And against Dennis’s advice, Alfred continues to haphazardly lend people money in an attempt to connect. Nonetheless, said people continue to beg him for money. “We all begin as hunters uncertain and fumbling until we gain sufficient confidence in our weapons and equipment so that we can afford rest, and let others seek him out.” Alfred is deeply upset by the fact that the people never pay him back, nor acknowledge him in the streets.
We first meet the hunters of the story, our narrator Dennis, a young black man and, an acquaintance, Alfred, a wealthy gay white man, who’s painfully lonely and desperate for connection.
Hue and cry james alan mcpherson publish date full#
Some of them want to get used by you.” This dynamic, between the users and the used of this world, is what McPherson leverages to build the beat for “All the Lonely People.” With McPherson’s expert choice of characters, spread across the full range of socioeconomic strata, gender, race and sexual orientation, a new social-ecosystem, emerges based on the dichotomy of Hunters and the Hunted: “The idea of social classes is a mythic invention, I suspect, manufactured like religion by successful hunters who have found their prey and who want to maintain what they have already won from other hunters.” “Everybody’s looking for something…Some of them want to use you. I hear the lyrics from the Eurythmics’s song “Sweet dreams” ringing in my head. After rereading “All the Lonely People” from his soon to be reissued short story collection Hue and Cry, it appears these characters are searching for the same things. I’d often haunt his office to pick his brain and he’d always encourage me to be into “regular things,” like having good conversations with friends, reading good books, or taking walks, the simple things that make us all feel connected, creative, and alive. I studied with Jim while attending The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. James received some of literature’s most prestigious prizes, namely being the first black man to win the Pulitzer Prize, though the awards did not define his identity.
Anyone who knew or studied with James Alan McPherson can attest that he exuded a rare warmth and generous brand of humanity to almost all that crossed his path.