{"id":6591,"date":"2019-04-21T14:18:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T20:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=6591"},"modified":"2019-04-21T14:18:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T20:18:07","slug":"the-ballad-of-black-tom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=6591","title":{"rendered":"The Ballad of Black Tom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6595\" src=\"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL-188x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"188\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL-188x300.jpg 188w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL-768x1229.jpg 768w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL-640x1024.jpg 640w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL-624x998.jpg 624w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/71AEUjQUIlL.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/>As a part of the ongoing series, Chris Reads Books Years Past When People Were Recommending Them, sponsored in this case by Tor who had the ebook on offer for free a few months ago, I present: a review of <a title=\"The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, at Amazon\" href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Ballad-Black-Tom-Victor-LaValle-ebook\/dp\/B0166PX1Z8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Ballad of Black Tom<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I guess this is what they call a novella. I&#8217;m not sure how many pages it weighs in at, since the Kindle only tells me what percent is left, but it&#8217;s maybe a hundred? Anyway, it focuses on a 1920s Harlem hustler musician who attracts the wrong kind of attention from, well, pretty much everyone. A creepy voodoo(?) lady in Queens, a beleaguered millionaire in Brooklyn, and of course the cops. Oh, and casual 1920s racism of the type unintentionally documented in the works of HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard, who I should say both figure heavily in the thematic ground the work covers.<\/p>\n<p>I accidentally understand from research that this is the story <em>The Horror at Red Hook<\/em>, retold from a different perspective. This reminds me that I want to read more Lovecraft, while simultaneously cautioning me that, man, maybe I don&#8217;t want to after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a part of the ongoing series, Chris Reads Books Years Past When People Were Recommending Them, sponsored in this case by Tor who had the ebook on offer for free a few months ago, I present: a review of The Ballad of Black Tom. I guess this is what they call a novella. I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30,1261,1321],"class_list":["post-6591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-horror","tag-kindle","tag-tor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6591"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}