, Book 5) (Paperback)
The main problem with Love The One You're With - like others in this series - is that it takes itself too seriously. The plot - such as it is - is pure soap. Mitchell's partner, Raheim, is out of town, and Mitchell is suddenly faced with an onslaught of attractive men vying for his attention. Naturally, they're all super-attractive, big-booty bruthas desperate for Mitchell, and either hyper-masculine or hyper-groomed. This could have been funny, but is handled with such a lack of modesty by our 'hero' (who is attractive and talented in equal measures) that it rapidly becomes both tedious and unreal. Such conceit and self-importance are a turn-off to most people, and these suitors would turn on the haughty Mr. Crawford as rapidly as the reader does.
In fact, the unappealing characters who fill the pages particularly grate on the nerves. Never before have a pool of such arrogant, vain, judgemental, bitching queens been assembled. Hardy's work has been called `the black gay Sex And The City' by some, a serious slur on that show. At best, Hardy's brand of `razor sharp wit' is a sort of banal carping. At worst, it's a dangerous, unnecessarily vicious attack on those whom Hardy judges as either traitorous, or the enemy, in his war on integration. What are young men of mixed black/white (or any other mix) parentage to make of a book that tells them they are born of a fraud? Or the multitude of men in interracial relationships, who are told they are immoral? Hardy has set himself up as the ultimate authority on issues of race and sexuality, and from his position on high, has decided what is right and what is wrong. Unfortunately, in his world, everything is black and white. No room is left for men who don't fit his limited view of black or white. It's wrong for a black man and a white man to love one another, apparently, because the white man will always use the black man to live out slave fantasies. Okay, so what if two mixed-race men love one another? Is that allowed in Hardy's world? Or doesn't mixed-race count as black? How black do you have to be, one wonders, if you are only one or the other? It seems that Hardy's characters prove their `blackness' by denigrating Caucasians at every opportunity. It's utterly cringe-inducing that every Caucasian encountered in the book, or referred to, is either an out-and-out racist or worse still, liberal (Hardy sees no difference between the two. A liberal is merely a redneck in disguise, or one attempting to salve their guilty conscience).
As an aside, it's worth noting that Hardy considers it wrong for white men to fetishise black men (it's BAD AND WRONG if they find large lips, dark skin or a big booty attractive), yet Hardy has deemed it okay for his middle-class, sanctimonious lead, Mitchell, to fetishise the down-low, straight-out-tha-ghetto lover, Raheim.
Hardy over-estimates his own intellectual stature. Take the scene in which Mitchell interviews a black (gay) republican. Mitchell floors the republican with some cutting questions. I'm sorry, but reality check, Hardy! Almost any politician would have a slick comeback rehearsed - politicians know how to deal with difficult questions, and those Hardy (I'm sorry, Mitchell) puts aren't rocket science. Has Hardy ever actually spoken to a black republican, or read one of the many books penned by them? Hardy wishes to establish Mitchell's, and by extension, his own intellectual standing, yet everyone he meets who dares to have a different opinion is a babbling idiot, unable to make any argument once Mitchell opens his mouth. The reader is left with the distinct impression that Hardy his so righteous that he has never listened to anyone who might have a different point of view.
His style of writing itself is peculiar. Desperately trying to be hip and trendy, he comes across as patronising and holier-than-thou. If his target audience is young black men (which it clearly is) then he clearly has a low opinion of them. At times it's rather like reading a lecture by a boring do-gooder. Even his fans have criticised his long, tedious digressions into politics, education, or whichever issue happened to cross his mind on that particular day. There's a particularly bad chapter in a supermarket where Mitchell is standing in line, which tries to come across as a Jerry Seinfeld "have you ever noticed how..." moment, and fails miserably.
There are seemingly endless pages of filler. Trying to up the word count from his last effort, the wafer- thin The Day Eazy-E Died, Hardy gives us lengthy catalogues of the songs played in whichever club the characters found themselves in. He describes in minute detail the menu every time a character has a meal. And there are whole chapters of meaningless fluff, in which Mitchell and Raheim have late night, long distance "I miss you" calls. None of this furthers the plot, or character development, and served only to antagonise this reader. It's another indication of the author being so in awe of his creations, that he expects his readers to be intrigued by every detail of their lives.
The first novel in this series, published a couple of hundred years ago, it now feels like, was fresh and original, and lacked much (if not all) of the spite and nastiness of its successors. But Hardy has proven himself to be a cynical opportunist, shamelessly flogging this dead horse for all it's worth. Worse still, a sixth (and apparently final) instalment is to follow.
And after 262 pages of righteousness, we're told that it's okay to cheat on your lover, so long as you don't actually kiss the other man. At least it's in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dreadful, boring, asinine, and an insult to all literature, March 2, 2003
By A Customer
James Earl hardy should've quit after 2nd Time Around and went back to journalism. Love the One you're with is very boring and unnecessary. There is NO tension whatsoever. I realize JEH feels compelled to depict positive Black gay relationships, but unfortunately by doing this he is sacrificing any conflict that will make his work engrossing and unforgettable. Raheim and Mitchell no longer have any grave issues to deal with in each other, nothing threatens to break them up, all they do is compliment and coo at each other. By the book's middle it was obvious that everything was going to end as neatly as it began. The UPS man is a very ineffective monkey wrench, I never for one second got the feeling he'd threaten R. & M.'s commitment because there is no build up of suspense. In fact, the story had no climax!
It's obvious JEH was grasping for straws while writing this. Some of the word choice is amateurish and downright childish: "Dr. Spock-ish ears", "skin color of a Planter's peanut", "Chipmunk cheeks". He also has a bad habit of beginning every scene with a character quote, too lazy to set things up with description or narrative. One of THE most annoying things is how he'd trail off.... there wasn't a page where his sentences didn't... I mean it gets pretty annoying... A lot of events he just borrowed from his original novel- cream of wheat burning, meeting the "love interest" in a gay social club, going to see a movie on the first date, running into the love interest as he makes a delivery. In fact, the entire plot relies on tired coincidence to move it along because JEH is apparently too lazy to brainstorm for less contrived ideas. In New York City, filled with millions upon millions of people, Mitchell and the UPS guy run into each other for no plausible reason on multiple occasions all over town, and yet strangely this has never happened until this novel.
To enhance the feeble plot, he creates a long chapter about his relationship with an old boyfriend mentioned in B-Boy Blues. In this novel the guy is a right-wing republican out of touch with his ethnicity. In B-Boy Blues this boyfriend was without any flaws or baggage and they were a match made in heaven, but again JEH is clutching for straws so he pulls this new info out of nowhere. In another attempt he spends a very long time describing a school call Knowledge Hall though it is not integral to the novel at all. Once the chapter ends the school is never mentioned again. The same can be said for the gay organization chapter, after the chapter ends the group virtually ceases to exist. To try and further characterize Gene, he talks about his daily grooming ritual, his interior design, and his favorite TV shows, but it adds nothing new to him. We already knew he was vain and grand. The scenes following Mitchell around doing typical activities add nothing interesting, either, because who doesn't shop for food/clothes and get occasionally hit on while doing so? In B-Boy Blues the original cast was fiery, flawed, and BUSY, in this book they are so contently settled and even-tempered it's as if this is being written by a completely different and less talented writer.
This is an exhaustive review but my point is how inferior every new installment is in this series. I didn't even bother reading The Day Eazy-E died but from what I've gathered from other reviews it's just as unnecessary as Love the One you're with and If only for one night. All three of these books could have been written as one novel or better yet incorporated into 2nd Time around, which also lacked substantial conflict but at least it was fresh and had some good dialogue. Nothing of any great importance was presented in JEH's last three novels. An uneventful high school reunion, an HIV test which comes back negative, and a sexual indiscretion- which although inconsequential is described in revolting detail-are too trivial to be main plots in a novel, especially when nothing else is happening. B-Boy Blues was such a rich, complicated book that warrants all the praise and controversy it gets. Unfortunately for us readers it was just a fluke. JEH is supposed to be writing the final installment of the series soon, hopefully in that one Pooquie, Little Bit, and Gene will get on an airplane with Basil Henderson and they are all killed in a fiery crash. In my opinion JEH has done a very big disservice to his characters by diluting them and making them less legendary with each new unsuccessful effort.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
