JAMES SNEAD was Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Figures of Division: William Faulkner's Major Novels and White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. He died in 1989. - KARA KEELING is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. - COLIN MacCABE is a Professor of English at Exeter University and at the University of Edinburgh. - CORNEL WEST is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

• Preface by Colin MacCabe Acknowledgements Permissions Editor's Note Introduction PART I: ESSAYS On Repetition in Black Culture Litotes and Chiasmus: Cloaking Tropes in Absalom Absalom! Misreading Race in Benito Cereno : The Silence of Babo The Vision of Desire in Death in Venice The Black Image in American Film MTV and Its Audiences: Global Utopias? On Basketball European Pedigrees/ African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed Racist Traces in Postmodernist Theory and Literature PART II: FICTION Colossus The White Cafe Fundamentals Egyptian Trains Always Come The Disappearance of Queen Nofret Index

'This long awaited book is a gem - yet still a small part of the huge corpus of the life of James Snead. He stands among the most important American intellectuals in the late 20th Century.' - Cornel West, Professor of Afro-American Studies, Princeton, USA

JAMES SNEAD was Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Figures of Division: William Faulkner's Major Novels and White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. He died in 1989. - KARA KEELING is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. - COLIN MacCABE is a Professor of English at Exeter University and at the University of Edinburgh. - CORNEL WEST is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

• Preface by Colin MacCabe Acknowledgements Permissions Editor's Note Introduction PART I: ESSAYS On Repetition in Black Culture Litotes and Chiasmus: Cloaking Tropes in Absalom Absalom! Misreading Race in Benito Cereno : The Silence of Babo The Vision of Desire in Death in Venice The Black Image in American Film MTV and Its Audiences: Global Utopias? On Basketball European Pedigrees/ African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed Racist Traces in Postmodernist Theory and Literature PART II: FICTION Colossus The White Cafe Fundamentals Egyptian Trains Always Come The Disappearance of Queen Nofret Index

'This long awaited book is a gem - yet still a small part of the huge corpus of the life of James Snead. He stands among the most important American intellectuals in the late 20th Century.' - Cornel West, Professor of Afro-American Studies, Princeton, USA

JAMES SNEAD was Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Figures of Division: William Faulkner's Major Novels and White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. He died in 1989. - KARA KEELING is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. - COLIN MacCABE is a Professor of English at Exeter University and at the University of Edinburgh. - CORNEL WEST is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

• Preface by Colin MacCabe Acknowledgements Permissions Editor's Note Introduction PART I: ESSAYS On Repetition in Black Culture Litotes and Chiasmus: Cloaking Tropes in Absalom Absalom! Misreading Race in Benito Cereno : The Silence of Babo The Vision of Desire in Death in Venice The Black Image in American Film MTV and Its Audiences: Global Utopias? On Basketball European Pedigrees/ African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed Racist Traces in Postmodernist Theory and Literature PART II: FICTION Colossus The White Cafe Fundamentals Egyptian Trains Always Come The Disappearance of Queen Nofret Index

'This long awaited book is a gem - yet still a small part of the huge corpus of the life of James Snead. He stands among the most important American intellectuals in the late 20th Century.' - Cornel West, Professor of Afro-American Studies, Princeton, USA