"The Palace
Council" by Stephen L. Carter (Knopf, ISBN 9780307266583, $26.95)
"The Palace Council" is Stephen L. Carter's third novel exploring the
intriguing world of what in this book he calls "the dark nation." The plot
follows a somewhat convoluted trail of secret meetings, quasi-government
collusion, cryptic messages, and inter-racial power struggles. While the
story takes place in the Sixties (correctly identified by Carter as mid-50's
to mid-70's,) it is particularly timely today as it ultimately concerns the
election of a black President and the machinations behind the scenes
necessary to pull it off.
Carter's cast is large and multi-generational; it is somewhat hard to follow
the family and social connections. The protagonist, Eddie Wesley, is an
intellectual black man driven to carve his own place in the somewhat
stratified world of 1940's-1950's Harlem through a life of writing. His
novels are critical successes and lead to his broader role as a key observer
and commentator for his race on the huge social changes of the Sixties. But
he is also obsessed with a woman who spurned his love for a more upwardly
mobile husband, his sister who drops out of the mainstream to live a
clandestine life of black radicalism, and a "conspiracy" he uncovers piece
by piece as he lives the salon life of Harlem.
All three of Carter's novels inhabit a world of the intellectual, social,
and financial elite of America's black community. It is a world within our
many worlds that is relatively untapped in literature or film. The news is
pre-occupied with black athletes, black gangsta's, black preachers, black
women but rarely the black elite. Carter's trilogy fills that gap and fills
it well. It is not inappropriate to compare his work to John Dos Passos'
monumental "USA Trilogy" – the writing is fast paced, real historical
figures intermingle with fictional ones, and an entire world is created.
Arguably Walter Mosley has done the same thing for the West Coast black
sub-culture of Easy Rawlins, Mouse, et al and perhaps done it better, but
Carter needs to be read by all of us...especially in these days when Barack
Obama is on the verge of election to the United States Presidency.
Review by
Bruce Jacobs,
August 21, 2008
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