Men Cry in the Dark
by Michael BaisdenFrom: Thumper
Date: 4/8/98
Let me state upfront, I did not like this book. Men Cry In The Dark, I guess, is suppose to show that African-American men can cry because we can be sensitive too. This book is about four black male friends that at one point or another all take the time to boo hoo in the bathroom over situations in their lives.
Derrick is an up and coming publisher of "Happily Single", a magazine for the single black population, who happens to be a womanizer. Tony is a succesful onwer of a construction company who has problems with an ex-girlfriend who happens to be the mother of his daughter. Ben is the owner of a chain of florist stores, who likes very young women. Mark, who is co-owner of a strip mall, dates only white women because black women wouldn't give him the time of day when he was younger. That's about it. Each in turn loses someone and then goes into the bathroom and cry over it. I didn't care enough about any of them that their tears mattered. It reminded me of that old standard, "Is That All There Is?"
Here's the problems that I had with this book. One, character development. This book is divided in chapters, not a problem there, right? The problem that I had with it was that because the characters were not fully developed, I couldn't tell which chararcter was handling the narration duties until I was two or three pages into it, because there were no indication of who was narrating the chapter. There were several times that I mistaken the narrator of the chapter. One chapter that I thought was being handled by Angela, Derrick's girlfriend, when in actuality, it was Tracie, Tony's finacee'. Now maybe if the characters possessed unique voices that were instantly recognizable, there wouldn't be any problems. This was not the case. It lead to confusion.
Second problem, the dialogue of the characters were stupid. Now if the characters are talking in street slang, keep the whole conversation in the same mold. One example, Ben and his old childhood friend, Big Red, were talking about the good ol' days. The particular incident was about the time Big Red shot Ben in the behind with something. I forgot what it was. Anyway, Ben used the word buttocks in one sentence. Then in the next sentence he used ass. Excuse me. I've been a black male since way back when, I have never, nor any of my cousins, friends, or even my mama, used the term buttocks and then in the next breathe used the word ass. It doesn't happen. Another trend is when the men talk about sex. The female reproductive organ is always called the p word, but in the next breathe the men would say, describing themselves, the word penis. Well, yeah, that is the technical name for it. But if you are in a conversation that has gotten that informal and descriptive, you will not use the word p for the women and penis for the men. It's not done. It's not normal. Who talks like that?
Finally, the mistakes that are in this book is stupid. The publishing company should be shot. The errors are numerous. Too many to name. I'm not only referring to grammatical errors, but the 1 being used for an l, or "you go do girl". The book is literally sprinkled with errors such as these. The author Michael Baisden knows about these mistakes. There is a disclaimer from him on the Amazon.com site that features this book. He does apologize up front and states that any potential reader interest in the book should wait for the second printing in order these mistakes to be corrected. This in itself is not unheard of in the literary world. Some books becomes valuable because of these mistakes, this book however will not be one of them.
Third, I got one word for the author...PLOT! For the next book, how about throwing one into it. You know, just for laughs.