MFS Modern Fiction Studies

The challenge of theorizing the symbiotic relation between jazz, collage, and fiction lies in the ontological differences between sound, visuality, and text. In Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture, Robert G. O'Meally reconciles these differences by staging a "polygeneric jam session" (7) in which artistic genres influence and inform one another, thus demonstrating that the borders between art forms are more porous than they appear.

To show how generic exchange shapes African American culture, O'Meally brings together an ensemble of interdisciplinary artists. This ensemble features the musician and collagist Louis Armstrong; the visual artist, author, and songwriter Romare Bearden; and the novelist, essayist, and former musician Ralph Ellison. Smaller accompaniment parts go to the composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, the novelist Toni Morrison, and the neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

O'Meally shows how each of these artists drew on the improvisatory nature of jazz and the layering techniques of collage in the spirit of "antagonistic cooperation," the structuring principle of his book. Antagonistic cooperation is best understood as the push and pull of playing "with and against … one another" (2), a mode of collaboration and competition exemplified by the jazz jam session. He traces this concept through interviews and essays by Ellison and Albert Murray before attributing it to the social scientist William Graham Sumner, who first used it in a 1906 sociological study. As O'Meally describes it, antagonistic cooperation has a democratic edge; it denotes a mode of community building in which divergent voices check and balance each other to forge new paths forward.

Chapter 1 theorizes antagonistic cooperation in national democratic terms. Arguing that jazz music's most radical demand is that "we learn to listen to one another" (20), O'Meally encourages readers to abandon linear thinking and to engage in the jazzlike interaction of call and response. Much of the chapter revolves around Ellison's 1956 short story, "A Coupla Scalped Indians," a bildungsroman in which two young and recently circumcised boys have a sexually charged encounter with an eccentric healer named Aunt Mackie on the way home from a carnival. Interspersing his argument with analyses of Invisible Man, O'Meally shows how Black music teaches the boys—and the reader—to negotiate tight spaces and outmaneuver [End Page 724] (racial) hostility. The chapter then celebrates Armstrong's influence on mid-century blues and jazz musicians, as well as his mentorship of up-and-comers during "cutting sessions" (47), to further align the jam session with the dual act of thinking for oneself and collaborating with others.

These notes on Armstrong's jam-session persona set the stage for chapter 2, which explores some of the musician's complex public performances, including his 1955 appearance alongside the actor Robert Merrill on The Ed Sullivan Show. Challenging the well-worn idea that Armstrong was an "Uncle Tom" (52), O'Meally describes him as a man who loved to create new versions of himself—in short, a living collage. Through a characterization of Armstrong as the personification of collage and an avid collagist, the chapter reconceptualizes Black social life: "I define Black selfhood and community as collagelike in their tears, frayed edges, and sometimes uneasy fits and textures—the patches of bold color that work, although we can't say precisely how—that are part of the fabric of personal and group culture" (61). O'Meally further explores the complex layering work of collage in Bearden's two-part Profiles series and his Odyssey series, then turns to Morrison's novel Jazz as a model of literary collaging that incorporates the layers and changes of jazz music.

Chapter 3 focuses on Bearden's use of an "open corner," or blank space at the edge of a canvas left unfinished to prompt viewers to participate in the work's completion. O'Meally construes the open corner as "an aesthetic device that reflects a robust will to create loopholes of retreat and open-ended, inclusive communities" (89) and "spaces of freedom," clarifying that "the open corner is an invitation, a will to draw us together with a shining sense of possibility and responsibility." The chapter traces this sense of Black imagination and freedom through an encyclopedic range of creative spaces, including jazz (Earl Hines, Ellington, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk), dance (Johnny Hudgins), New York City (in works by Ellison, Morrison, and James Baldwin) and New Orleans (especially Congo Square), the club (Zora Neale Hurston's "jook houses"), and literature (William Shakespeare and Mark Twain).

The final two chapters return to Armstrong and his figuration as an Uncle Tom. In chapter 4, O'Meally argues that Armstrong's frequently criticized blackface performance as Zulu King during the 1949 Mardi Gras parade is best interpreted as a humorous yet respectful embrace of the Black working-class New Orleans neighborhoods in which the musician was born. Drawing on theories of American humor by Ellison and Henry James, he theorizes "Armstrongian humor" (118) as a joyous mode of antagonistic cooperation in which [End Page 725] laughter is democratizing because it "goes both ways" (166), letting us "laugh at one another and at ourselves." To further complicate readers' perceptions of Armstrong, O'Meally shows how collages by Bearden and Basquiat wrestle with Armstrong's image, neither condemning him outright as a minstrel nor embracing him uncritically as a king.

The last chapter focuses on Armstrong in the 1961 film Paris Blues. O'Meally begins by discussing the film's development. Sam Shaw's original script told the story of Bearden's experiences as a Black American painter in the City of Light after WWII; however, its ambitious racial and gender commentary underwent so many revisions and redactions that it became a story about jazz, was developed into a novel, and was then whitewashed by Hollywood to produce a Black-white "buddy" movie starring Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as American expatriate musicians seeking jazz greatness in Paris. Armstrong's cameo as Wild Man Moore has been the subject of critique, but O'Meally argues that the film's score—composed by Ellison and featuring Armstrong on two tracks—sounds "unruly Black cosmopolitanism" (168), or an ecstatic Black voice that recuperates the racial and gender politics of Shaw's original script.

Some readers may be unconvinced by Antagonistic Cooperation's faith in national democratic ideals, such as O'Meally's calls for a "truly United States of America" (14) where we can all "hang together despite our unending differences—even when it hurts." Such faith reflects an optimism that is unsupported by the United States' history of racial-patriarchal hegemony. In that spirit, it is worth noting that the book's ensemble is dominated by men, Morrison being the only woman who receives sustained attention.

But Antagonistic Cooperation is comprehensive when it comes to Armstrong, Bearden, and Ellison. In every chapter, O'Meally introduces something that cannot be found elsewhere, such as little-known archival materials (like the unfinished 1970s artists' book in which Bearden, Shaw, and Murray remixed Paris Blues) and anecdotes from his extraordinary career in jazz studies (such as jokes that Ellison told him). Although some of the book's broader arguments about Armstrong, Bearden, and Ellison may already be familiar to scholars of jazz, Black visual culture, and African American literature, in these moments, O'Meally proves himself a formidable archivist of Black creative expression. [End Page 726]