As many of his critics have pointed out, the novel Damballah, of which ‘‘The Beginning of Homewood’’ is a part, marks the end of a fallow period for Wideman and signals the beginning of a new phase for him as a writer. Not surprisingly, then, some critics, expecting more of the same from the accomplished college professor and Rhodes scholar, were somewhat put off by his new thematic interests and stylistic innovations. On the other hand, some reviewers and critics saw the book as the culmination of Wideman’s career up to that point.

Writing in the New York Times, reviewer Mel Watkins says that Wideman’s latest work contains ‘‘the high regard for language and craft demonstrated in [his] previous books.’’ He goes on to praise Damballah for its formal daring and departure from the rules of the novel. The book, he says, ‘‘is something of a departure for him, and in freeing his voice from the confines of the novel form, he has written what is possibly his most impressive work.’’ Watkins concludes that ‘‘Wideman is one of America’s premier writers of fiction.’’ Finally, he sounds a note that other reviewers and critics have also echoed: ‘‘That they [Damballah and Hiding Place] were published originally in paperback perhaps suggests that he is also one of our most underrated writers.’’

Also writing in the New York Times, reviewer John Leonard praises both Damballah and Hiding Place, but decries their paperback status. Suggesting that the publishing world does not acknowledge the literary permanence of many black writers, Leonard wonders if publishers aren’t guilty of ‘‘a new ‘aesthetic’ of bad faith.’’ He concludes: ‘‘That his two new books will fall apart after a second reading is a scandal.’’ But in an interview in the New York Times with Edwin McDowell, Wideman explains that it was his decision to bring the books out in paperback. Citing the modest hardcover sales of his earlier work, Wideman explained: ‘‘I spend an enormous amount of time and energy writing and I want to write good books, but I also want people to read them.’’

Among the stories in Damballah, ‘‘The Beginning of Homewood’’ is often singled out by critics and reviewers as a particularly successful example of the kinds of stories Wideman was writing during this period. ‘‘The Beginning of Homewood,’’ because it links the stories set in Africa with those set in Pittsburgh that will follow in the next volume, seems to best embody the features that reviewer Randall Kenan identified as Wideman’s strength during the Homewood period: ‘‘It is as if he wrote his stories and then compressed them to a third of their original size. Eschewing quotation marks, Wideman has his speakers shift and shift and at times meld—as if into one mind, one voice.’’

Literary critics recognized in these collage-like techniques, despite the African-American setting and allusions to an oral literature, the hallmarks of literary modernism as practiced by the likes of James Joyce and William Faulkner. Despite the praise he received for the Homewood stories, Wideman continued to develop his experimental techniques and Afrocentric perspectives. This trend, as Mbalia points out, has caused some members of the literary establishment to dismiss his more recent work as not quite up to the standards of the Homewood stories. In her estimation, reviewers ‘‘emphasized the beauty of the Homewood stories,’’ and implied that they ‘‘were more lyrical and thus more powerful works of art than the more recent ones.’’