The Omni-americans: Black Experience And American Culture (Da Capo Press Paperback) [Paperback]

Albert Murray (Author)

Book Description

Series: Da Capo Press Paperback | Publication Date: March 22, 1990

The Omni-Americans is a classic collection of wickedly incisive essays, commentaries, and reviews on politics, literature, and music. Provocative and compelling, Albert Murray debunks the "so-called findings and all-too-inclusive extrapolations of social science survey technicians," contending that "human nature is no less complex and fascinating for being encased in dark skin." His claim that blacks have produced "the most complicated culture, and therefore the most complicated sensibility in the western world" is elucidated in a book which, according to Walker Percy, "fits no ideology, resists all abstractions, offends orthodox liberals and conservatives, attacks social scientists and Governor Wallace in the same breath, sees all the faults of the country, and holds out hope in the end."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Novelist, essayist, and cultural critic Albert Murray--a classmate of Ralph Ellison at Tuskegee University--has spent his whole life affirming the positive aspects of Afro-American culture while rejecting the sociologically flawed assumptions of white America. These essays from the '60s and '70s attack what he called the "social science fiction" propagated by Marxist theorists, black activists, sociologists, and politicians. The book's goal, he wrote, was "to expose the incompetence and consequent impracticality of people who are regarded as intellectuals but are guided by racial bias rather than reason based on scholarly insight." For Murray, black culture derives from the American South; is blues-based in its oral, literary, and musical traditions; and is heroic in its eternal attempts to affirm the principles set down in the Constitution. With the skill of a jazz pianist, Murray lays down some cool intellectual chords that drown out the bleak dissonances of black life articulated in mainstream culture to create a black, brown, and beige--and brilliantly American--composition of his own. --Eugene Holley Jr.

About the Author

Albert Murray was born in Alabama in 1916. A cultural critic, biographer, essayist, and novelist, he has taught at several colleges, including Colgate and Barnard, and his works include The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place(nominated for a National Book Award), The Hero and the Blues, and Trading Twelve: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. He has also won the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award for Stomping the Blues.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (March 22, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030680395X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306803956
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,646 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still good to the last drop, June 27, 2000

By 

Jim Kibble - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Omni-americans: Black Experience And American Culture (Da Capo Press Paperback) (Paperback)

Although it's now 30 years old, Albert Murray's debut has hardly aged a day, and his potshotting at the shallow pieties of sociology remains all too relevant. The reader from Pittsburgh seems concerned that Murray isn't positive enough. But I think his central thesis--that we are all omni-Americans, sharing a hybrid, black-and-white culture--is one of the most hopeful things to come down the pike since Whitman hung up his versifying shoes. Add to that the fact that Murray is funny (not an easy thing to be when you're taking Daniel Patrick Moynihan down a peg) and you've got an essential volume on your hands. Three cheers for Da Capo for keeping this in print!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, 30yrs later it's still relevant, January 17, 2001

By 

dredscott (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Omni-americans: Black Experience And American Culture (Da Capo Press Paperback) (Paperback)

I totally enjoyed the spirit of this book. I might disagree with a few points and admit that Murry at times overstates to make a point. But he is allowed to signify! I disagree with the person from pittsburgh. I think Murry can be a skilled polemicist/intellectual himself, but think he'd rather not. But the book was speaking to polemicist and intellectuals in their terms. That's the whole point. They gotten so caught up in their rhetoric that they've forgotten how to see or speak about the human experience in any other terms. It is positive, the book continues to add a freshness and bounce to the stale social science dialogue about race, culture and particularly Blacks. As he says 'we (blacks) can't afford to be reduced to oppression and repression'. Murry would probably rather chop it up at a jazz bar or barber shop. That's why he gets to signify.

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Makes some points, but disappointing, October 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Omni-americans: Black Experience And American Culture (Da Capo Press Paperback) (Paperback)

Murray condemns both polemic and intellectuals yet he only manages to look at things from an intellectualist viewpoint when he discusses things in-depth and he seems very skilled as a polemicist himself. Very critical of anyone except those with a similar background, including many shots at social scientists, northerners and whites as well as Murray's fellow writers even. Hardly a positive work, despite the subtitle "Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy" which makes you think it will be more than it is.