200
ItARTliAN REVIEW
Negro detective story. Here there are no whites at
all:
victim, mur–
derer, detective, police, and all the other characters are Negro. The
darky act
is
thus directed not at a character
in
the book, but at the
white reader. Shortly after the murder, an uncouth kinky-haired buf–
foon appears, exclaiming:
''Great day in the mornin'! What all you polices doin' in this place?
Policeman outside d' front door, policeman in d' hall, policeman on d'
stairs, and hyer's another one. 'Deed I mus' be in d' wrong house! Is
this Frimbo the conjure-man's house, or is it the jail?"
He turns out, of course (and I hope you will forgive me for giving
away the plot of a twenty-five-year-old mystery), to be the mur–
derer, an intelligent and literate man, disguised in a wig and a "coon"
act. The point here seems to be that for a Negro reader, no Negro
ever talked like that to his fellows, and the character
is
immediately
suspicious. To
.a
white reader, Fisher apparently assumes (and prob–
ably with justice), the disguise is impenetrable because it fits white
stereotypes. Writing a mystery that would mystify whites but convey
the essential clue to Negro readers seems an odd burlesque equivalent
to Cross Damon's obsequious aggressions.
The fullest development I know of the darky act in fiction
is
Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man,
where on investigation every
im–
portant character turns out to be engaged in some f.acet of the smart–
man-playing-dumb routine. The narrator's grandfather, who was
"the meekest of men," confesses on his deathbed:
"Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told
you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days,
a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my
gun
back in the
Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you
to overcome 'em with yesses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to
death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust
wide open."
Dr. Bledsoe, the president of the college, a tough and unscrupulous
autocrat, pretends to be a simple pious Negro for the school's white
trustees, explaining to the narrator: "I had to be strong and purpose–
ful to get where I am. I had to wait and plan and lick around....
Yes, I had to act the nigger!" Tod Clifton, a young intellectual
in
the Brotherhood, perversely turns to peddling black Samba dolls on
