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The Man Who Cried I Am | 
 enlarge | Author: John Alfred Williams
Publisher: Overlook TP
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $0.85
You Save: $16.10 (95%)
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 314414
Media: Paperback
Pages: 410
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 1585675806
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781585675807
ASIN: 1585675806
Publication Date: August 31, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Generally recognized as one of the most important novels of the tumultuous 1960s, The Man Who Cried I Am vividly evokes the harsh era of segregation that presaged the expatriation of African-American intellectuals. Through the eyes of journalist Max Reddick, and with penetrating fictional portraits of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, among other historical figures, John A Williams reveals the hope, courage, and bitter disappointment of the civil-rights era. Infused with powerful artistry, searing anger, as well as insight, humanity, and vision, The Man Who Cried I Am is a classic of postwar American literature.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
A great book I only recently discovered November 25, 2002
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
A neglected classic by a writer who some consider equal to Ralph Ellison in importance. One fascinating aspect is its fictionalized treatment of some of the century's famous black literary figures. It's a portrait of the post-WWII-through-mid-sixties period as seen through the eyes of a black writer as he establishes a career as a novelist, journalist, and Presidential speechwriter in New York, Paris, Washington, D.C., and Lagos, Nigeria. The main character, Max Reddick, is shaped by anger, at the crux of which is indignation at the hypocrisy and hostility that black people and writers faced during this period. It's a historical novel which provides some insight into the social and political ferment of the sixties, and has an Afrocentric perspective that's somewhat reminiscent of Walter Mosley's work. It includes an intruiging fictionalized version of a mythic encounter between Richard Wright and James Baldwin ("Marion Dawes") in a Paris cafe, and according to James Sallis's biography of Chester Himes, it describes the essence of Wright's expatriate experience and his relationship with Himes. Ishmael Reed has said that the cartoonist Ollie Harrington is depicted, and although I didn't recognize him, Malcolm X is unmistakable and I suspect that "Time" Curry is modelled after jazz drummer Kenny Clarke, who was living in Paris at the time. According to the author's biography of Richard Pryor, Motown explored the possibility of buying the film rights to the novel as a vehicle for its star, Marvin Gaye, until the idea was abandoned in favor of Lady Sings the Blues.The story begins near the end as Max, who's dying of cancer, sits at an outdoor cafe in Amsterdam where he's come to investigate the mystery of the death of his friend, Harry Ames, "the father of black writers," a few days earlier in Paris. What he eventually discovers is mind-blowing. Throughout the novel, Max opines on a multitude of subjects like: Marxism, African independence and African attitudes towards Americans, sexuality and interracial relationships (he works past some of his homophobia too), the different styles of reporters from 5 major NYC newspapers, the theory of the rich president and other political theories, the "lie" of Christmas ("the rich man's chance to dissipate the image of Scrooge"), American cars (with their "long, buttock-smooth lines"), existentialism, and Alban Berg's atonal opera, "Wozzeck" (whose climax, a child's scream, punctuates Max's argument with his woman). Max interprets bebop's message as, "we can not be contained," and modern jazz becomes the avatar of his literary aesthetic: "He wanted to do with the novel what Charlie Parker was doing to music -- tearing it up and remaking it; basing it on nasty, nasty blues and overlaying it with the deep overriding tragedy not of Dostoevsky, but an American who knew of consequences to come: Herman Melville, a super Confidence Man, a Benito Cereno saddened beyond death."
Its good. December 9, 1998
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
One of the greatest novels of its time or anytime. It brought me to tears, jeers, and fears.
Stupendous; one of the three greatest black novels December 30, 1997
Vaughn A. Carney (Vermont USA)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Belongs right up there with Wright's Native Son and Ellison's Invisible Man. Lyrical, poetic, evocative, powerful; if this book were set to music, the reader would hear Coltrane wailing in the night. John A. Williams misses nothing in this master work. It is impossible to read this work and remain unchanged.
i am a black man... July 17, 2001
Erren Geraud Kelly (San Francisco, California)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
and this is a great book...read this and you will see why the black man feels the way he does; why interracial relationships remain the enigma that no one wants to unravel and the the battles that black people fight in general...also read " one for new york," by williams
 A warning of horrors to come February 9, 2006
Stephen G. Esrati (Shaker Heights, OH USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I first read this book in 1968, as Cleveland burned and after a copy boy on my paper had asked me about a U.S. plan to imprison blacks in concentration camps. I told the kid he was nuts.
After reading the book, however, I realized that Williams was fictionalizing the McCarran Act, which set up the very scheme the kid was worrying about.
That law is still on the books.
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