Ask the Author: Jay G. Grubb
Answered Questions (2)
Jay G. Grubb
I am currently working on two novels. In The Assuredly Magnificent Paracelsus Bombastus Von Hohenheim a peasant girl in 1500s Austria, binds her breast to pass as a boy and become the assistant to the famous, and controversial, alchemist Paracelsus.
The other novel is a prequel to Land of Sins and Promise exposing Joshua Banks’ great-grandfather’s ruthless pursuit of fortune on the colonized sugar island of Monserrat in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Lots of twists and turns, with elements of ghost story, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
The other novel is a prequel to Land of Sins and Promise exposing Joshua Banks’ great-grandfather’s ruthless pursuit of fortune on the colonized sugar island of Monserrat in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Lots of twists and turns, with elements of ghost story, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Jay G. Grubb
Why this book?
It all started with a photo. Taken at Thomas Edison’s estate in 1900 at a gathering of recording artists for the Edison Cylinder Company. Forty-two people. Some men stand in the back. Other men, including rising star Albert Collins, sit cross legged on the grass. Ten performers, three of them women, get the comfort of chairs.
On one of the chairs is George Washington Johnson, the first Black recording star, a singer of “coon songs”. With Jim Crow discrimination in full bloom why is George Johnson afforded this respect? A year earlier, his fellow white musicians and comics had raised over $1,000 (about $35,000 in today’s money) for his defense in the murder of his mulatto girlfriend.
What compromises had Johnson endured to sit in such company? What mental gymnastics did the white artists perform, many engaged in the degrading race mockery or black face minstrelsy, to square their treatment of this one black man with their movement through a racist society?
I tried to make sense of the contradictions and complexities by viewing it all through a complete outsider; a barely royal second son of a Yorkshire baron. The twist is he may have more skin in the game than he could ever imagine.
It all started with a photo. Taken at Thomas Edison’s estate in 1900 at a gathering of recording artists for the Edison Cylinder Company. Forty-two people. Some men stand in the back. Other men, including rising star Albert Collins, sit cross legged on the grass. Ten performers, three of them women, get the comfort of chairs.
On one of the chairs is George Washington Johnson, the first Black recording star, a singer of “coon songs”. With Jim Crow discrimination in full bloom why is George Johnson afforded this respect? A year earlier, his fellow white musicians and comics had raised over $1,000 (about $35,000 in today’s money) for his defense in the murder of his mulatto girlfriend.
What compromises had Johnson endured to sit in such company? What mental gymnastics did the white artists perform, many engaged in the degrading race mockery or black face minstrelsy, to square their treatment of this one black man with their movement through a racist society?
I tried to make sense of the contradictions and complexities by viewing it all through a complete outsider; a barely royal second son of a Yorkshire baron. The twist is he may have more skin in the game than he could ever imagine.
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