
C.L.R. James
The Artist as Revolutionary
Paul Buhle(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. January 1989
Book
Paperback/Softback
204 pages
978-0-86091-932-2 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
C.L.R. James is one of the twentieth century's most remarkable individuals. As the author of the influential book The Black Jacobins, he is widely recognized as the premier scholar of slave revolt; the publication of his acute and sensitive volume Beyond a Boundary established an equal reputation as a historian of sport; and his tireless political and intellectual interventions have become the hallmark of a highly creative Marxist thinker, a brilliant dialectician and the last surviving pioneer of Pan-African liberation.
James's work has never previously been studied in its entirety. Now Paul Buhle, a longtime editorial collaborator with James, has produced a rich and informed analysis of his accomplishments. Drawing upon extensive interviews with James, his critics and his erstwhile supporters, together with many previously unpublished documents, Buhle's book offers an appreciative and enlightening portrait of the man and his times. The author also sheds new light on subjects ranging across Pan-Africanism, West Indian literature, British and American Marxism and the rise of third world nationalism.
James's work has never previously been studied in its entirety. Now Paul Buhle, a longtime editorial collaborator with James, has produced a rich and informed analysis of his accomplishments. Drawing upon extensive interviews with James, his critics and his erstwhile supporters, together with many previously unpublished documents, Buhle's book offers an appreciative and enlightening portrait of the man and his times. The author also sheds new light on subjects ranging across Pan-Africanism, West Indian literature, British and American Marxism and the rise of third world nationalism.
Reviews / Votes
"Buhle's path-breaking work-attentive and scrupulous-is a major contribution ... A first-rate analysis of James's central achievements."-Edward Said
"For Buhle, James was many things: artist, revolutionary, athlete, nationalist, internationalist, Anglophile, Graecophile, libertarian, Leninist, Black liberationist, Pan-Africanist, classicist and lover of popular culture. The central achievement of Buhle's biography of James is that he shows that James did not connect his various roles with the word 'nevertheless.' Rather he saw himself as an artist and therefore a revolutionary; as a nationalist and therefore a Pan-Africanist."
-David Roediger
"I thought it a good book, and a hard book to write, a biography. I haven't killed anybody, but he made it interesting ... A successful piece of work."
-C.L.R. James
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
281 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-86091-932-2 (9780860919322)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Book
10/2017
Verso Books
€24.00
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Person
Paul Buhle is the author or editor of more than three dozen books. Formerly a senior lecturer at Brown University, he produces radical comics. He founded the SDS Journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left and, with Mari Jo Buhle, is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left. He lives in Madison, WI.