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BOOK REVIEW JONES it; conscription into the Holy War for Civil Rights, the camaraderie of an underground life, unfettered sexuality, and understanding of the real meaning of jazz. It was during these moments, he knew, that the pity he felt for them had turned into love....Now he wanted to be with them, to be poor and hated as they were, and to be alive and pure as they were." But this earthshaking decision by a middle-class white professional is unexplained by any previous experience, other than that in early childhood he had been nursed through a serious illness by Mattie, a Negro nursemaid. Josh's life in East St. Louis begins with a job as a mail handler alongside the junkies, and in the Plaza Square Hotel, peopled by junkies, marijuana smokers, hustlers, and prostitutes. The writing is filled with chauvinist attitudes and ideas, and although in some instances they are the speeches of characters, the feeling persists that the characters speak for the author. "Eleanor lay back coolly, playing with his hair, sliding it between her fingers, twisting it, rumpling it and smoothing it again. 'You got such nice hair Joshua,' she said with the terseness gone from her voice, replaced by a distant tenderness. He stopped kissing her to look into her face. Suddenly he understood. Her hair could never be soft. A million straightening irons would not make it as smooth and straight as his. She was telling him how bad it was to be a good-looking woman with black skin and kinky hair." However, there is one relationship with a Negro social worker, Beatrice Allen, that almost redeems the story. He wants to get her into bed too, but falls in love with her and fears to pop the question. They discuss the race question in familiar cliches, and then one time Beatrice tells him, "You been in the wrong. The Plaza is no place to see what black people are really like. You want to dig what's really happening? Then come with me some day when I visit my cases....You'll see people who don't have a chance, never had a chance." A climax is reached when Josh's parents come to visit him, and he tells them about Beatrice, and his desire to marry her. They are properly thunderstruck and mouth racist objections. But when finally he asks for Beatrice's hand, she rejects him, and he goes back to the Plaza to buy what he wants. Earlier, one of his Negro friends, Jimmy, a solid working man but a frustrated artist, prophetically tells him off during an argument. 269
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 13:31:21
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 13:39:16