Porgy & Bess by Miles Davis by George Gershwin by Dubose Heyward by Jeffrey DeShell (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Porgy & Bess by Miles Davis by George Gershwin by Dubose Heyward by Jeffrey DeShell
• Jane Rosenberg LaForge (bio)

porgy & bess by miles davis by george gershwin by dubose heyward
Jeffrey DeShell
Spuyten Duyvil
https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/porgy---bess.html
154 pages; Print, $18.00

Deeply embedded in the American consciousness are at least two stories that allegedly capture the essence of Black life in the twentieth, and now the twenty-first, century. One is not set down in letters, or even sung, like the other; but it is one that has played out with alarming frequency on the impromptu theaters of America's streets, parks, and college campuses. It has no single name, although locations, such as Ferguson, Missouri; and the names of the protagonists, such as George Floyd and Sandra Bland, come to stand for these situations. The other is Porgy & Bess, the George and Ira Gershwin opera of Black poverty, violence, drug use, and murder. Revolutionary in its time—1935—for its all-Black, classically trained cast, Porgy & Bess has been revived and revised at least as many times as white police officers have killed unarmed Black people. The roles in Porgy & Bess may be recast, its sets redesigned, and its direction and choreography revamped, just as the circumstances of a police killing may differ as scenarios are reshuffled. But the outcome in both instances is always, always the same. [End Page 71]

In Porgy & Bess by Miles Davis by George Gershwin by Dubose Heyward, a Black graduate student is killed by a white campus cop after a confrontation in the hall of a college dorm. The facts are never in doubt. But the struggle over the narrative—who's responsible, who's been victimized or warrants vilification, and what kind of punishment should punctuate the production—is at the heart of the conflict. Francesca Fruscella, the fictional Denver detective whom Jeffrey DeShell has called upon to solve mysteries in two previous novels, is brought onto the University of Colorado campus, in Boulder, as an independent investigator. "You need to watch your language," she is told by a supervisor when she complains about the assignment. But the language she uses, to say nothing of the metaphors she will retreat into, or the "virulent corporate weasel speak" and other tongues she will encounter, are the real culprits, in a crime that is committed not during but after the murder.

DeShell has rendered his detective's odyssey without punctuation, which serves to make readers complicit with the reductive, racist cover-up that seemingly objective language will eventually provide. By withholding commas, quotations, semicolons, hyphens, and periods, DeShell is asking readers to attribute ideas and actions to certain actors and antagonists. He also is providing them with an opportunity to personally witness the construction of a synopsis that could either deliver justice or amplify the duplicity. Consider what the district attorney reveals as he describes his decision-making process on filing charges against the officer who pulled the trigger:

No as I have said he said I will carefully consider all the possible narratives but he said what I mean by possible narratives are narratives formed by facts and by formed by facts I mean confined or limited to reality I will not entertain he said narratives that warp or ignore the agreed upon reality and the truth is Detective he said that any doubt I have is directed at you I must confess that I harbor great doubt about your ability is not the right word I am altogether certain you possess the ability but perhaps temperament or disposition ideology even I have great doubt as to whether your epistemology will allow you to provide a possible narrative a narrative that is sufficiently reality based as to in fact add to the overall beyond a reasonable doubt Boulder narrative that I must finally construct he said. [End Page 72]

What the district attorney is professing in this excerpt—whether he will base his conclusions on accounts "confined or limited to reality" or on something he "will not entertain"—depends on where readers take the pauses and place the periods. It is about as edifying as the detective...