Victory Is Assured: Uncollected Writings of Stanley Crouch - Hardcover

by Stanley Crouch (Author), Glenn Mott (Editor), Jelani Cobb (Introduction by)

With Stanley Crouch's untimely death in 2020, American literature lost "a critic without peer" (Ta-Nehisi Coates). Born in Los Angeles in 1945, Crouch--a towering stylist, fearless columnist, and without question, one of the finest jazz critics of all time--was Rabelaisian both in stature and in intellectual appetite. Beloved yet cantankerous, Crouch delighted and enflamed the passions of his readers in equal measure, whether writing about race, politics, literature, or music.

In these essays--some discovered on his computer, unpublished until now--Crouch tackles subjects ranging from Malcolm X ("a thorned bud standing in the shadow of sequoias") to the films of Quentin Tarantino ("With Django, Tarantino has slipped down . . . into a shallow and bloodstained hip-hop turn that his own best work has well-refuted"). Introduced by Jelani Cobb, with an afterword by Wynton Marsalis, and collected by his longtime editor Glenn Mott, Victory Is Assured canonizes the legacy of an inimitable, indispensable American critic.

Back Jacket

Stanley Crouch was an astute and keen observer of the many facets of politics, art, history, life in general, and most notably jazz. . . . He was multi-dimensional in how he looked at the world, but at the same time, opinionated as well. That's to be expected and is part of the DNA of a great thinker.
--Charles McPherson, internationally acclaimed saxophonist

One never exited an encounter with Stanley Crouch, whether in person or on the page, through the same door by which one entered. Highly allergic to platitudes and off-the-rack ideas, he always made you think harder, and better, about your assumptions. If you are lucky enough to know his work or to have been his friend, you know. If not, this book is a perfect place to start.
--Tom Piazza