The Rediscovery of Such Sweet Thunder
By Chip Fleischer
Publisher, Steerforth Press
In April, Steerforth Press will publish the novel Such Sweet Thunder. Written in 1963 by an author who died in 1983, it came perilously close to never being published, and to disappearing without a trace. Here's how this unique publishing project came about:
Two years ago, a writer friend of mine happened upon a used copy of an odd memoir called The Bern Book: A Record of the Voyage of the Mind, which was in effect about being the only black guy in Europe's most provincial capital during the 1950s. Impressed and moved by the sensibility at work, my friend mentioned the book to me because, like its author Vincent O. Carter, I am from Kansas City. I quickly found a copy of my own online.
I learned from the front matter that, though Carter completed The Bern Book in 1957, it did not get published until 1973. The book's preface is a 1970 essay by the expatriate American literary biographer and former Publishers Weekly international correspondent Herbert Lottman. In his essay, called "The Invisible Writer," Lottman heaped praise upon an unpublished autobiographical novel Carter completed in the 1960s.
Was Carter still alive? I wondered. He'd only have been 77. Did that book ever get published? And, if not...might the manuscript still exist?
I faxed Lottman in Paris, and he gave me the sad news that Carter had long since died. He told me Carter never married and had no children, but suggested perhaps his Swiss girlfriend had sent his papers to whatever relatives remained in Kansas City. Herb promised to ask around, and soon the search for Carter's lost works took on a word-of-mouth life of its own.
Four months later, a retired professor at Penn State got from a Swiss friend in Greece the contact information for Carter's girlfriend, who was still living in Bern. Her name is Liselotte Haas, and, a week after I contacted her by phone, I received an 805-page, yellowed typescript that hadn't been read by a fresh pair of eyes in more than 30 years.
Set in Kansas City, Missouri, during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and '30s, Such Sweet Thunder is a majestic evocation of childhood and parental love told through the eyes of a boy, Amerigo Jones. In addition to being a Kansas Citian, I am also the father of two young boys, and Carter's ability to recreate the way in which a child experiences the world places his book in rare company. In this, and some other interesting ways, I think it's fair to liken Such Sweet Thunder to a sort of African-American Call It Sleep.
I could make other lofty comparisons, to the work of Joyce or the music of Duke Ellington -- comparisons that I believe would hold up, but with which others might take exception. Such Sweet Thunder is a book that makes demands upon its readers, and yes, I do wish Vincent were alive for one final round of polishing and revision. But Steerforth has left the text alone because we can't imagine any changes that could be made without Carter's involvement that could be considered an improvement.
I have read Such Sweet Thunder through three times, and have no doubt that Carter consciously selected (or at least left in) every word to serve a purpose. I also believe the book's strengths so overwhelm its flaws as to render them relatively insignificant. And there is one characterization with which I believe everyone who reads Such Sweet Thunder will agree -- and that is to say it is an unrivaled firsthand account of African-American life in pre-World War II America.
I am heartened by the fact that all of the advance reviews have been very positive, and that the book's publication appears on track to be the "event" I believe it deserves to be. For a feature story that went out over the Associated Press national wire this week, a reporter spoke to Liselotte Haas, who was just in the United States for a long visit.
"I found in this time in America, people are so insecure, so full of fears. I think a book that speaks so much about love and dignity under very difficult circumstances is needed now," Liselotte is quoted as saying. "I'm very happy for Vincent. That's what he wanted, to touch people's hearts with all this love."
Photos of Vincent O. Carter courtesy of Steerforth Press.