Divine Days
A Novel
Will be published approx. on 15. February 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
1168 pages
978-0-8101-4570-2 (ISBN)
Description
A virtuosic epic applauded by Stanley Crouch as "an adventurous masterwork that provides our literature with a signal moment," back in print in a definitive new edition
"I have an awful memory for faces, but an excellent one for voices," muses Joubert Jones, the aspiring playwright at the center of Divine Days. A kaleidoscopic whorl of characters, language, music, and Black experience, this saga follows Jones for one week in 1966 as he pursues the lore and legends of fictional Forest County, a place resembling Chicago's South Side. Joubert is a veteran, recently returned to the city, who works for his aunt Eloise's newspaper and pours drinks at her Night Light Lounge. He wants to write a play about Sugar-Groove, a drifter, "eternal wunderkind," and local folk hero who seems to have passed away. Sugar-Groove's disappearance recalls the subject of one of Joubert's earlier writing attempts-W. A. D. Ford, a protean, diabolical preacher who led a religious sect known as "Divine Days." Joubert takes notes as he learns about both tricksters, trying to understand their significance.
Divine Days introduces readers to a score of indelible characters: Imani, Joubert's girlfriend, an artist and social worker searching for her lost siblings and struggling to reconcile middle-class life with her values and Black identity; Eloise, who raised Joubert and whose influence is at odds with his writerly ambitions; (Oscar) Williemain, a local barber, storyteller, and founder of the Royal Rites and Righteous Ramblings Club; and the Night Light's many patrons. With a structure inspired by James Joyce and jazz, Leon Forrest folds references to African American literature and cinema, Shakespeare, the Bible, and classical mythology into a heady quest that embraces life in all its tumult and adventure.
This edition brings Forrest's masterpiece back into print, incorporating hundreds of editorial changes that the author had requested (but were never made) when the book was picked up by W. W. Norton after a disastrous warehouse fire destroyed most of the inventory from the original printing of the book by Another Chicago Press.
"I have an awful memory for faces, but an excellent one for voices," muses Joubert Jones, the aspiring playwright at the center of Divine Days. A kaleidoscopic whorl of characters, language, music, and Black experience, this saga follows Jones for one week in 1966 as he pursues the lore and legends of fictional Forest County, a place resembling Chicago's South Side. Joubert is a veteran, recently returned to the city, who works for his aunt Eloise's newspaper and pours drinks at her Night Light Lounge. He wants to write a play about Sugar-Groove, a drifter, "eternal wunderkind," and local folk hero who seems to have passed away. Sugar-Groove's disappearance recalls the subject of one of Joubert's earlier writing attempts-W. A. D. Ford, a protean, diabolical preacher who led a religious sect known as "Divine Days." Joubert takes notes as he learns about both tricksters, trying to understand their significance.
Divine Days introduces readers to a score of indelible characters: Imani, Joubert's girlfriend, an artist and social worker searching for her lost siblings and struggling to reconcile middle-class life with her values and Black identity; Eloise, who raised Joubert and whose influence is at odds with his writerly ambitions; (Oscar) Williemain, a local barber, storyteller, and founder of the Royal Rites and Righteous Ramblings Club; and the Night Light's many patrons. With a structure inspired by James Joyce and jazz, Leon Forrest folds references to African American literature and cinema, Shakespeare, the Bible, and classical mythology into a heady quest that embraces life in all its tumult and adventure.
This edition brings Forrest's masterpiece back into print, incorporating hundreds of editorial changes that the author had requested (but were never made) when the book was picked up by W. W. Norton after a disastrous warehouse fire destroyed most of the inventory from the original printing of the book by Another Chicago Press.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 158 mm
Thickness: 72 mm
Weight
1544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-4570-2 (9780810145702)
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.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
LEON FORREST (1937-1997) was born in Chicago and taught at Northwestern University for more than two decades. His first novel, There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden, included an introduction by Ralph Ellison and was edited by Toni Morrison, who also worked with Forrest on two subsequent novels, The Bloodworth Orphans and Two Wings to Veil My Face. Originally published in 1992, Forrest's masterpiece, DivineDays, was inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses and hailed as "boldly musical" by the New York Times and "dazzling" by Publishers Weekly. Meteor in the Madhouse, a series of connected novellas narrated by Joubert Jones, was published posthumously by TriQuarterly Books in 2011, and Forrest was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2013. His papers are held at the McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives at Northwestern University. KENNETH W. WARREN is the University of Chicago Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor. He is the author of What Was African American Literature?, So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism, and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism. ZACHARY PRICE is the grandson of Leon Forrest.