American Histories. John Edgar Wideman

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      First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © John Edgar Wideman, 2018

      Versions of “Williamsburg Bridge” and “JB & FD” previously appeared in Harper’s Magazine

      First published in the USA by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2018

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

       British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 208 9

      eISBN 978 1 78689 207 2

      Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

      To C—

      Luv, J

      I do not know why this double-entry account of time intrigues me, and why I am compelled to call attention to it—to both its personal and objective forms, the time in which the narrator moves and that in which his narrative takes place. It is a peculiar intertwining of time’s courses, which are ordained moreover to be bound up with yet a third—that is, with the time the reader will one day take for a receptive reading of what is told here, so that he will be dealing with a threefold ordering of time: his own, that of the chronicler, and that of history.

      —Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

      CONTENTS

       A Prefatory Note

       JB & FD

       Dark Matter

       Shape the World Is In

       My Dead

       Music

       Bonds

       New Start

       Maps and Ledgers

       Writing Teacher

       Williamsburg Bridge

       Examination

       Wail

       Lines

       Nat Turner Confesses

       Empire

       Yellow Sea

       Bunny and Glide

       Snow

       Ghost Dancer

       Collage

       Expectations