Michael Thelwell.
In my youth, there was a certain style of writing that worked magic on my brain. I don't know exactly how to describe it, in one way because I have abandoned a certain socioeconomic imperative, but primarily because its essence was so ineffable to begin with. But I knew it when I heard it, and perhaps you did too.
You could hear it in the spewing cadences of The Last Poets or the rambling associations of Ishmael Reed.
But the best times I ever heard it were two. One was from the fiction of Charles Wright in his fabulous novel 'The Wig'. The other was an essay I read in Gerald Early's Speech and Power a long time ago. I got so fired up about Michael Thelwell that I was... well I was very impressed.
We talked about Thelwell over at Vision Circle half a decade ago. I wonder what he's up to on Chinua Achebe.
Just puttering around the web I found this page. There's Thelwell referenced up top. Ahh. Nostalgia.
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