Magic Street

I feel so familiar with Orson Scott Card because of the impact he's had on my life that when he writes new books nowadays, I kind of let them go into my "need to read" file without actually going and getting them. I mean, I read his column every week, and I participate in a forum on one of the websites he sponsors, plus I've read most of his novels repeatedly. You know, while we're on the subject, part of me is exceedingly glad he's not much luck turning his stories into movies, because, movies from books invariably suck. And I've enjoyed them too much to see them suck. I think of Wyrms and Treason in particular, which were great as books, but would stink like a cornish game hen that'd been left in your freezer when the power was off for three weeks if they weren't made as films with the utmost of care.

 

Anyway, I finally got around to reading Magic Street, which was way different than I had expected. It's a fantasy, set in modern Los Angeles, in an upper-middle-class African-American neighborhood, which begins as a normal fantasy and turns into a classical-related fantasy, if you know what I mean. Which you probably don't, if you haven't read it and no one has spoiled it for you. Anyway.

 

Uncle Orson wrote it because he was talking to one of his friends who lamented the lack of strong black men as main protagonists in film, TV, and books. And Mack Street is certainly that (although my reading of it is that Ceese was the real hero of the book, also a strong black male). But I wonder if a book is really the best way to do that. I mean, the characters have distinctive manners of talking (distinctively African-American ways) and I was imagining a black man (in that vague, hazy, oblique, other-synonym-for-vague way that you imagine what folks look like when you're reading a book), but I don't know that it's a "positive black role model" type thing when "black" is the color of skin that you can't even see and are just imagining. For instance, if they made a movie of the Name of the Wind, and Kvothe was black, that wouldn't surprise me any more or less than if he was white or looked Indian or Latin or Russion or whatever.  I just don't think books, particularly fantasy and science fiction, work that way.

 

Still, it contained lots of social commentary, of the kind that Uncle Orson is known for, well-written, timely commentary. I wouldn't put it at the top of my list of favorites of OSC, but I would recommend it, particularly if you've liked any of his other books.