Prophets of Recognition: Ideology and the Individual in Novels by Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, and Eudora Welty. - Review - book review

The consecutive chapters on Ellison and Morrison make a congenial sequence even if the reader might question the interpretations. The subsequent chapters on Bellow's Seize the Day and Welty's The Optimist's Daughter, however, do not connect. The differences between these two short novels-region, culture, gender-are so wide that only the most general terms can span them. And in stretching her terms Eichelberger all but confesses their weaknesses.

In the end, Prophets of Recognition, because of its sermonic tone, becomes preaching to the choir. It is an odd book to have been published in 1999 -- like an old postcard found behind the woodwork during remodeling. Resolutely resisting a "cultural studies" practice by avoiding context, basing each chapter on an exhaustive and often repetitive close reading of a single text, Eichelberger has produced a book that would no doubt have been welcomed more warmly in 1975 (which is the outer reach of the texts she reads) than it will be in the "new millennium."

COPYRIGHT 2000 African American Review
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group