About the Book

In his first nonfiction collection, Thompson muses on different art forms and their relation to his own experiences as an African-American in the post-Civil Rights era.

Praise for Love for Sale: And Other Essays 

Clifford Thompson’s eclectic collection of personal reflections and commentaries on books, music, film and art reveals clarifying perceptions about American culture in a compelling voice of enthusiasm, honesty, humility and balance.”
—San Antonio Express-News

The triumph of this deeply satisfying essay collection is its presentation of a whole human being: immensely cultivated, likable because unfailingly honest, reasonable, mature, witty, and never less than eloquent. Clifford Thompson’s perspective is that of a humane African-American male who is wary of any condescending sentimentality or group-rant, who loves jazz, movies, books, and the oddities of daily life. His prose style is consistently thoughtful, surprising and unobtrusively elegant, and the voice navigates with remarkable smoothness between personal experience and critical analysis. With this selection, he vaults to the front ranks of essayists of his generation.
—Phillip Lopate 

Clifford Thompson received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction in 2013 for Love for Sale and Other Essays. He is the author of a novel, Signifying Nothing, and his essays on books, film, jazz, and American identity have appeared in publications including The Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Commonweal, Film Quarterly, Cineaste, Oxford American, and Black Issues Book Review. For […]

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