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Written in a lyrical, exhilarating, and intoxicating style that brilliantly evokes the moods and cadences of jazz and hip hop, Shackling Water is a book for lovers of both words and song.
The novel follows talented young saxophonist Latif James-Pearson as he migrates from Boston to New York in hopes of apprenticing himself to his hero, Albert Van Horn. The center of Latif's universe soon becomes his room in a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days alone, practicing intensely, and a downtown nightclub called Dutchman’s where Van Horn's group performs. There, Latif studies the musicians from afar, unwilling to meet Van Horn until he feels musically ready.
It is at Dutchman's that Latif stumbles into another apprenticeship, this one to a charismatic drug dealer named Say Brother, and inadvertently comes under the wing of Van Horn's pianist, Sonny Burma. Latif also meets Mona, a white painter who is a regular at the club, and they begin a complex affair, which causes both of them to question their ideas about artistry, race, and love.
As Latif drifts slowly toward the life of a hustler and away from that of a musician, Van Horn himself steps in and begins to mentor the young man, relating his own remarkable life story in the process. But even as Latif makes his way into his hero's inner circle, his frustration with his playing, the turn his relationship with Mona is taking, and the demands of hustling begin to take their toll. Desperate and in dire straits, Latif returns to Boston to seek the help of his mother, his first music teacher, and the crew of childhood friends he left behind. When tragedy spurs him to return to New York, Latif is forced to finally confront his music, Mona, and himself.
An intricate, riveting, and original improvisation on classic themes, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important and beautiful new voice in American literature.
The novel follows talented young saxophonist Latif James-Pearson as he migrates from Boston to New York in hopes of apprenticing himself to his hero, Albert Van Horn. The center of Latif's universe soon becomes his room in a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days alone, practicing intensely, and a downtown nightclub called Dutchman’s where Van Horn's group performs. There, Latif studies the musicians from afar, unwilling to meet Van Horn until he feels musically ready.
It is at Dutchman's that Latif stumbles into another apprenticeship, this one to a charismatic drug dealer named Say Brother, and inadvertently comes under the wing of Van Horn's pianist, Sonny Burma. Latif also meets Mona, a white painter who is a regular at the club, and they begin a complex affair, which causes both of them to question their ideas about artistry, race, and love.
As Latif drifts slowly toward the life of a hustler and away from that of a musician, Van Horn himself steps in and begins to mentor the young man, relating his own remarkable life story in the process. But even as Latif makes his way into his hero's inner circle, his frustration with his playing, the turn his relationship with Mona is taking, and the demands of hustling begin to take their toll. Desperate and in dire straits, Latif returns to Boston to seek the help of his mother, his first music teacher, and the crew of childhood friends he left behind. When tragedy spurs him to return to New York, Latif is forced to finally confront his music, Mona, and himself.
An intricate, riveting, and original improvisation on classic themes, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important and beautiful new voice in American literature.
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From the Back Cover:
"With Shackling Water, Adam Mansbach has crafted a literary debut of breathtaking splendor. Equally at home with jazz and hip hop, and as comfortable with high cultural classicism as with vernacular vibrations, Mansbach riffs like Coltrane, flows like Biggie Smalls, and heats the page with prose that might have spilled forth had Whitman learned the blues. . . . a remarkable literary achievement and a true artistic gem." –Michael Eric Dyson, author of Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur
"How fast and fluent is Adam Mansbach's prose; how reminiscent of Baldwin's, Ellison's and Baraka's ways of creating new rhythms with new ways of dancing words and attitudes. Here is virtuoso storytelling with a musical insistence and a drive to discover what it means to make art against the drift and noise of everyday life in America. Here is writing that seems to know the whole tradition but still seek to rhyme with today and tomorrow. Here is a novel to make clear that the tradition of jazz writing at its finest is alive and kicking!"
–Robert O'Meally, Director of the Center for Jazz Studies and author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison and The Jazz Cadence of American Culture
"This is a bold, beautiful, brilliant book, unafraid to grapple with race and art and love at a time when so many young novelists are. Mansbach is just the kind of writer we need." –William "Upski" Wimsatt, author of No More Prisons and Bomb the Suburbs
About the Author:
"How fast and fluent is Adam Mansbach's prose; how reminiscent of Baldwin's, Ellison's and Baraka's ways of creating new rhythms with new ways of dancing words and attitudes. Here is virtuoso storytelling with a musical insistence and a drive to discover what it means to make art against the drift and noise of everyday life in America. Here is writing that seems to know the whole tradition but still seek to rhyme with today and tomorrow. Here is a novel to make clear that the tradition of jazz writing at its finest is alive and kicking!"
–Robert O'Meally, Director of the Center for Jazz Studies and author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison and The Jazz Cadence of American Culture
"This is a bold, beautiful, brilliant book, unafraid to grapple with race and art and love at a time when so many young novelists are. Mansbach is just the kind of writer we need." –William "Upski" Wimsatt, author of No More Prisons and Bomb the Suburbs
Adam Mansbach, 25, is the founding editor of the pioneering hip hop journal, Elementary, and currently serves as an artistic consultant to Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies. His poetry collection, genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights, was published to great acclaim in late 2001. He has traveled as a drum technician for the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine and a Richmond B. Williams Fellow studying hip hop culture abroad, taught writing and hip hop classes for New York City public high school students, and has written for publications including 360hiphop, Feed, and Trace. An MC and performer who collaborates with both jazz and hip hop musicians, he lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDoubleday
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0385502052
- ISBN 13 9780385502054
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages240
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