PARTISAN REVIEW
393
to
be gigolos." He goes home to America to try to live off his own
insides, and by doing so he sharply delimits the wisdom of his early
attack on Bigger, with its brash equation of the black man's "fuck–
ing" and his "humanity."
In the process both book and character become perhaps more
serious than the author intended. One imagines that Brown's own
"jive" was to write a sex novel, to put on public and publishers as
well. This is all they want, says George, "and if you say something
about sex and being a nigger then you got a bestseller." I don't know
about his sales, but Brown happens to write very well about sex.
Steeped as much in Miller as in Mailer, not only for sex but for the
whole expatriate ambiance, he can be very funny about it. But in
the end the jive and exploitation catch up with Brown, as with
George, and the novel becomes serious in spite of itself. Of course
it's possible that this reversal is also a put-on - for critics like me
who are hot for meaning. Brown jokes bitterly about this in an epi–
logue. So what. That too is part of the meaning, and like the sex
part, it works. Brown is a deeply conflicted writer, despite the surface
brashness, and he gives George to imagine various
books
he'd rather
have written than this one. Such as a book with a real stick of
dynamite in it, to be acclaimed by the
Saturday Review
as "a sear–
ing blast from the depths ... slashing ... dynamite," and then ac–
tually to blow up in the reader's face. Or else a 700-page book, every
page empty but for the words KISS MY BLACK ASS, with a foot–
note reading MY BLACK BALLS TOO, and a preface by Marshall
McLuhan saying, "White America: I ask you to kiss this black ass."
Brown hasn't written those books, but they are part of the knife–
edged comedy, part of the meaning, of the one he actually has
written. "I won't mind writing a book," says George, summing up
his quandary, "but I'd hate to
be
a black author in America."
I'm not sure why Brown's fantasies evoke in me little of the dis–
gust and aversion I feel for those of LeRoi Jones. Probably the word
"jew"
is
crucial, the literal threat, the humorless viciousness of jones's
impulses, which lean consciously on a pogrom psychology and reveal
a truly sadistic, kamikaze mentality. Brown by comparison is coining
dada jokes, doing a verbal tum, not making a statement of intent. He
remains an artist, flailing himself for the limitations of his role, en–
a~ting
his own inner conflict. Jones and Neal scorn inwardness as a
