RaveBookforumThe achievement of Will Hermes’s book King of New York is, first, in how thoughtfully it contains Reed. It affixes Reed to his central muse: New York City. And, in doing so, it considers Reed through a very specific frame ... Hermes addresses both the scope of Reed’s work and the scope of Reed’s mythology ... The earliest chapters of the book operate in a way that earns itself out as the book progresses, funneling in a wide, seemingly overwhelming cast of people and influences who both inform and orbit the growing of Reed’s world—a world that, somewhat painfully, begins to shrink as the book progresses. That shrinking is beautifully rendered and paced by the writing of Hermes, but it is hard to watch, nonetheless ... If you are a reader who is coming to this volume to read about the exploits of the Velvet Underground, from its first rehearsals in 1964 through Reed’s departure in 1970, you’ll be satisfied. There’s enough familiar stories and anecdotes to keep any VU obsessive excited to stick around ... The book sits best with me when I consider it as an examination of obsession. To pursue a book of this heft, focused on a single subject and on that subject’s geographies, requires a type of labor that can only be defined by obsession. Hermes succeeds, I think, in treading the difficult line between obsession and a relentless type of fandom that might obscure the realities of a subject.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Positive4 ColumnsThroughout many corners of his writing, I have found Coates to be at his strongest when fully committing to his seemingly natural ability as an empathetic storyteller ... Because The Water Dancer is told in Hiram’s voice, through consistently unfurling memories and scenes, the emotional stakes of the book and its narrative/narrator feel immediate. The best work Coates does here is putting a reader in a position to connect to the jarring impacts of Hiram’s powers ... Because Coates is so good at populating and drawing out a scene, Hiram’s joy at being present in Lockless again is the reader’s joy—having been immersed in the Philadelphia landscape for so long, the break from it feels vivid, like a memory woven into our own history. It leaves a reader wanting a bigger look into what Hiram has left behind, or what a reader has left behind somewhere that cannot be retrieved ... The book does slightly suffer from occasional tonal inconsistency. In some places, The Water Dancer leans into its commitment to an alternate universe; in others it uses a few too many thinly veiled touchstones of American slavery ... In all of his work, Coates is strongly tied to allowing history to do heavy lifting, but the way history is woven into the fantasy world of this particular novel isn’t always as dazzling as the fantasy itself ... How a story of slavery richly depicts or stumbles over the tactile details of its violence can feel secondary to how the story of the human relationships within that violent machinery are rendered. The Water Dancer succeeds in this part of its work. There’s a tenderness not only in the language and story arc, not only in the frantic desires of Hiram and his need to belong, but especially in how gently the novel treats a person’s relationship with memory—and the parts of memory that don’t return as clearly as a person needs them to
Kiese Laymon
Rave4Columns\"Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy is many things, all of them searing, brilliant, and unflinching in honesty, no matter what heartbreaks or difficulties rest at the end of the road his honesty carves out ... In Heavy, the story begins messy, and ends messy, and in between we learn why the mess was worth fighting through, and fighting for.\
Zora Neale Hurston
Rave4Columns\"Barracoon, in many ways, pursues the slavery narrative in the same manner as the book and film 12 Years a Slave: it tracks slavery’s violence and aftermath through the words, memories, and history of a single person who survived it ... Holding the book and reading it now, Barracoon seems ahead of its time, largely due to how it makes the story of slavery both intimate and viscerally visual, as Roots did most notably several decades after this manuscript was created ...Hurston writes Cudjo’s voice as it was spoken out loud to her. Her strength in articulating dialogue is something that shines in her later work, but it is seen brilliantly here...Hurston lets his language exist, trusting readers to find their way through it ... Barracoon is a difficult read, harsh and brutal at times, with just enough levity to help push a reader through. Cudjo ends his story as a full human, beyond the terrors he endured. Hurston’s book is about a person surviving, despite every attempt made for him not to. It seems triumphant, I’m sure. Until you remember what you’re celebrating the triumph over.\
