Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

Abstract

Liliana Ursu A Path to the Sea Pleasure Boat Studio With poems that span the world, this newest collection of poetry by Romanian poet Ursu is electrifying. When discussing the work she performed in this collection, translator Tess Gallagher remarks that the poems are like lightning, leaving readers “singed and stricken but lifted by their illuminations.” Ursu’s acclaim has spread across the world, and she is recognized in her Romanian homeland as a Knight of Arts and Literature, the nation’s highest cultural honor. Jean-Philippe Toussaint The Truth About Marie Dalkey Archive Returning to the narrator from his previous novel, Running Away, this newest publication from acclaimed French author Toussaint (considered a “Camus for the twenty-first century”) follows the narrator’s relationship with Marie. Typical of Toussaint ’s literary style, the novel relies more on the intrinsic pace of action rather than the plot itself. This novel is Toussaint’s most acclaimed work to date. Nota Bene very nearly does. He also excoriates “the moist, vapid effusion that greeted the death of Diana Spencer” and the unearned appropriation of grief at the killings at Virginia Tech as “proof of how utterly painless all this vicarious ‘pain’ really is.” And his view of the British royal family can be summed up in “This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII.” But he is equally sharp on the failings of JFK. Although Hitchens can be snarky, he makes interesting and often valid points, mostly negative, about the weakness of Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” and his analysis of Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is both pointed and balanced. Even when he condemns, as in his discussion of Waugh, he can see virtues to mitigate faults. On the (very great) whole, the chief impression one might take from this massive collection is that, given the willingness of outlets like Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, and Slate to publish extended and thoughtful material like this, the condition of American journalism and thought might not be quite as bad as some have feared. Robert Murray Davis University of Oklahoma Manning Marable. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York. Viking. 2011. isbn 9780670022205 Reading the life, and death, of Malcolm Little is reading forty pivotal years of the history and culture of tumultuous mid-twentieth-century America. Perhaps more than in any other American book, Alex Haley’s 1965 transcription of that life allowed one to empathize with those whose lives were warped by racial prejudice in America and to see the tangible, dynamic, multifaceted reality of black culture in a way that few other texts have succeeded in doing. Fearing disappointment , I hesitatingly opened Manning Marable’s new biography. Marable’s biography is scrupulously researched. He excavates, through extensive archival research, details that amplify our understanding of the sociohistorical context. Manning also consulted the FBI reports on Malcolm, and notes the massive number of converts, frequently former soldiers and convicts, to the Nation of Islam in the postwar 1950s, and calls our attention to the arrival on the East Coast of a Caribbean calypso artist named Louis Walcott who joins, and remains with, the Nation of Islam even after its decision to ban performers from membership. That same Louis, renamed Farrakhan, replaced Malcolm as national minister after the latter had been ostracized by Elijah Muhammad. Moreover, Marable astutely tracks the gradually widening rift between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm after the latter, influenced by both the Civil Rights movement and his Hajj to Mecca, distanced himself from black separatism. Marable relates what was seen as Malcolm’s joy at President Kennedy’s death with his “Chickens come home to roost” remark after Elijah Muhammad had ordered him not to comment on the president specifically in his criticisms of the American government. The biography traces Malcolm’s moving closer to the color-blind perspective of orthodox Islam after his travels to Saudi Arabia and Ghana as well as his inevitable questioning of the separatist dogma of Elijah Muhammad. It January–February 2012 | 77 was upon his return from his Hajj that Malcolm broke from the Nation of Islam and founded...