Dirty Bird Blues
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A quietly influential force in African American literature and art, Clarence Major makes his Penguin Classics debut with the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Dirty Bird Blues
The PRH Audio book of Dirty Bird Blues by Clarence Major won a 2022 EARPHONE AWARD. Narrated by Dion Graham.
A Penguin Classic
Set in post-World War II Chicago and Omaha, the novel features Manfred Banks, a young, harmonica-blowing blues singer who is always writing music in his head. Torn between his friendships with fellow musicians and nightclub life and his responsibilities to his wife and child, along with the pressures of dealing with a racist America that assaults him at every turn, Manfred seeks easy answers in "Dirty Bird" (Old Crow whiskey) and in moving on. He moves to Omaha with hopes of better opportunities as a blue-collar worker, but the blues in his soul and the dreams in his mind keep bringing him back to face himself. After a nightmarish descent into his own depths, Manfred emerges with fresh awareness and possibility. Through Manfred, we witness and experience the process by which modern American English has been vitalized and strengthened by the poetry and the poignancy of the African-American experience. As Manfred struggles with the oppressive constraints of society and his private turmoil, his rich inner voice resonates with the blues.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In postwar Chicago, an African American man crawls in through a stranger's window from the fire escape, in the process getting a belly full of buckshot. But the situation is not what you might assume. Manfred is a blues singer and father whose wife has run off with the preacher (the wielder of the shotgun). Man's a good fellow, but weak, with no-account buddies like the guitar-picker Solly and a predilection for Old Crow bourbon (the dirty bird of the title). Not that Man doesn't try to set himself right now and again. After walking himself to the hospital--with a pause to help out an abused wife--and wallowing for a few weeks in self-pity, he bids a rollicking goodbye to his wife, Cleo, and abandons Chicago for Omaha, where his sister and a more sober life await. There, he finds work as a welder. Although he doesn't quite quit the booze, he convinces Cleo to join him. Things are looking up, but trouble--in the form of Solly--follows, and Man gets fired. Soon, it's a toss-up whether he will dry out and keep his family together or become a carbon copy of his abusive father. In his first novel in eight years, Major (Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar) cleverly demonstrates the pervasive racism that's part of the black experience. He's a rhythmic writer with a good ear for the music of the American vernacular. Although the blues refrains that run through Man's mind ring more calculated, and hence annoying, than true, the choices this flawed hero must make are compelling and weighty. The result is a novel that's moving--and highly enjoyable.
