Submariner – While Jones does “roll up his sleeves and go raking through the muck” I feel as though he could have accomplished this effort in a better way. If his other books are what people say they are, then ONE DAY FAR AWAY I will give them a try. After only 100 pages, I just don’t think I was taking away from this novel what I should have.

Lori – maybe the issue with The Known World is that Jones is a short story writer and his talent isn’t transferring over when he pens novels. I agree, when I pick up a novel I want to be entertained too. I don’t want to feel pressured to finish something just because I should.

Some authors are like that though. I will politely refrain from naming the author who is like that for me (smile), but I truly do love a lot of her work–her essay and short story collections in particular. I’ve even enjoyed some of her poetry. But I doubt if I’ll ever attempt another one of her novels. Of course, one should never say never…’cause you just never know (smile).

Personally, when I reach for a work of fiction, a novel in particular, I’m looking to be entertained (if not skillfully transported into another world), more so than anything else. I don’t want a lecture, a sermon, a political speech, a date & fact-filled history lesson or an angry editorial. Weaving bits and pieces of the fore-mentioned into a story is fine, but when it’s too heavy-handed or over-bearing, it’s a huge turn-off.

On the other hand, I’m not trying to read any women as hapless victim stories, formulaic romances or any gangsta, pimp, hustler or ho’ lit either. Increasingly and unfortunately that doesn’t really leave a whole lot in today’s “black book” marketplace.

Rather I took Known World to be an allegory about unbridled capitalism in the same way that George Orwell’s Animal Farm is about the rise of Stalinism. What is the most valuable commodity that can be and has been exchanged on the ‘free’ market but a human being? The criticism is applicable to our era of globalization and the Washington consensus on the ability of the market to solve social ills.

The protagonist is a brother who has bought into the system unquestioningly and excelled. But by doing this he has sowed the seeds of his own demise and is eventually caught in the undertow and illicitly sold into slavery himself at the end.

Calvin on the other hand struggles to maintain cohesion with the mass of black folks despite being born into privilege. We also see how white skin provides false comfort to its owners.

I’m sorry that you didn’t make it through to the end. The characters don’t pack the same amount of flesh and sinew as the cast from David Anthony Durham’s Pride of Carthage. Nor does Jones write lines of arresting beauty like Salman Rushdie. But he does roll up his sleeves and go raking through the muck that is our political economy and tell us the unvarnished truth about the triumphant way of American life.

Don’t do it, Naysue! Stay with it. The narrative is intricate, I agree, but so poignant and subtle in its disclosure of inter- and intra-racial relationships born of that “peculiar institution”, shedding a small light, like the flame of a candle, on race relations today.