Deacon King Kong by James McBride

This is a comic novel set in the projects in Brooklyn in the 1960's that I had a hard time seeing what was so funny about it all, and I am not entirely sure that I completely get it. It is not the least bit focused on civil rights or the quantum changes bubbling up and being quelled, but rather on the reality of life for blacks every day. The story opens with Cuffy “Sportcoat” Lambkin is an elderly African American man, a deacon of the Five Ends Church in South Brooklyn that serves a project known as the Cause Houses. On a warm September morning in 1969, Sportcoat, addled by moonshine known as “King Kong,” slowly makes his way to a communal courtyard and shoots 19-year-old drug kingpin Deems Clemens in the face. It is a shocking beginning that we come to better understand by the time it all ends. Clemens lives, but in some ways this opening scene is recapitulated over and over again. Beneath the characters and comedy this is a story about how a community and its religious institutions can provide a center to keep things from falling apart completely. Sportscoat is a flawed church man and hero in a flawed country and they both need healing.