Robert Nye, ‘Pick of the Paperbacks, 21 Jan, 1966, Tribune, Volume 30, Issue 3. p. 13

‘This month sees a batch of new paperbacks on American themes with American backgrounds, and mostly by American writers. They are, fortunately, too diverse to support any generalisations about the current state of American writing — but their vitality and exuberance, even their tendency towards an excitement and excited aberration, certainly makes the month’s English offerings look a little pale’.

‘Robert A. Bone’s study The Negro Novel in America is more complicated and difficult — ultimately, I think, more rewarding. Bone writes as a critic and historian of his subject, from the first novel written by a Negro writer, published in 1853, to the works to date of James Baldwin, which he treats with real hard critical brilliance’.