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a believable, distinguished Negro, a would-be leader who never had a
chance once he started himself and others marching; the book captures
beautifully the "thing" that goes on between black and white - par–
ticularly the more educated of both races - in Virginia or Alabama or
Louisiana. Perhaps a tentative generalization might be in order: Southern
writers of whatever color are particularly sensitive to the terrible and
humorous and impossible "goings-on" between men and women and
children of both races; Northern writers who are Negro or white go deep
into themselves, and even into the skins of "others," but somehow fail
to capture much that happens
between
people whose racial differences
mean so much to one another. Perhaps it is simply that not much
does
go on between whites and blacks in New York or Chicago. Or rather,
they hate and fear one another, pure and simple, but as Baldwin has
said, they don't "know" one another. Ellison's "invisible man" neverthe–
less had all sorts of palpable, sad, comic and ironic dealings with white
men in the South; and Ellison knows that social customs and habits, no
matter how formal, constrained or abusive, are not without their "deeper"
or "inner" (read "psychological" today) significance. Like Ellison,
Styron manages to catch the twisted intimacy that Southerners of both
races live out - and Southern writers portray.
So Styron has wedded his voice, his personal experience, his gener–
ous heart to Nat's yearning, suffering, gifted life. In so doing he succeeds
in making Nat a particular human being and a particular Negro, and
thereby affirms himself a novelist who wants to enter the world with
whatever sensibility he can summon. Yes, I find it all "valid": Nat's
experiences with Negroes and whites, his memories of growing up, his
various moods and "attitudes," his biblical rage and biblical resignation,
his uncanny restraint as a commander-in-chief and his murderous ven–
geance - singly delivered upon Margaret, the white woman who came
nearest him and drew him furthest from himself and his awful circum–
stances. But I do not believe it is the "validity" or the historical "ac–
curacy" of
The Confessions of Nat Turner
that count all that much.
William Styron has written words that will push hard at thousands and
thousands of minds. He has awakened us, made us feel more and in
that way given us a rather special glimmer of that elusive thing called
"history" and that terribly concrete thing called "race." Following the
tradition of writers like Faulkner and Tolstoy, he has made a bold and
successful attempt to follow them quite directly - not by writing "re–
sponsibly" about a social issue, or writing "profoundly" about a psycho–
logical one, but by writing a haunting and luminous novel that incidentally
breathes history and psychology and whatever on every page.
Robert Coles
