198
PARTISAN REVIEW
ening and razor fighting in Harlem. I want to bypass these modes,
and to discuss the half-dozen or so Negro writers who seem to me
largely to have gone beyond any sort of mimicry or naturalism, and
who in their use of literary form as an act of the moral imagination
have joined the mainstream of symbolism and irony in modern litera–
ture. These Negro writers, although not all of them are from the
South, clearly relate to the renaissance of white Southern writing we
have seen in our day, particularly in fiction, from Faulkner to Flan–
nery O'Connor. I shall discuss this small group of Negro writers
in
relation to two forms of Negro folk literature: the folk tale and the
blues. Other forms, among them spirituals and ballads, sermons and
speeches, rhymes and games, have comparable literary extensions, but
these two must suffice to suggest some of the possibilities.
*
*
*
To talk about the folk tale, oddly enough, we have to begin
with the familiar figure of the "darky" entertainer: Stepin Fetchit,
Rochester, the Kingfish of the Amos and Andy program. His role
is
to parody the familiar stereotype of the Negro: stupid, ignorant,
lazy, fraudulent, cowardly, submoral, and boundlessly good-natured.
The comic point of the act is that the performer is not really
this
subhuman grotesque, but a person of intelligence and skill; in other
words, a performer. Assuming this role, a smart man playing dumb,
is a characteristic behavior pattern of Negroes in the South (and often
in the North) in a variety of conflict situations. In
No
Day
of Tri–
umph,
the reporting by a brilliant and sensitive Negro of a trip
through the South in
1940,
J.
Saunders Redding gives us a typical
example. He was driving into Kentucky with a Negro hitchhiker he
had picked up when they were stopped in
a
strikebound mining town
by a guard with an automatic rifle. Before Redding could say any–
thing, the hitchhiker shifted automatically into just such a "coon" act:
"Cap'n, we'se goin' to Kintucky. See all dat stuff back dere, Cap'n?
Well, dat stuff 'longs ter Mista Rob French, an' he sho' will raise hell
ef
we don' git it to
him,"
Bill lied convincingly.
"That gittar too?" the guard questioned, already softened to a joke.
Bill grinned. "No, suh, Cap'n. Dis yere box is mine. Dis yere's
rna
sweetheart!
If
we-all hed time an' you hed time,
I'd
beat one out fer
YfYU,"
Bill said.
