Adam Mansbach books events bio music interviews other writing
In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison comes Adam Mansbach's stunning debut novel. Written in a lyrical, exhilarating, and intoxicating style that brilliantly evokes the moods and cadences of jazz and hip hop, Shackling Water is a book for lovers of both words and song. Set in New York City's late-nineties jazz world, Shackling Water is a story about the struggles of artists to overcome inarticulation and self-destruction, to function as both creators and human beings who can love. The novel follows talented young saxophonist Latif James-Pearson as he migrates from Boston to New York in hopes of apprenticing himself to his hero, Albert Van Horn. The foci of Latif's universe soon become his room in a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days alone, practicing intensely -- "woodshedding" -- and a downtown nightclub called Dutchman's where Van Horn's group performs. There, Latif studies the musicians from afar, unwilling to meet Van Horn until he feels musically ready. It is at Dutchman's that Latif stumbles into another apprenticeship, this one to a charismatic drug dealer named Say Brother, and inadvertently comes under the wing of Van Horn's pianist, Sonny Burma. Latif also meets Mona, a white painter who is a regular at the club, and they begin a complex affair which causes both of them to question their ideas about artistry, race, and love. As Latif drifts slowly toward the life of a hustler and away from that of a musician, Van Horn himself steps in and begins to mentor the young man, relating his own remarkable life story in the process. But even as Latif makes his way into his hero's inner circle, his frustration with his playing, the turn his relationship with Mona is taking, and the demands of hustling begin to take their toll. Desperate and in dire straits, Latif returns to Boston to seek the help of his mother, his first music teacher Wessel Gates, and the crew of childhood friends he left behind. When tragedy spurs him to return to New York, Latif is forced to finally confront his music, Mona, and himself. An intricate, riveting, and original improvisation on classic themes, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important and beautiful new voice in American literature.
"This
might be the best fictional work about jazz since James Baldwin's beautiful
and soulful 'Sonny's Blues.' Definitely a writer to watch."
"A rushing
torrent of swirling, coruscating language, jumpy with jazz-influenced
rhythms and shimmering with tumbling shards of urban imagery. There's
no doubt that, like Latif, Mansbach's got the goods." Shackling
Water is a workout, but an exhilarating one."
"[Mansbach
is] a veritable multi-culti code-switching genius... the novel forges
ahead to a powerfully humble conclusion that testifies to the authentic
impulses behind creation. ...A remarkable achievement."
"Mansbach
convincingly captures the rhythms and cadences of black language and
the inner monologues that play out while artists are on stage. ...the
questions that [Shackling Water's] authorship raises -- does this white
boy know what he's talking about? -- are forgotten."
"Mansbach
sparkles throughout, finding just the right voice to explain the jazz/hip-hop
transition of the last thirty years and doing justice to all of it.
As auspicious a debut as Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist... even
those who don't know a whole note from a grace note will revel in glorious
song and history both. A wonderful accomplishment."
"Some
of the most original and moving writing out there."
"Mansbach
displays a gift for fusing the improvised energy of streetspeak to that
of spiraling jazz riffs."
"Mansbach...
writes with authority, precision, and verve of Latif's initiation and
the passionate music he loves, and readers who share Mansbach's ardor
for the sky-scraping, core-of-the-earth-mining jazz of Coltrane and
Miles Davis will be enthralled by his ravishing musical descriptions.
Mansbach illuminates music's spiritual dimension and plumbs the sorrow
and rage that is the legacy of every black artist. [A] bold, resonant,
portrait of the artist as a young man... Mansbach's eloquence and energy
are unwavering and his music is divine."
"A stunningly
beautiful, heart-aching debut... a brilliantly written, risk-taking
novel that lands gracefully on its feet... Shackling Water may be the
finest novel written this year and half of the next one."
"Words
tumble off the pages of Shackling Water and bump against your brain.
Strung out and strung together, they pull you into passages so rhythmic
that for the first few pages you want to stop the meaning frrom leaking
through. You want only to say the words out loud, hear the syllables
roll off your lips, let them echo in the quiet and then, electrified,
catch them again as they snap back through your ears. First time novelist
Mansbach's love of language and music mixes the two into something both
ancient and immediate -- a story and a song, a new riff on the old tale
of a young man and his journey into jazz."
"How fast
and fluent is Adam Mansbach's prose; how reminiscent of Baldwin's, Ellison's
and Baraka's ways of creating rhythms with new ways of dancing words
and attitudes. Here is virtuoso storytelling with a drive to discover
what it means to make art against the drift and noise of everyday life
in America. Here is writing that seems to know the whole tradition but
still seeks to rhyme with today and tommorrow. Here is a novel to make
clear that the tradition of jazz writing at its finest is alive and
kicking!"
"Adam Mansbach
is our generation's literary ambassador to jazz. He inhabits characters
with such perceptive nuance and imagination... If Eminem got off the
drugs and grew a social conscience, he might write novels this good.
Might."
"Call it
hip-hop lit: Mansbach delights in the sing-song cadences of both book-speak
and street-talk. And his rhythmic bounce fits his subject: a fresh,
contemporary take on the story of the young African-American saxophonist
coming to the Big Apple to find his muse and make his mark. But what
unfolds is so much more, and heralds an exciting new literary voice
who's busy defining his own genre. Mansbach's attention to detail is
impressive; the depth of his characters even more so, exposing a surprising
maturity and honesty. I've often thought reading should offer nothing
less than a joyride, and that writing is like one person trying to convince
another, 'Hop in! Let's open this thing up . . .' In the case of Shackling
Water, you can trust the driver."
"Shackling
Water is a powerful lyrical portrait of Latif, a young black jazz
musician whose poignant attempts to harness his creative spirit, define
his masculinity and the painful histories that flow through both, nearly
destroys him. His journey swings and makes you think."
"Adam Mansbach
has crafted a literary debut of breathtaking splendor. Equally at home
with jazz and hip hop, and as comfortable with high cultural classicism
as with vernacular vibrations, Mansbach riffs like Coltrane, flows like
Notorious B.I.G., and heats the page with prose that might have spilled
forth had Whitman learned the blues... A remarkable literary achievement
and a true artistic gem."
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Adam Mansbach books events bio music interviews other writing
Shackling Water