Customer Reviews

Strivers Row: A Novel (P.S.)

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The third in Baker's "City of Fire" trilogy of historical fiction about New York City, this book is set in the early `40s in Harlem with the story told through the eyes of a young Malcolm Little, who in later life would become Malcolm X, and the fictional Rev. Jonah Dove (based on Adam Clayon Powell, who also appears as himself in the book.)

Baker's meticulous research results in Harlem scenes that resonate with believability. Laid against the backdrop is the story of Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad (founder of the Black Muslims), which has to be dealt with on a symbolic level. While an enjoyable read, this one didn't quite measure up to the promise generated by Baker's first two parts of the trilogy, Dreamland and Paradise Alley.

I've been a Kevin Baker fan since his brilliant book about Coney Island: Dreamland. His next one, Paradise Alley, may have been even better. No one writes about New York City as well as Baker does -- no novelist, no historian, no one. This new book is a novel about Harlem in the era of jazz greats and secret cults, the era of war and hope. I think it's his most ambitious work yet -- it tells the sotry of young Malcolm X, in the days before he was famous, and -- better than anything I know of about the man -- it gets at the heart of a great American engima. There are other great characters, too --- The Reverend Jonah Dove, who may be a real life figure, as well (I don't know) -- but the story itself is so riveting, I was totally into the book from page one.

Anyway, I really recomend it. The dude can write.

For six years and three books, Baker has been building, brick by brick, his own city, and it is a classic. With Striver's Row, the high-rises are inhabited, the streets are paved, the corners are teeming. You see how the country came together, and you understand that the world of books has been resting in sure hands. Baker has a detective's eye and a preservationist's heart: but most of all, he has a writer's head, and the proof is on every page. This book tops off a trilogy, but Striver's can be read alone; if it were a first novel, it'd be a cause for celebration. As the end of a series, it's an occassion for gratitude.

Kevin Baker has already proven himself to be a master of modern historical fiction with Dreamland and Paradise Alley. Now, he completes his City of Fire trilogy with the unforgettable Strivers Row, the story of a time as reflected in the lives of two men, Malcolm and Jonah.

We first meet Malcolm when he's still a boy after his mother has been taken ill. He is out hunting for hares with Mr. Gohannas and others. He describes the group by saying, "All of them darker than he was, their skin the color of burnt coffee or railroad coal, faces lined and creased like worn car seats. Wearing their field overalls and work boots, redolent with the scent of men's sweat and dirt. Some of them with their boys next to them -- wearing their handed-down overalls; faces exactly the same only smoother, as if all the creases had been ironed out. Their ragged hair knotted up in burrs and tangles, like the farmers they were and would always be."

As a 12-year-old Malcolm may be unfamiliar with how to use a .22, but he's clever and soon figures out the path that the frightened hares always take when rousted by the dogs. Soon, he's off by himself shooting the frightened creatures as they run, bagging more than any of the others.

When he reaches adulthood he remembers the rabbits, as an adult he is civil rights leader Malcolm X.

Set in Harlem in 1943 the scene is one of trouble waiting to happen. At this time Malcolm is young, self-important, without direction. Reverend Jonah Dove is the minister of one of the largest churches in Harlem and lives in the heart of that area known as Striver's Row. Fate steps in when it is Malcolm who saves Jonah and his wife from the brutal hands of some drunken white soldiers.

For Malcolm this is something he soon forgets; the assault and rescue affects Jonah quite differently. However, despite the pleasures he enjoys Malcolm has never found peace within himself, which haunts him and brings about a dramatic change in his thinking.

Yet life is about to be changed for many as race riots begin and before long Malcolm and Jonah are thrown together once again. Each must confront this devastation in his own way.

Baker's description of the Harlem that was with the Apollo Theater and vendors selling trinkets on street corners is so intensely real that one can almost hear the sounds and feel the tension. Thomas Anthony Penny offers a fine voice performance, becoming by turns a self indulgent man who battles racism in his own way and a minister who could pass for white and is often unsure of exactly where he belongs. All the while Penny recreates a pivotal era in American history with his attention to the nuances of Baker's story.

- Gail Cooke

Very few white American writers can deal with the black experience in America without being patronizing, mawkish or subtly racist. This writer does Malcolm X with sympathy, empathy, admiration and originality. While Malcolm X's horrendous childhood is fully set out, Baker never lays it on too thick or loses respect for his characters. Other great characters are Elijah Muhammed and a light skinned preacher of a black church who finds his privileged bourgeois upbringing a real handicap. This is a terrific book.

I read this book for my book club, and I felt it was a powerful look at history and race. The injustices faced by the characters to be utterly gut-wrenching, and knowing that this is based on true life only makes it harder. An important and wonderfully written book.

This is a REAL novel, written by an authentic novelist. His recreation of 1940s Harlem as a moral universe unto itself unfolds like something Duke Ellington might have composed -- jaunty, sexy, smooth and bombastic. My only complaint would be that the narrative at times lacks a compelling drive, making some sections overly picaresque and stagnant. Nonetheless, an impressive piece of work.

This is a stellar weaving of fictional characters and historical characters; and of fictional story telling amid historical events.

Baker deftly transports the reader into the period, and into the lives, thoughts and dreams of his characters.

I have not read the previous two books in Kevin Baker's series, but I will search them out now!

I loved this book!

If you have seen D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Nation, or if you're familiar with it, you know that it depicts white people as heroic, intelligent and noble, while the ex-slaves are presented as sinister and crude drunkards who pose a threat to white women and all decent people (that is to say white people). Now, imagine if you will, the negative of that film, where everything is reversed and black is white. Keep that in mind and you will have an idea of what "Striver's Row" is like. White people are presented without exception as barbarous, inhumane, menacing, cowardly, villainous, cruel and ignorant, and on the rare occasion where they are not depicted as being especially barbarous, inhumane, menacing, cowardly, villainous, cruel and ignorant, they are thoughtless and patronizing.

Very well. I'll voice no sentiments as to the truth of such a view and leave you to your own opinion. But who wrote this book? Louis Farrakhan? No, it's a white magazine writer and graduate of Columbia University. The story of Malcolm X and the society of Harlem has been told many times, most notably in Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Spike Lee's movie Malcolm X, but as Kevin Baker notes in the end pages of this novel, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is highly inaccurate. Apparently, it takes a white man to get the story straight.

It is almost too obvious to state again (as it's been stated many times), but the history of society in the United States during the past one-hundred years is the story of the white man mimicking the black man. First with music -- ragtime, jass, jazz, swing, blues, R&B, rock & roll, and on to hip-hop and rap -- and then with fashion and slang. As someone who spent most of his life in Detroit's inner-city, I can report that African-Americans resent it when their culture is thus arrogated, and that as soon as the whites (honkies, crackers) adopt a new fad, blacks drop it and move on to something else. Once white college students began listening to the blues (by way of British Invasion bands) blacks stopped listening to it, and B. B. King began playing almost exclusively to white audiences. Black women stopped wearing the Afro hairstyle as soon as white women began getting Afro-style perms. The black folx I knew became enraged when Republican activist Bo Derek appeared in a movie with "cornrow" braids.

Gil Scott-Heron mocked the hippie John Sinclair and his imitation White Panther party. A jazz musician once explained to me that bebop was developed as a style that was too intricate and impenetrable for the square white musicians to copy, and the popularity of Spike Lee's early films was due to the fact that they were so anti-white that they would confound the white man. Everyone in my city began wearing caps emblazoned with the letter X. (I got a cap which read PG-13, but that didn't go over very well.) Whatever his accomplishments, Malcolm X became popular mainly because he was someone who was out of the reach of the white man; out of reach because he represented (despite whatever his actual beliefs were) hatred of the white man. Let's see y'all copy THIS!

Well, here it is. Here's the white man's version of Malcolm. It's like seeing a modern production of Hamlet in contemporary garb with the Prince of Denmark portrayed as being obviously gay. Baker's presentation of Malcolm is that of a weak and hesitant man who is always on the verge of tears. He has no friends, and he's an undependable doper who, for some reason (I guess it's supposed to be envy), rips-off his Harlem benefactor of the proceeds of the numbers payoff. I think that the idea here is to make Malcolm more human by showing that he has insecurities and weaknesses just like the rest of us, but this Malcolm is certainly no leader. The only thing that keeps him going is his love (adoration, really) for a beautiful white woman -- actually, a deceitful woman who fools Malcolm into thinking she's white.

I don't think all this will go over with a black audience too well. They don't want a weak Malcolm; they want to believe in a forceful leader (in the same way that Republicans want the Founding Fathers to have all been churchgoing Christian fundamentalists and puritans).

Of course, there is no black audience for this book. It was written for a white liberal audience, those hanging on the cross of Liberal Guilt, and there's plenty here for them to wallow in. For those few readers not afflicted with Liberal Guilt, the numerous flashbacks in the narrative which do nothing to advance the story but are included only to reemphasize the perfidy of the white man, make for tedious reading, and many pages can be skipped without losing track. That's not to deny that Baker is a skilled writer, because there are also strong passages which hold the reader's attention.

The best of these is the story of how Elijah Muhammad (né Poole) was converted by Wallace D. Fard, a man who remains a mystery to this day, and although I've read a lot about the founding of the Nation of Islam (partially because it took place near where I grew up, and I also used to see the superb weekly "Muhammad Speaks" at work) this is the most gripping and detailed account I've read. Baker even hints at the possibility that Elijah Muhammad murdered Fard in June, 1934. (It's a great story, and the Nation of Islam hagiography is strangely reminiscent of that of Scientology. Fard taught that the evil scientist Yakub created the soulless white mutant race, while L. Ron Hubbard had the Emperor Xemu killing their souls with atomic bombs. In both cults, large aircraft play a significant role.)

It's a great story, but is it accurate? Extensive research went into this novel, and I can't even guess as to how much of the story is authentic. The extensive use of obsolete Harlem argot is admirable, but did they use the euphemism "hooking up" or "homie" back in 1943? Seems unlikely, but I defer to Baker's mastery of the topic. One wrong note, though, occurs in the first chapter. When Malcolm is depicted selling sandwiches on a train, they're in plastic sandwich bags. Baker (b. 1958) is too young to realize that plastic bags are a relatively recent invention, and the first plastic wrap, Saran Wrap, was not introduced until 1949. Sandwiches on a train were sliced diagonally and came in triangular waxed-paperboard containers. Baker gets the geography of Detroit all wrong, but you can chalk that up to "writer's embellishment."

The study of African-American history is worthwhile, and while Baker is not "wrong" for writing these historical novels, this book made me feel as I did some years ago at a street festival on West Grand Blvd. (near the Motown Museum) during a performance by KC and the Sunshine Band. The area was crowded, as many thought, because of his disco hits "That's the Way (I Like It)", "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" and "I'm Your Boogie Man", that KC was black. When he turned out to be a potbellied white man, and when KC began doing a ghastly imitation of James Brown, the audience did the opposite of rushing the stage. A wave of disgust swept the crowd, and in the mass evacuation, nobody was trying to leave faster than I was.

Yet, years later, here's another white man making money selling the black-man's story. Some things never change.

I'll wager that in his youth, Kevin Baker wore an Afro perm.

STRIVERS ROW is the third book in Kevin Baker's trilogy of historical novels about New York City. His ambition for these books is enormous, and it is the reader's good fortune that he has fulfilled, and then surpassed, the trilogy's huge potential.

As DREAMLAND, the first book, took readers to Coney Island at the turn of the century, and the second, PARADISE ALLEY, took us to the Lower East Side during the Draft Riots, STRIVERS ROW gives us Harlem just as World War II breaks out. Hustling, hellish, hard-hitting, hipped to the play Harlem --- just the sort of place a young man named Malcolm Little selling ice cream on the Yankee Clipper might plan to visit for an evening's entertainment and wind up never getting back on that train again. Malcolm Little is the cocky, good-time, pre-Islam Malcolm X, whose casual drug use and petty crime start to spiral out of control just as his rage over the condition of black Americans distills into an overwhelming feeling that there must be something more.

Malcolm shares the narrative with Jonah Dove, son of Milton Dove, whom readers might remember from PARADISE ALLEY. Jonah is a minister, pressed into inheriting his father's place in the church despite his doubts and lack of a calling. Milton Dove is a hero to his flock, the legendary founder of the church, and Jonah feels entirely inadequate to his task, a feeling that inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He has been secretly indulging his habit of "passing," banking on his light skin to lead people to assume that he is white, after a humiliating incident on the train. Malcolm Little witnessed the minister and his wife, saw how drunk white soldiers treated them, and the two men keep running into each other at crucial moments, both bewildered that "the man from the train" keeps turning up.

Malcolm is unaware that the love of his life, the white singer Miranda, is actually Jonah's equally light-skinned sister. She has turned passing into a way of life, protected by West Indian Archie, Malcolm's mentor in drug dealing and number-running. Kevin Baker makes the two men's frequent encounters seem inevitable: their problems of doubt and self-loathing are so similar and such products of being young black men in white America that they transcend all their differences in character. The crises increase until Harlem is on the brink of a riot and both men are matured and permanently changed by their experiences.

Strivers Row is an actual street in Harlem, the destination of choice for blacks who have found a way to succeed. World War II, however, makes it impossible to live there without remembering the Jews of Europe. They liked to live in the same neighborhoods too, and it only made it easier to round them up and kill them. The characters in STRIVERS ROW question if assimilating with mainstream white culture might be a better choice, and if it might not be self-destructive for black men to fight a white man's war.

Kevin Baker takes great glee in working in the colorful, marvelously funny slang of the period. Readers might find it helpful to peruse the jive glossary in the back of the book before plunging into this unforgettable novel about another of New York City's crucibles.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn (CQuinn9368@yahoo.com)