Volume 18, Number 3 · February 24, 1972
Dear Mr. Rockefeller…
By Edgar Z. Friedenberg
South to a Very Old Place
by Albert Murray
McGraw-Hill, 230 pp., $7.95
The Decline of the WASP
by Peter Schrag
Simon & Schuster, 255 pp., $6.95
'In rummaging through Africa and inventing the Nation of Islam,' Peter Schrag observes in The Decline of the WASP, 'Malcolm and the Muslims managed, really for the first time, to color Americanism black; the triumph of Malcolm's hustle was his ability to make some people believe that the stolen goods from Franklin, Carnegie and Emerson were really new…. Not even the worst dressers in Harlem, said Albert Murray, the black writer, 'are indifferent to fashion. They are over-committed to it.' ' In this quotation Schrag argues, as Murray does throughout South to a Very Old Place, that the black contribution to contemporary life in America is as distinctively American as that of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which it willingly and often exultantly exploits and parodies.
Review, 4082 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |