Deacon King Kong is an affectionate look at the residents of a housing project in 1969.
The presiding spirit of the book is Christian, but not of the punitive, close-minded variety that commands the lion’s share of public attention. McBride’s novel is also resolutely untribal, with a dedication that reads “For God’s people—all of ‘em.
A conflict between a preacher and a drug runner in a housing project may sound gritty, but Deems’ ruthlessness is not on an Avon Barksdale level. Not even close. Deems once attended Five Ends Church and even pitched for a Cause Houses baseball team, so he forbids his crew from occupying the prime real estate around the flagpole in the morning, out of respect for the elderly church members who hang out there until noon. He refuses to sell dope to grandmothers.
Is this a weakness? Perhaps, but McBride doesn’t seem interested in writing historical fiction. Despite the urban setting, this is a village novel, likean ensemble piece about the way a small community of flawed characters who think they know one another all too well cope with newcomers and their own capacity for change. The plot features a lot of palaver about Deems’ scheme to switch suppliers and the gangster’s comically thwarted attempts to punish Sportcoat, who’s oblivious to the danger.
But the meat of McBride’s novel lies in Five Ends Church, in its scandals and feuds, its good deeds and fellowship, the aid its members offer one another in times of need, their sensational funerals. Early on, two of the choir’s best singers get into a spat over a microphone. “Church fights are normally hushed, hissy affairs,” McBride explains, “full of quiet backstabbing, intrigue, and whispered gossip about bad rice and beans. But this spat was public, the best kind.
announced, “He’s got the devil’s understanding,” and departed for Chicago, where he quit the gospel and became a blues singer named Tampa Red and recorded the monster hit song “Devil’s Understanding,” before dying in anonymity flat broke and crawling into history, immortalized in music studies and rock-and-roll college courses the world over, idolized by white writers and music intellectuals for his classic blues hit that was the bedrock of the $40 million Gospel Stam Music Publishing empire,...
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