“All the publishers are interested in selling books and if you say something about sex and being a nigger then you got a bestseller” (206).

C.S. Lewis writes that fiction allows you to be a thousand men whilst always maintaining the integrity of your own person. In today’s impoverished lingo, he argued that fiction allows us to walk in another person’s shoes. To be honest, the world of Brown’s classic novel of an African-American navigating the gigolo world of Copenhagen is one I didn’t want to stay in for very long. The rawness of the sexual encounters that make up much of the book at first seemed to be little more than the kind of meaningless encounters strung together by thin plot lines that are the hallmark of run-of-the-mill porno. I found myself repeatedly referring back to the insightful, new introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to reassure myself that something worthwhile was going to come of this odyssey through the sordidness of late-60’s Denmark.

However, as the novel progresses, the increasing bizarreness of the protagonist George Washington’s encounters with women wear on him as much as on the reader. Upon entering the bedroom of his last encounter, he sits on the sofa, head in hands, wondering “What is beauty, Mrs. Hamilton?” When Washington realizes that “everybody in this town, every black person, seems to be living off someone or something else. Everything but their insides” (203), he decides to go back home to the U.S., back to where “the battleground is a bit more familiar” (206).

In his introduction, Louis Gates, Jr. recalls that among his friends at Yale Brown’s book was “a required text on our veritable ‘Quest for Blackness’” (x). I don’t pretend to know or understand what lessons he derived about African-American identity from Life and Loves, but the return of Washington to America where the battleground is familiar might be one. The gigolos in Brown’s book are all expatriates escaping the racism and violence of the South, of America. Yet, what they find in Europe is not essentially different. The white women do not desire them for their persons but for their color. The existentialism of Europe seems to Washington to be just another way for whites to get in touch with their blackness. America may be a place that doesn’t allow him to write a “serious book,” but it’s a place where he understands the situation.

I also stayed with the book because while George Washington is careering through women left and right, he displays a self-awareness and understanding that is endearing. At first, his knowledge makes him appear the rapacious player, but as you watch the emptiness dawn on him, a core of inner humanity peeks out. Mr. Jiveass might be a slick negotiator, but he can’t jive himself for too long, and in the end, not at all.

Gates calls attention to the postmodern epilogue in which Brown tells his character “All is jive” (212) and encourages him that in the end, after “the intellectuals [pick] through your soul….You will have them understand what you mean by jive” (213). In a new preface written for this edition, Brown suggests that “Jive is a philosophy, for sure, but it is also a door. Open it and enter” (xxii). Brown certainly opens a door into a world of experience alien to me racially, but it’s also a world that is not entirely foreign. It is a world in which people’s self-serving behavior robs them of humanity, a world in which escaping from overt oppression leads to a more insidious, creeping imprisonment, a world in which freedom from does not lead to freedom in. And the kind of life that leads to that world and may be required in that world is certainly something I could understand as jive. ( )

This is a novel of a time and place, but I didn't get much out of it other than that. I'm not sure that the characters are drawn very well; I feel that I brought all the other things I've read to it & those other books fleshed out this one. ( )

I can see why this is considered something of a cult classic, but it wasn't for me. It is a page turner, but the book felt rather uneven for me. At times, it seemed like there were scenes that were solely for shock or over-emphasis, and other scenes felt like they were trying too hard to be philosophical. Also, I have to say that the profanity seemed a bit overboard, though it doesn't bother me generally.

Overall, it's an entertaining enough story most of the time, and presents a different version of Ellison's Invisible Man ideas, but I wanted it to be tighter for Brown to really make the points he was obviously working to make. For me, it was an up and down ride, though it kept me interested and wasn't a difficult read for the most part. I just wanted there to be more depth. ( )

A novel by Cecil Brown is quite a showstopper where ever I happened to be reading it. This version is a re-print of the original 1969 classic pulp fiction book and is updated to include a new forward by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The new introduction lends some added credibility for those not deeply entrenched in identity politics or collegecurriculumreading to know the other works of the author. And I have to admit, Gates' addition to this edition was a sociallifesaver for me when I read the text in public (especially in the community where I live). Ironically, my own identity is a blurry façade that continues to need unravelling, so there is a timeliness in reading this book for the larger, political and smaller, personal perspectives. In order to peel away the layers of intrigue within the text I think it an interesting exercise to beigin with the cover art of each printing. Though you can't always judge a book by its cover, I think you can begin to discern some of the meaning an author or publisher is trying to convey; as the case is with Mr. Jiveass Nigger, my interest is piqued.

The cover on the 1st edition does not leave much to the imagination; and then, another edition was published in 1973. Each one markets a different audience and with it, interpretations that are sprung from the variant layers of meaning. I tried to read the middle edition shortly after I had graduated from high school at the behest of a friend. I was stunningly insulted by the flamboyant and unadulterated sexuality - particularly directed between black men and white women. I could not get past my own identity to read into the text so sloghed it off as pulp fiction. At that time I was a 'surface' reader and what jumped out at me most is that it seemed to me too racy and racially sexually charged.

I had forgotten all about the novel as my youth faded away and still was not re-introduced to the text even into my late-blooming collegiate career. The latter is not too surprising, given that I attended university in a largely 'white' community where '-isms' are easily marginalized and 'colored' students came to play bad football or final four basketball. Yet, I mastered in a program fraught with -isms that sought to expose the underbelly of oppression from intensely theoretical angles, so it is disappointing that my program which claimed an interest in recruiting 'students of color' did not seek out such texts to analyze for the rich perspectives on gender, race, class, color, nationality and -isms of all flavors. But still, I am grateful because from such an academic space, I am fortunate that said education has afforded me the practiced patience of a studious learner in accessing those layers that I am still groping with three days after I've completed reading Brown's work and laid the popfiction text aside.

And I am pleased to have read it now - under these circumstances (y'know with all that agedness and now certified smartiness), I still managed to learn a lot about myself in the telling of George Washington's (Mr. Jiveass Nigger, himself) tale. It made me curious, more now than before I read the book, about why it was released at this moment. Because yet another layer in the work is the racial identifying that Brown expresses through the eyes of his protagonist. In our current and seemingly remarkable era, when our first African-American president is nearing his swearing in, the timing of a long-ago text broaching identity politics seems ill-conceived. Of course, it is not badly-timed at all, because it is the mixmash of identity and race and class and politics that are all fleshed out in Brown's narrative. Matching the narrative themes with current political debate swirling in the media, in periodical prints, and floating about my head along with the heady text of Cecil Brown's imagination seems so damn clever that I can scarce call it accidental that Brown was approached for it's re-release at this juncture in our collective history. So there you have it - I suppose I have come to my own answers and conclusions on the timing of the book's resurgence into popular, political and social interest.

And that brings me back to those darn layers! The cover art chosen for this edition is certainly telling. The letter-size and clearly legible fonting, coupled with the blaring image of the "white" woman had the most interesting effect in my community. Because I am a regular reader, I thought nothing of taking the text along with me wherever I went, to read in the snippets of the godot time that I invariably endure as part of my routine. While waiting for my younger son to be dismissed from kindergarten, my older son to be dismissed from high school, while out and about, I generally carry a book. This text was no different, but the response from people I do not know was remarkable as opposed the bored or'looking I usually receive. People were openly hostile to the word "nigger" that was largely visible from several feet away. And that I have embodied the "white" woman figure on the cover made my carrying the text seem all that much more alarming in my circle. And I cannot deny that the text continues to feel racially violent in a sexuallized context. So to muddy the waters and add to the irony, I have recently discovered my own African-American roots. How it came to be that I should be the "whitest" black girl that anyone could imagine is a whole other story in itself (and maybe a good novel one day in its own right). Yet, I am also reeling from my own sense of identity.

So the country, neh-- the world, is also uncovering dusty old identity politics to learn more about themselves. And here is Cecil Brown... re-releasing his charged tome on the subject(s) for us to analyze again, under our newfound circumstances. Gates is correct in pointing out the importance of this work - not just from his own perspective and history - but also for the African Americans left in the trenches of american life and who are still jiving - and for the rest of us, the "white" folks who need to learn more about ourselves and our identity in the larger world. Read, be patient with yourself and read it all -- the whole tale of the Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger himself! ( )

This book is beautifully written, full of anger and sex, blatant truths and subtle descriptions of interpersonal relations. It captures the experience of a person trying to escape his past by making a philosophy and lifestyle out of jive, prevarication, self-imposed exile, promiscuity and drugs. Even more important, Jiveass shows how the protagonist gets out of the escapist thinking and behaviors and becomes ready to return to his home country—the site of all of the formative traumas of his life. The sex scenes are potentially distracting—but each contains luminous descriptions of the mental state that carries the participants through these rather fraught encounters, and reads dangerously true about how people with different amounts of power in the world (and different senses of their relationship to racial difference) behave sexually to each other. As George Washington (the protagonist) progresses through the novel, these scenes embody his changing awareness of the women he is involved with—and thus his changing relationship with the world that leads to his decision to return to the United States.

Overall, this is one of the best works of fiction I have read—a truly valuable work.