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  • The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry by Keith Clark
  • Hazel Arnett Ervin
The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry, by Keith Clark. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. 233pp. $40.00 cloth; $30.00 ebook.

In the introduction to The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry, esteemed literary critic Keith Clark is quite clear about the aim of his book: “[To] play a role in the ‘excavation’ of . . . understudied literary icon” Ann Petry (p. 7). In pursuit of this aim, Clark carefully avoids pulling from established conclusions about the writer and her criticism in order to breathe new life into Petry scholarship. Instead, as an astute and close reader of literary texts, he proposes re-situating the New England female writer in the annals of American and African American literary criticism through postmodernist approaches to the much overlooked and radical aesthetic agenda visible in her short stories and novels.

In its methodology, The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry calls to mind D. H. Lawrence’s famous directive to trust the tale and not the teller of the tale. Throughout his study Clark engages the reader often in intensive critiques of Petry’s short stories and novels with particular attention to “multiple points of view, her narrative discontinuities and breaks, her improvised variations on a singular scene, [and] her reliance on parallelism in lieu of causality” (p. 5). He adds depth to his critiques with substantive evidence pulled not only from Petry’s short stories and novels but also from her non-fiction articles, interviews, autobiography, and bio-bibliography.

Clark’s own early publications on the black male, especially in Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson (2004) and in his edited collection, Contemporary Black Men’s Fiction and Drama (2001), seem to have informed his approach to Petry and his attentiveness to her aesthetic agenda. Of particular value in this study is Clark’s focus on Petry’s multifaceted portraitures of black masculinity. His work opens questions about this author and the functions of gender within African American literature. What is the role of any writer of the black male experience? How does a major African American female writer such as Petry responsibly give voice to under-represented black males? What is the artistic responsibility of literary art, especially art authored by a woman, when written on behalf of males in general and black males in particular?

Found also in the text are useful genre approaches, theoretical approaches, and cross-references of critics echoed and anticipated by Petry—all of which might enhance the teaching or studying of this author. Clark’s consideration of Petry’s engagement with gothic forms and tropes, as well as his enlisting of psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, and queer theory, produces a supple and nuanced study that adds much to our understanding of this author, her place in the traditions of New England writing, [End Page 448] African American literature, and black feminism. She is more securely and clearly positioned within an intricate web of literary figures, including precursors as diverse as Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, and Nella Larsen.

Few publications, if any, are without shortcomings, and The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry is no exception. Too often Clark’s generous depth of vital references and cross-references found in his rich text are not reflected in the book’s index. Beyond this unfortunate oversight, however, Clark has given to teachers, students (undergraduate and graduate), scholars, and others who enjoy reading, discussing, and rediscovering Ann Petry a very welcomed inclusion.

Hazel Arnett Ervin
Philander Smith College
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