Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hour to perform. The shortest of his Three Small Pieces for Cello and Piano (1914) consists of nine measures. His Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913) go by in an average of 40 seconds each-expressing, in the words of his mentor Arnold Schoenberg, ''a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath...
Adapted by Frederick Neumann from a novel by Samuel Beckett
...Colored Girls roused theatergoers while Pat Harris ruled HUD, so that was the Year of the Black Woman. This year must be the Year of the Black Relationship, since both Time and Newsweek wrote on that subject. Baldwin thinks so too. His newest novel, Just Above My Head, scrutinizes almost every possible variation of the black love relationship, homosexual to conjugal to incestuous to fraternal, while simultaneously indulging Baldwin's familiar obsession with the black church. His approach produces an odd melange of eroticism and spiritualism, which seems to alternate between embarrassing explicitness and slightly cloying romanticism. However, the book...
...Arthur's older brother Hall. Hall recounts Arthur's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement, Julia's fall from the ministry and subsequent exploitation by her father, Arthur's homosexual relationship with Julia's pianist brother Jimmy, and Arthur's mysterious death at the peak of his fame. The novel reads as if authored by Hall in an effort to understand his brother's life as an artist, in order to legitimize his need for art in a rapidly changing society. Though Baldwin halfheartedly attempts to detach himself from the character of Hall, it is clear Hall's observations about...
Baldwin's handling of the gospel music motif, which he weaves throughout the novel to mark the changes in Arthur's life, also warrants some criticism: readers lacking any exposure to gospel music may find the references hard to follow. This is important, since Baldwin depends on the music to evoke an atmosphere rarely found outside black churches. Those who can't understand the gospel theme can ignore it; still, having worked to incorporate that bit of black culture, it is sad the author failed to make the device serve the readers who most need "clues...