William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions. By Catherine Parsons Smith. With essays by Gayle Murchison and Williard Gatewood and contemporary sources from the 1930s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ISBN 0–520–21542–7 (cloth); ISBN 0–520–21543–5 (pbk.). Pp. xvi, 368. $50.00 (cloth); $19.95 (pbk.)

In this valuable new book, Catherine Parsons Smith and her colleagues offer not standard biography but richly postmodern representations of William Grant Still, a man whose essence eluded even those who knew him well. Still's friends and tormentors alike usually heard his work while fixated on various tropes of racial difference—tropes that, for black composers, lethally circumscribed their opportunities in American concert life. A Study in Contradictions may be a sensitive response to that aspect of the Still phenomenon: call it Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Composer. In adopting a Rashomon-like approach, Smith presumably hoped to advance a truer picture of Still. Mostly, it works. The disparate voices collected here illuminate their subject in ways not available to a single biographer. Readers are left somewhat on their own to compare sources, integrate critiques, and assemble a personal view of the subject. In that regard, this volume honestly depicts the state of Still research today. In addition to her own ess