Clarence Cooper Jr. 
Black May 1997 The Scene The Farm About the Author Bibliography Clarence Cooper Jr.
Black May 1997
The Scene
The Farm
About the Author
Bibliography
Black
The Dark Messenger • Yet Princes Follow • Not We
Many
Black brings together three short works by the one of the
greatest but least known writers from post-war Afro-America.
As with all of his work, these tales in Black are marked by
Cooper's insistence in portraying a side to American life rarely seen in print. The result
is three more classics of underground fiction, none of which have ever been published in
Britain before.
The Dark Messenger is a short, sizzling, deeply
autobiographical novel in which a reporter for a black newspaper discovers that truth and
justice are no match for the next handout from the corrupt powers that be. Yet
Princes Follow and Not We Many are both sardonic crime novellas set in the
worlds of the numbers racket and of Black Muslims respectively.
One hopes that with the resurgence of interest in his work,
which is reflected by the fact that his novels are coming back into print in both America
and Britain for the first time since his death, Cooper is at last getting the acclaim that
his writing so clearly deserves. He was simply too hot for his contemporaries and too
bleak in his outlook.
'Cooper writes with a personal authority that can
only be called shattering and the searing exactness of one who has lived through the
horror.' New York Herald Tribune
'One of the most underrated writers in America, a
Richard Wright of the revolutionary era' Negro Digest
The Scene
The Scene is a junk novel - it follows the lives
of various hustlers, addicts, undercover cops, pimps and whores, all of whom are connected
by one thing - The Scene.
The Scene is part of a nameless city, an everycity, in which
drugs are prevalent and widely consumed. The Man is the king pin in this apocalyptic half
world, so well-connected that he seems untouchable. Working undercover seems a thankless
and hopeless task - the desperation and bleakness of the situation is overwhelming, both
for those hooked and for those trying to unhook them.
Everyone needs the Scene although everyone's lives would be
better off without it. In this respect, Cooper's second novel explores this fundamental
ill that is at the root of much of our contemporary culture. In a world in which drugs are
becoming ever more accepted, The Scene is spot on in its perceptive analysis
of hard drugs - their appeal, their nature, their horror and their inevitability. It is a
book that remains as important and as relevant as the day it was first published. Penned
in 1960, The Scene has to be one of the most authentic and hard-hitting
novels about drugs ever written.
'Not even Nelson Agren's The Man with the Golden
Arm burns with the ferocious intensity you'll find here' - New York Herald Tribune
'A Richard Wright of the revolutionary era' -
Negro Digest
The Farm
Published, in 1967, Clarence Cooper's final and perhaps finest
novel, is a bold and experimental piece of writing that probes into addiction, prison life
and love. Challenging the reader through constant linguistic experimentation, The Farm is
one of the most honest and unrelenting examinations of what it is to be hooked. John, the
hero of The Farm, is serving out time in a federal drug rehabilitation centre. He knows
how to work the system, which he does with consummate ease - what he can't fathom is what
is going on in his own head.
Written from behind the wall, Cooper's The Farm is a
frighteningly authentic and profound piece of prison literature that raises serious
questions about society's ability to cage human beings and its success in dehumanizing
prisoners in the process. It is a work of uncompromising genius.
"So much of what we know about ourselves is a lousy God
Damn lie" from The Farm
About The Author
Born in Detroit in 1934, Clarence Cooper Jr wrote
six novels, all of which probe deep into the underbelly of black America. He worked as an
editor for The Chicago Messenger during the fifties but by this stage he heroin habit was
working him.
Disillusioned by the hostile response to his
fiction, Cooper became increasingly alienated from those around him. He died penniless,
strung out and alone in New York City in 1978.
He was a generation too early, way too hot for his
contemporaries who could not handle his uncut and intense prose. His time has come.
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