Tag Archives: James McBride

Good, Evil, and Hope: Deacon King Kong

18 Monday Jan 2021

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Review: Deacon King Kong, by James McBride
Riverhead, 2020. 370 pp. $28

Few people even know his real name, because he never uses it. Even the police confuse him with someone else, because he shares a driver’s license with another man, which makes his official record almost untraceable. But to the residence of the Causeway Housing Projects (the Cause) in south Brooklyn, he’s Sportcoat, because of the colorful assortment he wears of that garment.

His finest moment came umpiring the Cause baseball team, now disbanded. These days, the former deacon of Five Ends Baptist Church spends his time high on King Kong, the popular name for a friend’s moonshine, and talks to his late wife, Hettie. Or thinks he does, and nobody can persuade him otherwise.

Except that in summer 1969, Sportcoat shoots Deems, a teenage kingpin of the Cause drug traffic, and his former baseball protégé, at point-blank range. Sportcoat claims not to have understood what he was doing, but nobody believes that, least of all, the police. But he’s the type of character who doesn’t care what anybody thinks, alternately perplexing, amusing, and horrifying everyone else.

From that shooting springs a complicated, finely woven story, involving Five Ends, cheese deliveries, storytelling as an art form, the racism that warps life in the projects, unlikely romances, what constitutes good in the face of so much evil, and how humans dare to hope.

A portion of the Red Hook Houses project, south Brooklyn, as it appeared in 2012 at Lorraine and Henry Streets (courtesy Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

But I’d be doing Deacon King Kong a disservice if I failed to mention what a rollicking good time the novel is. Pick almost any paragraph, and you’ll find sprawling, delicious sentences like these, oozing with spicy flavor:

Meanwhile Sister Bibb, the voluptuous church organist, who at fifty-five years old was thick-bodied, smooth and brown as a chocolate candy bar, arrived in terrible shape. She was coming off her once-a-year sin jamboree, an all-night, two-fisted, booze-guzzling, swig-faced affair of delicious tongue-in-groove licking and love-smacking with her sometimes boyfriend, Hot Sausage, until Sausage withdrew from the festivities for lack of endurance.

And for those who appreciate snappy dialogue, look no further. What in the Sixties we used to call “rank-outs” or “snaps” appear here in a poetic form guaranteed to prompt laughter. For instance: “But that idiot’s so dumb he lights up a room by leaving it.” Or: “Son, you looks like a character witness for a nightmare.” McBride has a superb ear and inventive pen, which makes the narrative a delightful ride.

For the first two chapters, McBride even goes a little too far, I think, unraveling so many stories within stories, and with such far-ranging flights of verbal fancy, that I worried. I thought reading Deacon King Kong would be like eating an entire tub of caramel pecan ice cream in a half-hour, past my limit. But the narrative settles down somewhat, to the extent that it does, and McBride’s storytelling skills come to the fore.

Every spoonful matters, as details you might have glossed over come back to play important roles. Characters cross paths in natural yet unexpected ways, and points of view transition gracefully from one to other. Sportcoat moves through the novel oblivious to the effect he has on others, the ultimate catalyst — and denies it, if anyone should point it out to him.

Two key themes emerge. One involves how white interpretations of Black life rest on lies that Black people need not — must not — accept, even if they can do nothing else to fulfill themselves. Dignity requires insisting on the truth. Within that, a person finds meaning and hope by taking small actions, even though they won’t change the big picture. That’s all anyone can do.

As historical fiction, the novel gets down to neighborhood level, as in how the influx or departure of certain groups changes the Cause, how the police or certain agencies function differently from the past, or how drugs have taken over, and the horrific damage that follows. That’s what 1969 means here, aside from frequent references to the New York Mets. And though I yield to no one in my love for that team, I do wish McBride had gone a little further. In particular, I’d have liked to hear more about the Vietnam War, for instance, because maybe residents of the Cause had strong feelings about fighting the white man’s war in Southeast Asia.

But Deacon King Kong is a terrific book and a testament to the author’s range and vision.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from bookshop.org, a bookseller that shares its receipts with independent bookstores.

Mistaken Identity: The Good Lord Bird

11 Monday Apr 2016

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Review: The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride
Riverhead, 2013.417 pp. $28

Young Henry Shackleford, who lives in the Kansas Territory in 1856, thinks he’s about twelve. He can’t be sure, because slaves don’t always know when they were born and often adopt January 1 as their birthday. But even in his brief life, Henry has managed to make quite a reputation for himself as a lazy, lying, good-for-nothing who cares only for his next meal and making sure that if and when bullets fly between pro-slavery and abolitionist militia, they pass harmlessly overhead. (They didn’t call it “Bleeding Kansas” for nothing.)

Enter John Brown, the legendary abolitionist who’s committed a few murders himself and whose likeness is plastered on Wanted posters in several states. An argument with Henry’s owner leaves the boy’s father dead, and Brown takes Henry into his band. Over the next four years, ending with the failed rebellion at Harper’s Ferry, the two repeatedly separate and find one another again, their fates bound in many an ironic twist.

John Brown, 1859, copy of a daguerrotype attributed to Martin M. Lawrence (Courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain).

John Brown, 1859, copy of a daguerreotype attributed to Martin M. Lawrence (Courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain).

That irony, often humorous, drives the narrative, starting with Henry’s character. He misses slavery, because the eating was regular, and, unlike his time with Brown’s band, he suffered few hardships. (In fact, he thought his master a good sort and reserved his dislike for his father.) Also, since this novel is about identity and disguise, McBride pushes the envelope and has Henry choose to pass as a girl, which will keep him out of the fighting–or so the boy thinks. Strangely, Brown calls him Little Onion and believes that God sent “her” as a sign. Crazy? Sure. But then again, the Old Man, also known as the Captain, sees what he wants to see and does what he likes, confident that he performs the Lord’s work with every breath. This extends to exposing himself to enemy fire carelessly, while his men hide behind any cover they can find:

He stood mute, as usual, apparently thinking something through. His face, always aged, looked even older. It looked absolutely spongy with wrinkles. His beard was no fully white and ragged, and so long it growed down to his chest and could’a doubled for a hawk’s nest. He had gotten a new set of clothes someplace, but they were only worse new versions of the same thing he wore before . . withered, crumpled, and chewed at the edges. . . . In other words, he looked normal, like his clothes was dying of thirst, and he himself was about to keel over out of plain ugliness.

Brave as John Brown is in battle or by hewing strictly to his convictions, don’t ever ask him a direct question, because he’ll unleash a sermon that lasts for hours. Many are hilarious, and such is the fear he instills in his men, even his sons, nobody dares interrupt or hurry him to get to the point. I also laughed when Henry meets Frederick Douglass, whom the boy (still disguised as a girl) has to drink under the table to ward off the leader’s groping hands. Douglass comes off poorly in this book, as all talk about freedom but no action, whereas Harriet Tubman is another matter. She sees right through Henry, sensing his cowardice and belief in nothing except saving himself.

That’s the lesson that Henry learns, slowly, as he moves from frying pan to fire to another, hotter frying pan: that being a man means the willingness to act like one. But that prescription is particularly difficult when he’s trying to pass as a girl, though it’s laughable how easily he fools the men around him (albeit seldom the women, of course). His disguise carries a particular risk when he’s away from Brown’s band, for white men cozy up to him, and he can’t drink them under the table. So The Good Lord Bird isn’t just about racial identity; it’s about power and what it confers on those who wish to use it, sexually or otherwise.

Much as I like McBride’s prose and the picaresque aspect to a brutal subject–both of which remind me of Joe R. Lansdale’s Paradise Sky–they don’t sustain The Good Lord Bird at its considerable length. Henry’s adventures feel repetitive after awhile, with no new point to make, no further envelopes to push. To be sure, McBride’s a marvelous storyteller, never letting his protagonist off the hook, but by the midpoint, the only question is whether Henry will escape before Harper’s Ferry, and you know how that will turn out even if you haven’t read the jacket flap.

All the same, The Good Lord Bird is worth a look. I’ve always wondered whether John Brown was a maniac or a prophet just before his time, and McBride’s portrayal has given me a lot to think about.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.