Customer Reviews

A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read this book because I am a huge fan of Percival Everett's, and I was really blown away by how funny it is. I recommend it indeed.

This book is wonderful! A good read for anyone!

I actually bought this book thinking it would do a lot more strom-thurmond-bashing then it ended up doing. But Strom really wasn't the focus on the novel, it poked more fun at all the crazy people involved in working on Strom's project (Everett and Kincaid included).

Yes, it's a tad political. And if you don't like that kind of humor then the book's not for you. However, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only was it intelligently written, but it made me laugh my butt off so often, I'll be sore for weeks.

Gee, this isn't very funny, and a better target would have been the esteemed Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Robert Bird. Senator Thurmond was merely a segregationalist (as were 98% of the Democratic senators from the South). But Senator Bird was an open and vocal member of the Ku Klux Klan. So why is Senator Thurmond the target? Simple. He's a Republican. Fair and balanced? I think not.

I bought the book because I'd heard it was funny and figured it would be nice for a light read.

The writing team is made up of James Kincaid, who I've never heard of, and Percival Everett, well-known as the guy who refused to speak in the South Carolina State Legislature because of the presence of the Confederate flag. This sparked off a long controversy that eventually ended in its removal.

The book is indeed quite funny. It's also a relatively light read (though not quite as light as I'd intended - the language can be a bit dense, but always amusingly so).

The writing style often bears a striking resemblence to another Southern novel, Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and the character Barton Wilkes of Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly.

"My dating life is, I am happy to say, creative and unboundeed by rules of public declarations. I am not one to say, "I will only date people who do A, or people who eat B, or people who are proficient at backyard C, or people who---," You see. Your comments on my complexion (poor), slouch, and bad hair are fine jokes. Very manly. That's just one thing I like about you. I think we are the sort who could, if we liked, have some beers, eat peanuts, watch football, insult one another, and pee on the floor. That is if we wanted to, if you wanted to. I mean we could do that, not necessarilly that we would or anything like that. It'd be up to you."

The book, of course, needs to take on the Strom issue, and does so, albeit reluctantly and seldomly. In doing so it makes a cogent (And sincerely held? Hard to tell.) point about the rift between the Southern and Northern states, and the subtle politics of self-righteousness that led the Northerners to condemntation of the South in spite of their own grave defficiencies in regard to civil rights.

As James says in a letter to Percival after their first meeting with Strom:
"I sort of like him, and I don't think that's a racist thing to say. You admitted you sorta liked him too. There was the quasi-headstand [he did], of course, but think of it as pathos. He's just trying to find his way back to the light as all the windows are closing on him. That's a good line we can use in the history."