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Such Sweet Thunder: A Novel
“For those of us who are used to handling manuscripts — sometimes to examine them line by line, more often to flip through the pages — it’s a privileged moment indeed when we realize that we are dealing with a text destined for that small shelf of memorable literature certain to be printed and reprinted over the years. The telltale signs, for me, are trembling hands, eyeglasses clouding over — the psychological equivalent of a thunderclap. The book you have in hand now provided all of these emotions. ”-- From The Foreword By Herbert R. Lottman
SUCH SWEET THUNDER opens in 1944, somewhere in France, near the fighting. Amerigo Jones, a young foot soldier, is invited by a buddy to bed down with a French girl who has put herself at the service of a black United States infantry unit. But when Amerigo half-reluctantly goes to her he sees not a hardened prostitute, but a sad and bewildered innocent. In a daze, he watches her features take on the aspect of Cosima Thornton, the great obsession of his youth in his native Kansas City. This moment of connection serves as the springboard for a unique and compelling novel that deserves a place of prominence in American literature. Amerigo drifts back in time, so far back he recalls suckling at his mother’s breast. We see life through the eyes of the boy at each stage of his development as he struggles for independence, respect, understanding from his friends and elders, and above all, love.
Set during the segregated 1920s and ’30s, Such Sweet Thunder is laced throughout with references to the struggle for justice and freedom, with many allusions to the white man and the white man’s strange, brutal, and just plain crazy ways. But Amerigo also learns about sexuality, love, art, literature, and life itself — the standard themes of the European bildungsroman. Amerigo is a dreamer, and yet it is clear that many of his dreams will go unfulfilled, not because of who he is but because of the color of his skin.
Such Sweet Thunder is a jazz song of a book, a river of sound, something like an epic poem. Carter dedicates the novel to Duke Ellington, and it is replete with references to the influential musicians of the Kansas City jazz scene of his youth — Count Basie, Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, and the young Charlie Parker. And there are references to Louis Armstrong, whose scat singing is a lot like the extended dialogue riffs between the book’s characters. Jazz musicians in Kansas City during the Depression created an influential big band sound, and in a way Carter has structured his book similarly. It has an orchestral feel — it’s big; it’s got sweep; the characters are like musical instruments, carrying their own themes; there are solos, set pieces, drama, comedy, and pathos — and all are arranged to transport the reader on an evocative and emotional journey.
Carter has written an unprecedented literary portrait of African American life, but at the heart of this grandly told story is a boy, Amerigo Jones, full of life and humor and as desirous and deserving of love as any child. Part of the greatness of Carter’s achievement is his ability to write the way a young boy truly experiences the world. And his depiction of the noisy, jostling, mysterious, fascinating world rich with warmth and fun, danger, and uncertainty in which Amerigo must find his way is as overwhelming and unforgettable as any to be found in literature.
SUCH SWEET THUNDER opens in 1944, somewhere in France, near the fighting. Amerigo Jones, a young foot soldier, is invited by a buddy to bed down with a French girl who has put herself at the service of a black United States infantry unit. But when Amerigo half-reluctantly goes to her he sees not a hardened prostitute, but a sad and bewildered innocent. In a daze, he watches her features take on the aspect of Cosima Thornton, the great obsession of his youth in his native Kansas City. This moment of connection serves as the springboard for a unique and compelling novel that deserves a place of prominence in American literature. Amerigo drifts back in time, so far back he recalls suckling at his mother’s breast. We see life through the eyes of the boy at each stage of his development as he struggles for independence, respect, understanding from his friends and elders, and above all, love.
Set during the segregated 1920s and ’30s, Such Sweet Thunder is laced throughout with references to the struggle for justice and freedom, with many allusions to the white man and the white man’s strange, brutal, and just plain crazy ways. But Amerigo also learns about sexuality, love, art, literature, and life itself — the standard themes of the European bildungsroman. Amerigo is a dreamer, and yet it is clear that many of his dreams will go unfulfilled, not because of who he is but because of the color of his skin.
Such Sweet Thunder is a jazz song of a book, a river of sound, something like an epic poem. Carter dedicates the novel to Duke Ellington, and it is replete with references to the influential musicians of the Kansas City jazz scene of his youth — Count Basie, Jay McShann, Big Joe Turner, and the young Charlie Parker. And there are references to Louis Armstrong, whose scat singing is a lot like the extended dialogue riffs between the book’s characters. Jazz musicians in Kansas City during the Depression created an influential big band sound, and in a way Carter has structured his book similarly. It has an orchestral feel — it’s big; it’s got sweep; the characters are like musical instruments, carrying their own themes; there are solos, set pieces, drama, comedy, and pathos — and all are arranged to transport the reader on an evocative and emotional journey.
Carter has written an unprecedented literary portrait of African American life, but at the heart of this grandly told story is a boy, Amerigo Jones, full of life and humor and as desirous and deserving of love as any child. Part of the greatness of Carter’s achievement is his ability to write the way a young boy truly experiences the world. And his depiction of the noisy, jostling, mysterious, fascinating world rich with warmth and fun, danger, and uncertainty in which Amerigo must find his way is as overwhelming and unforgettable as any to be found in literature.
657 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2003
8 people are currently reading
199 people want to read
About the author
Vincent O. Carter
3 books4 followersVincent O. Carter was born in Kansas City in 1924. At seventeen he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 and took part in the drive toward Paris. Back in the United States, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill, earning a college degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and spending a graduate year at Wayne University in Detroit. Eventually he returned to Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam before settling in Bern, where he spent the rest of his life in a sort of self-imposed exile. He died there in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 27, 2014
Set in the 1930s this novel follows the life of Amerigo Jones and his mom and dad, Viola and Rutherford.A close family with the challenges of racial prejudice, low paying jobs,due to the depression and living in a low income neighborhood riddled with crime. However, he is also surrounded by his loving parents , various relatives and neighbors that form a support group that allows him to grow and develops into a caring individual. Written in heavy black dialect we are introduced into a world that we as readers will probably find foreign and enlightening. I enjoyed and suffered with Amerigo in this very special read.
May 2, 2023
What a gorgeous, complicated and in some ways difficult novel written in the 1960s, but not published till 2003. It's written generally chronologically as a 500 page flashback to Amerigo's childhood in Kansas City after a few pages of his experiences in France in 1944 as a soldier in the US Army. It's really autobiographical fiction. The author, Vincent O. Carter, a black man, is Amerigo Jones in the novel. He grew up in Kansas City and the city is, in a real sense, a character in this story. The chronology gets a little mixed up at times - after all, Amerigo's childhood is written from the memory of a soldier during a respite in the fighting of WWII. Of course events of the 4th grade get mixed up with events that really occurred in the 6th grade. And in many places, Amerigo's thoughts relate to past events without warning. So you have flashbacks to Amerigo as a child, who in turn has flashbacks to his earlier childhood. But that's really ok. My memory works that way, too.
Those who know anything at all about KC, know that in the 1920s and 30s, it was a wide open city. BBQ didn't make its mark there till the 40s and 50s, but it was a major center for jazz. Count Basie, Charlie Parker and many others got their starts there. With a corrupt government under boss Tom Pendergast, almost all was allowed. Unfortunately, crime occurred much too often and Carter does a great job of drawing the picture of the good with the bad, including segregation and blatant racism.
After finishing this novel, I wanted to know what happened to Amerigo (Carter) after the war, but alas no sequel was ever written. This is not a quick read. I would recommend, if you do decide to take on this great work of auto fiction, that you read slowly at first and pay attention to the description of the many characters that make up this novel. It can get complicated, but it will pay off as you go along. My main gripe is that the words "Kansas City" are never actually mentioned in this novel. It is obvious that is the city in which this story takes place, but what could be the reason for this omission? I hope someday to find out, but I enjoyed this book nonetheless.
Those who know anything at all about KC, know that in the 1920s and 30s, it was a wide open city. BBQ didn't make its mark there till the 40s and 50s, but it was a major center for jazz. Count Basie, Charlie Parker and many others got their starts there. With a corrupt government under boss Tom Pendergast, almost all was allowed. Unfortunately, crime occurred much too often and Carter does a great job of drawing the picture of the good with the bad, including segregation and blatant racism.
After finishing this novel, I wanted to know what happened to Amerigo (Carter) after the war, but alas no sequel was ever written. This is not a quick read. I would recommend, if you do decide to take on this great work of auto fiction, that you read slowly at first and pay attention to the description of the many characters that make up this novel. It can get complicated, but it will pay off as you go along. My main gripe is that the words "Kansas City" are never actually mentioned in this novel. It is obvious that is the city in which this story takes place, but what could be the reason for this omission? I hope someday to find out, but I enjoyed this book nonetheless.
August 22, 2025
Real Rating: 3.75* of five
The Publisher Says: This must-read rediscovery, published in an elegant and unabridged paperback edition with a new foreword, is a literary masterpiece poised to take its rightful place in the American literary canon.
Such Sweet Thunder immerses readers in the life of a precocious infant, Amerigo Jones, and then tells the story of his first 18 years as he becomes aware of the adult world, from racism and crime to falling in love. All the while, in one of the most moving homages to parents ever to appear in literature, Amerigo is protected by Viola and Rutherford, who are loving and, mostly, even-tempered, but also desperately young — teenagers themselves when Amerigo is born — and poor.
When it was finally published in 2003, 40 years after Carter completed it and 20 years after he died, Critics hailed the novel’s “unflinching condemnation of a society that rejects bright, eager Black children” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).
This “colossal work of fiction” (The Kansas City Star) and “vibrant portrait of African-American life” (New York Times) is set in an era marred by racial segregation and relentless, daily injustices and yet renders with deep appreciation and artistry a time and place enriched by a widely influential African American culture and a fierce feeling for family and community.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A truly magisterial story of Black life and love, family first and last, all set at the dark historical juncture of the 1930s made still darker by racism. No wonder no one would take this on! It's too honest to make white people feel good and virtuous. It's a weirdly lyrical storytelling voice, one that keeps you reading...it's a really dark story, so that carrot leads when reader fatigue sets in.
I'm not five-starring it because it is much too long...650+ pages...and, like Ellison's Invisible Man, overly recursive. It vitiates the kind of pacing that makes the pages fly by. YMMV, of course, and no matter what, you owe yourself a long look at the available ebook sample before you pass it up. It's possible you'll ring like a freshly struck bell at first read.
Pushkin Press Classics requests $13.99 for an ebook. Well worth the spondulix for the right reader.
The Publisher Says: This must-read rediscovery, published in an elegant and unabridged paperback edition with a new foreword, is a literary masterpiece poised to take its rightful place in the American literary canon.
Such Sweet Thunder immerses readers in the life of a precocious infant, Amerigo Jones, and then tells the story of his first 18 years as he becomes aware of the adult world, from racism and crime to falling in love. All the while, in one of the most moving homages to parents ever to appear in literature, Amerigo is protected by Viola and Rutherford, who are loving and, mostly, even-tempered, but also desperately young — teenagers themselves when Amerigo is born — and poor.
When it was finally published in 2003, 40 years after Carter completed it and 20 years after he died, Critics hailed the novel’s “unflinching condemnation of a society that rejects bright, eager Black children” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).
This “colossal work of fiction” (The Kansas City Star) and “vibrant portrait of African-American life” (New York Times) is set in an era marred by racial segregation and relentless, daily injustices and yet renders with deep appreciation and artistry a time and place enriched by a widely influential African American culture and a fierce feeling for family and community.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A truly magisterial story of Black life and love, family first and last, all set at the dark historical juncture of the 1930s made still darker by racism. No wonder no one would take this on! It's too honest to make white people feel good and virtuous. It's a weirdly lyrical storytelling voice, one that keeps you reading...it's a really dark story, so that carrot leads when reader fatigue sets in.
I'm not five-starring it because it is much too long...650+ pages...and, like Ellison's Invisible Man, overly recursive. It vitiates the kind of pacing that makes the pages fly by. YMMV, of course, and no matter what, you owe yourself a long look at the available ebook sample before you pass it up. It's possible you'll ring like a freshly struck bell at first read.
Pushkin Press Classics requests $13.99 for an ebook. Well worth the spondulix for the right reader.
March 14, 2024
In the 1930s, Amerigo Jones takes us readers through his world beyond the safety of his house. Family members and surrounding neighbors reveal the complexity, kindness, and cruelty of his Kansas City community. Living through challenges and adventures at home and within a few miles surrounding his house, he is not content with the confines his mother wants him to enjoy as long as possible. Ah, but he does wander beyond all that is safe, and he finds a world of injustice, innovation, violence, and often beauty. Amerigo is a young boy who learns that both potential violence and potential protectiveness are within him. I found him to be fascinating, multi-faceted, and relatable even into the 21st Century.
Oddly both comforting and disconcerting, this bildungsroman narrative led me into neighborhoods here in my home. It was refreshing and reassuring to recognize the many stories many older Kansas Citians shared of their lives; the power of their stories was just as deep as Vincent Carter's prose. This is bittersweet because so many of the locations, parks, and institutions disappeared or were displaced because of various interstates and almost a century of "progress." Much to my surprise, I was sad to recognize how much we have stayed the same in terms of pain, failed hopes, and ongoing struggles. I want to acknowledge that I learned of this book through the Black Archives of Mid-America and the digital collections of the Kansas City Library. Now that I've both read this novel and listened to the Audible recording, I will find the excerpts to share with others (much of the language will need to be contextualized), notably some of my college students. Perhaps they'll find themselves exploring their world and their own stories.
Oddly both comforting and disconcerting, this bildungsroman narrative led me into neighborhoods here in my home. It was refreshing and reassuring to recognize the many stories many older Kansas Citians shared of their lives; the power of their stories was just as deep as Vincent Carter's prose. This is bittersweet because so many of the locations, parks, and institutions disappeared or were displaced because of various interstates and almost a century of "progress." Much to my surprise, I was sad to recognize how much we have stayed the same in terms of pain, failed hopes, and ongoing struggles. I want to acknowledge that I learned of this book through the Black Archives of Mid-America and the digital collections of the Kansas City Library. Now that I've both read this novel and listened to the Audible recording, I will find the excerpts to share with others (much of the language will need to be contextualized), notably some of my college students. Perhaps they'll find themselves exploring their world and their own stories.
December 26, 2024
Book accessed through NetGalley.
Described in the introduction as being similar to Ulysses by James Joyce, with its stream of consciousness writing and detailed description of places and people.
The book stars of very strong, with vivid imagery and beautiful language, as Amerigo Jones shelters away for the night somewhere in France during WW2. Here he gets reminded of his past and disappears into himself to look at his life right from the very beginning. He sees his parents, grandparents and other family members talk among themselves and he eventually becomes himself as a young boy.
Due to this magical transformation and transportation I would definitely say it is worth rereading the book, at least the beginning part, once you have finished it. There is vivid imagery and you really feel like you can see what is happening, but it is definitely a bit disorientating. The dialogue is very loose, free and flowing - and sometimes it feels almost like reading a play more than anything else.
This book gets a medium rating from me, because even though there were many parts I liked (and I felt way warmer towards it at the end and when rereading the beginning) I found the experience to be overall taxing. It has no chapters, very few obvious breaks and the passage of time isn't always clear. It is definitely not a casual read.
Described in the introduction as being similar to Ulysses by James Joyce, with its stream of consciousness writing and detailed description of places and people.
The book stars of very strong, with vivid imagery and beautiful language, as Amerigo Jones shelters away for the night somewhere in France during WW2. Here he gets reminded of his past and disappears into himself to look at his life right from the very beginning. He sees his parents, grandparents and other family members talk among themselves and he eventually becomes himself as a young boy.
Due to this magical transformation and transportation I would definitely say it is worth rereading the book, at least the beginning part, once you have finished it. There is vivid imagery and you really feel like you can see what is happening, but it is definitely a bit disorientating. The dialogue is very loose, free and flowing - and sometimes it feels almost like reading a play more than anything else.
This book gets a medium rating from me, because even though there were many parts I liked (and I felt way warmer towards it at the end and when rereading the beginning) I found the experience to be overall taxing. It has no chapters, very few obvious breaks and the passage of time isn't always clear. It is definitely not a casual read.
October 29, 2007
update: I'm giving up on this one...
so far, I'm very confused about the beginning, one minute we're talking about a soldier, the next we're walking through the life of that soldier from infancy...what gives?
so far, I'm very confused about the beginning, one minute we're talking about a soldier, the next we're walking through the life of that soldier from infancy...what gives?
April 18, 2022
the narrative kind of throws you around in the beginning so I was just starting to get into the swing of things when there was like a three-page description of the main character killing a kitten. you lost me man.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews