Artificial White Man

A bracing of the problem of authenticity in America - in racial politics, in the arts and in the media - and the first collection of original essays from one of America's most important and most galvanizing intellectual firebrands Another dance of the bull through the china shop of cliches, The Artificial White Man proves the rightness of Tom Wolfe's observation that Stanley Crouch is "the jazz virtuoso of the American essay". This time out, Crouch focuses his attention on issues surrounding the often misdirected American hunger for "authenticity". Though the essays range in topic from segregation in contemporary fiction to the racial politics of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, they are informed by a singular concern: our increasing difficulty in discerning the real from the counterfeit, the posture fro the pose, in contemporary life. Crouch moves across literature, music, sports, film, race, sex, class and religion with insights withering in one instance, celebratory and challenging in another. The cumulative effect of this rhetorical flair and heavyweight intellect is nothing less than a new set of perspectives from which to examine our collective experience. Such provocation is characteristic of Stanley Crouch, an independent who takes intellectual chances in the interest of our ability to live up to the potential at the centre of our social contract and our democratic arts. The Artificial White Man is as serious, witty and eye-opening as it gets.