"A masterful story collection--thirteen years in the making--from National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, showcasing the incredible range and resonant voice of this American treasure"--
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"A masterful story collection--thirteen years in the making--from National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, showcasing the incredible range and resonant voice of this American treasure"--
Read Less
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $0.99, very good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Scribner Book Company.
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Fair in fair dust jacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket.
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Scribner Book Company.
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Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $2.00, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Scribner Book Company.
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $4.00, very good condition, Sold by HPB Inc. rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Scribner.
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $4.00, very good condition, Sold by Half Price Books Inc rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Scribner.
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $4.00, good condition, Sold by HPB-Emerald rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Scribner.
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Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Night Hawks: Stories to cart. $4.53, new condition, Sold by Ebooksweb rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensalem, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Scribner Book Company.
Edward Hopper's 1942 painting "Nighthawks" shows four people wrapped up in themselves late at night in a diner. The enigmatic noir-themed painting captures the loneliness and broad spaces of life in a large American city.
Charles Johnson's collection "Night Hawks" (2018) makes an unmistakable allusion to Hopper's painting with its twelve stories capturing the allure, provocative, and lonely character of night in many places and times. The author of the National Book Award winning novel "Middle Passage" (1990) Johnson is a philosopher, Buddhist, academic, and former cartoonist in addition to a storyteller. The many aspects of his work show well in this collection.
The title story "Night Hawks" was for me the highlight of thie book and is the closest to the spirit of Hopper's painting. Two old literary friends, Johnson and the playwright August Wilson spend long evenings together discussing their lives, literature, art, and Black America. Wilson does more of the talking while Johnson listens and comments. The two friends spend several hours over dinner and coffee at the Broadway Bar and Grill in Seattle. When the restaurant closes for the evening, the two friends, not yet talked out, retreat to a 24-hour IHOP, with the bright lights and spaces vaguely reminiscent of Hopper's scene, if livelier. Johnson says "[u]nlike the Broadway, the customers in IHOP at this hour were night hawks, the people who slept all day and only ventured out after dark; a group that may have included the occasional prostitute, gangster, pimp, or drug dealer." An incident at the IHOP causes Johnson to reflect that "the love of beauty had been our lifelong refuge as black men, a raft that carried us both safely for sixty years across a turbulent sea of violence, suffering and grief to a far shore we'd never dreamed possible." Johnson's "Night Hawks" is atmosperic and thoughtful as in a related way is Hopper's celebrated painting.
In addition to "Night Hawks", four of the stories in the collection are set in contemporary Seattle where Johnson has lived for many years. The remaining stories have varied settings including Afghanistan, India, Japan, ancient Greece, and the pre-Civil War South. Science fiction and fantasy play a role in three stories. Each of the stories has a strong night setting and night theme.
Johnson's love for Buddhism, philosophy, and the life of the mind are never far from center in these stories. The stories work best from me when these themes are explicit, as in "Prince of the Ascetics", a story of the Buddha's Enlightenment, and Kamadhatu: A Modern Sutra" set in Japan and showing the interaction between a young monk and an African American woman writer who comes to visit. In "The Cynic", Johnson tells a story about Plato and his interaction with Diogenes, while "Idols of the Cave" brings both Aristotle and Buddhism to the forefront, together with Plato's Cave, in a story of the Afghanistan War. Of the remaining stories, I most enjoyed "The Weave", set in Seattle with a surprising relationship to Buddhism brought in.
Johnson wrote eleven of the stories in this book for a reading series called "Bedtime Stories" that he helped to establish for Humanities Washington to introduce readers, and writers as well, to the joys of storytelling. Each of the stories is intended as a short read, and each provokes reflection. The stories fulfill Johnson's goals of providing entertainment and allowing the reader to "experience a little bit of the possibilities for wonder and mystery" that may be attained in the telling and reading of tales.
