In synopsis, Snakes might sound a pretty insubstantial book; what makes it special is the way in which Al Young has synthesized three special worlds, three types of insularity—adolescence, blackness and the love of jazz music. MC's devotion to jazz is revealed not as some passing fancy, nor, of course, as some inherited instinct like enjoying collard greens or making for the back of the bus, but as a real enthusiasm strengthened by the novice's desire to participate and to know all there is to be known; and his beginnings in jazz are paralleled by his introduction to the tougher aspects of life on the city's streets. As much as anything, though, the novel is about being black, though it's necessary to add that the novel's polemic, in so far as it exists, is confined to demonstrating blackness as a form of cool insularity rather than a...