Ein Tropfen Geduld by William Melvin Kelley

Ein Tropfen Geduld Reviews

• 
  Jonathan

  
  https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
• 
  Jin

  Ein ungewöhnlicher Klassiker, das erste Mal herausgegeben in 1965 und das erste Mal von mir in 2022 gelesen. Es ist überraschend tiefgründig ohne das Leiden und die alltäglichen Probleme detailliert auseinander zu nehmen, und auch schmerzhaft ohne dass man mit dem Finger in die Wunde stochern muss. Die Geschichte kommt ohne Klischees aus und schafft es dennoch eine glaubhafte Welt darzustellen. Insgesamt war es ein wunderbares Buch mit viel Gefühl um das menschliche Dasein, was mich am Ende zum Nachdenken angeregt hat.
  Der Protagonist lebt sein Leben als blinden schwarzen Musiker, wir fangen bei seiner Kindheit an und beobachten ihn auch nach seinem Erfolg. Ich fand es erfrischend, dass der Autor genau an den Stellen die Kapitel beenden ließ, wo ich eigentlich erwartet hatte, dass das Drama und die Tränen ausgeschlachtet werden. Stattdessen geht das Leben immer nach vorne und weiter in die Zukunft, immer weiter, bis er (hoffentlich) ein Ort für gute Musiker findet.
  
  Vieles wird anhand seiner Umgebung und den anderen Menschen dargestellt und ein Hauch von Hoffnung und Reinheit begleitet den Text ebenfalls. Es ist nicht nur sein Dasein als POC, sondern auch seine Blindheit und auch sein Talent, was ihn aus der Masse hervorheben lässt und vieles schwingt nur zwischen den Zeilen mit, aber genug um eine melancholische Atmosphäre herzustellen. Obwohl das Buch schon älter ist, fühlt es sich nicht alt an, was für den Autor spricht, aber leider nicht für unsere heutige Gesellschaft. Ich bin froh dieses Buch gelesen zu haben und freue mich schon darauf weitere Bücher von William Melvin Kelley zu lesen. Das Buch bekommt 4,5 Sterne auf 5 hochgerundet.
  
  ** Dieses Buch wurde mir über NetGalley als E-Book zur Verfügung gestellt **
• 
  Jill Bowman

  Years ago a friend of mine said “I’ve just heard the best music! I can’t wait to see Stevie Ray Vaughan in concert!” I told her that he had died in a helicopter crash a year earlier.
  
  This is how I feel about finding this book by William Melvin Kelley. My copy of this book was published in 2017. Even as I was thinking “This is so good! I have to read everything he’s written “ he was already gone.
  
  I’ll certainly read his other books. I’ve read the beautiful follow up to this edition written by his wife. I can’t help but think Willy was an articulate, honest, thoughtful man. I look forward to seeing what other parts of life he can help me ‘see’.
  
  Special thanks to the women at The Book Club Review Podcast. I’d not have known about it without you.
• 
  LittleSophie

  Not as compelling as "A Different Drummer", Kelley focus is again on the exploitative way in which white American regard and treat black Americans. While observant and convincing on this front, this book failed to grab me due to the pervasive misogyny. The protagonist's attitude towards women is so calculating and demeaning, that I did not buy the several love stories in the book. As the affairs are the prism through which Kelley delivers his themes, this made me lose confidence in the whole book.
  I understand that it is a product of its time, but sadly it didn't keep as well as "A Different Drummer".
• 
  the_wistful_reader

  A Drop of Patience ~ William Melvin Kelly
  
  One day, at the age of five, Ludlow Washington's father picks him up and carries him down an unknown road and signs all parental responsibility over to the master of a care home for blind African-American children.  In the Home he learns how to plays instruments and it is discovered he's rather good at playing the piano.  This becomes the ticket away from a life in care, however, Ludlow quickly finds out that in one way or another, you're still the property of someone or something.
  
  We follow Ludlow as he grows up and in many ways becomes a man while he is still a boy. His experience with life and people - and women above all - has been limited and he has to learn lessons from people and environments that are not necessarily ideal nor wholesome.
  
  As the synopsis says, it is "the story of a gifted and damaged man entirely set apart - by blindness, by race, by talent - who must wrestle with adversity and ambition to generate the acceptance and self-worth that have always eluded him."
  
  I really enjoyed this book, so raw and full of emotions. It will stay with me a long time and I definitely hope to read more of Kelly's writing.
  
  Thanks to riverrun_books for this copy.
• 
  Caz

  Wow. Slick and spirited, but not too heavy on the jazz (the protagonist is a jazz musician), which I definitely appreciated. A lot to unpick in the text. Just fantastic. I’m glad more Kelley is being published in the UK because I need to read it all.
• 
  Mandy

  What an interesting discovery this turned out to be! I’d never heard of William Melvin Kelley and I’m pleased that this reissue of his 1965 novel will hopefully introduce him to a wider readership. I don’t think that the book merits the rather extravagant claims that are being made for it – it’s no “masterpiece” in my opinion – but it’s a really interesting and moving story and one that I very much enjoyed. It tells the story of a blind jazz musician’s rise to national prominence after an inauspicious start in life when he is placed in an institution for blind black children when he is just 5 years old. The impression we get is that it’s not a good place to be but unexpectedly the author doesn’t dwell on this but instead on the musical education that our hero Ludlow Washington is given, allowing him to leave the home early to embark on a musical career, something he does very successfully. He has an exceptional talent and it takes him far. But gifted though he is he’s damaged inside and sadly never manages to fill the emotional void deep inside. Consequently his relationships never quite manage to work out and he seems very much a lost soul. There’s so much to enjoy in this compelling novel. As well as Ludlow’s own story, we get a glimpse into the world of jazz music and black musicians, we come across racial prejudice, even from those white people who like to “slum it” by visiting the clubs where the musicians perform. We learn about what it’s like to navigate a seeing world if you’re blind – and, refreshingly, Ludlow never bemoans his fate. There are no stereotypes here, or lazy characterisation. Kelley is an original and inventive writer, and was very much a part of the 1960s Black Art Movement. He only died in 2017 and it’s shame he didn’t live to see this resurgence of interest in his writing.
  Another of his achievements is that in 2014 he was officially credited by the OED with coining the term “woke” in a New York Times article ‘If You’re Woke You Dig It’”.
  Highly recommended.
  
• 
  Hans Ostrom

  One of the best novels I've read in a long time, so good I'm embarrassed I didn't get to it earlier. It's the story of a blind Black child sent to an orphanage for the blind down south. A gifted musician, he grinds his way through juke joints playing horn -- exactly what horn, we never learn -- one of the great choices Kelley makes. The book is funny and sad but walks a narrow line between comedy and tragedy--almost like a deft jazz solo. Eventually the musician helps invent Bop. The novel is not a Roman a clef however--all the musicians are fictional with no easy counterparts in history. The parts in Harlem, including those that deal with white folks' sudden creepy fascination with jazz and Black musicians are especially fine. In an afterword, Kelley 's wife compares his prose to Thelonious Monk's jazz, with the surprising off notes and the deceptive complexity, understated. This is one of the very best jazz novels, partly because it's about the musicians as human beings. The insights into race are terrific.
• 
  Rhyena

  I loved Kelley's writing and the story of this wonderfully gifted blind musician who pushed outside jazz forward in the culture, like so many have done IRL. I appreciated his struggle to come fully into himself and know who he was and who he wasn't, based on the trauma he experienced as a child who was abandoned and stigmatized. As he says it screwed him up. I loved the observations about race, so smart, so accurate, so right on.I appreciated that he had the alacrity to figure out how to treat people/play people so he could get what he want, which he used often in the bedroom. I didn't find his breakdown so believable, nor his decision to go it alone many years later. I felt the author cheated the reader out of knowing more about what was going on inside of him and kept us at a distance, so that the most important culminating scenes of the book were truncated. I was left without, kinda abandoned. I wanted to know more of his journey and what happened with his music and his heart, but the ending was abrupt with only a nod.
• 
  Charlie

  Kelley's least experimental novel, A Drop of Patience is an episodic kunstlerroman about a blind jazz musician mostly told through his love affairs with several women. I am appreciative for Kelley's strong understanding of halting emotional realism, the ways in which Ludlow Washington and his lovers (resist and) fall into infatuation with each other. The novel is pretty clipped, and if anything, I think it could have been a bit more fleshed out, especially in the context of the jazz world that Kelley obviously can draw from a deep well of information on, but often keeps at the periphery of the novel.
• 
  Anne

  3.5 stars - I was convinced this was going to be another 5 star read for me after A Different Drummer and Dancers on the Shore, but I didn’t connect to this one as much, unfortunately, and that’s mostly due to the main character’s misogyny. The writing is superb, the themes are great, but women being viewed purely through the “how can I get her into my bed”-lens and not as valuable human beings is not something I enjoy reading about. I’m not sure if it was just that or if there was more to it, but there was something keeping me from being entirely pulled in.
• 
  Deborah Schuff

  An excellent novel about a jazz musician. Other jazz novels I have enjoyed are Nat Hentoff's Jazz Country (more for young adults, which I was when I first read it -- left an impression on me/remembered it long into adulthood) and Albert Murray's The Seven League Boots (third of a four-part series about the life of a young boy growing into adulthood -- the entire set is absorbing).
• 
  Maoui

  3.5
• 
  Jewell

  I only wish I'd discovered William Melvin Kelly sooner.
• 
  Charlotte

  The story of a blind, black, jazz musician, A Drop of Patience (first published 1965) centres around Ludlow Washington, who learns to play his instrument after his father abandons him, aged 5, at an institution for the blind. Leaving the Home at 15, he plays for a new master, in a down-at-heel jazz club where he hones his skills and awakens to the world around him.
  
  Reflecting on her husband's state of mind when writing the novel, Kelley's wife observes, "He excavated his soul bringing Ludlow Washington to life-the blind child left behind; the aching patience of the small boy waiting. Waiting; that knowing came from the deepest recess of his being. From not knowing his mother for the first five months of his life...A Drop of Patience plunged into his depths." And it is that sense of bewilderment that the protagonist exudes throughout as he attempts to make sense of a world that operates around systems, rules and expectations that relate to the colours that he himself cannot see. As Gerald Early observes in his 1996 introduction, the novel suggests "race is an illusion that blinds people who can see." (Btw, avoid reading said intro until you have completed the book, unless you wish to discover the entire plotline before you even begin!)
  At one point, Ludlow remarks to a fellow musician and friend, "What do you think white folks want from us?" and Reno's reply speaks volumes, not only about race, but also about human interactions and insecurities as a whole, "They want us to be what they think we are."
  
  William Melvin Kelley's wife remembers that, "he wanted to experience blindness as we travelled around New York by subway; he would close his eyes, hold my elbow, listening to the rumble of the train, the babble of voices, subway doors opening and closing with a ding." For me, it is this attention to the sounds of a life lived in darkness, that is most remarkable. Kelley does not tell of squeaking hinges and warm breezes; wastes no words on facile nods towards the scent of blossoms or tweeting birds; instead he paints a world constructed of layers and textures which, those of us lucky enough to have sight, too easily ignore;
  "His father approached him dragging his heavy shoes. Ludlow smelled dust in the air. Then his father's hand lifted his own and Ludlow hopped to his feet. His father led him to the road. They went to the right. The dirt on the road felt so powdery and dry it felt like hot water. Ludlow complained and his father lifted him up, his arm under Ludlow's thighs like a seat. Ludlow put his arm around his father's neck. Whiskers pricked his fingertips...The ground under his father's feet turned hard; Ludlow felt the shock all the way through his father's body. they were on a pavement now. A car chugged by, blowing warm air against his face."
  
  As relevant and poignant today as it was when first published, 'A Drop of Patience' is a compelling read and I am grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for sharing an advanced copy with me in return for my honest opinion.
• 
  buchwoerter

  • EIN TROPFEN GEDULD •
  
  Im Jahr 1965 veröffentlichte William Melvin Kelly den Titel „A Drop of patience“ in den USA. In diesem Jahr erschien sein Roman nun endlich auf Deutsch im Hoffmann und Campe Verlag.
  
  Ludlow Washington ist fünf Jahre alt, schwarz und blind. Sein Vater lässt ihn in einem Heim für schwarze blinde Kinder zurück. Dort wird sein Talent entdeckt und er entpuppt sich als begabter Jazz-Musiker. Der Leser begleitet Washington bei den unterschiedlichsten Lebenslagen, erfährt Rassismus und wie es ist als blinder Mann sich in der Welt zurecht zu finden.
  
  Ludlow Washington kennt bis zu seinem Heimaufenthalt keinerlei Unterschiede zwischen den Menschen, denn er kann weder weiß noch schwarz sehen. Der Auftakt der Handlung hat mich sehr begeistert und berührt. Gerne hätte ich mehr über das Leben im Heim, das Erlernen eines Instruments und seine Unterdrückung erfahren. Mir war nicht bewusst, dass es in den amerikanischen 30ern Heime gab in denen Kinder zu Jazzmusikern ausgebildet wurden. Noch erschreckender ist die Tatsache, dass Eltern ihre Kinder in so jungem Alter dort hinschicken.
  Wichtig zu wissen ist, dass der Roman in den 1960ern geschrieben wurde und dementsprechendes Vokabular verwendet wird. Dabei stolpert man über das ein oder andere Wort, welches man heute sicherlich nicht mehr verwenden würde. Auch die Darstellung von Beziehungen bzw. das Bild der Frau hat mich an einigen Stellen sehr schockiert. Ich bin sehr froh, dass sich einiges getan hat, dennoch kam ich an einigen Stellen bei der Darstellung von Frauen an meine Grenzen. Leider ging mir der Autor auch zu wenig auf Ludlows Rasdismuserfahrungen, Leben als Blinder und sein Musiker-Dasein ein. Sein Liebesleben und Abenteuergeschichten nahmen mir dafür zu viel Platz ein.
  
  📖 „Ein Tropfen Geduld“ lässt mich zwiegespalten zurück. Auf der einen Seite berührt mich seine Geschichte und die Unfähigkeit Hautfarbe zu erkennen. Für ihn sind Menschen einfach Menschen. Auf der anderen Seite hat mich das Frauenbild und der inhaltlich andere Fokus nicht überzeugen können.
• 
  Annarella

  It's a fascinating read that aged well and kept me hooked till the last page.
  I found the theme fascinating and the plot engrossing. The cast of characters is not always likeable but they're all well written and interesting.
  It could be a very long review as there's a lot of themes in this novel and all of them are important but I prefer to keep it simple.
  An excellent read, highly recommended!
  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
• 
  Jürgen K.

  Das Buch ist vor fast 60 Jahren geschrieben, es zeigt keinerlei Alterserscheinungen. Die Geschichte des Protagonisten Ludlow steht einzig und allein im Mittelpunkt und trägt die Erzählung vollständig.
• 
  Randi

  24/60 for Mama in 2020