A pairing for the ages: William Styron’s stunning, and controversial, Pulitzer-prize winner, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER [1968] and Bernard Malamud’s remarkable tale, THE TENANTS, about writers on the edge in derelict NYC [1971] Both novelists, both white, confront race relations, early 1800s and late 1900s, and both master storytellers, diving deep into the chasm between oppression and aspiration.
All I could feel was despair, despair so sickening that I thought it might drive me mad, except that it somehow lay deeper than madness. Styron, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER
I write it right but say it wrong, Lesser thought. I write it right because I revise so often. What I say is unrevised and often wrong. Then he thought, I write about love, because I know so little about it. Malamud, THE TENANTS.
Styron, known for painful themes, like the holocaust in SOPHIE’S CHOICE and his spectacular memoir of depression, DARKNESS VISIBLE, dared to base this novel on a slave uprising in Virginia led by a slave called Nat Turner. There is considerable historical documentation of the murder of roughly 70 slaveholders, and events following, including horrific revenge on an estimated 200 slaves, as well as the tightening of the noose on the already limited civil rights of all black persons, free or slave.
When I first heard of all this adversity, I could not help but feel a spasm of satisfaction [do not consider me altogether heartless – I am not, as you shall surely see, but the contentment a Negro takes in a white man’s misery, existing like a delicious tidbit among bleak and scanty rations, can hardly be overestimated…
The narrative reimagines Turner’s pre-trial confession to lawyer, and slaveholder, Thomas Gray, expanding beyond the original text, which was summarized as a slave gripped by demons, to a broader interpretation of a boy trapped from birth in slavery who learns to read and who has an abiding Christian identity. A psychological character study based on the sociology of a despotic culture and the devastation of perpetual trauma.
The trouble is: a Negro, in much the same was as a dog, has constantly to interpret the tone of what is being said.
Although the novel was a hit critically, and remains to this day recommended reading in many schools, it was, as Styron subsequently agreed, the first politically incorrect novel published on race relations in America. He was condemned by many black writers for both a lack of authenticity and audacity. And yet, the mesmerizing prose and the attempt to reveal the tragedy of slavery seemed a noble effort at the time.
Though it is a painful fact that most Negroes are hopelessly docile, many of them are filled with fury, and the unctuous coating of flattery which surrounds and encases that fury is but a form of self-preservation.
Malamud, who, with Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, elevated the Jewish-American immigrant voice in 20th century American literature, was awarded both the Pulitzer and the National Book awards for THE FIXER, and may be best known, because of the film, for his first novel, THE NATURAL. [My personal favorite is THE ASSISTANT.] THE TENANTS, a later work, is a quirky tale of a has-been writer living in squalor, refusing to vacate a condemned apartment building until he completes a novel he may never complete. [The characterization of the desperate landlord is also priceless.]
Without looking up at the windows at his side the writer imagined the wintry day beyond, crystal bright, lit bold beauty; glad of its existence but without desire to be in or of it, breathe its stinging glow into his half-retired lungs, live it. This sort of pull and push he had long ago quelled in the self else he would never have seriously written. He itched with desire, as he wrote, to open the nearby closet and stare at his box of accumulated manuscripts.
The writer becomes distracted, disturbed and threatened in many ways, by the appearance of a homeless black man who aspires too to be a novelist and who comes to reluctantly admire his senior, for a time. The novel becomes as much as about the art and artifice of writing as the need for human connection, and is also, at times, surprisingly funny, as well as poignant.
As for grammar, they talked once or twice about noun clauses, gerunds and gerundives, but the subject bored Bill. He said it killed the life out of language and never referred to it again. Instead, he studied his paperback dictionary, making list of words in a notebook and memorizing their meanings.
The two ultimately descend into distrust and hostility, as they vie for the same woman and try to fulfill their creative spirits. As they engage in a battle of wits, and manuscripts, seeking affirmation in a culture unsympathetic to Jews and Blacks, they find their extremist personal circumstances impossible to bridge, despite their common ground.
Often, the writing about writing speaks profoundly to anyone who writes, and, to my surprise, reflected the challenge of the narrative form depicted so beautifully by Styron.
Sometimes the writing goes really badly. It is painful when images meant to marry repel each other, when reflections, ideas, won’t coalesce. When he forgets what he meant to write and hasn’t written. When he forgets words or words forget him. He types wither for either all the time. Lesser sometimes feels despair’s shovel digging. He writes against cliffs of resistance. Fear, they say, of completing the book? Once it’s done what’s there to finish? Fear of the ultimate confession?
Malamud captures New York City in the 70s well: a threatening dangerous place, antagonistic to the underclasses. I can attest – I lived there then – also extremely threatening to women.
I was mesmerized by both novels – the command of language and narrative confidence, the descriptive settings, character revelations, pacing and structure. These are old-fashioned storytellers in peak form and worth revisiting. What is disheartening, beyond the plight of these protagonist and their brethren, is how little has changed in human relations beyond the superficial. Perhaps literature will still save us.
Stay tuned for more of the best of the backlist, with the best of the new best thrown in. Cheers.