What a sad, sad book. Melancoly. OH MY! It was a fictionized (is there such a word?) story about one of the very first black performers in the early 1900's. It actually was a two team comedy, singing and dancing act one of which sported black face (if you remember Al Jolson - even tho he was white Bert, in the book, also sported that type of black face with the exaggerated lips). The author weaved a story of sadness that plagued the performers b/c although their life was in the performance, the sadness came from the fact that they were doing it in a form of entertainment that they did not embrace. The way that they had to play the "darkey" was an insult to themselves but the only way that the white population would accept them. The turmoil that permeated their lives was a sad way to live their lives and it bled into their family life, their marriages and their deaths. I also compared this to the way a lot of people must even live today whether they be white, black, straight, gay, persecuted for various reasons. I can see how this concept would lend itself to many venues of life today. I can see how people of everywhere might have to live a lie in their lives to make it through the day. I kept reading this book hoping beyond hope that there would be a happy ending. The way of the early 1900s and the way of life for these black men was what it was, unfortunately. A very sad, but thinking, book.
I feel bad giving this book such a low rating when it appears so many others enjoyed it. It was the writing style that brought it down for me. The sudden changes in perspective, third person omnipresent, first person, third person limited, and then 'newspaper' articles, and wow, it just ended up doing my head in.I can't help but wonder how much was real, and how much is Phillips' imagination coming into play. I think if this book was written in a much more linear form, and the perspective wasn't continuously changing, then it would be easier to pick it apart and decide where fiction started and non-fiction ended. Ultimately, I just found this book hard to enjoy when the writing seemed to be all over the place. Instead of appearing artistic, it just seemed messy.
What do You think about Dancing In The Dark (2006)?
A somewhat confusing narrative that shifts regularly from character to character and from fiction to reality. Of course, this is in the cause of underlining the ambiguities of any claim to 'truth', but it can occasionally lead the reader to tear at his hair.The text itself weaves news clippings and interviews, and extracts from the original musicals and songs made famous by Bert Williams, once said to be the most famous black man in America. It has it's merit, but I'm not sure that it made me any the wiser about its central protagonist.
—Kris McCracken
It's strange to read the Wiki entry for Bert Williams after the book, since the Wiki entry employs a defensive, even celebratory tone to describe Williams's career, whereas Dancing in the Dark never loses sight of the pathos of blackface performance. Phillips does a great job of capturing Williams as a melancholic alcoholic who has internalized American culture's racism and criticisms of his work by black intellectuals--he's really getting it from both ends, so to speak--but the book rarely ventures beyond that. We hear from other characters, all of whom are painted with a shade of tragedy, and while surely it is Phillips's intent to convey that tragedy, the resulting novel and its characters are one-note. Even the fall half of the rise-and-fall arc is unbearably depressing.
—David
