Considering Darryl Pinckney and Authenticity – The New York Times

This week, Lauretta Charlton reviews Darryl Pinckneys collection of essays Busted in New York. In 1992, Edmund White wrote for the Book Review about High Cotton, Pinckneys debut novel about a young black man coming of age.

When an African-American writer or a gay writer or a Native American writer publishes a novel, its always read as somehow representative of the whole minority group. Its also regarded as a testimony of the writers own coming to terms with that minority status. This kind of attention automatically focused on such books explains the power they generate and the constraints that are imposed upon them.

Whereas Ralph Ellisons hero was an invisible man to the whites around him, Mr. Pinckneys seems unreal even to himself. He has acquaintances rather than friends, observations rather than passions, few resentments, guarded enthusiasms and no sex life. No wonder hes drawn back again and again to the authenticity of the old-timers he meets in Harlem bars or at family funerals.

At a time in our history when a puerile political correctness imposes hypocrisy on most writers dealing with sensitive topics, Darryl Pinckney has dared to treat his theme with excruciating honesty and the total freedom from restraint that Schiller said we find nowhere else but in authentic works of art.

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Considering Darryl Pinckney and Authenticity - The New York Times