The first ever collection of John Edgar Wideman’s most influential essays and articles, five decades of cultural and literary criticism that paint a vivid portrait of America’s changing landscape and chronicle the emergence and evolution of a major presence in fiction.
You’d be forgiven for mistaking sections of Wideman’s nonfiction for poetry. The stark imagery of his language, the nimbleness of thought that traverses time and place with breathtaking quickness, and the deep reflection on a life that has known more than its share of pain go beyond what we usually think of essayistic prose. This is like a written form of jazz, a musical genre to which Wideman returns frequently ... Extraordinary ... Few have ever written so well about basketball ... When you finish a Wideman essay you feel a little different from when you started. You’ve gone somewhere and had your senses rearranged a little. Poetry has a way of doing that, even when it’s wrapped in prose.
Wideman is a writer of titanic skill. He explores predicaments of race, place, sport, and music with a close attention, and he articulates his explorations—as intimate as they may be for him—in a way that is inviting, not alienating ... I think the triumph of Languages is that it...give[s] us a pathway through the mind of Wideman. His beliefs, his principles, his willingness to explore and not detach himself from his themes and the central engine of his oeuvre. If there is a way to approach this kind of text through a binary of success, I think it might be a book that feels especially useful for a writer to spend time with.
Through a mixture of journalism, literary and cultural criticism, and biographical and political essays, the varied career of the prolific Wideman is on full display in this new collection of his long-form nonfiction writing ... Wideman is always insightful, honest, and absorbing. This collection is an essential addition to a masterful oeuvre.
