{"product_id":"9781627795364","title":"Screamin' Jay Hawkins' All-Time Greatest Hits: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMark Binelli turns his sharp, forceful prose to fiction, in an inventive retelling of the outrageous life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a bluesman with one hit and a string of inflammatory guises\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe came on stage in a coffin, carried by pallbearers, drunk enough to climb into his casket every night. Onstage he wore a cape, clamped a bone to his nose, and carried a staff topped with a human skull. Offstage, he insisted he'd been raised by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians, that he'd joined the army at fourteen, that he'd defeated the middleweight boxing champion of Alaska, that he'd fathered seventy-five illegitimate children.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe R\u0026amp;B wildman Screamin' Jay Hawkins only had a single hit, the classic \"I Put a Spell On You,\" and was often written off as a clownish novelty act -- or worse, an offense to his race -- but his myth-making was legendary. In his second novel, Mark Binelli embraces the man and the legend to create a hilarious, tragic, fantastical portrait of this unlikeliest of protagonists. Hawkins saw his life story as a wild picaresque, and Binelli's novel follows suit, tackling the subject in a dazzling collage-like style.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt \u003ci\u003eRolling Stone\u003c\/i\u003e, Binelli has profiled some of the greatest musicians of our time, and this novel deftly plays with the inordinate focus on \"authenticity\" in so much music writing about African-Americans. An entire novel built around a musician as deliberately inauthentic as Screamin' Jay Hawkins thus becomes a sort of subversive act, as well as an extremely funny and surprisingly moving one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Holt, Henry \u0026 Company, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47174408175856,"sku":"9781627795364","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781627795364_p0.jpg?v=1769905593","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781627795364","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}