The Magic Keys

by Albert Murray

Book Overview

The Magic Keys winningly evokes the coming to maturity of one of the great characters in contemporary American literature: Scooter, the central protagonist of Albert Murray' s highly acclaimed autobiographical novels Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots.

Growing up brilliant and curious in Alabama, Scooter was told he was destined for greatness. Now newly married and a graduate...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400095530
• ISBN13: 9781400095537
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A master literary cat...

Born in Nokomis, Alabama in 1916, Albert Murray is what we used to call a man of letters. With interests in music, art and literature, Murray has generated a body of work over the last fifty years that is profoundly American and deeply humanistic. It is American, in the sense that Murray approaches a deep Faulknerian sense of place but with prose that is as musical as a bebop horn solo. This new novel's humanism glows in the can-do sense of public community that, today, seems a fading memory. Educated at the Tuskegee Institute, Murray had a front row seat on 20th century America. His new novel, The Magic Keys, is the work of a master literary cat, confident, smooth and challenging. Murray tells a picaresque coming of age tale of Scooter, a young bull-fiddle (bass) playing, college-educated "schoolboy." Being the fourth novel in the long tale of the young jazzman and his growing up around Gasoline Point, Alabama at some time in a vaguely imprecise first third of the twentieth century, Scooter has come of age. He quits his high class, barnstorming big band gig to attend New York University, studying for a master's degree and taking full advantage of everything the big city can offer to a sharp, curious young mind. Murray is interested in the literary, the knowledge and wisdom that are earned, not given to those who seek it---which is what this book is about. Scooter was an all-star knowledge-sponge of a student, and the system of proud, dignified yet segregated Alabama schools and educators that produced him, against all odds, seem depressingly far away and long gone. The sense of place in the novel is as strong as dank Mobile Bay anti-mosquito smoke. New York City is the blaring star of the show, like the summer street noise of the music stores of New York's 49th Street. The flipside of Murray's tune is the warm glow of porchy summer evenings in Scooter's Gasoline Point, with the sound of Luzana Cholly's battered 12-string guitar jangling up the dirt road. Murray's street credibility makes the reader sit up straight and soak up the happy blues of Scooter's improvised hipster New York tale. Murray has said that he wasn't too interested in some "abstract BS" of civil rights and politics. And there is no political or social debate in this novel. One could argue with that. But Murray has paid his dues. He lives in a "literary context", which is nice work if you can get it. Ralph Ellison, author of the canonical Invisible Man, an old friend of Murray's, makes an appearance as the writer and former Scooter schoolmate Taft Edison. Not that Murray raises the briar patch subject of civil rights anyway. This is a tale about seeking art, music and knowledge in what Murray calls the "metaphorical Philamayork." He's interested in hitting the right American note in some solid gold or sterling silver key.

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