JESUS' SUN

JESUS' SUN BEN RATLIFF THE WISDOM OF SUN RA: SUN RA'S POLEMICAL BROADSHEETS AND STREETCORNER LEAFLETS COMPILED AND INTRODUCED BY JOHN CORBETT CHICAGO: WHITEWALLS. DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS. 144 PAGES. $20.

Most artists want their work to be understood. In retrospect, it seems that the jazz bandleader Sun Ra, born Herman Blount, wanted not so much to be understood as to be needed. He seemed to have a Messiah complex, perhaps from being a smart young man in a miserable place and time: Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1620s and early '30s. He didn't think much of other human beings, and he eventually wrote himself into a fantasy of being teleported to Earth by Saturnians. …