It's Confusing Down There

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

New York, N.Y. : A Library of America Special Publication, [2021] 

 xii, 228 p. ; 22 cm.

When you see that there is a "new" Richard Wright novel out in the world, well of course you have to read it - which is exactly what I did! Apparently this compact novella appeared as a short story, but in its full form was rejected by Wright's publisher. It seems the opening set up of the hero, a Black man named Fred Daniels, being arrested and tortured by police into confessing to a double-murder he's innocent of was just too much.  The scene is still excruciating, but not so shocking in this age of learning about police abuses of power. 

Though this portrayal of racist police violence and terror is horrifying, it serves as the launching off of the main action of the book: Fred Daniels escapes the police and goes to live for a number of days in the sewers beneath the city.  Here he wanders through the maze of the city's underground digging and tunneling into several places where he wrestles with guilt, greed, corruption and disillusion. He is able to peer into a Black church service, view a savings vault, and jewelry storage area. In his isolation and darkness he also begins to become a bit unhinged.

I liked a lot about this book, but I have to say that the movements and the descriptions of the underworld actions of the protagonist are pretty confusing. How he chisels through bricks and squirms into basements is hard to follow. The passage of time is not clear, and extreme changes in the main character make it seem like he is underground for months, when in fact it is only three days. I wish the writing had been a little more exact; I think it would have really added to the power of the book.

These issues aside, the book is also wonderful for including a long essay - "Memories of My Grandmother" - that is an exquisite revelation of Wright's thoughts about his writing, discussing origins, influences, the blues and jazz among other things. It's well worth the read.

I'm glad I read this novella and I will definitely recommend it to any student interested in Richard Wright. 

Amazing Amazing

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
New York : Picador, c2000.
639 p. ; 21 cm.

Michael Chabon's novel won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize and I challenge a reader to not enjoy this  wonderful tale.  It's a gloriously written tale of the starting in the late 1930s and continuing into the 1950s and centers on the golden age of comic books in New York City, but also embraces the Holocaust, Harry Houdini, The Golem of Prague, Brooklyn, gay life, and of course love, friendship and family.

Though we have this book in the UHS library collection, I read it on my cell phone - accessing it through our library's eBook collection.  It's not the first book that I've read on my phone, but it was great to be able to carry it around in my pocket while traveling during the summer.

Fortunately, The Amazing Adventures seems to be doing quite well.  I looked for a copy at my local public libraries and all 6 copies were checked out.  It's a great book and I will definitely recommend it to any student looking for a rewarding literary fiction read from a contemporary author - especially a reader who has an interest in world of comic book writing and publishing back when vast majorities of young Americans regularly read comic books. 

Harsh Life - Lush Art

Black Boy by Richard Wright
New York : HarperPerennial ModernClassics, 2006.
xiv, 419, 14 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

One of the joys of being a librarian is walking the stacks and seeing a book that keeps calling out to you, "Read me." It must have been about 8 or 9 years ago that I finally read Wright's stunning 1940 novel, Native Son.  Since then his autobiography has been sitting on the shelf demanding to be read, and so I finally have done it.  It is amazing!

What I loved about Wright's book is the way it puts you completely in the mind and heart of a young African American male growing up in the Jim Crow south in the early twentieth century.  It's especially interesting in that Wright is never able to learn to hide his thoughts from white people - even when he tries, and he realizes that - in the racist South - could easily cost him his life.

It is also a wonderful book for anyone who is an artist or loves art, but really has no idea why.  There are times as a boy, where he writes just for the sheer delight of using language.  It is something that almost none of his peers understands or appreciates.  The book is also tribute to the stubborn grace of someone clinging to his integrity while being threatened by the larger society with its violent racism, and his more intimate social circle where his assertion of his right to think independently is ridiculed and punished by teachers, guardians, religious people, and family.

The book breaks down into two major sections - his life in the Jim Crow south (Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee) and his move to Chicago where he gets involved in the heavily Stalinist, intellectually repressive Communist Party.  Both sections are very interesting, but my guess is that many students would especially like the first half.

I would definitely recommend this book to students.  It is a fascinating, well written book.

Horse Fatigue

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
New York : Vintage Books, 1995, c1994.
425 p. ; 21 cm.

I liked the beginnings of this novel a lot.  The main character Billy, a young man, gets involved in the trapping of a wolf and his attempt to return it to its range, a quest which leads him on a coming of age journey as he wrestles with the ferocious forces of nature and the sometimes kind and sometimes dangerous/savage forces of the human world.

This second novel of the "Border Trilogy" moves from being a powerful story of a young man and his quest to release a she wolf - into a repetitive and gloomier repeat of his All the Pretty Horses, the first book in the is "Border Trilogy." His next quest involves he and his younger brother seeking the horses stolen from his murdered family and the subsequent sufferings and tragedies they experience.

I enjoy the high style of McCarthy, but after a while I just started to grow weary with it.

If you love McCarthy, you will probably enjoy the novel, but I felt like it could have been far shorter and would have been more powerful if it had been.

More Than a Pretty Horse

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
New York : Knopf, c1992.
301 p. ; 22 cm.

I first read this book about fifteen years ago. I read it then because it had won the National Book Award and for the first few pages, I was not impressed. It almost seemed like a parody of Hemingway with its short, sparse sentences - but then, wow! it grabbed me with its lush romantic beauty and gorgeous descriptions and never let go.  Cormac McCarthy has become something of a major literary figure in American fiction, and so I wanted to revisit his novel ( I had planned to read all three of his "Border Trilogy" works, but only made it through the second one, The Crossing.)

All the Pretty Horses works as a love story, a coming of age novel, a quest novel, and and ode to the end of the horseback riders era in the Texas-Mexico borderlands.

The book is in many ways a tale of moralities.  What are the bonds of loyalty, friendship, family, and, of course, love?  It is a tale of integrity, of human-animal interdependence, of the beauty of the land and of the powers of goodness and evil.

I would definitely recommend this book to a student looking for a literary, but very readable and compelling novel.