Claude McKay, Romance in Marseille (2020)Wide open in the shape of an enormous fan splashed with vio
Claude McKay, Romance in Marseille (2020)Wide open in the shape of an enormous fan splashed with violent colors, Marseille lay bare to the glory of the meridian sun, like a fever consuming the senses, alluring and repelling, full of the unending pageantry of ships and of men.Magnificent Mediterranean harbor. Port of seaman’s dreams and their nightmares. Port of the bums’ delight, the enchanted breakwater. Port of innumerable ships, blowing out, booming in, riding the docks, blessing the town with sweaty activity and giving sustenance to worker and boss, peddler and prostitute, pimp and panhandler. Port of the fascinating, forbidding and tumultuous Quayside against which the thick scum of life foams and bubbles and breaks in a syrup of passion and desire. A noted figure of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay had an itinerant career—travelling widely in Europe and North Africa, and eventually forsaking the Marxism of his early years for Catholicism. This vibrant satire, begun in 1929, later abandoned, and now published for the first time, follows a West African stowaway on a boat from Marseille to New York. Discovered by the crew and shut in a freezing room, he loses both legs to frostbite, but, in a twist based on real cases, wins a large settlement from the shipping company and is able to return to Marseille a rich man. Encompassing a huge diversity of perspectives—including memorable evocations of Marseille’s black Marxist scene and of its queer subculture—the novel remains radical in its clear-eyed assessment of racism and unsentimental depiction of disability.“Briefly Noted,” The New Yorker (March 23, 2020) -- source link
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