White Tears: A novel
"Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation."--Amazon.com
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Community Reviews
The more I think about this book, the more I love it. Kunzru covers so much ground with beautiful writing and great pacing. Summarizing this novel is difficult, there is so much going on. Ostensibly, it begins as two recent college grads start a recording studio, one obsessing over collecting and disseminating race records from the early 20th century.
Very quickly thought, this becomes about authenticity and cultural memory. As Utah Phillips said, "the past didn't go anywhere." In this novel the past reaches out to these two young men with a vengeance.
Dark. Lovely. Important. I'd rate a must-read.
We covered this (with many spoilers) on the Bedrosian Bookclub Podcast, here.
Very quickly thought, this becomes about authenticity and cultural memory. As Utah Phillips said, "the past didn't go anywhere." In this novel the past reaches out to these two young men with a vengeance.
Dark. Lovely. Important. I'd rate a must-read.
We covered this (with many spoilers) on the Bedrosian Bookclub Podcast, here.
Starts out as a fairly normal story about a couple of music obsessed college kids. But spins into a very dreamworld fantasy about black blues musicians in the south and the racial abuse and exploitation they experienced. A fascinating, yet somewhat confusing, turn that leads down a very unexpected path.
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