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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I can't recall exactly where the thread began that lead me to The Stone Face, but somewhere along the way I landed on the wiki for Michael Haneke's film, Caché, which lead me to the page about the massacre of peacefully protesting Algerians in Paris in 1961 (a glaring historical blind spot for me), and then to William Gardner Smith (who was similarly unknown to me.) Seeing him in the company of Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin made me question why I'd never heard of him before, and I immediately inter-library loaned The Stone Face.
After finishing The Stone Face I'm surprised that his work hasn't been more widely read. It's a unique glimpse into the life of Simeon, of black, expat living in Paris and grappling with the double consciousness imposed upon him by his upbringing in the fundamentally flawed, racist, United States. The rest of his expat community and the French alike assure him that he doesn't need to fear letting his guard down in Paris as the French are not racist, but he slowly comes to realize that discrimination thrives in some form or another in any country.
The story occasionally gets too ragged for me, but Smith's passion and intent are always there. Even when I questioned why things were moving so quickly, I was still fully invested in Simeon and his struggles.
4/5
After finishing The Stone Face I'm surprised that his work hasn't been more widely read. It's a unique glimpse into the life of Simeon, of black, expat living in Paris and grappling with the double consciousness imposed upon him by his upbringing in the fundamentally flawed, racist, United States. The rest of his expat community and the French alike assure him that he doesn't need to fear letting his guard down in Paris as the French are not racist, but he slowly comes to realize that discrimination thrives in some form or another in any country.
The story occasionally gets too ragged for me, but Smith's passion and intent are always there. Even when I questioned why things were moving so quickly, I was still fully invested in Simeon and his struggles.
4/5
This forthright, morally engaging 1963 novel by a neglected Black expat author applies a distinctly international perspective to questions of race and class. Fleeing the viscerally recounted racist brutalities of his native Philadelphia, Simeon Brown feels a giddy sense of liberation upon arriving in Paris. Sensitized to the cold stone face of the white gaze, he swiftly becomes disillusioned when he observes that, far from discovering some post-racial paradise, he has merely traded up into a more elevated caste, and that in mid-century France, Algerians occupy the lowest rung. Worse, Simeon is complicit in their oppression, as are his fellow Black American exiles and his Jewish lover Maria, a survivor of the Nazi death camps. This dissonance sets him on a dire course that will culminate in the massacre of Algerian protesters by Parisian police in October of 1961, of which this novel offers a rare depiction. Far more than his contemporaries Richard Wright, Chester Himes, and James Baldwin, Smith (1927–74) parlayed his experiences in Paris into universal explorations of race, caste, and colonialism, earning him a place alongside them on library shelves.
A remarkably relevant book to this age of “I’ve got mine” that prioritizes comfort over political commitment. Some heavy-handed metaphors aside, there’s a clear political vision of anti-imperialist solidarity— one we desperately need now.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A very disappointing read. Historically and politically interesting to read perhaps, and the descriptions of the torture and clubbing to death Algerians by French military and police are vividly gruesome. But the books reissue in the NYRB Classics series led me to expect some literary value too, and unfortunately the literary value of this ‘novel’ is next to nil. In his introduction, Adam Shatz calls it ‘an anti-racist novel about identity, but also a subtle and humane critique of a politics that is based narrowly on identity’, and that is about right except for the ‘subtle’. There's nothing subtle and in that sense there is also very little that is interesting about this book. The characters are mere ciphers, the prose is flat and unalluring, there’s one chapter with a sudden unexplained and unexplainable shift of perspective (from the protagonist to his lover) that features some cringeworthy dialogue and exposition of the love plot... It's all a little embarrassing, really. The political message is clear and praiseworthy, but the text never rises above the level of mediocre magazine writing. For my money, this is not literature, it's pamphleteering, and not very effective pamphleteering at that.
If you can find this book, it is a must read. I don’t like to use speed as a marker for how good a book is or even how enjoyable it is to read, but with The Stone Face, I had a hard time putting it down and for good reason. The writing is direct and compelling and the story itself is absorbing. Not-so-loosely based on the author’s own move to Paris in search of a life away from the violence and racism in America, only to find himself on the other side of the blow, the novel reaches into every nuance of racism, prejudice, antisemitism all while remaining beautiful and kind. The main character Simeon faces the troubling idea that this Stone Face, the heartless embodiment of white supremacy, hierarchy, power, you name it, exists everywhere and in multiple forms. Simeon finds solace and community with other black American ex-pats, he falls in love with a survivor of a Polish concentration camp, and befriends Algerian immigrants fighting to get out from under France’s rule.
The novel will draw you in, make you fall in love with the characters, break your heart, piece it together and start a fire inside it.
The novel will draw you in, make you fall in love with the characters, break your heart, piece it together and start a fire inside it.