PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-155-4   $31.95

240 pages; 5.5 x 8.5 inches

by Paule Marshall

 “An aged man is but a paltry thing, /A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/Soul clap its hands and   sing.”—W. B. Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

The images summoned in Yeats’s poem also inhabit the quartet of short stories in Paule Marshall’s Soul Clap Hands and Sing.  In each, an aged man who has sacrificed human companionship to pursue fame, security, material possessions, or prestige comes face to face with his hollow existence and imminent death.  A dramatic confrontation precipitated by a young female character offers each of the four lonely men a chance to surmount his indifference or fear and inject greater meaning into his life before it is spent.  Named for their geographical settings—Brazil, Brooklyn, British Guiana and Barbados—each of these haunting vignettes forms a riveting existential commentary.  The insightful introduction to this edition of Marshall’s novel, provided by literary scholar Darwin T. Turner, places the book squarely in the context of the times in which it was written.  The edition also includes an appendix of reviews that appeared when the book was first published in 1961.

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