Banjo (Magill’s Choice: American Ethnic Writers)
At a glance:
- Author: Claude McKay
- First Published: 1929
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The early 1920’s
- Setting: Marseilles
- Principal Characters: Lincoln Agrippa Daily (Banjo), Ray, Latnah, Bugsy, Taloufa, Goosey, Buchanan Malt Avis (Malty), Ginger, Dengel
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: Traveling or travelers, Blacks, France or French people, Music or musicians, 1920’s, Adventure, Beaches or seashores
- Locales: Marseilles, France
The Novel
Banjo is subtitled “A Story Without a Plot,” but it is not a novel in the manner of Virginia Woolf—although it is conversational and at times even dialectical. Rather, it is an episodic narrative involving a small group of relatively permanent residents of the Vieux Port section of Marseilles and a larger cast of incidental characters who are encountered briefly in the varied but fundamentally routine activities of unemployed black seamen trying to maintain a sense of camaraderie and well-being. It is, therefore, basically a picaresque fiction that offers...
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See Also:
Claude McKay (Cyclopedia of World Authors)Claude McKay (Poetry)Claude McKay (Identities and Issues)
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