Black Deutschland

Jed young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and decadence Berlin The paradise that tyranny created, the subsidized city isolated behind the Berlin Wall, is where he s chosen to become the figure that he so admires, the black American expatriate Newly sober and nostalgic for the Weimar days of Isherwood and Auden, Jed arrives to chase boys and to escape from what it means to be a black male in America.But history, both personal and political, can t be avoided with time or distance Whether it s the judgment of the cousin he grew up with and her husband s bourgeois German family, the lure of white wine in a down and out bar, a gang of racists looking for a brawl, or the ravaged visage of Rock Hudson flashing behind the face of every white boy he desperately longs for, the past never stays past even in faraway Berlin In the age of Reagan and AIDS in a city on the verge of tearing down its walls, he clambers toward some semblance of adulthood amid the outcasts and expats, intellectuals and artists, queers and misfits And, on occasion, the city keeps its Isherwood promises and the boy he kisses, incredibly, kisses him back.An intoxicating, provocative novel of appetite, identity, and self construction, Darryl Pinckney s Black Deutschland tells the story of an outsider, trapped between a painful past and a tenebrous future, in Europe s brightest and darkest city. Free Read Books Black Deutschland Author Darryl Pinckney – kino-fada.fr Lyrical gorgeous and unapologetically intellectual, both at once, in a way that is almost nonexistent in modern american literature I m still steeped in the feeling the novel left me on the last pages I feel as if I have spent a few hours with a person narrator author who thinks deeply about the world someone who looks so closely at the human experience, and sees it clearly, and finds it beautiful The rendering of Berlin in the late eighties is magnificent the city Pinckney renders is Lyrical gorgeous and unapologetically intellectual, both at once, in a way that is almost nonexistent in modern american literature I m still steeped in the feeling the novel left me on the last pages I feel as if I have spent a few hours with a person narrator author who thinks deeply about the world someone who looks so closely at the human experience, and sees it clearly, and finds it beautiful The rendering of Berlin in the late eighties is magnificent t...As Rome is the Eternal City, Black Deutschland, an exploration of race, identity and expectations in mid 80 s West Berlin, is the Eternal Novel Weighing in at fewer than 300 pages, Darryl Pinkney s story of a gay, African American ex pat in West Berlin looking to live the Isherwood promises of the city, was one of thelaborious and disjointed reads I ve ever experienced I d get lost not in a good way in every third sentence Pronouns were used without antecedents Sentences were sometim As Rome is the Eternal City, Black Deutschland, an exploration of race, identity and expectations in mid 80 s West Berlin, is the Eternal Novel Weighing in at fewer than 300 pages, Darryl Pinkney s story of a gay, African American ex pat in West Berlin looking to live the Isherwood promises of the city, was one of thelaborious and disjointed reads I ve ever experienced I d get lost not in a good way in every third sentence Pronouns were used without antecedents Sentences were sometimes ja...DNF at 50%I found the premise of the book and some things Pinckney had to say interesting but my interest got lost among the buildings of Chicago and Berlin and unfortunately Boredom I think this is because of how this book is written Everything is reported so I get Jed s view only an...It s said that we should be careful what we wish for because we might get it I ve been made sick by gratuitous gore, and overcome by oceanic tears, from recent highly touted misrepresented novels of gay literary fiction In Black Deutschland I was hoping for something different.And, yes, thankfully there is no blood, and only a few dry tears But, absent these plot elements, what does Darryl Pinckney replace them with Only intellectual pretension and an awkwardly arranged story not matching to It s said that we should be careful what we wish for because we might get it I ve been made sick by gratuitous gore, and overcome by oceanic tears, from recent highly touted misrepresented novels of gay literary fiction In Black Deutschland I was hoping for something different.And, yes, thankfully there is no blood, and only a few dry tears But, absent these plot elements, what does Darryl Pinckney replace them with Only intellectual pretension and an awkwardly arranged story not matching too well with the publisher s book description Like those other recent novels.For readers wondering whether to read this book, I won t compare in detail like I did with those other novels the differences between the published de...I can understand why this book has its champions It s so defiantly dull that it might fool you into thinking it s a classic Not only does Mr Pickney manage to do everything wrong, like substituting caricatures for character, artiness for art, rehash for narration and believe me I could go on, but he gives the impression of having worked hard to be so incompetent There is the occasional lyric passage in Black Deutschland but it s about as incongruous as finding a nightingale nesting in a ju I can understand why this book has its champions It s so defiantly dull that it might fool you into thinking it s a classic Not only does Mr Pickney manage to do everything wrong, like substituting caricatures for character, artiness for art, rehash for narration and believe me I could go on, but he gives the impression of having worked hard to be so incompetent There is the occasional lyric passage in Black Deutschland but it s about as incongruous as finding a nightingale nesting in a junkyard It s a waste of beauty If you find novels about American expatriates in Europe to be inherently fascinating, then Black Deutschland might fit on your bookshelf between Tropic of Cancer and The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas Pickney lacks Miller s vitality or Stein s playfulness, but he s heir to the former s knack for self indulgence and the latter s penchant for name dropping Susan Sontag makes a brief appearance in one chapter for no discernible purpose other than to be Susan Sontag Pi...DNFed, expected it to be a mixture of Baldwin and Isherwood and what I got was very fragmented, muddled and very uneven story Some great, witty observation of race mixed with super boring visits to Berlin gay clubs and soul searching meanders ...4.5wownearly perfect2.5 5There s a lot I haven t gotten to yet or haven t done in a while I still haven t read Isherwood, and the last book translated from German I read was by Zweig, and his was the world of turn of the century Austria, which mocked Weimar rather than finding refuge in it I can t even remember the last history I read concerned with Germany, and the books I have arelikely than not obsessed with the Nazi issue, as most white non Germans are As such, I was woefully underprepared for reading 2.5 5There s a lot I haven t gotten to yet or haven t done in a while I still haven t read Isherwood, and the last book translated from German I read was by Zweig, and his was the world of turn of the century Austria, which mocked Weimar rather than finding refuge in it I can t even remember the last history I read concerned with Germany, and the books I have arelikely than not obsessed with the Nazi issue, as most white non Germans are As such, I was woefully underprepared for reading his, leastwise on the national front On the blackness front, though, I was s...2,5this sounds actually awesome and it s set in Berlin where I live, sothe negative reviews with their criticism of dullness and a protagonist they didn t know enough and care for nearly turned me offanother book where I have to payfor the...

• English
• 18 February 2018
Darryl Pinckney
• Hardcover
• 294 pages
• 0374113815
• Darryl Pinckney
• Black Deutschland