Full Product Details
Author: Ed Pavlić
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9780823276837
ISBN 10: 082327683
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 03 April 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlic unearths James Baldwin's epic song--one shaped and honed by sacred and popular music. This rumination of intricate details celebrates Baldwin's vision of democratic conscience. Pavlic gives us a flesh-and-blood subject formed through a lyrical determinism of deep feeling. Through turn of thought and juxtaposition of historical and personal evidence, he embraces Baldwin's need for justice and truth. --Yusef Komunyakaa A brilliant and original study of Baldwin as the ultimate bluesman. --David Ritz, author of Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin Pavlic offers the most extensive engagement to date with Baldwin's lifelong love affair with black music, but he also provides the most sustained and compelling account of how Baldwin's work speaks (or sings) to our present global condition. --Emily Lordi, author of Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature Ed Pavlic's words have always heard the music and with Who Can Afford to Improvise?, he shows the exquisite ways that James Baldwin's words both heard the music and was the music itself. --Mark Anthony Neal, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities Who Can Afford to Improvise is a tour de force from one of our premier Baldwin scholars. Ed Pavlic's brilliantly insightful meditation on black music and culture and Baldwin's centrality to that tradition is a must-read. --Peniel E. Joseph, author of Dark Days, Bright Nights Pavlic proves himself an expert on Baldwin's corpus. --Library Journal.. .Who Can Afford to Improvise plays in the pocket between actual musical performances, interpretations of the lyrical mode in Baldwin's poetics, and intricate historical detail. -Los Angeles Review of Books While Pavlic is to be commended for choosing such an important subject in the first place, what is more important is the fact that he has addressed it with a great deal of stylistic finesse and analytical clarity. --Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwize Magazine If you read books, sometimes or all the time, for the quality of their sentences (and what writer doesn't? why else would anyone want to be a writer?), Who Can Afford to Improvise is even more essential. Ed Pavlic is f*cking fearless about how he goes about it, as fearless as any contemporary musician I can think of, as fearless as some of the greats. It's definitely a book, but music is where its soul is, if you ask me. --Dave Marsh, Counterpunch Ed Pavlic's strikingly original meditations reveal a James Baldwin swaddled in Black music whose masterful ear heard the overtones, the changes, echoes of memory, cries of agony and joy. By excavating experience from song and turning social critique into lyric, Baldwin produced a deeper, more dangerous truth. --Robin D. G. Kelley, author of <em>Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original</em>
While Pavlic is to be commended for choosing such an important subject in the first place, what is more important is the fact that he has addressed it with a great deal of stylistic finesse and analytical clarity. -- -Kevin Le Gendre Jazzwize Magazine In Who Can Afford to Improvise?, Ed Pavlic unearths James Baldwin's epic song-one shaped and honed by sacred and popular music. This rumination of intricate details celebrates Baldwin's vision of democratic conscience. Pavlic gives us a flesh-and-blood subject formed through a lyrical determinism of deep feeling. Through turn of thought and juxtaposition of historical and personal evidence, he embraces Baldwin's need for justice and truth. -- -Yusef Komunyakaa Ed Pavlic's words have always heard the music and with Who Can Afford to Improvise?, he shows the exquisite ways that James Baldwin's words both heard the music and was the music itself. -- -Mark Anthony Neal Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities ... Who Can Afford to Improvise plays in the pocket between actual musical performances, interpretations of the lyrical mode in Baldwin's poetics, and intricate historical detail. -Tsitsi Jaji, Los Angeles Review of Books Who Can Afford to Improvise is a tour de force from one of our premier Baldwin scholars. Ed Pavlic's brilliantly insightful meditation on black music and culture and Baldwin's centrality to that tradition is a must-read. -- -Peniel E. Joseph author of Dark Days, Bright Nights If you read books, sometimes or all the time, for the quality of their sentences (and what writer doesn't? why else would anyone want to be a writer?), Who Can Afford to Improvise is even more essential. Ed Pavlic is f*cking fearless about how he goes about it, as fearless as any contemporary musician I can think of, as fearless as some of the greats. It's definitely a book, but music is where its soul is, if you ask me. -Dave Marsh, Counterpunch Ed Pavlic's strikingly original meditations reveal a James Baldwin swaddled in Black music whose masterful ear heard the overtones, the changes, echoes of memory, cries of agony and joy. By excavating experience from song and turning social critique into lyric, Baldwin produced a deeper, more dangerous truth. -- -Robin D. G. Kelley author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original Ed Pavlic's Who Can Afford to Improvise? is remarkably present in how it sings-in all that it does for Baldwin, for his mediums, and for the book's listeners. -The Georgia Review
Pavlic offers the most extensive engagement to date with Baldwin's life-long love affair with black music; but he also provides the most sustained and compelling account of how Baldwin's work speaks (or sings) to our present global condition. -Emily Lordi, author of Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature
Pavli-c offers the most extensive engagement to date with Baldwin's life-long love affair with black music; but he also provides the most sustained and compelling account of how Baldwin's work speaks (or sings) to our present global condition. GCoEmily Lordi, author of Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature
Author Information
Ed Pavlić is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.
