Radio Golf
by August Wilson
Book Summary Information
Author: August WilsonForeword: Suzan-Lori Parks
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-01
ISBN: 1559363088
Number of pages: 120
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Book Reviews of Radio Golf
Book Review: ...And The Story Ended?
Summary: 5 Stars
By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson's Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson's work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of "Gem Of The Ocean" (the first play chronologically in the cycle).
In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in "Fences" when he (correctly) stated that there should been "no too early" in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom passed on as means to survive in racially-hardened America. In "Radio Golf" this task falls to Roosevelt Hicks, a man who has been a beneficiary of some affirmative action by the white establishment (as always not directly present in the story line as it unfolds), when he candidly and ironically notes that when heading to the golf club with his white associates he has to pass out business cards so that others do not think that he is the caddy.
That says more in a couple of sentences about a central aspect of black experience in America than many manifestos, treatises or sociological/psychological studies. That Wilson can weave that home truth into a play of less than one hundred pages and drive the plot line of a story that deals with the contradiction between black aspirations to "make it in America", at least for those who fall into W.E.B. Dubois' "talented tenth", and that nagging feeling of selling out for a `mess of pottage' to the mainstream white culture. Given the continuing hard fate for most blacks in housing, education and jobs today Brother Wilson is on to something. As I have also noted previously- that, my friends, is still something to consider in the "post-racial" Obamiad. We shall see.
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