Robert Deane Pharr was an acclaimed author of five novels, the first of which, The Book of Numbers (1969), was published while he was a fifty-three-year-old waiter in New York. Setting out to be “a black Sinclair Lewis,” Pharr focused on the harsh yet vibrant living conditions faced by countless African Americans in urban America from the 1930s to the 1970s. Critics such as Susan Lardner of the New Yorker celebrated Pharr for his “tough, emotion-laden dialogue” and the profound sense of pain and loss that permeates his work.
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