For the last several weeks I have been reading two books from the 1930s. The first is George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931). Isabell Wilkerson recommended it in one of those “By the Book” columns in the New York Times Book Review. She mentioned that the book was a satire, which caught my attention because there are times that I have dabbled in satire (despite the trend that memes are crushing the long-form satire market).
The premise of Schuyler’s short novel is that a black doctor has discovered a process that can bleach a black man’s skin white, which will solve “America’s race problem,” but as one would expect there are many unforeseen complications as blacks rush to turn themselves white thinking this will be a permanent solution. One major shortcoming is that the blacks-turned-white soon begin to miss their black culture, and whites become increasingly nervous about the thought that there are blacks posing as whites. The possibility that the offspring between these two “demographics” could be born black adds to the society's confusion and anxiety.
Naturally, religious leaders and politicians alike take advantage of America’s new race dynamic.
Schuyler’s book drips with tone-sharp, dark humor (I liken it to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary - 1911) while making one uneasy since not a whole lot has changed in almost a century. He explains how a demagogue can rise to power. Not only will “people believe anything that was shouted at them loudly and convincingly enough” writes Schuyler, but these demagogues also justify stealing (misappropriating donations) because it was the “rightful reward for their services.” Sound familiar?
Included in the Penguin edition is an illuminating introduction by Danzy Senna, who explains Schuyler’s controversial legacy, which began when he was African-American journalist during the Harlem Renaissance. Because the book is set in the near future (1933), Senna maintains that Black No More is an example of Afrofuturist fiction “before such a term existed.”
William Faulkner’s Civil War
The second book from the 1930s is William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! published in 1936 the same year as Gone with the Wind. This novel came to my attention via Drew Gilpin Faust (see previous posting) who wrote a review of Michael Gorra’s The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (2020), which was published in last September’s issue of The Atlantic (“What to Do About William Faulkner”).
Absalom, Absalom! is considered Faulkner’s most Civil War centric novel, though most of this work deals with the aftermath of the South shortly after the war instead of military engagements. The plot centers around the Sutpen family beginning with Thomas the patriarch who arrives mysteriously in Yoknawpatha County in 1837. He fathers two children Henry and Judith with Ellen Coalfield, the daughter of local merchant but sires another son, Charles Bon with a Haitian woman before he ever arrives in Mississippi. By happenstance Charles and Henry meet in college and become good friends at the precipice of the war, though unbeknownst to Henry, Charles is his half-brother. They fight together in the war and Charles plans to marry Judith. But when Henry finds out about Charles lineage well, bloody hijinks ensue.
Gorra’s book is a great companion to Absalom, Absalom! and as valuable as one of those online chapter-by-chapter summaries (otherwise you'll be buried Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness prose). But what sets Saddest Words apart is that Gorra also spends time and effort contextualizing Faulkner with other writers of the post-Civil War period (George W. Cable, Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Conrad). Gorra has written kind of a travelogue as well, as he describes visits to Oxford, Vicksburg, and Shiloh – the latter being Faulkner’s “favorite” battlefield as it was less than two hours from his home. Discussion of current hot button issues such as The Lost Cause and Confederate memorials are deftly woven into the book as well.
Gorra does not avoid the difficult assessment of the Faulkner, who is both a white man in the Jim Crow South and winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. Gorra writes in the last chapter:
There is never a clear line between the work and the life, many people now judge the tale by the teller, they see the book’s best self in terms of the man at his worst. For some people, the history I’ve detailed in the paragraphs above (where Gorra reveals some of Faulkner more shameful opinions) will be reason enough not to read him. Such decisions are personal and not perhaps subject to argument or exhortation. I have made a different one. I read him despite, and I read him for or because or on account of this difficulty. Not the formal difficulty of his work, however compelling I find it. The moral difficulty, rather, the drama, and struggle and the paradox and power of his attempt to work through our history, to wrestle or rescue into meaning.
With Black Lives Matter, the rise of white supremacy groups, the gerrymandering efforts to restrict voting, and the Meghan Markle-Royal Family saga, the works of Schuyler and Faulkner are as topical today as when they were first penned 90 years ago.
If you purchase Black No More or The Saddest Words at Destination:Books, part of the purchase price goes to the blog and to independent bookstores.
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