Banjo

One of the best of Claude's early novels

Great

I named this tranquility because I ordered "Banjo" by McKay I got it in a few days and it was in perfect condition. Therefore I didnt have to worry a second thankyou [email protected]

Formed in 1992, the X Press intends "to become not only Europe's biggest, but the world's number one black book publisher." Judging by their 2000 edition of McKay's Banjo: A Story Without a Plot (1929), we will have much to fear if they succeed.The X Press edition is rife with errors and silent emendations, beginning with omission of the book's crucial subtitle: "A Story Without a Plot." This edition also omits McKay's dedication ("For Ruthope"), along with the table of contents and the chapter titles. Worse still, the publishers frequently tamper with McKay's prose, changing punctuation, omitting clauses, and converting McKay's carefully constructed dialect passages into Standard English. Consider the book's second paragraph:X Press: "It sure is," he noted mentally; "the most wonderful bank in the ocean I ever did see."Original: "It sure is some moh mahvelous job," he noted mentally; "most wonderful bank in the ocean I evah did see."X Press omits an entire phrase ("some moh mahvelous job"), blurring two separate thoughts into one and making McKay's semicolon seem ungrammatical. Banjo's vernacular "evah" becomes "ever," far from a minor point since the characters in Banjo frequently reflect on the nature of language and slang. The X Press edition does not eliminate all uses of dialect, but it does efface many. For example, there are eighteen silent emendations of dialect on page 252.For those readers who wish to appreciate Banjo as McKay intended it, I highly recommend the  Banjo (Harvest Book)  Harcourt Brace edition (1957/1970), which replicates of the original Harper & Brothers 1929 edition down to the pagination. Far from being a definitive modern re-issue, the X Press edition misrepresents McKay's authorial vision, preventing readers from appreciating one of the great novels of the 20th century.

This is easily one of the worst books I've ever been forced to read.It's like trying to read "The Twelfth Night" upside down... in Braille.How something like this managed to survive into this century is beyond me.