The Hungered One (Akashiclassics: Renegade Reprint) - Softcover

Bullins, Ed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933354666 ISBN 13: 9781933354668

Verlag: AKASHIC BOOKS, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

“A richness of language and observation pervades this collection of short stories by a black writer about real black people.”—The New York Times Book Review

These early writings from award-winning playwright Ed Bullins explore loneliness and despair in beautifully crafted stories.

Ed Bullins has written numerous plays and fiction, including In the Wine Time, Goin’ a Buffalo, Clara’s Ole Man, and The Taking of Miss Janie, which received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of the 1974–1975 season. His book of short fiction, The Hungered One: Early Writings, was originally published in 1971.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ed Bullins has written numerous plays and fiction, including In the Wine Time, Goin? a Buffalo, Clara?s Ole Man, and The Taking of Miss Janie, which received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of the 1974-75 season. His book of short fiction, The Hungered One: Early Writings, was published in 1971.

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The Hungered One

Short Stories

By Ed Bullins

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2009 Ed Bullins
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-933354-66-8

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Preface by Amiri Baraka, 
Introduction 2009 by Ed Bullins, 
Part One: The Absurd One, 
The Absurd One, 
Moonwriter, 
The Enemy, 
The Excursion, 
An Ancient One, 
The Reason of Why, 
The Real Me, 
The Drive, 
He Couldn't Say Sex, 
THE RALLY or Dialect Determinism, 
The Messenger, 
Part Two: The Hungered One, 
The Hungered One, 
The Saviour, 
In the Wine Time, 
The Helper, 
In New England Winter, 
The Reluctant Voyage, 
Travel from Home, 
Mister Newcomer, 
Support Your Local Police, 
DANDY, or Astride the Funky Finger of Lust, 

CHAPTER 1

PART ONE

THE ABSURD ONE

To Joe Wooly ... from Mississippi ... to Hate (Haight) Ashbury & death ... filling his belly with life

The Absurd One

I have no understanding of how that absurd being whose lair is centered behind our eyes takes us over, stealing from his cave in our brains to take us over for a sliced second; but, in dream, when dog weary, in the d.t.'s or cold turkey we sometimes glimpse him, or better, his claw flexing, hinting of the Absurd One's eternal presence, his ironic whim for destruction or creation.

Some of us know him and are in an intimate compromise to his capture in that unsuspected interval, for we know he may call once a year in the dawn as we practice our art — that he viciously splashes a shadow of his perfection onto the canvas, upon the page or within the wood, stone or clay, and as soon, swipes back and withdraws and awaits his whim another year or more, and we are left madmen who scream futilely within, screams which reverberate in the Absurd One's hole, screams he gloats upon, screams he draws sustenance, for they are his solemn reverences, given by the devout and reverent believers. We scream inside for that impossible perfection he teased of.

Or the Absurd One may come in the bed and bite with our teeth through our love's nipple or into our manhood and he intimidates us both to lie of it as our love, or the Absurd One may prance with the punch of the needle, popped as he pursues the heart, until he is the heart, pumping, pounding to every portion, and you are he, awesome in absurdity. Or with the lung- scorched joint effect the Absurd One may lift out your mind from its case and insert an endless running bump-and-grind piano roll of creation until he becomes absurdly bored and sprinkles a pinch of depression into his bed, your head, before slamming back the brain, snapping the musical paper toilet roll of the universe, or the Absurd One may one day like the other days but for that day, slide down the out-of-uniform Royal Crowned and processed cowlick of the seventeen-year green sailor, into the fortyyear breathing wide nostrils belonging to the scrawny whore who "moved like she had a propeller in her tail"; the same woman who shed a tear from dehydrated glands forgotten since twelve, the same woman absurdly taken in the crotch so as to have a twitch disbelieved since fifteen, the same who sliced forty-year veins after the boy was gone with his money still to be used for another skinny one, the same who blubbered the entire distance to the psycho ward that she had somehow felt absurdly impure when Joey, or was it Johnnie, or Moe, when it was unknowingly Sam, was with her with the exact mixed amounts of Mississippi sweat, lye, lard and sweet water that someone once had who had had her at ten in some absurd hayloft ... of all places. But there was reality in his bumpkin bounding and pounding.

It then must have been the Absurd One who was there that one sliced second of night or day that you or me or we stood with glass in hand and with unshakable conviction in the arrogance of our convictions that the answers possessed were our own answers. It was he then who pulled the blinds behind our eyes, reversing them, slipping the slats out and back again all at once, as your eyes changed from brown to blue, from grey to white or charred good black in the heat of possibility, when Absurd stood behind you that second that you knew you were a girl or a boy though your Brooks Brothers and Chanel spoke with proper authority otherwise, but the Absurd One whispered in that absurd second that men and women and girls and lads are all one and the same as you and all look boss, to you, for you wanted a man or a woman or a girl or a boy or yourself, which was the best possibility, and you knew entirely, backed up by Absurd, that you could then in that sliced second and at once fuck the world, Sealy Posturepedic or not, for it waited; it waited with mouth wide.

Moonwriter

On rainy Saturday ... and there I was at one of them thar scary lit-ar-airy beer busts with real writers and he-man things ... with sandals and beards and handlebar moostashes and tweeds and pipes ... and agents and contracts and credits and the moon and mountains and in Mexico were in the room ... with beer belches.

We put down all mutually known writers not there ... unless, of course, they came later.

And there I was saying ... "Yeah ... and after bein' a bouncer in Naples and a bodyguard in Sicily I got to ..."

"Yeah ... you and the Mafia in Palermo ..." someone said.

"... and I got to Spain," I continued, "and ran into a hassle with the lightweight champ of that part of the world ..."

But then I sighed fuck-it inside and didn't tell them that I've had a lot of odd jobs, my father ain't Italian, and all the champ and I did was get to like each other finally; he drank me under the table.

People dream of goin' to the moon ... I'd just like to get back down into livin' ...

Should I have dropped my pants and flashed bullet blister, round and pus pushing, sometimes sore on snowy days.

Should I have shined stiletto slash seam of stitches skimming jugular vein, or pursed pulled together punctures in back. Should I have flexed my scars and screamed:

"But ... mah pain is in mah brain ... yawhl!"

Should I have said: "Check with J. Edgar ... sweetie!"

But I shouldn't be blowin' 'bout the past; the past is with me each night hobbling on cloven hooves holding hands with dead dream masks that even drugs can't dim. They dance to goat songs sung until dawn in spirals about my head.

I lived by the gun ... and know those who live will die ...

I live a lie ... and know those who live die ...

I have notches on my soul ... and know those who have ... have ... have need of death ... for sleep has dreams and handholding songs.

I've met Death on ageless corners and died in streets without corners in Brooklyn, in Philly, in Hollywood, in Boston, in Nice, in Marseilles ... on corners without streets.

I've woken up dead in drunk-tanks, on hospital slabs ... never ever in bed.

I've notches on my soul ...

the gun ...

Notches ...

the knife ...

Notches ...

You want to go to the moon, writer?

Go via Harlem, Dante.

Muses of mountains, poet, with sprinkles of waiting solitary secrets?

Sip a random sample of meatless everyday soup in solitary stir with visions of tits, arse and better ... scorching steel cells.

Romance in Mexico, hombre ... with advaanture ...

Tell your analyst elephant jokes, men, the punch line being: "Elephants don't fuck with analysts!"

The gun, the knife, the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AKASHIC BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1933354666
• ISBN 13: 9781933354668
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar