Ambitious, Interesting, Disorganized

In an interview, Edward P. Jones disclosed that The Known World took form around two significant moments. Firstly, when he learned that Black people had once owned slaves, and secondly, when he read a thin paperback in high school about a Jewish man who decided to join the Nazi party and acted contrary to expectations.

The Known World is an ambitious novel that endeavors to描绘 the world of 1855 after Henry Townsend's recent death. His passing casts a cloud of uncertainty, leaving behind his widow, Caldonia, and the undetermined fate of the slaves he bought to work his land.
Although the plot is interesting, the book is disorganized. It encompasses numerous characters and rapidly shifts time periods. I often found myself having to stop and reread as the storytelling was so cumbersome. For instance, the text would suddenly state something like "and this person lived to be 93 years old and had 235 grandchildren."
In The Known World, there are several references to Adam and Eve, and even to Milton's Paradise Lost. My favorite author, Philip Pullman, loves to discuss this topic and how in his works, he wanted his characters to find their way back to The Garden by taking the long way around. So, the quote on page 329, “There was a long way around but he chose not to take it,” stood out.
There is a character named Anderson Frazier in The Known World who creates and distributes pamphlets and interviews Fern Elston. In my view, this pamphlet could have provided a framework to systematically organize the characters, rather than resulting in a jumbled and confusing mess of characters and timelines.
The Known World has some unforgettable moments, but the disorganization of the narrative detracts from the enjoyment of the reading experience.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $13.87 on Amazon
Audiobook – 1 Audible Credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)

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In this book, I made a discovery that there were once black slaveholders in the US. I had always thought that only white people could own slaves during the era when owning slaves was like owning property, during that pre-Abolition time, those sad and dark days in American history.

Black Edward P. Jones (born 1951) penned this historical epic novel, The Known World, based on the lesser-known fact that there were some black slaveholders (black people owning black slaves) in the state of Virginia during the time when slavery was legal in the US. Wikipedia states:

\\n  \\"Slavery in the United States was a form of unfree labor which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.[1] The first English colony in North America, Virginia, first imported Africans in 1619, a practice earlier established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s.[2] Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there were a small number of white slaves as well.[3]\\"\\n

The winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Award for Fiction, The Known World is one of the most memorable reads of my year. It's not an easy book to get through. This 388-page novel left me with a heavy chest each time I closed it. Every page is filled with gloom and sadness. The novel is masterfully told with lyrical prose that creates a vivid and expansive canvas of imagery in one's mind while reading. In that big canvas are numerous memorable and three-dimensional characters, most of them black slaves. No character is simply all bad or all good. The detailed description of the sceneries of a fictional county called Manchester and the true-to-life depictions of the characters are exceptionally striking, making me slow down my reading to savor the story and hold on tightly to each character, cheering them on. Reading the last page left me with a heavy heart. I didn't want to let go of that image of Manchester and say goodbye Please don't go yet to the characters who had become a part of my literary world. The world that resides in the recesses of my brain, the world known only to me, populated by people I met only in my readings.

In terms of writing, Jones extensively employs the technique called prolepsis, which I first came across while reading Muriel Sparks' The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). Jones explained this in an interview (appendix of the book), saying that he is like the God of those characters, so he knows what happened in the life of each character from the moment they were born until the time of their death. The most moving example of this usage was with the character of the child Tessie. One fine day in September 1855, their mistress Caldonia saw the 5-year-old Tessie playing with a wooden toy horse. Caldonia said to the child: That is very nice, Tessie, to which Tessie responded, My papa did this for me. In January 2002, on her deathbed, the old Tessie asked her caretaker to retrieve the wooden toy horse from the attic. While holding the toy, she took her last breath, saying the same thing: My papa did this for me.

My heart seemed to stop beating. Tears welled up in my eyes. That scene is just one of the many moving scenes about those slaves during that time in the history of Virginia when black people were traded as if they were not human but mere properties.

I could make this review extremely long. There are so many wonderful things I would like to say here, but I'm afraid that no review can truly do justice to a book as outstanding as this.

This is a very good book. I have to admit that while reading this book about slavery, I felt a bit ignorant. I never knew that free (former) slaves actually bought and owned slaves themselves. It's just another thing that I didn't learn in American history.

The book has many characters, but they are not overwhelming. There is a man who worked hard to buy his freedom and eventually that of his wife and later their child. However, he watched their child prosper and then purchase slaves for himself. The book also focuses on his slaves and their relationships.

There is also the sheriff and his wife who are given a slave girl as a wedding gift. Even though they are against slavery, they raise her and think of her as their "child". All of these stories come together in "The Known World". It offers a complex and detailed look at the institution of slavery and the various people affected by it.

When Toni Morrison embarked on her research for "Beloved," she unearthed a horrifying cache of instruments. She was well aware that slaves endured routine whippings, starvation, rape, and hangings. However, the discovery of specially crafted tools came as a shock: metal bits forced down throats, iron masks locked onto faces, and spiked collars clasped around necks. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel reintroduced these atrocities into the national consciousness, vividly demonstrating that the cruelties of slavery extended far beyond arduous labor and physical privation.

Edward Jones' "The Known World" uncovers another peculiar aspect of American slavery, once again highlighting the perverse distortions it inflicted on the human spirit. As strange as it may seem, in Louisiana, Virginia, and South Carolina, a small number of free blacks owned their own plantations and slaves. This was a tenuous arrangement, as blacks who were freed or managed to purchase their freedom had little incentive to remain in the South. The laws governing their status and property rights were ambiguous and easily manipulated by any white person.

Jones uses this precarious situation as the backdrop for a novel about a group of black and white Virginians who attempted, sometimes nobly and often viciously, to preserve their world in the face of inevitable collapse. To the extent that Morrison transformed a surreal tale of American slavery into a mythic narrative, Jones has crafted a companion series of stark anecdotes that become part of the national legend. In a measured voice that never rises to match the agonies and absurdities he describes, he weaves back and forth through decades and across state lines, assembling a seemingly random collection of brief scenes that gradually coalesce into a stunning portrayal of moral confusion.

This is an incredibly complex novel. The writing is dense, the structure is non-linear, and there is an abundance of characters.

It reads very much like a true historical account of a specific place, Manchester County in Virginia, and a particular time, the pre-Civil War 1800s. It could almost pass for a non-fiction book as each character feels so vivid and real, with their personal stories and histories being highly authentic.

The author even goes to the extent of telling us what becomes of many of them ten, twenty, or even fifty years in the future. And yet, Edward P. Jones himself states: "The county and town of Manchester, Virginia, and every human being in those places, are products of my imagination… The census records I made up for Manchester were, again, simply to make the reader feel that the town and the county and the people lived and breathed in central Virginia once upon a time…"

Well, I was truly duped. At first, I really believed such a county existed and the data presented were genuine facts. As my son walked through the living room, I even shouted out some statistic or other and asked if he had ever read about such a thing in his history classes. He couldn't recall, but it sounded 'familiar'. Right, because much of this could have been true, yet it wasn't. The institution of slavery, of course, was all too real and cruel, and that's what this book is about, and this is the truth. Slavery in all its forms is evil.

Henry Townsend is a black farmer. He is a former slave who, with the purchase of freedom and some land, becomes a slave owner himself. Henry and his wife Caldonia own a small plantation near the border of his former master's much larger one. I could not fathom why on earth a freed man would ever want to enslave another human being. Henry and other black slave owners like him justify their actions: "Henry had always said that he wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known. He did not understand that the kind of world he wanted to create was doomed before he had even spoken the first syllable of the word master."

Well, as the old saying goes, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' When Henry dies, all hell breaks loose, and we begin to see the ill-fated consequences of an institution that is immoral and corrupt.

A narrative that seems to jump around in time and between characters eventually comes together into a whole as consequences and events snowball out of control. Lives are permanently changed. Some for the worse, others (we hope) for the better. They all become woven together much like the massive tapestry hanging on the wall of another place in another time. Each is part of the story. Everyone is responsible for the events which passed, were allowed to pass despite the huge injustice to humanity.

This book is not easy to read. The structure is challenging and the topic is gloomy, albeit important. What happens to the people we grow to care for is often horrifying and heartbreaking. But it is well-written and extremely impactful. An important novel which is well worth your time and attention if you are up for the challenge. It won't suit everyone, but if you are at all interested, I encourage you to pick this one up.

"What I feared most at that moment is what I still fear: that they would remember my history, that I, no matter what I had always said to the contrary, owned people of our Race."

2.5-stars, really.

Here is a perfect example of a book that I should love, and yet.... I didn't. The book was a lot of work, and for me, very little reward. I think most of my issues stem from the style and structure of the novel.

The third-person, omniscient narrator was distracting from the very beginning of the read. I tried to hold off on judging it, hoping to trust Jones and his choice.

The non-linear narrative, which I usually don't have a problem with, felt super-clunky here and was also distracting.

The made-up references were another issue. Jones would cite sources and details that seemed to add an air of gravitas, but none of it was actually real. I know it's fiction, but it still felt a bit weird to me. Social commentary in fiction is common, but I felt like Jones did a lot of research for this book and then didn't fully utilize it.

All of these elements combined to create a really awkward flow and convoluted storytelling. I think the book could lose 50-100 pages and be a tighter, better story.

In case you think I'm a lazy reader, I'm not! I love a meaty, tough read. Jones' story is definitely both of those things. He explores the issue of free black people owning slaves in Virginia and gives us a large cast of active characters. But it all felt so surface-y. We get the actions and reactions, but not the motivations or emotions. I would have loved to go deeper into the morally dodgy landscape that Jones is navigating.

Jones has received a lot of critical acclaim and recognition over his career, winning numerous awards. The man clearly knows what he's doing, and the respect he's earned is fairly universal. The Known World is an important story, but is just shining a light on the issues enough? I'm still back to the should. I should love this book, but it was just okay for me. People should read this book, but it's not one I would blanket recommend to all.

I'm bummed about this one and this is a terrible review/collection of thoughts. Maybe I'll become more coherent with some distance and fix it up a bit, but for now I wanted to note down something here.

(Aside #1: Moses confused me. His sudden turn into being an asshole was weird. He seemed like a lovely man, and then halfway through the book, he's a wife-beater? Where did that come from and why was he presented like that?)

(Aside #2: The cover photo of this edition is by Eudora Welty! I had no idea about her photographic prowess.)

I know there is something rather strange about me as I didn't take a liking to this book. I am well aware that it has received numerous positive reviews here, and thus people should still give it a shot. To be honest, it is the very first book this year that I simply couldn't bring myself to finish. I managed to get halfway through, hoping with each passing chapter that I would gradually become engaged in the story.

I believe my main issue lies in the way the author presented the stories. Absolutely nothing is arranged in chronological order, and it is extremely perplexing to keep jumping back and forth within the characters' lives. Half of the time, I had no idea whether the events were unfolding in the present or the past. It was just an excessive amount of effort, and I started to feel a sense of dread every time I laid eyes on the book. Perhaps one day I will give it another opportunity. However, I simply don't possess the patience at the moment.

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, is a remarkable historical novel set in Virginia during the antebellum era. Published in 2003, it delves deep into the complex and often overlooked issue of black slave ownership by both white and black Americans.

The story unfolds in 1855 on the plantation of a black man named Henry Townsend. He was born into slavery but has now become an owner himself. This black owner dreams of a future with his fifty-acre plantation and thirty-three black slaves. His interactions with his slaves mirror those that his white owner, William Robbins, had with him.

The narrative revolves around two main characters: Henry Townsend, the black owner, and his slave, Moses. While Henry Townsend can be considered the central figure of the story, he is not a traditional hero as he lacks the typical heroic traits. Instead, he is the focal point that is examined from various angles. Alongside Townsend's life, love stories and the comical aspects of other characters are also told over several decades.

Critics have praised Jones's work. Independent critic Jan Freeman writes, "Jones employs a concise style in a familiar world, and as the story progresses, its rhythm quickens, and the writer's voice comes alive. Jones plays with language so skillfully that at times, during the story, he makes a sudden leap to the past or future, captivating the reader and astonishing them with his mastery of the pen. His awareness is so keen that it is truly nothing short of a miracle." Harper Perennial, a critic for The Guardian, also remarks, "Reading The Known World is not easy, but it is a powerful and unforgettable experience."

I know this is a highly regarded book, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a work that delves into a difficult and complex aspect of American history: slavery and black slave owners. There are indeed moments when the book offers some interesting insights or uncovers some unappealing and uncomfortable truths. However, as a reader, it was extremely challenging to engage with.

I mean, I persevered through the first 600 pages of "Infinite Jest" where not much seemed to happen, but that was because I was captivated by characters like Hal, Orin, Marathe, Steeply, Mario, and Madame Psychosis. There were literally dozens of other characters, but these particular ones drew me in. In "The Known World," there are also numerous characters, yet I didn't develop any attachment to any of them. It was as if the author, Jones, was using a handheld camera without a stabilizer, resulting in jumpy and out-of-focus images. It sometimes reminded me of how the world appears to my myopic eyes between taking off my glasses in the morning and putting in my contact lenses.

The narration also irritated me greatly. All those parenthetical remarks like "in 60 years so and so will do such and such" were meaningless as I was given neither sufficient time nor enough detail to care. Moreover, there's this reference to "years later they would all turn into human torches in front of the dry foods store," but there's no subsequent explanation of what this refers to. But the most annoying part was the use of the Canadian journalist frame around page 130 or so. It only briefly appears in the narrative 200 pages later in a parenthetical throwaway comment. It is said that the journalist would never marry his heart's desire, yet 3 pages later, they marry. And when coming to talk to Fern, there's some incomprehensible stuff that happens off-screen that morning (also never adequately explained), and so she wasn't going to open up to the journalist. And yet, we still find her filling in details about Henry, Moses, and Caledonia 30 pages later. There's just too much inconsistency. Was the editor asleep or stoned and missed these?

So, despite addressing a complex subject, Jones is no Faulkner as his portrayal of the South doesn't even come close to that of the great William. He's not as skilled as Pynchon or DFW in manipulating time and space in a narrative that was 100 or 150 pages too long and felt it. And he's not on par with Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, who have given us the most amazing, poignant, and powerful images of slavery and its lingering impacts generations later that I've ever read. So, if you want to learn about the South, read "Beloved" or "Absalom, Absalom" and I expect you'll be less frustrated, but just as enraged at this deplorable institution that is a blight on America's past.

Despite having some luminous moments where the characters come alive in a special way, this novel about the lives of slaves in a fictional community in Virginia of the 1830s felt too hermetic and sealed off for me to enjoy it as thoroughly as others might.

The story's special hook lies in its portrayal of freed blacks who became slave owners themselves. The focus is on one such plantation with about 30 slaves, which is struggling to adapt to the death of its black master, Henry Townsend. We are presented with a plausible history of how his father, Augustus, was so talented at furniture making that he bought his own freedom, and state legislative action allowed him to continue residing in the state and eventually bought the freedom of his son.

With other free blacks, such as the feisty, condescending teacher Fern from the North, they form a small society of their own. While Augustus abhors slavery, his son tries to emulate the path taken by the whites to economic success by owning slaves. Despite an ambition to become a benevolent master, the corrupting influence of owning people as property is well portrayed. When his lonely widow takes up a love relationship with her plantation foreman, she is replicating the same abuse of power enacted by most other white plantation owners, and the consequences are tragic.

The “known world” of plantation life in this fictional county is like an island in time, and the characters themselves seem stuck in it like insects in amber. The omniscient narrator is god-like in passing into the thoughts and dreams of more than a dozen characters. However, the reader gets distanced from emotionally connecting to them due to the narrator's tendency to break the flow and leap backward and forward in time to reveal some particular fact or person’s fate.

Unlike the romanticized lives portrayed in Hailey’s “Roots”, the characters have no sense of cultural history of their African origins, and there is no foreshadowing of plantation life as a doomed phase in history on the path to the Civil War. The idea of a slave revolt is unthinkable, and the one humane white character, Sheriff Skiffington, feels no compunction over diligently carrying out a big part of his job in organizing night patrols and retrieval efforts when “property” runs away.

In an interview with Jones appended to the audiobook version of the novel, he admits he did not do much research for the book and was not concerned about communicating any particular message to his readers about the history of slavery. Still, the reader can't help but get the message of how inhumane slavery was and how individuals trapped in it strived to achieve some form of dignity in their lives. Like other reviewers, I didn't feel I got to know any of the characters well enough to get emotionally engaged with them. When not interrupted by the narrator, the prose is effective in evoking the place and time, which is an obvious factor in helping it gain a Pulitzer Prize.

Here is a lovely example from the opening of the book:

The evening his master dies he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins. The young ones, his son among them, had been sent out of the fields an hour or so before the adults, to prepare the late supper and, if there was time enough, to play in a few minutes of sun that were left. When he, Moses, finally freed himself of the ancient and brittle harness that connected him to the oldest mule his master owned, all that was left of the sun was a five-inch long memory of red orange laid out in still waves across the horizon between two mountains on the left and one on the right. He had been in the fields for all of fourteen hours. He paused before leaving the fields as the evening quiet wrapped itself about him. The mule quivered, wanting home and rest. Moses closed his eyes and bent down and took a pinch of the soil and ate it with no more thought than if it were a spot of cornbread. …he ate it not only to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the field, but because eating it tied him to the only thing in his small world that meant almost as much as his own life.

There is likely an important and captivating story lurking within these pages somewhere.

For instance, as the book jacket alleges, it could potentially be about the widow of a black slave owner attempting to manage a plantation after her husband's untimely demise.

Nevertheless, any semblance of a plot that might have existed was buried so profoundly beneath the convoluted chronology, extraneous characters, and excessive details.

Consequently, I reached the conclusion that I simply didn't have the inclination to continue delving deeper in search of it, and thus, I abandoned the book on page 198.

The author seemingly had an unwavering determination to incorporate every single existing anecdote regarding slavery into a single novel.

Perhaps this would have been more effectively presented as a compilation of essays or short stories, allowing each individual narrative to shine on its own merits without being overshadowed by the overwhelming mass of information.

Dear The Known World:

I'll be brutally honest. I'm ending things. This simply isn't functioning. It's not entirely your fault; it's also mine. Well, perhaps a little bit yours too.

I truly believed that when we came together, we would have a short yet mutually fulfilling relationship. I would read you, and you would offer enlightenment, emotional catharsis, or entertainment, maybe even all three. All the indications were there: the praiseworthy quotes on your cover, a shocking and unexpected premise, high ratings on Goodreads. But something felt amiss by the conclusion of the first chapter.

Maybe it was the masturbation scene right at the beginning. Or the characters that I just couldn't engage with - I could scarcely distinguish some of them. Or the way the narrative seemed to jump around without any clear focus. Maybe I just didn't give you enough pages. I'm certain you improved as the story progressed. I mean, look at all the four- and five-star reviews you've received! But every time I picked you up, my thoughts drifted to the three other books on my bedside table that I would rather be reading. I haven't actually been unfaithful, but that's just not a healthy foundation for a relationship. So after 72 pages, I'm setting you aside.

Don't feel too despondent. Concentrate on all those other positive reviews, and perhaps we'll encounter each other again someday when the stars align perfectly. But probably not.

Emily

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