Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany

by Robert Elliot Fox

Fox offers a clear and important, if brief, consideration of the fiction of Baraka, Reed, and Delany. He renders an especially important service by establishing the relationship among three fictionists whose work has been substantially neglected. . . . Readers will find this volume useful as a starting point for the investigation of recent Afro-American fiction and as an example of the application of poststructuralist criticism to Afro-American fiction. Choice

This book is a provocative and enlightening study of the fiction of LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Ishmael Reed and Samuel R. Delany, three black American writers who are among the most gifted literary artists of the past twenty-five years. These authors, who emerged in the tumultuous period of the 1960s, when the complacencies of the previous decade were being challenged throughout the country, are examined here within the context of Afro-American literature.

142 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1987

Reviews

[Laura Wallace]

This was the only book that came up when I searched for criticism on Delany in the Portland public library. It's largely focused on postmodernism and SF as genres, which is just not a kind of litcrit I'm that interested in. Elliot Fox is obviously smart and well read and he makes reference to a lot of more interesting-sounding stuff. There isn't much specific discussion of Dhalgren, but I gather that he did that in his dissertation?