388
MORRIS DICKSTEIN
and complex as children) who grow and learn, or fail to, who ex–
perience love and unhappiness, brutality and special grace, all with-
out disturbing the cosmos or the body politic. These writers resume
the fifties' concern with identity in a new and fresher tone. I'm re–
minded that
if
Baldwin's "we" sometimes wobbles in the early essays)
enacting
his
predicament by assuming now a white, now a black
face, yet the brilliance of his introspection is directly indebted to that
fluid and infirm sense of himself, and to a literary tradition and
I
prose style that nurtured psychological complexity. Add to that
his \
tormented, ambiguous sexuality, which made for further complica- \
tions of awareness and affect - though it would be invidious to
call
his
emotional sensitivity "feminine." But later blacks, proclaim-
ing their masculinity, would aim to turn identity from a personal \'
problem into a function of group solidarity. Such a project has
some meaning for blacks, or for women, who do suffer common
disabilities, but it tends to confuse identity with power, or absolution,
or pride, all of which groups can more readily bestow.
The continuing "relevance" of Baldwin's books, then, especially
the three volumes of essays, lies not in their eloquence, which no
other black writer has achieved, but in their vigorous dissent from a
cultural mood that excessively devalues inwardness. So too McPher–
son's stories are a bold evasion of the stereotypes of black militance
and "black writing." His central characters are plagued by personal
and sexual uncertainties similar to those we find in Baldwin. They
are heterosexual, but just barely; intellectual, but not very assuredly;
black, but not convinced of their superiority or their exemption from
ordinary human needs. They are set off against other figures more
firmly
if
not more happily implanted: half-demented black racists,
assured cocksmen, confirmed homosexuals. The stories usually end
unhappily. Either the hero is weak and falls under the domination
of one of these predators, or he arms himself and casts them out un–
til,
eschewing all relationship, all human risk, he becomes an empty
shell.
McPherson's stories are the opposite of protest literature. They
are built on a principle of reversal by which the victim, apparent ob–
ject of aggression, turns out to be most deeply victimizing himself.
Often these reversa.Is do not quite come off and the stories become
