Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes
One night in 1942, Langston Hughes overheard a New Jersey war plant worker tell his girlfriend that he made cranks, though he didn't know "what them cranks crank." From this encounter came Hughes's one great fictional character, Harlemite Jesse B. Semple, a sidewalk sage who was introduced in a weekly column for the Chicago Defender and went on to star in six books and a play. Harper, a professor at Spellman College, has written the definitive account of the birth and development of a wise commoner who compares favorably with Sholem Aleichem's Tevye and Leo Rosten's Hyman Kaplan, as well as the creations of Garrison Keillor and Will Rogers. She also fully describes Hughes the working journalist as he planned publishing strategies, dodged political potholes, and haggled with editors and agents. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.?David Kirby, Florida State Univ., TallahasseeCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.