Illustrated by Bernhard Nast

I’ve been reading The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes. I didn’t know Simple until I ran across this book. One of many holes in my education, one which it’s thrilled me to patch. Hughes wrote these short shorts first as weekly columns in the Chicago Defender, and they were subsequently published in three collections, Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple Stakes a Claim. The volume I’ve been reading is a hand-picked collection called best.

Simple is Jesse B. Semple. An everyman living in Harlem, Simple tells his stories to the author, usually over a drink, often in a bar. His woes are the problems of the working man, the black man, any person living in fifties America, anyone with a soul. The Simple stories remind me of Nasrudin, a Sufi often called an archetypal fool whose stories reveal truths, even when those truths are backed into with half-understood concepts and misappropriated words.

I’ve been equally struck by the illustrations by Bernhard Nast. The illustrations are as simple as Simple, pure line drawing at its minimalistic best. Evocative, never saying more than is necessary, always saying enough.

I don’t know much about Nast. His other work as a children’s book illustrator seems to be in a very different style. I’ll try to find one of his other books and will share it with you when I can. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these sketches as much as I have.

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