‘The Vulture’: The forgotten novel that saved Gil-Scott Heron
Herman Hesse once described the power of Mozart as “the outcome of his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois,” but that description seems particularly befitting of Gil Scott-Heron (though, to be fair to our favourite German novelist and master of introspection, the American jazz poet had yet to be born when The Steppenwolf was first published).
It was during the age of civil rights struggle and perpetual class war in the United States, that Gil Scott-Heron established himself as a voice for the masses, fueled both by his own suffering and that of Black people across the world. With records like ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, which remains as earth-shatteringly powerful today as it was half a century ago, the writer attacked bourgeois complacency against a seemingly endless onslaught of suffering.
A career like Scott-Heron’s does not materialise out of nowhere, of course, and at every turn the poet and songwriter was forced to fight for his voice to be heard. After all, the architects of mainstream society were hardly going to platform a voice as powerful and politically-charged as Scott-Heron’s willingly. Luckily, by the time the poet entered into his recording career, he had already amassed a wealth of experience in fighting for his voice and creativity to be heard, against an increasingly skeptical line of authority figures.
As with most inherently rebellious artists, Scott-Heron’s penchant for pushing back against barriers developed during his youth, and his time at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania proved to be particularly transformative for the young writer. At this point, you might expect there to be a heartwarming blockbuster story in this tale, revolving around a maverick college professor who inspired a young Gil Scott-Heron to follow his literary dreams, but that is not what happened. In reality, his literary dreams were laughed out of the university pretty quickly.
Inevitably, though, that push-back did little to deter Scott-Heron from his ambitions – indeed, acting in defiance of so-called voices of authority would end up becoming a staple of his entire existence. Rather than accepting the fate that was handed down to him, Scott-Heron decided to write his own, dropping out of university to work on his first novel, The Vulture. “The Dean thought I was crazy and asked me to go and see the school psychiatrist,” the writer later recalled.
That debut thriller novel, revolving around the murder of a teenager named John Lee, did not immediately establish Scott-Heron among America’s greatest authors, nor did the follow-up, The Nigger Factory. Nevertheless, those works were both essential in establishing Scott-Heron’s distinctive voice, as well as his motivation to act individually. After all, it was only the following year, in 1971, that he unleashed his searing masterpiece of a debut album, Pieces of a Man.
Had Scott-Heron listened to his college professors and pushed aside any desire to drop out of his studies, the world might never have heard ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, or any of the poet’s equally life-affirming, culturally rebellious anthems. In that sense, The Vulture might have been one of the most important things Gil Scott-Heron ever wrote, despite that fact that it only reached a very niche audience upon its initial publication.
