The Hero and the Blues

By Albert Murray

Book Overview

In this visionary book, Murray takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way one reads literature. Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences; both place a high value on improvisation; and both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity. Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright , The Hero and the Blues pays homage to a new black aesthetic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679762205
• ISBN13: 9780679762201
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Put on your time-annhialating hats, kids

This is a complicated essay; like the previous reviewer mentioned it might be a good idea to have some Thomas Mann and Hemingway under your belt. That being said, this is the most witty, insightful, coherent and thought-provoking essays I have ever read. Not only is Murray's style pure thrilling joy to absorb, but his examinations into aesthetics, the blues, tragedy, and improvisation are masterful. This book entirely changed the way I view the role of literature and art in life.That is about all I can say. Murray knits a view of confrontation with life in art that nimbly leaps between Hemingway and Duke Ellington. I found his conclusions about the role of the blues and books in life endlessly compelling. I consider this book to be a treasure, from one of the unsquarest cats I've ever read.

Better do your homework

This book is a great example of Murray's witty and lucid writing style. However, you'd better read up on your Mann, Hemingway, and Faulkner before you read this.