- Hardcover: 199 pages
- Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; First Edition edition (Aug 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0805012664
- ISBN-13: 978-0805012668
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,199,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
By the award-winning author of All Stories are True
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Eleven people – five of them children – are killed in west Philadelphia when 6221 Osage Avenue is bombed out of existence. One small boy is seen to escape the fire. From his life of self-exile on an island in the Aegean, Cudjoe mourns the child until it becomes an obsession, leading him home, forcing him to face up to his own profound alienation and to the wrenching realities of his native land. He searches for the boy and, as he does so, he searches out his own past. Reconstructing his life plunges him backwards into memories both personal and communal, forwards inch by inch into a city fast becoming a nightmare. ‘Wideman’s novel succeeds through raw emotion and a linguistic versatility . . . Written in a sinewy language which also combines reportage, Philadelphia Fire operates as parable and social document’ Irish Times ‘Philadelphia Fire is a welter of fine writing, sociological observation, polemical address and messianic prophecy . . . A literary novel in the grand contemporary, postmodern, literary style’ New Statesman & Society ‘Unquestionably the foremost chronicler of the urban African-American experience. A master storyteller, Wideman is both a witness and a prophet’ Caryl Phillips
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Its a bit of a strange one this, it has quite a post modern feel to it. It concerns a man called Cudhoe who returns from self imposed exile to America to search for a missing boy, and in doing so searches out his own past.
There are lots of different voices, and confusing jumping back and forth through time going on here, which can make it a bit confusing, but all the more fascinating.
Definitely worth the effort.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Difficult, but worth it.
14 Oct 1999
Format:Paperback
I read 'Philadelphia Fire' as a part of my MA course at The University of Sheffield, England, and, on the whole, enjoyed it. I did, however, find its stream of conciousness style confusing and difficult to read at times. It is rather 'heavy' and slow in certain points, and tends to jump from character to character (and to author/ narator) especially in the second and third parts of the novel. Its description and use of the City is excellent, and I am sure that many can relate to certain experiences encountered by Cudjoe, from reliving youth to revisiting ones old stomping ground etc.
On the whole, I found its style difficult, but do not let this discourage you, as the experience of reading this novel outweighs the sluggishness of certain points.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Wideman tells all
21 Dec 1997
Format:Paperback
This novel with its shifting points of view and often stream of consciousness style plays like a Cecil Taylor jazz piece . . . everything seems discordant but the underlying theme pulls it all together beautifully. It's a great novel about modern America, our strengths and weaknesses, our loves/obsessions and hates, our insights and blindness. Widemnan uses the fire bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia to take a snap shot of contemporary urban America.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Not what you may have expected
21 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
This is not really the story of Cudjoe but the story of story-telling itself.
The book explores the jagged edges between fictional protagonists (Cudjoe, then Caliban, and finally a homeless man named J.B.) and an ostensibly non-fictional speaker (a version of Wideman himself, hinting at family dysfunctions such as the incarceration of his son for murder). It also explores the jagged edges separating his own text from, and linking it to, precursory texts by Shakespeare, Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Eldridge Cleaver, Marcolm X, and others.
If you're looking for a cohesive, traditional story, this is not your book. It purposely does not give us pay-offs in scenes and plot developments that it arranges for us to expect. But if you're looking for continual surprise and dislocation, stylistic bravado and beauty, and an often profound meditation on African America, on masculine anguish and self-delusion, and on the American problem more generally, this book is for you.
The book explores the jagged edges between fictional protagonists (Cudjoe, then Caliban, and finally a homeless man named J.B.) and an ostensibly non-fictional speaker (a version of Wideman himself, hinting at family dysfunctions such as the incarceration of his son for murder). It also explores the jagged edges separating his own text from, and linking it to, precursory texts by Shakespeare, Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Eldridge Cleaver, Marcolm X, and others.
If you're looking for a cohesive, traditional story, this is not your book. It purposely does not give us pay-offs in scenes and plot developments that it arranges for us to expect. But if you're looking for continual surprise and dislocation, stylistic bravado and beauty, and an often profound meditation on African America, on masculine anguish and self-delusion, and on the American problem more generally, this book is for you.
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