sonnys blues :: essays research papers

At its best, James Baldwins fiction is lyrical, intense, poetic, outrageous, improvisatory, brutal, and transcendent. The prime(prenominal) time I read his short story, "Sonnys Blues," I was sitting in one of those massive chain bookstores, drinking coffee and trying to full point out the pabulum coming from the Muzak. Imagine my surprise when I abruptly found myself choking back tears. The last three pages of "Sonnys Blues" ar as good as it gets Sonny breaks into a blistering lightly solo, finally finding a voice for his repressed pain. Baldwin follows suit capturing the rhythms, the longing, the empower and take of the best jazz in some of the most(prenominal) stun prose Ive encountered.Unfortunately, some other Country is not Baldwin at his best. In fact, its possibly the most frustrating novel Ive ever read. Here, Baldwin is so determined to explode the intersections of race, gender, and gender and judging by the variety of sexual relationships on di splay here, he must have plotted those intersections on graph paper out front sitting down to write that he makes a fatal skid instead of being particularly insightful or even shocking, Another Country is preachy, sentimental, and, worst of all, boring.Rufus Scott is a young black man who makes his bread and butter playing drums in Harlem jazz clubs. When we first meet Rufus, he is range the streets, suffering from guilt over his treatment of Leona, a woman we posterior meet through flashbacks. Leonas and Rufuss relationship is based on a divided self-loathing he feels unworthy of the love of a white woman she has cognize solely brutal relationships, having come to New York after escaping from an abusive conjugal union in the South. Rufuss brutality eventually sends her to an asylum, an event that plagues Rufus, leading him to jump from the George cap bridge at the end of chapter one. The remainder of the novel charts the effects of Rufuss self-annihilation on the lives o f those closest to him. The most interesting relationship is between Ida, Rufuss junior sister, and Vivaldo, his best friend. Both are struggling artists she a singer, he a novelist. In Baldwins hands, they become a platform for long discourses on the legacies of racism. in the lead meeting Ida, Vivaldo has known black women only as sexual objects the shoddy whores he frequented in Harlem. Ida has likewise known white men only as victimizers the men who leered at her and who broke her brothers spirit.