My Amputations
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Originally published in 1986, this new edition returns to print a classic, influential work of American fiction
The author of the acclaimed novel Reflex and Bone Structure returns here in My Amputations to the question of identity, the double, adventure, detection, and mystery, but with more hypnotic power and range. In My Amputations he has his protagonist, Mason Ellis (who may just be “a desperate ex-con” or a wronged American novelist out to right the wrong done to him), jump through flaming loops like a trained dog, so to speak. In other words, there seems to be no end to the troubles Mason Ellis faces.
His story takes him from the South Side of Chicago, to New York, with a stint in Attica prison, across America and Europe and into the primal depths of Africa. Mason, all the while, tries to convince the reader that he is the important American writer he says he is. Upon his release from prison he sets out to prove his claim. After an audacious bank-robbery and a couple of burglaries that are hilarious, he goes into hiding to escape the malice of one of his cohorts, and eventually flees to Europe. The irony is that he is now as much the runner as the seeker. After encounters with a Zuni ex-folksinger, kidnappers, the New York underworld, literary groupies, an Italian swordsman, a violent German secret society, and an anti-bellum cotillion in rural Greece, he finds himself face to face (behind a mask) with his own destiny.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stuffed with references to Ishmael Reed, William Carlos Williams and other literati too numerous to mention, this novel, winner of a 1986 Western States Book Award, is an Alice-in-Wonderland trip through the literary life as perceived by one Mason Ellis. Ellis, a black man who grew up in the Chicago slums, is now a convicted felon in Attica. While there, Ellis becomes convinced that a novelist he sees on the prison TV has somehow stolen a novel that he has written. Upon his release from jail, Ellis kidnaps the novelist and takes his place in the literary life, hobnobbing with writers and groupies and lecturing cross-country, leaving readers to wonder who's crazier, the literati or the convict. The book's frantic, rhythmic prose will not be everyone's cup of tea. Some may find it evocative and inventive; others, merely gimmicky and pretentious.
