ISBN: 9781400043965

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (1874--1922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels o… Plus…

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (1874--1922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. Even as an eleven-year-old child living in Southern California in the late 1800s-his family had recently emigrated from the Bahamas-Bert Williams understood that he had to "learn the role that America had set aside for him." At the age of twenty-two, after years of struggling for success on the stage, he made the radical decision to do his own "impersonation of a negro": he donned blackface makeup and played the "coon" as a character. Behind this mask, he became a Broadway headliner, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies for eight years and leading his own musical theater company-as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields. Williams was a man of great intelligence, elegance, and dignity, but the barriers he broke down onstage continued to bear heavily on his personal life, and the contradictions between the man he was and the character he played were increasingly irreconcilable for him. W. C. Fields called him "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew," and it is this dichotomy at Williams's core that Caryl Phillips illuminates in a richly nuanced, brilliantly written narrative. The story of a single life, "Dancing in the Dark is also a novel about the tragedies of race and identity, and the perils of self-invention, that have long plagued American culture. Powerfully emotional and moving, it is Caryl Phillips's most accomplished novel yet. Media > Book, [PU: Random House]<

ISBN: 1400043964

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (18741922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels of … Plus…

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (18741922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. Even as an eleven-year-old child living in Southern California in the late 1800shis family had recently emigrated from the BahamasBert Williams understood that he had to "learn the role that America had set aside for him." At the age of twenty-two, after years of struggling for success on the stage, he made the radical decision to do his own "impersonation of a negro": he donned blackface makeup and played the "coon" as a character. Behind this mask, he became a Broadway headliner, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies for eight years and leading his own musical theater companyas influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields. Williams was a man of great intelligence, elegance, and dignity, but the barriers he broke down onstage continued to bear heavily on his personal life, and the contradictions between the man he was and the character he played were increasingly irreconcilable for him. W. C. Fields called him "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew," and it is this dichotomy at Williams's core that Caryl Phillips illuminates in a richly nuanced, brilliantly written narrative. The story of a single life, Dancing in the Dark is also a novel about the tragedies of race and identity, and the perils of self-invention, that have long pla contemporary,fiction,literary,literature and fiction,world literature Literature & Fiction, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group<

ISBN: 9781400043965

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (1874--1922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels o… Plus…

A searing new novel that reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams (1874--1922), the first black entertainer in the United States to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. Even as an eleven-year-old child living in Southern California in the late 1800s-his family had recently emigrated from the Bahamas-Bert Williams understood that he had to "learn the role that America had set aside for him." At the age of twenty-two, after years of struggling for success on the stage, he made the radical decision to do his own "impersonation of a negro": he donned blackface makeup and played the "coon" as a character. Behind this mask, he became a Broadway headliner, starring in the Ziegfeld Follies for eight years and leading his own musical theater company-as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields. Williams was a man of great intelligence, elegance, and dignity, but the barriers he broke down onstage continued to bear heavily on his personal life, and the contradictions between the man he was and the character he played were increasingly irreconcilable for him. W. C. Fields called him "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew," and it is this dichotomy at Williams's core that Caryl Phillips illuminates in a richly nuanced, brilliantly written narrative. The story of a single life, "Dancing in the Dark is also a novel about the tragedies of race and identity, and the perils of self-invention, that have long plagued American culture. Powerfully emotional and moving, it is Caryl Phillips's most accomplished novel yet. Media > Book, [PU: Random House]<

2005, ISBN: 1400043964

Edition reliée

[EAN: 9781400043965], [SC: 27.57], [PU: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. dj], BLACKFACE, BERT WILLIAMS, HARDCOVER FIRST EDITION - CARIBBEAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY NOISBN, Jacket, Hardcove… Plus…

[EAN: 9781400043965], [SC: 27.57], [PU: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. dj], BLACKFACE, BERT WILLIAMS, HARDCOVER FIRST EDITION - CARIBBEAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY NOISBN, Jacket, Hardcover first edition - First US printing. Novel by this award-winning writer from St Kitts, which re-imagines the life of Bert Williams (1874-1922). Born in the Bahamas, and raised in Southern California, Williams became the first black entertainer in the US to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune - a level he reached by putting on blackface and playing the 'coon' as a character on Broadway in the Ziegfield follies. 209 pp plus an epilogue. Near fine in near fine dust jacket (remainder dot), Books<