Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk: Thoughts on the Groundbreaking Classic Work of W.E.B. DuBois

by Playthell Benjamin and Stanley Crouch

Book Overview

Stanley Crouch teams up with noted journalist Playthell Benjamin for this thought-provoking look back at The Souls of Black Folk, the epochal, prophetic work by the great African-American intellectual... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0762416998
• ISBN13: 9780762416998
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Great Deal

The book was in great shape and was shipped on time. It was a gift and they really enjoyed the book.

Smart, but not Stuffy

This is a very worthwhile read. As an introduction to the work of W.E.B. Du Bois or for someone like me who's read "The Souls of Black Folk" as well as David Levering Lewis's "Biography of a Race," this book is valuable because it personalizes some of Du Bois's scholarship and puts it in an interesting context. The scope is not limited to "The Souls of Black Folk" however, it's much broader than that. Benjamin provides a thorough overview of Du Bois's entire body of work while Crouch contributes some "speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger's posterior," to quote Ralph Ellison's prologue on invisibility. This is a smart book but not a dry academic work; it draws upon: current events, history, contemporary fiction, music, sports, everything. I've read it twice already and have referred back to it numerous times. I've also checked out a couple of additional books based on the authors' recommendations, like Roger Wilkins' "Jefferson's Pillow" and James Weldon Johnson's autobiography, "Along This Way." Benjamin especially, lays out the whole legacy of Du Bois's influence in sociology and political science, discussing important works by Harold Cruse and many others."The chords of unintended consequences were subjected to some extended blues choruses in which the tragic optimism of American democracy wafted through the atmosphere, setting loose enough building wind to blow the candles off of the table of slavery and burn down the house." Shelby Foote could not have put it any better than that! This is clearly some inspired writing by Crouch, and I've read a few of his books (plus all of his JazzTimes columns). He contributes only 70 of the book's 250 pages though, so instead of "trading twelves," the format is more like trading eighteens and sixes, but he says a lot in those six bars. Anyway, they might have acheived a more equal distribution by editing out some of Mr. Benjamin's attacks on other public intellectuals. He skewers public intellectuals the way Queequeg skewers sperm whales. The other suggestion I have is that Running Press might consider springing for an editor at more than minimum wage. A couple of highlights for me are: Playthell Benjamin's extraordinary ten-page musicological analysis which traces strains of anti-Semitism in German culture to the music of Richard Wagner (terrible man, terrific music). Benjamin comes as close as he's going to get to chiding Du Bois for not making the connection, during his student days in Berlin, between the Teutonic "Strong Man" of his Harvard baccalaureate address and the Teutonic Strong Man of Wagner's pre-Christian operatic epic. I was also impressed by Stanley Crouch's presentation of what he sees as the African American legacy of intellectual opposition (of which Du Bois is a part) in the process of redefining (or "purifying," as he calls it) the Enlightenment ideals contained in the founding documents. Crouch provides excerpts from the writing of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire as well a