PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"Throughout is Johnson’s familiar anguish at our passing over. What makes The Largesse of the Sea Maiden different is that in this case Johnson knew his own time was short, and embarked on his material with an admirable and pitiless openness he conveys through his characters ... The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, as a volume, drills down into and through what is tolerable until it hits a powerful vein of the painfully mortal and lasting. If it ends with a yawp of tragicomedy in the Elvis Presley story, \'Doppelgänger, Poltergeist,\' it’s only to remind us that Dante, too, was a toiler in the comedic fields, no matter how brutal and austere his triune cosmogony.\
James McBride
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewMcBride has written a collection of diverse meditations and interpretations in search of James Brown, more than he has written the story of the man. Readers embarking on Kill ’Em and Leave would be wise to bear this in mind. That said, when McBride digs in, especially when describing the music — that massive, unstoppable, titanic, world-shaking accomplishment — by virtue of his own training as a saxophonist, he does so with great warmth, insight and frequent wit.
