> Jordan wrote:
> Long-time lurker here. I just read Jerry Bryant's
"'Born in a Mighty Bad Land': The Violent Man in African
American Folklore and Fiction". It is an excellent book, but
it gave me a hankering to pick up the rest of Donald Goines'
books that I don't have. Any suggestions on the cheapest way
to go
> (I only have 4 of the 16). I will also buy the 2
Iceberg Slim books I don't have.
>
> Bryant's book has a chaper entitled "Toast Novels",
which discusses Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. He also has a
chapter on Chester Himes (I have his entire Harlem cycle
courtesy of Payback Press).
>
> *********
> Bryant's book sounds interesting. I have looked at
American folklore for its impact on the hardboiled and noir
genres. The desire to root a lot of folklore in fact is
common. Most of it is questionable, but the search for the
real John Henry looked pretty interesting. I was disappointed
to find
> the characters I remember from childhood, like Paul
Bunyan and Pecos Pete, demoted into mere tall tales by a lot
of folklore experts.
>
> I didn't care for Iceberg Slim's PIMP, but I've got
Goines's WHORESON on the shelf waiting on me and I have
higher hopes for it. Charles Willeford writes about Chester
Himes in his New Forms of Ugly, spending as much time
discussing THE PRIMITIVE as any other book in the
essay.
>
> If you have the time and inclination, write some
more about the Bryant book. Who are some of the characters he
writes about? Does he have some "big picture" theory? Are
some of the folk tales imported from Africa? Also, can you
recommend any good books on American (United States) folklore
in
> general?
>
> Thanks, miker
Hi Miker,
Mark beat me to the punch with Stagoolee Shot Billy - an
excellent book. As for Born in a Mighty Bad Land, he deals
with the postbellum period and after, so he doesn't deal with
the African origin. He discusses the evolution of the
archetype with the change of society. He does talk about in
detail, among others: Stagolee, John Hardy, Dupree, Lazarus,
James Corrothers' Sandy Jenkins, Rudolph Fisher's Joshua
Jones, Arna Bontemps' Lil' Augie, Richard Wright's Bigger
Thomas, James Baldwin's John Grimes, Ralph Ellison's
Rinehart, Chester Himes' Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones,
Walter Mosley's Socrates, Mouse, and Easy Rawlins; John Edgar
Wideman's Tommy Lawson, and Toni Morrison's Cholly Breedlove,
Ajax, William Green, etc. As for folklore books, I don't know
what would be good very general books. I have focused on
African American, oral, and supernatural folklore and
legends. I list some books on African American folklore on my
site at http://funkmasterj.tripod.com/toasts!
.html . Feel free to ask me other questions on
folklore...
Jordan
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