A Speaking Novel Unspoken
"If you don't like the novel," LBJ told me,
"you oughtn't write about it."
LBJ has a generous heart and a Harlem Renaissance
mindset. We have to protect writers who
get published in the right places. Cast
no shadow on their achievements. Would
you allow a single negative comment to throw an entire ethnic group into a
ditch?
LBJ said I should not write about the novel that I happen
not to like. He didn't say I should not
write around the novel.
I do not especially like novels where each paragraph is a
cinderblock, related only to other cinderblocks by virtue of proximity. The novel doesn't lack intelligence and
design. It lacks the fire I expect to
find in an upper middle class confessional.
It gives me as much pleasure as an annotated telephone book.
I did find one thing to like in the novel. The reverse revenant of a narrator mentions
Sissiretta Jones. Like Paul Laurence
Dunbar's Malindy, Miss Jones could sing.
The late Ja Jahannes knew that when he wrote a play about Sissiretta
Jones. As far as divas go, she was a
diva's diva. It pleased me that the
narrator rescued a jewel from the barnyard.
"O.K., LBJ. I
did not write about the novel."
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. May
20, 2016
