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by Albert Murray

Book Overview

First published in 1975, this is a coming of age novel. Scooter, growing up in Alabama in the 1920's, learns everything he needs to know from the classroom, the barbershop, and a train-hopping musician who brings a musical touch to the tale.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555530516
• ISBN13: 9781555530518
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Black Ethos

This intriguing novel provides a wonderful illustration of the blues idiom in this coming of age story. Memorable character such as Luzana Cholly and Stagolee brought a vivid illustration of the south through the eyes of an African American child. Through the use of folklore, which brought about the art of self discovery, you can truly appreciate the use of folklore in African American culture.

Hindsight is 20/20

I discovered this book in a college course this year (2002). This review is aimed specifically for those who have always cast a skeptical eye at the literary offerings of the last half of the twentieth century. If, like me, you have always scoffed and balked at the notion that there were numerous undiscovered great pieces of American literature, buy this book.When I think of this century's great writers I think mainly of Eliot, Kafka, Naipal, Wright, Hemingway, Wolfe, Proust, and Orwell. There are others, but I make this list to illustrate that I am a rather conservative reader, a "Canon Man". All of this to say one thing:I truly believe that this book will only be fully revealed for what it is in a decade or two...and when that day comes, when scholars are tripping over each other in the rush to sift through what is left to us of Murray's life, thoughts and writings, they will all be wondering what kept the current generation of scholars from seizing upon this legend while he still walked the earth.I've always wondered when someone was going to write an "epic" American poem. "Train Whistle Guitar" is the closest thing to that. This book will introduce you to the freshest and wisest American voice I have read in the last three years. After finishing this book for my course work I picked it up again the following weekend to return to the beginning once more. The language is so skillfully used Murray makes genius look easy. Like watching a beautifully captured film for the first time, or walking up to a panoramic pastoral, I needed to return again to look for all I missed the first time...That first time while I had been challeneged enough just seeing past the sheer beauty of what lay before me. Murray's book is more than merely linguistic and structural acrobatics. Murray establishes both an exlusive "black" voice speaking directly backwards to Richard Wright and also the Harlem Renaissance while at the same time writing to include the entirety of the American experience. The end result is a book so remarkable in its complexity and so complex in its execution that for it to be so smooth and fluid is an achievement worthy of note in and of itself. "Train Whistle Guitar" exceeds this and goes beyond the sublime.I have yet to read the other two books that follow in this trilogy, "The Spyglass Tree" and "Seven League Boots", but I believe I will give "Train Whistle Guitar" a third reading because it is just that good.At the risk of repeating similar sentiments from other reviews, Murray's book goes beyond the boundaries of both verse and prose and achieves the impossible...a book as melodic, complex and resonant as the Blues and Jazz compositions that inspire it.

The also and the also of a buried treasure

I'm not sure why Murray had not recieved the attention he deserves in the canon of American authors. His work is among the finest I have ever read. This book, his first, is one of my personal favorites and deserves recognition.The most striking aspect of this book is Murray's style, which is absoloutely a joy to read. The major accomplishment that Murray makes in Train Whistle Guitar is the incorporation of the improvisational rhythms of Jazz and blues into speech. In other words, Murray's narrator and characters talk in riffs, call-and-response patters, in trading-twelve exchanges. It's awkward to talk about this but pick up this book and you will get an idea of what I am driving at. His prose is rhythmic forceful and eloquent, swift and swift and not too swift. This work was one of the first to incorporate the aesthetics of Jazz into prose and novel; the result is a profound success. This stylistic power is mated to the story of a boy growing up in blues-filled Gasoline Point alabama. The way jazz music is integrated into both plot and style is impressive; and make no mistake, Murray is quite serious about the role that music plays in his character's upraising and confrontations with life. Brilliant.