Bob Marley: The Untold Story

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The story begins before the election the 1976 election. Thankfully Paul, my husband, listened to the first half of this book 'with' me. It was supportive to have conversations I was able to follow the Jamaican patois from years of listening to reggae musicians like Bob Marley and the Wailers and Jimmy Cliff and from having a few Jamaican acquaintances in New York City. I certainly learned a whole lot of Jamaican patois from the audio, including how to curse in Jamaican. I think that Marlon James has set the bar for post-modern fiction in this second decade of the 21st century, that his Man Booker Prize of 2015 was more than warranted, and that he is of supreme talent as a writer and impersonator in his writing. He alludes in his afterword that he had enough material for a second book. I will be the first in line for that one.

This strength is a possible weakness though, marketing-wise: I don't think this book is translatable. I doubt it can be done without losing the all-important context of the story. The Jamaican Patois is the identity of this book, translating it into anything else would be equal to killing that identity. And his voice…it is hard to describe the seeing-ness of his voice. It seems almost trite to say he got the woman thing. He got everybody’s thing. James says Nina Burgess was the voice that most clearly expressed what he as an author was thinking, but it was Kim Clarke speaking in February of 1979 (the first voice in a section called Shadow Dancin’) that broke my heart in two. Besides, who trusts a man who drinks hot water with lime instead of whiskey or even coffee? What's next, peeing sitting down?" Sitting in the middle of this book is someone whose music has never brought me any joy, Bob Marley. While I’m not a fan of his, I really appreciated his phantom like presence in this novel. He’s there in almost everything that happens, either directly because of actions he is taking or else from the fall out of the attempted assassination on his life. He’s a voice calling out for peace and unity in Jamaica while at the same time has a dark presence in the book that is almost as ruthless as the triggerman Josey Wales. The fact that he’s there but almost never actually physically there in the story gives him a wraith like quality that works in interesting ways with this book and its structure.Like a breath of fresh air, even with the rich aroma of mountain 'erb. Timothy White's 'Catch a Fire-The Life of Bob Marley' is wholly, and perhaps holy, unlike any other biography in the 'poptastic' genre that I have ever read. Marley and Livingston devoted much of their time to music. Under the guidance of Joe Higgs, Marley worked on improving his singing abilities. He met another student of Higgs, Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) who would play an important role in Marley's career. The Wailers A Brief History of Seven Killings should not be evaluated based on its supposed brevity, nor on the amount of killings featured in the book. The title could be the source of misguided expectations in this regard, as it is being overly modest on both counts. But if you're expecting a clever, fast, insightful, colourful and authentic novel, you won't be disappointed.

The book also describes the incident--apparently also true--in which he's given the gift of a pair of cowboy boots with a needle---possibly containing a carcinogenic chemical---in the right toe, so when Marley, who loved cowboy boots, put them on, his toe, which had previously been damaged in a soccer accident, bled profusely. Some people wonder if this incident was connected with his death of cancer at age 36---it started in his right toe and spread to his vital organs---and there's some speculation that this "gift" came from the CIA. Carl Colby, the son of the late CIA Director, William Colby, showed up at Marley's house as the band prepared for the Smile Jamaica concert. Colby claimed to be a member of the film crew. There is a character, Mark Lansing, that might be a fictionalized version of Carl Colby. The presence of Death is overwhelming, which will be less surprising because that usually comes with the killings. This book opens with a dead person talking, by ways of introduction, which didn't strike a big chord with me at first. That intro actually left me completely clueless. But the way Marlon James gives the sometimes very recently deceased a voice is powerful beyond compare. You'll look into the minds of people about to die or just having died and I can tell you, those thoughts strike home.

Because it is a biography, it gets average marks for the sheer amount of data available, especially in the appendices, but readers should practice skepticism when reading it. Unfortunately, it's largest negative comes from the fact that most of the story ignores Marley's musical inspiration and methodology in favor of secondary stories full of obvious speculation, making one wonder if the author actually cared about the musician's music in the first place. I was very disappointed with this book. After reading it, I have a pretty good idea of what Marley's childhood was like, a hazy picture of his adult life but no understanding at all of how a poor man from a third-world country was able to popularize a genre of music that was almost universally disdained in most of the world. The author populates his beautifully painted landscape with a multitude of different characters, some living and some ghostly, all of whom are fleshed out, believable and speak with unique voices... and it felt like most of them took a turn at bat, narration-wise. I still feel like I have a distinctly un-heavenly host of shades living in my skull.