670
PARTISAN REVIEW
Now the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet
had of what it means to be a Negro in America is unquestionably
Richard Wright's
Native Son.
The feeling which prevailed at the
time of its publication was that such a novel, bitter, uncompromising,
shocking, gave proof, by its very existence, of what strides might be
taken in a free democracy; and its indisputable success, proof that
Americans were now able to look full in the face without flinch–
ing the dreadful facts. Americans, unhappily, have the most remark–
able ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but
piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or
public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration,
such as are given for heroism on the field of hattle. Such a book,
we felt with pride, could never have been written before-which was
true. Nor could it be written today. It bears already the aspect of a
landmark; for Bigger and his brothers have undergone yet another
metamorphosis; they have been accepted in baseball leagues and
by colleges hitherto exclusive; and they have made a most favorable
appearance on the national screen. We have yet to encounter, never–
theless, a report so indisputably authentic, or one that can begin
to challenge this most significant novel.
It
is, in a certain American tradition, the story of an unremark–
able youth
in
battle with the force of circumstance; that force of
circumstance which plays and which has played so important a part
in the national fables of success or failure. In this case the force of
circumstance is not poverty merely but color, a circumstance which
cannot be overcome, against which the protagonist battles for his
life and loses. It is, on the surface, remarkable that this book should
have enjoyed among Americans the favor it did enjoy; no more
remarkable, however, than that it should have been compared,
exuberantly, to Dostoevsky, though placed a shade below Dos Passos,
Dreiser and Steinbeck; and when the book is examined, its impact
does not seem remarkable at all, but becomes, on the contrary, per–
fectly logical and inevitable.
We cannot, to begin with, divorce this book from the specific
social climate of that time: it was one of the last of those angry
productions encountered in the late 'twenties and all through the
'thirties dealing with the inequities of the social structure of Amer–
ica. It was published one year before our entry into the last world
