Ebony, December 1st, 1990
WHEN novelists tread well-known historical waters, as John Edgar-Wideman does in his latest effort, Philadelphia Fire (Henry Holt, $18.95), they are bound to ruffle a few feathers. journalists and historians-prompted sometimes by jealousy or guilt-are quick to leap upon and batter the fiction writers for any reporting lapses. The alleged defenders of truth in both the media and the academy feel duty-bound to decry the novelist's use of literary license as an encroachment on territory they hold sacred.
It is no wonder then that when Wideman turned his attention to the explosive 1984 confront...
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