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Well, look at the headnote on Richard Wright. We have a lot of firsts as we go along through here, about first this and first that, and Richard Wright was the first African American writer to have a best-selling novel which was Native Son in 1940. It was a best-seller for many reasons. One, it was good literary fiction but, two, it had a sensational subject and a lot of sex and violence. Not the kind of explicit sex that we’re accustomed to. Uh-hmm? [Inaudible student response] Native Son. A lot of irony in the title. He’s a native son, too, is the point of the hero of his novel. But there’s violence and politics, and I’ll — well, in fact, in order to cover up an inadvertent homicide, a woman’s body — he tries to stuff it into a furnace of a boiler room in an apartment house and she won’t fit so he has to behead her. Now, that’s one of the nicer episodes in the novel. I mean, the other day I said Black Boy. I meant Native Son. I didn’t mean Black Boy. That’s his autobiography and it’s a — I recommend it. It’s a long book but it’s powerful. It’s powerful fiction. The main character’s name was Bigger Thomas and Bigger was well chosen and carefully chosen for his first name. Wright himself was born near Natchez, Mississippi. His father left the family when Wright was only five and he had a little brother. He was raised by a series of relatives. In 1925, he took off when he was 17 years old and went to Memphis. He worked there in an optical firm as kind of a gofer. He was just a kid. But he had this thirst for knowledge. He had very little formal education. Moving around so much, a little bit of junior high school and you can imagine what education for a poor black kid in
Mississippi would’ve been anyway back then. And he determined that he would teach himself. And so he went down to the Memphis Public Library and attempted to get a library card. Well, guess what? Sorry, no library cards for African Americans in Memphis. So what he did was this optical firm where he worked, he convinced one of the men working there to write him a note to the librarian. And he took it down there and the note said something like this. I’m paraphrasing but it’s awfully close. “Would you please give this little nigger boy some books by H. L. Mencken? Signed so-and-so.” and he had his library card. And that’s the way Richard Wright began his own education. The reason he wanted to read H. L. Mencken was he knew that he had written a book called Prejudices. Well, what that is is a collection of Mencken’s reviews. But Wright thought, “Well, that’s something I need to know about. Let’s see what this smart white guy who’s so famous thinks about it.” So that’s the book he got. The autobiography is good, Black Boy. He talks about how he had to — well, he didn’t have a hotplate in this little rented room he had, but he did have hot water. So he would run hot water over his can of beans and eat it. Have you read that book? Isn’t it good? [Inaudible student response] Well, yeah, it is good. I thought about using it except it’s so long. It’s pretty lengthy. If I ever teach that capstone course on biography — an autobiography again because it might be a good one. He went to Chicago in 1927 and worked at a lot of odd jobs, but he also got on
was published posthumously. It’s one of those books that I own. Like many of you, a little stack of books that you need to get to one day and it just kind of looks at you recriminatingly. Well, it’s there but I don’t know when it’ll happen. He visited France in 1946 and was so impressed with French culture and particularly in the way the French embraced him as a man first and a writer first and as an African American way down the list. And it was -- you know, as far as Wright could see, it seemed to be a prejudice-free culture. Probably not entirely true, but at the same time he certainly had a greater personal freedom there, he felt, than he did in his own country. And he remained there until he died. Fairly young. Yeah, 52. They mention — they quote, in fact, Ralph Ellison and they also mention James Baldwin. Both men were influenced by Wright. Wright was kind of the pathfinder and path breaker. And in the autobiographical writing, particularly James Baldwin took it as a model for his own work. Ralph Ellison, of course, wrote what? What’s his one novel? He has a second novel, but I don’t count it. What’s his first novel, only novel? Invisible Man. They published his — it was almost like a work in progress — a couple of years ago. I believe it was called June Teenth. But he never really was able to finish that book, as far as I know. I met Ralph Ellison once, a distinguished, grave gentleman. But everybody was saying, “When are you gonna publish another book? You know, it’s been 40 years since Invisible Man.” But, you know, if you can write Invisible Man, why do you need to write another book? That ought to be good enough for anybody. Well, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” is a late story, apparently. Published in
the last collection of his that was posthumously published. What’d you think of this? Have you seen the movie of this? There’s a film of this. You guys don’t ever see these little movies that I’ve seen. Maybe it’s because they were 100 years ago. But it starred Lavar Burton. You may remember Lavar Burton. I was thinking of Star Trek where he wears one of those old-fashioned air filters on his face. He started out in Roots. He played Kunta Kinte in Roots. But you don’t have to take my word for it. But he did a pretty good job. He played him really young. And when Burton’s out there with that pistol — and I don’t know where they found that pistol, but it’s about, you know, 20 feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. Waving that gun around. It’s easy to see how he could’ve, in fact, shot that mule. The dialogue or dialect in the dialogue is better than most, it seems to me. It’s stylized to a degree but to — it’s not asking you to put a Hollywood accent on it so much as it’s asking you to kind of just repeat it. Let me see if I can try. This is Dave talking to himself, first paragraph: Shucks, Ah ain scareda them even ef they are biggern me! Aw, Ah know whut Ahma do. Ahm going by ol Joe’s sto n git that Sears Roebuck catlog n look at them guns. Now, his language is partially African American and a lot southern. Notice some of that — “sto,” for instance, is a southern-ism. Mebbe Ma will lemme buy one when she gits mah pay from ol man Hawkins. Ahma beg her t gimme some money. Ahm ol ernough to hava gun. Ahm seventeen. Almost a man. He strode, feeling his long loose-
meat. Has every body read To Kill a Mockingbird? If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird, just leave now. Go read it. But you remember the scene when the kid — the son of the racist comes home with — I always want to call her Jeep. What’s her name? Scout. Comes home with Scout and they fix lunch for him. And he asks if he can have some syrup and he gets some molasses or syrup or something like that, and pours it all over his food. And Scout goes, “Yeah! What’re you doing that for?” “Shut up, Scout,” you know. “Bring in some more of the syrup.” Because that’s — the poor black and white in the South would eat that way. Well, he pleads with his mother. Did you believe some of this? Can you believe she would go along with it? It’s just hard for me to accept that part. “But, Ma, we needa gun. Pa ain got no gun. We needa gun in the house.” Needa, n-e-e-d-a. Needa gun in the house. “Yuh kin never tell whut might happen.” “Now don yuh try to maka fool outta me, boy! Ef we did hava gun, yuh wouldn’t have it!” Sears and Roebuck catalogue. That was a big deal to have. Notice what she wants to do with the catalogue. “We can use that in the outhouse.” “No, I gotta give that back to Mister Joe.” And he says, “Ah done worked hard alla summer n ain ast yuh fer nothin, is Ah, now?” So she says he can have a gun if he’ll bring it back to her and that it’s gonna be for his father. I think this is pretty accurate. The only thing, does he seem like he’s 17? Seems a lot younger than 17. [Inaudible student response] Well, I wish he was like 12 ‘cause you can do a man’s labor — they often have
‘em doing man’s labor when they’re 12, 13 years old — in those days in particular, I guess. But, yeah, 17 seems — I’m almost a man, but that takes away the almost a man part of you don’t give him a little age. But picky, picky, picky. But what I was thinking — you know, he could be immature and childish in that way that if you’ve ever dearly wanted something — you know, something that was out of your reach or out of your range or out of your — you know, perhaps your parents would not let you have, and then when you finally got it you treasured it. I can remember sleeping with some high- top black sneakers that I finally got. I’ve forgotten how old I was. I was pretty small. I wasn’t 17. But, you know, just the whole idea. And I thought of that when he’s got that gun in bed with him. The first movement he made the following morning was to reach under his pillow for the gun. In the gray light of dawn he held it loosely, feeling a sense of power. Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him. It was a big gun, with a long barrel and a heavy handle. He raised and lowered it in his hand, marveling at its weight. Look how straightforward and simple and uncomplicated that prose is. I mean, this is easy, easy, easy to understand and it’s also the way he would probably look at it. It was a big gun. But he’s not for sure he knows how to fire it. That’s kind of hard to believe, too. Doesn’t everybody know how to fire a gun — more or less? Well, maybe not. Point it and pull the trigger? Generally, that works. You know, you might have to
shuddered, whinnied, and broke from him.” “Hol on! Hol on now!” Well he buries the gun and then tries to lie to these people -- and there’s a big crowd here, black and white, who’ve gathered over this dead mule -- and he tells this incredible story about the plow. And then finally somebody says, “Looks like a bullet hole to me.” And his mother says, “Dave, whut yuh do wid the gun?” And, ‘course, she gives him away with that. “Did he have a gun?” asked Jim Hawkins. [the owner of the mule and his employer] “By Gawd, Ah tol yuh tha wu a gun wound,” said a man, slapping his thigh. His father caught his shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. “Tell whut happened, yuh rascal! Tell whut.. .” Dave looked at Jenny’s stiff legs and began to cry. Again, 17 seems a little old for that, doesn’t it? Somebody in the crowd laughed. What do we know about him and other people? He doesn’t like ‘em laughing at him. He doesn’t like ‘em making fun of him. He can’t take criticism at all. He’s absolutely thin-skinned. And the laughter. “Well, looks like you have bought you a mule, Dave.” “Ah swear fo Gawd, Ah didn go t kill the mule, Mistah Hawkins!” “But you killed her!” All the crowd was laughing now. And he says, “Just let the boy keep on working and pay me two dollars a month.” “Whut yuh wan fer yo mule, Mistah Hawkins?” Jim Hawkins screwed up his eyes. “Fifty dollars.”
Now, I have no idea if that mule was worth 50 bucks or how much 50 bucks would’ve been, but it seems like a large amount of money for the day. But I imagine a mule might’ve brought that. You know, it was kind of like the guy’s tractor and truck and everything else. But I did the math immediately, didn’t you? How long does it take at $2 a month to pay off $50? Two years. But our hero here doesn’t figure that out until later and he goes “Oh-oh.” But maybe he had a lot on hid mind at that moment. He heard people laughing. That’s all he can think about. Middle of that page: That night Dave did not sleep. He was glad that he had gotten out of killing the mule so easily, but he was hurt. Something hot seemed to turn over inside him each time he remembered how they had laughed. He tossed on his bed, feeling his hard pillow. N Pa says he’s gonna beat me.
.. He remembered other beatings, and his back quivered. Naw, naw, Ah sho don wan im t beat me tha way no mo. Dam em all! Nobody ever gave him anything. All he did was work. They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me. He gritted his teeth. N Ma had t tell on me. Did she tell on him? She gave it away, yeah. “What’d you do with the gun?” And everybody’s looking at him immediately then. Oh, as an old writing teacher, I notice things like repetitious diction. And then when I’m reading something that’s good, I wonder if the repetitious diction is intentional. Notice how often the word “stiff” came up here? “He held the gun stiff and hard in his fingers.” He goes out there and just starts firing the bullets. He’s got four rounds left
could be. I thought it was some kid he knew. I won’t ask for hands, but if you’ve ever done this, if you’ve ever hopped on a freight car, it’s kind of interesting, I would think. We’ll have to edit that out of the tape. I don’t need that in there. Gawd! He was hot all over. He hesitated just a moment, then he grabbed, pulled atop of a car, and lay flat. He felt his pocket; the gun was still there. Ahead the long rails were glinting in the moonlight, stretching away, away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man... They nicknamed a lot of those trains that came out of the South — after World War II in the ‘40s and ‘50s — the Chickenbone Express ‘cause everybody had fried chicken lunches and they were getting the heck out of Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and going to Chicago and Kansas City and St. Louis and New York and points north. The end of a story I didn’t assign you called “Queer” in Sherwood Anderson’s section, at the end of that story this young man hops on a freight car and takes off and leaves everything behind. It seemed to be kind of a motif for the Depression years. Well, a lot of people rode the rails. Anybody have any comments about this story? There’s not much there except pure narrative. I don’t know if you can classify it as an initiation story. There’s not much — it’s not protest literature, it’s just a character sketch really. But it’s quite dramatic. I remember the first time I read it, I felt a humongous amount of empathy for the kid for shooting the mule. When you made a mistake like that and then somebody makes you pay probably more than you really ought to have to pay for some kind of foolish mess- up, which is kind of really what that was.
Okay. We’ll quit early. I’ll see you on [inaudible] and we’ll talk about Hemingway. That’s a long story.
