Dancing in the Dark

This novel re-imagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams, the first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. W.C. Fields called him the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.

About the Author :
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies. Brought up in England, he has written for television, radio, theater, and film. He is the author of three books of nonfiction and seven previous novels. His last novel, "A Distant Shore, "won the 2004 Commonwealth Prize. His awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Phillips lives in New York City. Caryl Phillips's "The Final Passage, A State of Independence, The European Tribe, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, The Nature of Blood, The Atlantic Sound, A New World Order, " and "A Distant Shore" are available in Vintage paperback.

Review :
""Dancing in the Dark," Caryl Phillips's haunting novel about the career of Bert Williams, challenges the view that Williams's black audience appreciated that he was trying to transcend the racial stereotypes of the day . . . [Phillips] recreates the defiant mood at the Marshall Hotel when it was the unofficial headquarters for the young stars of the new black theater . . . "Dancing in the Dark" is almost reluctant to put a label to the hurt, or to make a display of Williams's vulnerability. Phillips places the emphasis on Bert Williams's dignity in his 'performative bondage' . . . His and Walker's frustration as pioneers of black theater is a constant theme in the novel, but the pride and intelligence with which they coped are what Phillips pays homage to . . . In Phillips's novel, Bert Williams, proud to be inducted into a Masonic lodge in Edinburgh, is far from being a folk figure. Phillips's characterization of Williams as a man incapable of revealing himself fully to anyone else somehow fits with the atmosphere of his five other novels, all of which concern specific episodes in transatlantic black history. [But] Caryl Phillips's life is not on display in his work, only his intelligence and his careful, cold prose . . . Maybe "Dancing in the Dark," much like "Darktown Strutters," shows that as academic theorists become ever more triumphalist concerning the elevation of vernacular culture, the black novelist as alternative historian is free to return to the nobility of defeat as a grand theme." -Darryl Pinckney, "The New York Review of Books" "Phillips, whose last novel, "A Distant Shore," won the 2003 Commonwealth Prize for Literature, has an uncanny gift for writing himself into the lives and homelands of his fictional subjects . . . With his eighth novel, Phillips once again raises the bar for himself. "Dancing in the Dark "is nothing less than his best work--cerebral, tender, masterful in its scope and vision." "-The Miami Herald" "Phillip