High Cotton: A Novel

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Description

An elegant, insightful novel that evokes the world of upper-middle-class blacks, following an unnamed narrator from a safe childhood in conservative Indianapolis, to a brief tenure as minister of information for a local radical organization, to the life of an expatriate in Paris. Through it all, his imagination is increasingly dominated by his elderly relations and the lessons of their experiences in the "Old Country" of the South. . Reset edition with a new interior design

Reviews

"This remarkably accomplished first novel about growing up as a "nice Negro" in conservative Indianapolis, Ind., is sure to put Pinckney, a journalist and critic, in the front ranks of new writers this season. Writing with passion and an elegant wit, Pinckney conveys the dedication, pride and hypocrisy that formed the society of "upper shadies" in the 1950s and '60s." - Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Darryl Pinckney, a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of a novel, High Cotton, and two works of nonfiction, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature. He has also collaborated with Robert Wilson on theater projects, most recently an adaption of Daniil Kharm's The Old Woman. He lives in New York.