A review by ombudsman
American Histories: Stories by John Edgar Wideman
3.0
the good: wideman utilises metafiction with a brutal efficacy, particularly in "JB & FD", "Writing Teacher" and "Williamsburg Bridge". these are the few that i think live up to the promise expressed in the title of exploring american history through a mix of fiction and reality (though in the latter two, the reality is not history but wideman's own life - or near enough that i can believe that it is his life). i think what these stories have to say about the ethics of fiction- of using another person's life for your own profit - will stick with me.
the bad: basically the rest of the book. while the three stories i mentioned are good enough that i think the whole collection was worth it for me to read to find these, i wouldn't recommend the entire collection. i think the thing that stuck out to me the most was the epistemology of the texts - i always felt at an unintentional disadvantage with the author which ruined my enjoyment of the story. wideman is not very good at communicating what he already knows to the reader; even in "Collage", which has a style seemingly predicated on the removal of the epistemological divide between author/story and reader, i felt lost. and i did wikipedia who john brown, frederick douglass and nat turner were before reading their respective stories (they're unheard of in the uk; given that i had a uk edition, i sort of wish that the publisher had done something to address this).
sidenote: there's a pretty decent amount of reference to film in the book, which i found interesting having just come off [b:Black Movie|26158735|Black Movie|Danez Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440440584s/26158735.jpg|46116306], which also explored the intersection between race and film. i thought it was better done in black movie though .
the bad: basically the rest of the book. while the three stories i mentioned are good enough that i think the whole collection was worth it for me to read to find these, i wouldn't recommend the entire collection. i think the thing that stuck out to me the most was the epistemology of the texts - i always felt at an unintentional disadvantage with the author which ruined my enjoyment of the story. wideman is not very good at communicating what he already knows to the reader; even in "Collage", which has a style seemingly predicated on the removal of the epistemological divide between author/story and reader, i felt lost. and i did wikipedia who john brown, frederick douglass and nat turner were before reading their respective stories (they're unheard of in the uk; given that i had a uk edition, i sort of wish that the publisher had done something to address this).
sidenote: there's a pretty decent amount of reference to film in the book, which i found interesting having just come off [b:Black Movie|26158735|Black Movie|Danez Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440440584s/26158735.jpg|46116306], which also explored the intersection between race and film. i thought it was better done in black movie though .