{"product_id":"9781598535617","title":"Albert Murray: Collected Novels \u0026 Poems (Loa #304): Train Whistle Guitar \/ The Spyglass Tree \/ The Seven League Boots \/ The Magic Keys\/ Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eComplete in one volume for the first time, the joyous, jazz-saturated fiction of one of our foremost African American writers, including the four-novel Scooter sequence\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the leading cultural critics of his generation, Albert Murray was also the author of an extraordinary quartet of semi-autobiographical novels, vivid impressionistic portraits of black life in the Deep South in the 1920s and '30s and in prewar New York City. \u003cb\u003eTrain Whistle Guitar \u003c\/b\u003e(1974) introduces Murray's recurring narrator and protagonist, Scooter, a \"Southern jackrabbit raised in a briarpatch\" too nimble ever to receive a scratch. Scooter's education in books, music, and the blue-steel bent-note blues-ballad realities of American life continues in \u003cb\u003eThe Spyglass Tree\u003c\/b\u003e (1991), Murray's \"Portrait of the Artist as a Tuskegee Undergraduate.\" \u003cb\u003eThe Seven League Boots\u003c\/b\u003e (1996) follows Scooter as he becomes a bass player in a touring band not unlike Duke Ellington's, and \u003cb\u003eThe Magic Keys\u003c\/b\u003e (2005), in which Scooter at last finds his true vocation as a writer in Greenwich Village, is an elegaic reverie on an artist's life. Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin round out the volume with a selection of Murray's remarkable poems, including 11 unpublished pieces from his notebooks, and two rare examples of his work as a short story writer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47050587898096,"sku":"9781598535617","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781598535617_p0.jpg?v=1763824920","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781598535617","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}