Mark Binelli turns his sharp, forceful prose to fiction, in an inventive retelling of the outrageous life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a bluesman with one hit and a string of inflammatory guisesHe came on stage in a coffin, carried by pallbearers, drunk eugh to climb into his casket every night. Onstage he wore a cape, clamped a bone to his se, and carried a staff topped with a human skull. Offstage, he insisted he'd been raised by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians, that he'd joined the army at fourteen, that he'd defeated the middleweight boxing champion of Alaska, that he'd fathered seventy-five illegitimate children.The R&B wildman Screamin' Jay Hawkins only had a single hit, the classic I Put a Spell On You, and was often written off as a clownish velty act -- or worse, an offense to his race -- but his myth-making was legendary. In his second vel, Mark Binelli embraces the man and the legend to create a hilarious, tragic, fantastical portrait of this unlikeliest of protagonists. Hawkins saw his life story as a wild picaresque, and Binelli's vel follows suit, tackling the subject in a dazzling collage-like style.At Rolling Stone, Binelli has profiled some of the greatest musicians of our time, and this vel deftly plays with the irdinate focus on authenticity in so much music writing about African-Americans. An entire vel built around a musician as deliberately inauthentic as Screamin' Jay Hawkins thus becomes a sort of subversive act, as well as an extremely funny and surprisingly moving one.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Metropolitan Books
ISBN-10
1627795359
ISBN-13
9781627795357
eBay Product ID (ePID)
222259255
Product Key Features
Format
Hardback, Sewn,Cloth over Boards,With Dust Jacket
Language
English
Topic
General & Literary Fiction
Author
Agent Sterling Lord Literistic Mark Binelli
Additional Product Features
Date of Publication
03/05/2016
Country of Publication
United States
Author Biography
Mark Binelli is the author of Detroit City Is the Place to Be and the novel Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! as well as a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Men's Journal. Born and raised in the Detroit area, he lives in New York City.