HAZEL ROWLEY
633
exactly what I mean. But I'm sure that with your sensitive ear you can
catch the over-tone. I do hope you also catch the over-tone of my unwill–
ingness to say too much about this."
Canfield Fisher's letter was verging on blackmail. Wright was silent for
ten days. When he eventually sent yet another revision to his publisher
Edward Aswell, he did not conceal his impatience. "I really feel that this
ought to do the thing. I don't think that I could relate myself any better–
and keep within the facts-to the American scene."
His silence made Canfield Fisher "very uneasy." Understandably. What
if it became known that the Book-of-the-Month CI ub corruni ttee of five
was not only directing American readers to certain books (this was con–
troversial enough), but also
modifying
these books to conform to a
wholesome American template? She wrote him a hurried note: ''I'd never
forgive myself if (in my own attempt to be honest) I had stepped beyond
the line of permissible influence on a younger writer! Don't you put in a
single word which is not from your heart!"
Her letter crossed with Wright's, with his final draft enclosed. For the
first time, he used the words "American" and "America"-but not at all as
the glowing epithets Canfield Fisher intended. He named some American
writers-Dreiser, Masters, Mencken, Anderson, and Lewis-whose critical
attitude toward "the straitened American environment" provided him
with "a tinge of warmth from an unseen light."
He had taken the risk of infuriating Canfield Fisher. But in fact, she was
relieved. "The final version of your ending comes in, to give me the greatest
satisfaction," she wrote to Wright. "You have
not
said a word beyond what you
really fel t and feel-I might have known you'd be incapable of that-the end–
ing is a beautiful piece of writing and deeply full of meaning." In March
1945,
the Book-of-the-Month Club made
Black Boy
once again a dual selection,
along with Glenway Wescott's wholly forgotten novel
Apartment in Athens.
Wright had managed, admirably, to keep his integrity-but the fact is, the
abridged narrative cushioned white readers from the much more serious chal–
lenge of
American Hunger.
Whether or not the removal of the Chicago section
was a good idea in aesthetic terms, it distorted the book's message and less–
ened its punch. The lyrical tone of the new ending was very different from the
ferocity and passion of the original ending. Though Wright never actually says
so, in the final pages of
Black Boy
the North appears to represent hope and pos–
sibility. "With ever-watchful eyes and bearing scars, visible and invisible, I
headed Nord1, full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity."
Black Boy
has always been seen as a story of triumph: a black man who
succeeds, despi te all the odds. The narrative's status as autobiography
encourages readers to see the gap between the tormented protagonist and
the famous author he became as evidence that the American Dream is real.
