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A review by mattnixon
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
2.0
As Rome is the Eternal City, Black Deutschland, an exploration of race, identity and expectations in mid-80’s West Berlin, is the Eternal Novel. Weighing in at fewer than 300 pages, Darryl Pinkney’s story of a gay, African American ex-pat in West Berlin looking to live the “Isherwood promises” of the city, was one of the more laborious and disjointed reads I’ve ever experienced. I’d get lost—not in a good way—in every third sentence. Pronouns were used without antecedents. Sentences were sometimes jammed together in positively Moroccan bazaar fashion: crowded, clamorous, and sequenced in an ancient or alien logic. I did more re-reading—not in a good way—than any book I can recall.
And yet…yet. Pinkney chocks Black Deutschland with so many hilarious, heartbreaking, trenchant and sharp-eyed observations about race in America and abroad, that it’s impossible to not admire and enjoy aspects of the novel. The scenes of Jed, Deutschland’s protagonist, with his upper middle class family in Chicago flow far more coherently than the portions abroad and better hit (what I believe to be) the mark for his wryly-observed, searching, self-critical and somewhat bitchy voice. I get what Pinkney is going for (it seems) with the more disjointed, illogical and distanced narrative in the West Berlin scenes (where Jed is uncomfortable and somewhat at sea). This understanding of the device doesn’t make the reading experience any less exhausting.
I wouldn’t not recommend Black Deutschland; there’s so much here that’s well done. There’s also so much that’s, to me, overdone. In this case, I’ll cop to the possibility of user error without reservation.
For me, I’ll most fondly look back on the ending of Black Deutschland for it being the end of my reading Black Deutschland.
And yet…yet. Pinkney chocks Black Deutschland with so many hilarious, heartbreaking, trenchant and sharp-eyed observations about race in America and abroad, that it’s impossible to not admire and enjoy aspects of the novel. The scenes of Jed, Deutschland’s protagonist, with his upper middle class family in Chicago flow far more coherently than the portions abroad and better hit (what I believe to be) the mark for his wryly-observed, searching, self-critical and somewhat bitchy voice. I get what Pinkney is going for (it seems) with the more disjointed, illogical and distanced narrative in the West Berlin scenes (where Jed is uncomfortable and somewhat at sea). This understanding of the device doesn’t make the reading experience any less exhausting.
I wouldn’t not recommend Black Deutschland; there’s so much here that’s well done. There’s also so much that’s, to me, overdone. In this case, I’ll cop to the possibility of user error without reservation.
For me, I’ll most fondly look back on the ending of Black Deutschland for it being the end of my reading Black Deutschland.