Middle Passage

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Summary: Holy baloney, people!
Review: I found this book really intersting, i had to read it for a book report and my teacher happens to know charles johnson. I think that this book is well written, you can really get a feel for what Rutherford is going through, i mean, if that was my only chance and i were him, i would take it in half a heart beat. If you only pay attention to what the events are, and how accurate the dates are, then you miss the whole plot and the beautiful writing that Charles uses. I can understand using and shifting actual events slightly to fit the story, to make it better, as he did. Who cares if Charles Darwin hadn't thought up the 'missing link' yet? or if a slave has been educated? By a minister who feels guilty about owing slaves? or if dime novels hadn't been invented yet? or the hegelian theory or philosify or what not wasn't well known in the 1830s? that shouldn't stop you from enjoying a good book! i would definatly recomend this book, the parallels between this man's life and Odicious (Spelling?) from Homer's Odyssey. It made a surpising but excellent ending. now, i will stop raving to let you read this book!

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Summary: Middle Passage is a Wonderful Dose of Historical Fantasy
Review: I have read every, and I do mean every book, novel, auto-biographical sketch ever put out by Charles Johnson. I am convinced that "Middle Passage" is by far his most compelling, his most outrageous, his most excellent book ever.This is a must read for all fans of his and a must gift to all those in your life who need a dose of meta-reality in a world gone madder then the one he weaves into the latter half of the book. Do yourself and the ones that you love a favor, buy this book. It was written for you, after all, you did find this review didn't you

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Summary: A luminous, entertaining read...
Review: I just finished reading Charles Johnson's book for my reading group, and I enjoyed it much more than I had anticipated. It's a rousing sea-yarn with layers of captivating images (the captain, the cargo, the last scene), and comes beautfully full-circle at its end. The narrator's point of view and use of language is consistently interesting, and the other characters Dickensian in their quirks and motivations. Highly recommended, if not perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: I loved it. It was assigned to my school's English 2 class. Opinions varied widely, but I thought it was a vivid and engrossing work. Perhaps it was a little graphic at times, but even that contributed to the impact of the scenes and characters.

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Summary: Historical Fiction? Magical Realism? A Little of Both.
Review: I read Middle Passage over the course of a weekend. This is significant for two reasons: 1)I was to meet Charles Johnson that following Monday and 2) I have a three-year-old and an infant who slowed my reading to a crawl and cut my opportunites to sit down with the book to a minimum. Had I not been so distracted, I would easily have digested Middle Passage in a matter of hours. It is an excellent read. Its protagonist, Rutherford Calhoun, comes off as a latter day Huck Finn, only this time black and educated. The wit and wisdom is very nearly the same.

Despite what other reviewers may have felt, and despite what one may construe as anachronisms within the book, I can attest that such is not the case. I had similar concerns about the novel's historical accuracy and when I finally did have an opportunity to speak with the author, I voiced those concerns. Mr. Johnson assured me of the veracity of virtually every aspect of every detail; he cited the genesis of the scene in which the dead slave is thrown overboard as an example. As an avid (dare I say slavish?) note-taker, Mr. Johnson had apparently done some research for a project having nothing to do with this novel. Indeed, the research notes to which he refers were taken in the early seventies! They came from a police detective friend of his and detailed the effect water had on the human body after death--unusable for the article for which he had originally been researching, but quite useful for the graphic turning point of Middle Passage.

Other evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, proved that Mr. Johnson did indeed have an extensive and authoritative command of American History, the History of the slave trade (made so believable and accurate by the inclusion of the Arabian slave trader in Africa, and by the rounding up of slaves from the African interior--two very historically accurate details),as well as of the ship and her voyage. Thus the exhaustive historical detail is quite effective in the telling of the tale.

One point in which the author and the novel falter lies in the books inability to follow through on its Magical Realist ambitions. Perhaps Mr. Johnson might have included in the dedication an apology to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, most notable and accomplished writer of magical realism. The African god of the Allmuseri is well developed and effectively presented. Its potential for malevolence is a quality keenly felt by this reader and should be noted as an accomplishment on the part of the author. However, the supernatural quality of the unnamed entity deteriorated too quickly into an ineffectual stasis nearly forgotten by author and reader alike; it is only brought back to life to function as a bridge between Rutherford's life at sea and Rutherford's life on land. The problem is that the maneuver is at once clever and contrived and therefore weakened. Mr. Johnson is a clever enough writer. He may simply have gotten too clever for his own good.

Middle Passage is an accomplishment that well represents the National Book Award. It is a well written and finely crafted book worhty of becoming literature. Its foray into the realm of the magical realists is entertaining if only somewhat distracting and should not be considered as a detriment as it does not "undo" anything the author "does". I highly recommend your purchase of Middle Passage.

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Summary: THIS won the National Book Award?
Review: I read this book in a class, and although the teacher who assigned it usually has good judgement, he made a serious mistake in this case. This book is lacking in just about every respect. Except for the protagonist, the characters are mostly boring and one-sided. The plot is contrived in the extreme and relies far too much on improbable coincidences. It is also much too predictable, with an overly pat ending which wrecked any suspension of disbelief I might have retained. Some of the events just don't make sense; for example, the protagonist opens a ship's log at one point and within a short time knows the entire life story of the captain in a high degree of detail. The only really interesting plot element is abandoned without any kind of resolution.

There are also numerous errors in this book. It is laden with glaring anachronisms (which may be intentional, but serve no useful literary purpose) and factual contradictions, and the author is apparently ignorant of the definitions of words like "octave" (a unit of pitch, not volume!) and "iamb" (a type of metrical foot of which "Falcon" is definitely not an example). The way the story is told makes little sense. At first, I thought it was a journal, but realized that it referred to future entries. Eventually it came out that the narrator was retroactively completing a ship's log, but things still don't make sense--even if someone doing that used date-based entries, he would not split one conversation between two entries that were three days apart solely for dramatic effect.

I'll give credit where credit is due--the writing style was sometimes entertaining and the descriptions of the god were interesting. Aside from that, this book is a waste of your time and money. I have no idea why the National Book Foundation would give it any particular notice.

As a side note, the aforementioned English teacher (who will not, I think, be assigning this book again--I am not alone in my opinion) believes that this book is a parody. If it had been presented as one, I might evaluate it differently, but the cover, the blurb, and even the editorial quotes, as well as some of the more serious themes, all indicate that it is intended as a serious work, and I think we should evaluate it that way,

Rating:
Summary: Simply Excellent
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand a piece of (not much spoken about) African-American history. I have read it more than once and I wish that this was a book made into mandatory reading for schools. It is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but kinda silly
Review: I selected this book partly because it's advertised as being very historically accurate. Sadly, it doesn't seem the case. In fact, it's so inaccurate as far as the thoughts, values and progression of events, that the only explanation I can come up with is that it's an attempt at "magic realism."
The story takes place in 1830, where a young black man, Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave turned petty thief, ends up hopping a ship in New Orleans and discovers he's on a slave ship. The whole story is told by this emancipated slave, written into the ship's log by him.
Rutherford is, of course, taught at home by his master before he's freed. But would even a well-taught rural boy think in terms of Kant and Hegel, neoplatonists and the Pseudodionysis? A modern graduate student, perhaps, might people his thoughts like this, but not an 1830's farmboy-turned-thief. A phrase like "post-Christian moonscape" (describing the Captain's cabin after it's been ransacked) sounds perfectly at home in a late-twentieth century fiction, but completely out of place here. He knows all about evolution, before Darwin published, and the "missing link" which is an idea that developed about a century later.
Towards the end of the book, he's out of sorts partly, he thinks, because he's passed through so many time zones. Time zones, however, didn't exist then, they were invented by the American railroads well after the Civil War. And even aside from that, would you notice the changing of time zones in a trip that takes months to cross the Atlantic ocean?
Rutherford is, of course, black. But his brother, also black, has freckles. And, after several months at sea, our hero has somehow grown a beard of old testament length.
The biggest problem, though, is a terribly anachronistic point of view regarding slavery. Rutherford is horrified by the idea of slavery, and the worst part of it all is that one of the powerful black men of New Orleans, is actually smuggling slaves. A black man would own another black man as a slave? Beyond inconceivable! Except, of course, that it happened regularly in the American south, and, in fact, black slaveowners were not known to be particularly gentle. The slaves were fed into the slave trade back in Africa by other blacks, who had no compunction about enslaving fellow Africans. In fact, the leader of the Africans in the Amistad (the real ship, not the Spielberg fantasy) eventually returned to Africa and became a well-to-do slave trader. To a modern eye, of course, the idea of a black man participating in slavery seems nightmarish, but in 1830 America, it was just the way things were.
Of course, the explanation on the back of the book is that he's gone mad, and perhaps all this bizarre inaccuracy and anachronism is an expression of that. Which, I suppose, is a convenient device, but not a very convincing one.
Oddly enough, all these anachronistic thoughts and values are expressed in what sounds, at least to me, fairly well-done period prose.
All that said, the story is fast moving, and entertaining, if you pass through the boilerplate philosophizing. It'd make a good HBO movie, I suppose. If you want a good historical novel, read "Cold Mountain" or anything by Margurite Yourcenaur. If you want magic realism, read Vargos Llosa or García Marquez.

Reading some of the other reviews, I see a suggestion that the whole book was a parody. While I don't think that's accurate, it does make some sense.

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Summary: Descriptive on ever page
Review: I'm not done yet but it is amazing how the slaves on the ship have yet to give up. Perhaps this is due to the incredible leadership of Rutherford. I have enjoyed how you show that there were black leaders.

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Summary: I would definately read more by this author!
Review: If you are at all interested in pre-Civil War slavery and the transport of those slaves to the United States, this is a great book to read. The book is very very detailed and graphic and will definately give you a glimpse into the horrific lives of the crew and slaves on the slave ships. If this book seems interesting to you, be prepared to put a lot of time and thought into it to truly understand it and get it's message. If you have any questions feel free to email me.