For the black author, the onus of writing a novel in the 21^st century carries a portentous historic weight. The African American novelist cannot escape the legacy of writers like Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin, whose names have dominated our literary map since World War II. Today these literary giants continue to cast a daunting critical shadow over emerging black writers; we listen for a new voice that acknowledges the mantel of our troubled past, but also articulates the subtleties of our contemporary struggle for social and economic progress.

One writer who is particularly well versed in history but also cognizant of his responsibility to speak to today’s reader is Don Peavy. In his new book, Disaster Among the Heavens, Peavy simultaneously engages the ghosts of black history and also looks forward, suggesting an ethical manifesto meant to bridge conflicting American ideologies. Peavy is a historian, a cultural critic, a conspiracy theorist, and a philosopher all at once. His choice for the setting of his tale is the “ground zero” of modern black consciousness: the 60’s. With a deft eye and an attentive ear, Peavy recreates the sights and sounds of that tumultuous decade, when our nation appeared to spin out of control, but curiously looked for answers to its moral quandary from two Southerners – a black Baptist minister and a white Texas politician.

It is the latter figure that dominates the thread of Peavy’s tale. Lyndon Johnson finds himself hounded by all the threats we remember so well, including the ongoing conflict in Vietnam and the equally dark drama of the inner city. But added to what we know about the 60’s

(at least what we think we know, suggests Peavy) comes a perilous dramatic twist: while LBJ fights communist threats abroad and cultural disenfranchisement at home, he also must deal with an insurrection -- a ferociously dangerous black uprising, cynically labeled as “the revolution” by our government’s intelligence agencies.

Who is responsible for this “revolution”? Ironically, it turns out that America’s network of spy operatives, in particular one black agent identified only as “the Assistant” (a clever allusion to Ralph Ellison’s epic study of invisibility), fosters potential world chaos. Peavy’s story of violence and subterfuge condemns a contingent of players who subscribe to various creeds, but lack the courage or strength to act on those beliefs. The Assistant is the only character who acts and knows why he acts. Spiraling events and layer upon layer of deception take us from Washington to Nashville to Colorado, where the NORAD missile defense system becomes the battleground for an apocalyptic struggle between blacks and whites.

Peavy knows his cultural artifacts, and his satiric nod towards film masters like Stanley Kubrick is adept. Lyndon Johnson is the antithesis of the President we meet in Dr. Strangelove; Peavy’s leader is blustery, obscene, and ruthless, in direct contrast to Peter Seller’s memorable turn as the mild-mannered, ineffectual leader. But Peavy’s point about American presidents is the same as Kubrick’s: real or imagined, in their hour of desperation, our leaders are malleable and vacuous. Look inside the man who ostensibly conceived our “Great Society,” and you will find a leader forced to act humanely by adverse circumstances. Faced with a revolt from a band of black activists who threaten a nuclear holocaust, Johnson wilts under pressure and trumpets a newfound, empathic philosophy. American leaders may eventually act, says Peavy, but only because of dire necessity or coercion, never as the result of principle.

So a titanic struggle is waged between two less than heroic characters -- one a beleaguered white political opportunist, the other a self-serving, power-driven black. The winner (or at least the survivor) is no surprise, given the lessons of history these past five decades. But Don Peavy’s training as both lawyer and minister enables him to pass judgment on the American scene with scathing indictments. Peavy’s vibrant characters, including a disillusioned CIA agent, a loving (and willing) prostitute, and a Johnnie-come-lately revolutionary who doubles as a doctor, are all testaments to the pervasive American appetites for power and lust. Each is characterized by passions that know few limits; in the end, each is consumed by a personal creed that emphasizes self-aggrandizement far more than collective social need. From Peavy’s perspective, we Americans are a wholly intriguing and colorful lot, but our motivation is dubious, our direction unknown.

Disaster Among the Heavens intrigues the reader on several levels. Peavy’s contention that Americans may never know the truth of their political history appeals to any red-blooded lover of conspiracy theory. So, too, his illustrious troupe of musical, literary, and pop icons reminds us that too often we venerate figures, rather than deeds or ideas. And Peavy’s central dilemma is unmistakable: How will America, a country founded on and perpetuated by innumerable kinds of violence, ever escape a catastrophic and bloody end?

Peavy’s crowning irony is the absence of pacifist Martin Luther King, Jr. during the revolution. Co-opted to leave our shores for Africa on a humanitarian mission, King becomes another pawn in Johnson’s conspiratorial response to anarchy. Without our legendary activist to serve as moral compass, Peavy summons the guiding spirits of previous black luminaries, like W.E.B. Du Bois, whose prediction that the “color line” would be the central challenge of our era is only bolstered by cataclysmic events that portend an irreconcilable racial divide. Caught in a perpetual circle of violence and deception, with no moral touchstone at hand for deliverance, America quickly moves to the brink of extinction.

Peavy’s larger view of our homeland, like that of his central characters, is decidedly ambivalent. Despite its historic pattern of carnage and racism, Peavy acknowledges that America has managed to survive – even, on some levels, to thrive. It is not our cultural or economic capacities to endure that are in doubt, though. For Don Peavy, it is the sum of our ethical shortcomings these past fifty years that matters. As his narrative concludes, and it is clear that in spite of ourselves we do survive the ultimate apocalyptic threat, the writer looks at the promise of the 60’s, and bluntly wonders, “Have we become a Great Society?” Peavy’s morality tale suggests that our antagonistic belief systems, coupled with our materialistic, individualistic drives, cast a dark pall on our legacy to the world. For this African American author, who is steeped in the contradictory experiences of political oppression and redemptive spirituality, the potential of all Americans, no matter their color, hangs in the balance.

Bruce Gilman, PhD.

Professor of English

Saddleback College