The System of Dante's Hell
Page 11
Hell in the head.
The torture of being the unseen object, and, the constantly observed subject.
The flame of social dichotomy. Split open down the center, which is the early legacy of the black man unfocused on blackness. The dichotomy of what is seen and taught and desired opposed to what is felt. Finally, God, is simply a white man, a white “idea,” in this society, unless we have made some other image which is stronger, and can deliver us from the salvation of our enemies.
For instance, if we can bring back on ourselves, the absolute pain our people must have felt when they came onto this shore, we are more ourselves again, and can begin to put history back in our menu, and forget the propaganda of devils that they are not devils.
* * * *
Hell is actual, and people with hell in their heads. But the pastoral moments in a man’s life will also mean a great deal as far as his emotional references. One thinks of home, or the other “homes” we have had. And we remember w/love those things bathed in soft black light. The struggles away or toward this peace is Hell’s function. (Wars of consciousness. Antithetical definitions of feeling(s).
Once, as a child, I would weep for compassion and understanding. And Hell was the inferno of my frustration. But the world is clearer to me now, and many of its features, more easily definable.
1965
AMIRI BARAKA/LEROI JONES (1934–2014) was the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named poet laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, from 2002–2004. His short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and won a 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He is also the author of Home: Social Essays, Black Music, and The System of Dante’s Hell.
Also available from Amiri Baraka
and Akashic Books
Tales of the Out & the Gone,
by Amiri Baraka
Controversial literary legend Amiri Baraka’s new short story collection—an Essence Magazine best-seller—will shock and awe.
“Baraka is a poet down to his bones . . . [The stories] evoke a mood of revolutionary disorder, conjuring an alternative universe in which a dangerous African-American underground, or a dangerous literary underground—hell, any kind of an underground—still exists . . . In his prose as in his poetry, Baraka is at his best a lyrical prophet of despair who transfigures his contentious racial and political views into a transcendent, ‘outtelligent’ clarity.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“These stories are so out there that at times they leave you wondering what you just read, but in a good, this is how a truly singular voice sounds way . . . The difficulty and strength of Baraka’s writing is its sincerity. It is the memory of all that has passed, reflecting all he has seen and been told . . .” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Baraka remains a prodigiously skilled writer . . . Ultimately, those most familiar with Baraka as a rabble-rousing poet may be surprised that his prose can so readily make one squirm as well as smile.” —Time Out New York
“Baraka has a rich and distinctive voice . . . The collection records a marvelously vital and creative mind at work.” —Library Journal
“A- . . . [A]n eccentric brew of sci-fi and social commentary.” —Entertainment Weekly
“4 stars.” —Time Out Chicago
“In his signature politically piercing and poetic staccato style, Baraka offers a perspective on social and political changes and a fresh view of the possibilities that language presents in exploring human passions . . . Fans and newcomers alike will appreciate Baraka’s breadth of political perspective and passion for storytelling.” —Booklist
“Throughout, Baraka makes his prose jump with word coining—’outtelligent,’ ‘overstand’—and one-liners. But the humor and off-the-wall jaunts, however whacked-out, tackle real issues of race, otherness and power with pointed irony.” —New York Press
“Baraka unabashedly steps on toes, but does it in such a way that you close the book thanking him for it . . . [R]efreshing from both ideological and technical perspectives. His books cannot be read casually.” —Idaho Statesman
“Amiri Baraka’s writing possesses a remarkable balance of poetry and politics, passion and polemic. His voice is unmistakeable. His point of view uncompromising. This collection just adds to his imposing legacy.” —Nelson George, author of The Death of Rhythm and Blues
“What can be said about Baraka’s work that would be new? That the energy is unremitting, the focus unwavering, the anger burning into a crystal rage, the questions disquieting and unnervingly raw? Perhaps that there is also tenderness here, something like light breathing on a New York street. In this groundbreaking collection of stories—vintage, new, and previously unseen—the words don’t play nice, they demand that you listen, and you do and you are glad for it.” —Chris Abani, author of Becoming Abigail and GraceLand
Comprised of short fiction spanning the early 1970s to the twenty-first century—most of which has never been published—Tales of the Out & the Gone reflects the astounding evolution of America’s most provocative literary anti-hero.
The first section of the book, “War Stories,” offers six stories enmeshed in the volatile politics of the ’70s and ’80s; the second section, “Tales of the Out & the Gone,” reveals Baraka’s increasing literary adventurousness, combining an unpredictable language play with a passion for abstraction and psychological exploration.
Throughout, Baraka’s unique and constantly changing literary style will educate readers on the evolution of one of America’s most accomplished literary masters of the past four decades.
Table of Contents
War Stories
New & Old (1974)
Neo-American (1975)
Norman’s Date (1981–82)
From War Stories (1982)
Mondongo (1983)
Blank (1985)
Tales of the Out & the Gone
Northern Iowa: Short Story & Poetry
The New Recreation Program (1988)
Mchawi (1990–91)
The Rejected Buppie (1992)
A Little Inf (1995)
Dig This! Out? (1995)
Heathen Technology at the End of the Twentieth Century (1995)
Rhythm Travel (1995)
Science & Liberalism (1996)
What Is Undug Will Be (1996)
Dream Comics (1997)
A Letter (1998)
Conrad Loomis & the Clothes Ray (1998)
The Used Saver (1998)
My Man Came by the Crib the Other Day . . . (1999)
A Monk Story (2000)
Retrospection (2000)
The Pig Detector (2000)
Post- and Pre-Mortem Dialogue (2003)
Tales of the Out & the Gone is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Tales,
by Amiri Baraka
This reissue of a 1967 story collection shows a mind in motion, featuring writing that is provocative, witty, bitter, and aggressive.
“We owe profound thanks to Akashic Books for reissuing this important collection of Amiri Baraka’s short stories. Baraka was, without question, the central figure of the Black Arts Movement, and was the most important theorist of that movement’s expression of the ‘Black Aesthetic,’ which took hold of the African American cultural imagination in earnest in the late sixties. While known primarily for his plays, poems, and criticism of black music, Baraka was also a master of the short story form, as this collection attests. Tales first appeared in 1967 and is an impressionistic and sometimes surrealistic collection of short fiction, showcasing Amiri Baraka’s great impact on African American literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Tales is a critical volume in Amiri Baraka’s oeuvre, and an important testament to his remarkable literary legacy.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“A clutch of early stories from the poet, play
wright, and provocateur, infused with jazz and informed by racial alienation . . . Worth reading to see the way [Baraka] feverishly tinkered with ways to explore a multiplicity of black experiences. An intense and button-pushing collection.” —Kirkus Reviews
The sixteen artful and nuanced stories in this reissue of Amiri Baraka’s seminal 1967 collection fall into two parts: the first nine concern themselves with the sensibility of a hip, perceptive young black man in white America. The last seven stories endeavor to place that same man within the context of his awareness of and participation in a rapidly emerging and powerfully felt negritude. They deal, it might be said, with the black man in black America. Yet these tales are not social tracts, but absolutely masterful fiction—provocative, witty, and, at times, bitter and aggressive.
AMIRI BARAKA/LEROI JONES (1934–2014) was the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named poet laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, from 2002–2004. His short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and won a 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He is also the author of Home: Social Essays, Black Music, The System of Dante’s Hell, and Tales, among other works.
Tales is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Home: Social Essays,
by Amiri Baraka
A seminal Jones/Baraka literary land mine that launches AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.
“Jones/Baraka usually speaks as a Negro—and always as an American. He is eloquent, he is bold. He demands rights—not conditional favors.” —New York Times Book Review
“In Home, Amiri Baraka, the master hunter, aims for the hearts and minds of his readers, and hits both targets dead-center. The result, here in the twenty-first century, is no different than when the book was originally published more than forty years ago.” —Kenji Jasper, author of Dark
In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. Now, this reissue of Home—long out of print—features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of 1960s social and political essays.
Home is, in effect, the ideological autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. The two dozen essays that constitute this book were written during a five-year span—a turbulent and critical period for African Americans and whites. The Cuban Revolution, the Birmingham bombings, Robert Williams’s Monroe Defense movement, the Harlem riots, the assassination of Malcolm X . . . each changed the way Jones/Baraka looked at America. This progressive change is recorded with honesty, anger, and passion in his writings.
Home: Social Essays is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Black Music,
by Amiri Baraka
The long-awaited reissue of the sequel to Amiri Baraka’s seminal work, BLUES PEOPLE, and latest selection in the AkashiClassics Renegade Reprint Series. This collection of essays by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones includes a new introduction by the author and Q&A by Calvin Reid.
“Jones has learned—and this has been very rare in jazz criticism—to write about music as an artist.” —Nat Hentoff
In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. Now, this reissue of Black Music—long out of print—features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of essays on jazz criticism, the creative process, and the development of a new way forward for black artists.
Black Music is a book about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and others. This rich and vital collection is comprised of essays, reviews, interviews, liner notes, musical analyses, and personal impressions from 1959–1967.
Black Music is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©1963, 1965 by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka; ©2016 by Amina Baraka
Introduction ©2016 by Woodie King Jr.
Originally published in 1966 by Grove Press/Evergreen Black Cat. In addition, portions of this novel previously appeared in the following publications: the first seven Circles in The Trembling Lamb; “Hypocrites” and “Thieves” in The Moderns; “The Eighth Ditch” in The Floating Bear, © 1967 by Diane DiPrima and LeRoi Jones; “The Christian” and “The Rape” in Soon One Morning; “The Heretics” in New American Story.
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-396-1
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-414-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934039
First Akashic Books printing
Akashic Books
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