TALE OF NEGRO LAD
Meyer, Ernest L.
Tale Of Negro Lad THE DARKER BROTHER, by Bucklin Moon. Doubleday Doran. $2.50. Reviewed by Ernest L. Meyer HERE IS AN eminently readable and in parts an enthralling first novel by a member of...
...Especially the portrait of Verne, a loose lady, who is a Jezebel not because she is black or white but because she just IS...
...Aside from this prejudicial slant, the book is excellent for its dialogues, its often exciting incidents and'its portraits...
...People somehow get that way even in a society of one skin-color...
...The story recounts the ups and mostly downs of a Negro lad, Ben Johnson, who on his father's death comes up from the South to join an uncle in New York City's Harlem...
...Its one defect is its too one-sided Uncle Tom Cabinish slant...
...Thus Ben (save for one lapse caused by hunger and despair) is a good black boy pummeled and shunned by bad white boys and bosses...
...his sweetheart is a good black girl (save for one lapse caused by hunger and despair) and is rooked and robbed by bad white employers, rooming house owners, and a member of the vice squad, and Ben's uncle is a good black Harlem racketeer who is murdered by a bad white racketeer...
...It's all a little too pat...
...The one out-and-out Negro villain, Slick, got that way after coming on the dead body of a lynching victim...
...The theme is valid, and Moon contrives to make it vibrant...
...Reviewed by Ernest L. Meyer HERE IS AN eminently readable and in parts an enthralling first novel by a member of the editorial department of the book's own publishing firm— submitted under an alias, and accepted...
...Main motif is the hapless battering of Ben and his kinfolk against the rising Jim Crowism of the North...
...Speaking loosely in moral terms, Moon's blacks are too white and his whites too black...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 43
