The National Endowment for the Arts recently published a study indicating that Americans are losing interest in literature. Apparently, we’re not reading novels the way we used to. What this means for the state of the nation’s collective ability to imagine, let alone create, alternative realities for itself has yet to be determined. What it means for publishing is that books like Soul City, by the singularly named Toure, are being pitched as fiction’s next best hope.

It’s easy to see why. Weighing in at 184 generously spaced pages, Soul City is to the genus novel what, say, a tart Top 40 single is to a concept album like Sergeant Pepper. This is not necessarily a bad thing; as Pete Townshend once remarked, a single might contain a symphony. No, it speaks more to the digestibility factor. Soul City is meant to be bite-sized, easily consumed by people without the time to fully process the kind of narrative ebb and flow associated with Tolstoy or Pynchon.

But it’s not just its brevity that makes Soul City feel like such a contemporary product. Toure´, who has his own show on MTV2, writes with a flair that is as informed by graffiti, hip-hop, quick-cut video and back porch storytelling as it is by the magic realist literature he frequently pays homage to throughout the course of his little saga.

Soul City itself is an African-American dream city, a place where all the ancient and modern threads of African-American experience and culture are woven together to the point where they become second nature for all who live there. It’s a place where the sacred and profane are blurred completely — and completely interchangeable. The story, such as it is, follows Cadillac Jackson, a journalist who travels to Soul City to write about what it’s really like. He winds up being at a loss for words.

So what we get instead is a book of names. Toure´’s greatest gift lies in his ability to concoct place and character names that manage to evoke and celebrate a remarkable swath of black America: “He checked into his hotel, the Copasetic on Cool Street, then walked from Nappy Lane to Gravy Avenue to Cornbread Boulevard. The sidewalks were 40 to 50 feet wide and the streets were abuzz with all-age minifestivals of hair braiding, marble shooting, bubble blowing, puddle stomping, roller skating, faithful preaching, ‘God’s coming!,’ mommies strolling, babies toddling, groceries spilling, lots of flirting and gossip flying. On Bookoo Boulevard the Vinylmobile crept by, offering old albums for a few dollars, and children poured from homes to chase it …”

Rather than following a regular narrative path, Toure´ builds his book from a series of loosely linked folk-style tales that shed shards of light on Soul City’s leading citizens and history. Toward the finish, Toure´ suggests that his project here is to invent an alternate world as inspiring as Macondo, the magic realist community created by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s a great idea and Toure´ might even have the chops to pull it off, but his minimalist aesthetic works at cross purposes with this ambition. Soul City is loaded with magic, but is too hurried to accumulate the detail and observation necessary to evoke a truly alternate reality. This is what happens when you try to write for people who don’t read.

As a novel, Soul City pops like a great piece of poster art.