Toss and Whirl and Pass Shawn Stewart Ruff Msr ClaudeAlbert Saucier 9780981942001 Books
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From highly acclaimed author Shawn Stewart Ruff comes a fearless new novel set in New York City two weeks into the nightmare of the World Trade Center s destruction. For Ivy-educated, HIV-positive African-American poet Yale Battle, the will to go on since the death of his lover -- a famed Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer and casualty of AIDS in the early 1990s-- is never more acutely tested than when the city he loves is engulfed in grief. Wandering the memories of Yale's old life, and deep in the terror of a drug and sex odyssey that lands him in jail, Toss and Whirl and Pass ponders the nature of eternal love and celebrates the city of dreams.
Toss and Whirl and Pass Shawn Stewart Ruff Msr ClaudeAlbert Saucier 9780981942001 Books
Grady Harp has already ably given us the plot highlights, but I want to share with you some feelings I have about this work, a book that is more than brilliant, but genuinely worthwhile.The contradictions are palpable: the gritty sex and the soaring poetry, right there on the same page. Like steel and concrete skyscrapers exploding into dust. Like a lover's embrace fading into a chilling absence. "All that is solid melts into air," Marx said of our contemporary predicament... and with good reason.
As with Ruff's first novel, Finlater, he offers a singular, fully realized character who nonetheless needs and loves an Other. Here the special character is the frustrated writer Yale Battle, and the Other is dancer and choreographer Courtney Arrington (and I was about to spell that "Arrogant"... I think Ruff is doing a little Dickens there). Their love is round-and-round passionate and intense.
That solidity-turned-granular, that round-and-round spinning is captured by the title and by the shifting back-and-forth through time in the text. Again, the contradiction: the result is a feeling that Yale and Courtney's relationship is a collection of isolated, fleeting moments... and yet utterly timeless, something that will always accompany Yale after Courtney's death.
Oh oh, you may be thinking, I see lots of ideas and feelings and metaphors here... but what about characters? Ruff is a masterful creator of memorable characters, including a trove of secondary people who are delightful to experience as individuals even as they mirror and magnify the primary characters' struggles.
Also, as with Finlater, I have to remark on the quality of the book production. Get a physical copy if you can: it is a work of art that manifests in its heft, its fonts, its pagination style, that sense of constant movement.
Finally, let's just look at one bit of the novel... it leaves you with questions that have no easy answer, even as the novel ends on a hopeful note. Here Yale has joined Courtney as his manager on a demanding dance tour. Courtney says to Yale,...
--- "Thanks for putting up with me." [Courtney] seemed suddenly embarrassed, even ashamed. "Don't let me push you around. You do what you feel is best. Always." [Yale thinks:] I didn't know how to respond. ... [Courtney:] "Hopefully, it ends up being material for you. Fodder for your writing, huh? I mean, I've loved you being here, but I want there to be something in it for you." --- [Yale responds:] "Maybe... But I'm not thinking that way at all. It's the last thing on my mind. I'm just loving all of this. Why does it have to mean anything about what I might do sometime in the future?" --- [Courtney continues:] "I just want you to have a stake in this. I mean, what's in it for you otherwise? What do you get out of putting your own life on hold? We could be dead tomorrow. ..." --- pages 119-120
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Tags : Toss and Whirl and Pass [Shawn Stewart Ruff, Msr. Claude-Albert Saucier] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From highly acclaimed author Shawn Stewart Ruff comes a fearless new novel set in New York City two weeks into the nightmare of the World Trade Center s destruction. For Ivy-educated,Shawn Stewart Ruff, Msr. Claude-Albert Saucier,Toss and Whirl and Pass,Quote Editions,0981942008,Literature & Fiction Literature
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Toss and Whirl and Pass Shawn Stewart Ruff Msr ClaudeAlbert Saucier 9780981942001 Books Reviews
`I've lived in a sort of fugue state for years now - my mornings beginning during most people's supper, my evenings ending at the start of canine morning rush hour, when the sidewalks glisten with the new day's fresh piss. I'm more likely to recognize the dog than I am the person holding the leash.' So begins the latest novel TOSS WHIRL PASS by Shawn Stewart Ruff whose rise to literary importance since the publication of his first novel FINLATER has been swift and sure. Ruff is a national treasure, a gifted writer who is unafraid to tackle difficult topics because his use of the English language is as polished as anyone writing today. He can comfortably move from eloquent poetic prose (and poetry, this time) to raw, sensuous, erotic descriptive tones in a manner that does not draw attention to his talent but instead propels his story along. And what a storyteller he is!
Ruff moves so easily from the present to the past by a seamless use of flashbacks that it is sometimes difficult to know where we as readers are in the story. It would seem that TOSS WHIRL PASS is actually one day in the life of our narrator, Yale Battle, an Ivy-educated HIV+ poet/artist whose life and very being are still quivering from that terrifying moment we all refer to as 9/11. No particular time frames are mentioned but it FEELS as though that could have happened approximately two weeks before the opening of Yale's story. But then perhaps it is the author's intention in this paean to those countless men lost to the plague of AIDS to draw a parallel despite the insidious onset of that disease with all of the physical signs Ruff so astutely describes in the course of this book, the end of life of the victim has the same momentous impact as that explosion of the twin towers.
Through a series of carefully choreographed episodes (`choreographed' is an appropriate term here as Ruff names each of his chapters after a dance position, explaining the French terms in English in a way that foretells the content of the words to come), Yale tells us a bit about his childhood including his introduction to same sex activity with his friend Hillary who later claims to have been assaulted, to his move into adulthood and progression to Ivy League schools in pursuit of his life as a frustrated writer, finding a lone friend in college, moving to New York and encountering Angel, his Dominican friend who dies of AIDS, and his ultimately meeting the ideal man of his life - one Courtney Baines Arrington, a ballet dancer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and a wannabe choreographer. Throughout the book there are the trials and pleasures of his relationship with the narcissistic Courtney and the discovery that Courtney is HIV+ while they work together to make a dance company for Courtney and encourage the development of Yale's writing gifts. The story begins with Yale seeking meds for their dying cat Zsa Zsa Gabor when the pharmacy will not supply, Yale relies on his own supplier, the very young Solstice, who also happens to be bedding Yale's stuffy British neighbor's wife, and it is at this point that we realize that Yale has long been a drug addict. Since Courtney's death he has been increasing casual about his life (the descriptions of his physical encounters are of the quality of Henry Miller, Genet, Gide et al) and eventually (later on in the day that the story begins) he gets arrested in the park for drugs and public sex with a Jamaican man who is likely the only real person Yale knows. Yes, this is a lot of story, but it is related with such aplomb and brilliant dialogue and intelligence that the reader forgets this happens to be a day in the life of Yale Battle. At the end of the book Yale confronts his own anguish with an extended poem about his eternal love, then resolves the loose ends of his story that began on page one. The final chapter burns itself into the memory of all who have lost loved ones.
In addition to the beauty of this writing the book design is also a work of art designed by Don Joseph as an irregularly shaped volume with excellent font and with the tenderness of printing the extended poem toward the back on black and gray pages. This is the second truly brilliant work by Shawn Stewart Ruff and with it he places himself solidly in the ranks of our finest African American writers - NO, simply one of our finest American writers! Grady Harp, October 10
Grady Harp has already ably given us the plot highlights, but I want to share with you some feelings I have about this work, a book that is more than brilliant, but genuinely worthwhile.
The contradictions are palpable the gritty sex and the soaring poetry, right there on the same page. Like steel and concrete skyscrapers exploding into dust. Like a lover's embrace fading into a chilling absence. "All that is solid melts into air," Marx said of our contemporary predicament... and with good reason.
As with Ruff's first novel, Finlater, he offers a singular, fully realized character who nonetheless needs and loves an Other. Here the special character is the frustrated writer Yale Battle, and the Other is dancer and choreographer Courtney Arrington (and I was about to spell that "Arrogant"... I think Ruff is doing a little Dickens there). Their love is round-and-round passionate and intense.
That solidity-turned-granular, that round-and-round spinning is captured by the title and by the shifting back-and-forth through time in the text. Again, the contradiction the result is a feeling that Yale and Courtney's relationship is a collection of isolated, fleeting moments... and yet utterly timeless, something that will always accompany Yale after Courtney's death.
Oh oh, you may be thinking, I see lots of ideas and feelings and metaphors here... but what about characters? Ruff is a masterful creator of memorable characters, including a trove of secondary people who are delightful to experience as individuals even as they mirror and magnify the primary characters' struggles.
Also, as with Finlater, I have to remark on the quality of the book production. Get a physical copy if you can it is a work of art that manifests in its heft, its fonts, its pagination style, that sense of constant movement.
Finally, let's just look at one bit of the novel... it leaves you with questions that have no easy answer, even as the novel ends on a hopeful note. Here Yale has joined Courtney as his manager on a demanding dance tour. Courtney says to Yale,...
--- "Thanks for putting up with me." [Courtney] seemed suddenly embarrassed, even ashamed. "Don't let me push you around. You do what you feel is best. Always." [Yale thinks] I didn't know how to respond. ... [Courtney] "Hopefully, it ends up being material for you. Fodder for your writing, huh? I mean, I've loved you being here, but I want there to be something in it for you." --- [Yale responds] "Maybe... But I'm not thinking that way at all. It's the last thing on my mind. I'm just loving all of this. Why does it have to mean anything about what I might do sometime in the future?" --- [Courtney continues] "I just want you to have a stake in this. I mean, what's in it for you otherwise? What do you get out of putting your own life on hold? We could be dead tomorrow. ..." --- pages 119-120
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