Tell it like it is: the young Negro writer

It's time to talk about the influences and movements among younger negro riders. So I'll try to mention that on the way through. I wrote an essay once called The Myth of a negro literature which was published in some kind of weird form in the Saturday Review. And the point I was trying to make there the emphasis was that until relatively recently most of what could be call the negro's formal attempt at high art. Were found in his music and one of the reasons I gave was that it was only in the music that say the negro didn't have to respect a tradition outside of his own feelings. That is he could play literally like the man said what he felt and not try to make

it seem like this thing or that thing. I also said about Negro writing that in most cases and not only writing let's say any other thing that we classify or they classify that they again classify as high art. Usually the negroes who want to pursue that were necessarily middle class Negroes and that the art that these middle class negroes made tended to be an art that was in imitation of a white middle class literature. So that say popular fiction is usually about tired white lives so that say the negro writer who would duplicate these tired white lives only let's say painting them black which is like checkers white checkers and black checkers you say a saying essentially nothing about the negro except that he has been desperately oppressed se so oppressed that he cannot even remember his own separate

experience. So that even a man say like Charles just not one of the earlier black writers finally had to cop out as they say by being a quote refined Afro American not just any body not just any sensibility not just any functioning intelligence but a specific kind of intelligence that say white America would recognize as being valid as some kind of intellectual commentary on the times the society the culture etc. so that finally you know America becomes a place where integration means not just dollars and cents although that's what it is about dollars and cents. It means Radio City Music Hall. It means say the insipidity of television. It's a means almost the impossibility of becoming a man in a place that doesn't demand manhood anymore in fact despises manhood as some

kind of alien Grace. So that the negro finds himself in a very weird position that is to say to be of this country and to be part of this country. But to say I have a culture and it is a culture because culture is simply the way people live and it's reinforced for the poor by memory. That is to have a culture which is say an adjunct separate from the mainstream of the culture. So that you have in one breath you have the literature that would come from being a house Negro. That is by assuming cultural properties that were not emotionally one's own in order to have a go at mainstream white America or you'd have a literature which would seek to identify and delineate the slave the black black man the man who say

remains separated from the mainstream say. I'm then preaching at once at once the validity of say separating oneself emotionally and finally intellectually from what turns out to be only mediocrity. Even if it's well paid. Dissociation disassociation with the mainstream. That is what is said to be real by the main white American image man. The moves say that the Negro is made to the cities. And let's say the beginning of the 20th century which is nine hundred twenty nine or let's say 1919 the First World War 1929 the depression. What also happens not only to the black man but to the white is that the writer can become more nearly anonymous that is he can come from any place and be anybody. He doesn't have to be say the landed gentry it doesn't have to be the New England aristocracy

which made most of American literature but can be literally any man in the kind of anonymous circumstance that the city provided. So the negro than the negro writer the Negro Artist has two problems there. First of all he's got to make a break say with an intentional drive to get in the mainstream to become faceless. That is say the negro middle class realize that in a society where black is a liability the coolest thing is not to be that. So the first thing the negro writer has to say is say well I am a Negro which is a great. This is a great dramatic thing to say that and to realize that it means not only some racial delineation but it means that you are say responsible to us specific and particular culture and that you can talk about that culture and have it be

meaningful simply because it is a human experience that is to say I am a black man all my writing is done by a black man. Now whether I label each thing I write written by black man it's still written by a black man so that if I point out a bird a black man has pointed out the bird and it is the validity the weight of that experience in me and the way I get it from where it is here to you that says whether I'm a writer or not. Not say any strictly socio cultural categorization. So if the writer say can get away first by not making the move to become a white man. That is the switcheroo that the that the middle class and grow middle class want to pull that is intended by the house negro his intellectual progeny. That is just show up why that suddenly by virtue of say your

memory and your acting ability that you suddenly become white and that there is no trace of you on this continent. As ever having lived and has ever having experienced a separate emotional experience. So say that even in the thirties when Husan What we call the Harlem School began to want to talk about let's say I have some notes. When they say wanted to refocus and say what was around them there where they were and create that place as an instrument of feeling when they wanted to talk about literally where they were would say turned out to be a literature about poverty a literature of violence a literature about the seamier sides of the so-called American qua American dream then say the first people to jump on them were either negro or the first people who

said well it's just not so. You're talking about you're talking about bad stuff which is a moral concept. Finally you're talking about bad things so that say breath wait and Skyler who said of such literature that it preys degradation. Or say the negroes who set of the blues. Well that makes me feel feel like slavery. Well the point is that the middle class has always worked with a curious kind of fantasy. They assume that those 300 some years that were spent in this country by our fathers and our grandfathers as slaves that finally no one is to remember that that it has vanished. That we never did experience that that your grandmothers were lying but that's not the case and say the stakeout on America that any black man makes if it's legitimate will say probably be a hole or a vision of what America finally is

than most white men can give. And this is not necessarily racial it's scientific in this sense. If say you live in a big house and you keep me locked in a room and you never go in that room. You don't know anything about that room. But say I come out of that room to clean it up or to do something in the rest of the house. Then I know about the whole house and if I want to talk then I can talk about the whole house. And if you say suddenly that what I'm talking about is degrading is filthy is obscene is pornographic. Then realize that place that you had me living is the same thing so that say a man who tries to tell me that I cannot have my character say to describe something that he sees is trying to deny the validity of my experience and trying to deny the expressiveness of that word as a category of human feeling in the

world which is not so. So that I don't have to say golly. But negro literature has always let's say been in America social response which finally I think the best of any kind of literature is let's say social response either in the sense of say the middle class writer refusing to acknowledge his blackness and say not even talking about social or social things but making a skip to some other say neutral territory in which he can exist as anybody which is impossible so that the American Negro say 1940 when it's getting ready to go down again that is another war let's say bebop musicians realize that just by being black in

America one is a non-conformist you don't have to get weird or you don't have to act. To me that is by simply being a black man in a country where black is a liability. You are a committed nonconformist. So that one makes use of that nonconformity as a natural fact of one's life rather than say as a program. So I can talk about my life and some woman and say that's weird but indeed in the context of America it is weird. So you have you have a choice of cultivating on the one hand cultivating a mask that is making believe I am actually like you so that a man can ask you well in 20 years I'll tell you in 20 years America is going to be president of the United States. But then I ask myself who am still a young

negro. I asked myself but who would want to be the president the United States. Who would want to be say known as an international murderer. I mean that's a dubious distinction. And so even say the middle class idea of saying Well Warren Harding was a Negro. That is even though he's say maybe the worst president we've ever had. But say that sense that sense of some kind of he meant simply because it's recognized by the white man is the sickness that infests. Let's say the missionary culture that is say for instance the negro colleges where the missionaries culture still works. Cleanliness hard work etc. even in the face of such people who have never done any of these things and who profit beyond your wildest dreams by never having done it.

So so. Here we come to say what what what are your influences then. If you refuse say to be taken in you know by what goes down and around as being the most admirable qualities of American culture that is say if a man will nominate Leonard Bernstein for say the Pulitzer Prize and not even understand that the finest composer America has produced was Duke Ellington to not even understand that to say to to say Virgil Thompson as some possible great composer and not even understand who do get Ellington was is fantastic. It's fantastic. But that is what we are labeled as not having contributed anything so man says What has been the negro's contribution to American culture. What has it been so you think about that what has it been. We've lived here which is what everyone else has done and we have memories of our particular and specific way of living here and

that is valuable as a statement about not only this place but the nature of the world. And when I say social art I mean not only art that is art in anyone's definition but an art that will tell you how man lived or say at least how he wanted to live. As far as that goes there and joining the mainstream being say and Ebony Magazine speaking of people column as having made some micro cosmic progress into what. Into maybe as a man said a burning building. But then finally it comes to the idiocy of perhaps like the Harding reference of one day a negro being in Ebony magazine for being the first Negro to drop an atomic bomb on some people. It goes to that kind of accomplishment so that finally the man says the Negro has to be twice as good to get ahead. So that means and finally are we to drop two bombs instead of

one. The Souls of Black Folk let's say Dubois and let's say find clothes for the Jew. Talk about two different places in America two different places in the emotional history of America. Both say equally equally valid by virtue of the precision of the telling nothing else the precision of the telling. By demonstrating exactly what it is you feel by showing it rather than say elaborating in some didactic but finally non instructive way that is by demonstrating which is what are you supposed to do so that I usually think of the Harlem writers and say Jean Toomer not in the same term but because Jean

Toomer say separated himself as an intellectual let's say with the same term as a middle class intellectual whether as a mystic. Which is the hard core of Negro culture mysticism because the Spirit was always valuable. That more valuable than things for the negroes because they never had. Anything else so that the Spirit was always valuable and so that the religious core of Negro culture still say is present even let's say and feel only as Monk Ornette Coleman they are trying to get at something that is finally spiritual and has to do say with you being capable of transmitting spirit. Rather than saying writing a biography which might be useful for you to get a job or say something like that. So the negro focusing on himself as an equal let's say person but that person being a

receptacle or a scepter or receiver of all emotion just as any other person so that you talk about where you are and who you are and say what that place has made you. The say future the way they say that negro riders in the future. If you think of say Wright Richard Wright and Toomer and Hughes and Ellison and Baldwin and Chester Himes if you think of those people you have say in just those few years a top level performance in each of those areas that they set out to do. That is the most meaningful book of social essays in the last decade. Notes of a native son

the most finally constructed archetype or mythological novel utilizing say Kafka sense of what the world could be is the invisible man. The most completely valid social novel and social criticisms of South and North non urban and urban Negro life. Black Boy and native son. It's all there. Even say finally to detective fiction when we have Chandler and Hammett but say Chester Himes all shot up or the crazy killer the real coup killers finally much more interesting because not only about plot but also about a place wherein such plot can take a natural existence so that the negro writer finally doesn't have to think about his roots even literarily as

being subject to some kind of derogatory statement one has only to read the literature that is. For instance it is impossible to understand the Civil War or the Reconstruction period without reading Dubois by reconstruction. It is impossible to understand say the temperament of middle class negroes without reading the Franklin Frazier's black. It is impossible in this sense. So the young negro writer has that has all that material. Our fathers our grandfathers and hands say the still finally just barely plumb innards of his own cultural history. I'm writing a novel now about something my grandfather told me. And about something my grandmother told me that is the essential reality is this.

When I ran in and said Grandmother This boy called me a nigger. She said well you are you are nobody else's. And the realization that finally that is valuable being that nigger because that means you don't have that experience of being what you think a nigger is. So that's a Finally in jazz. When people start talking about funk and say before you know they said Negro has a characteristic smell. So then the negro say takes that and turns that term around so that if you don't have that characteristic smell that funk then it's not valuable. So it becomes the very tools the white man gave you to work with or suddenly used against him so that the nasty the nasty parts of Pigs and the useless parts of certain vegetables make people that are say characterized as big black bucks that is makes another delineation in the social order that is directly

attributable to that separation to these very weapons they have given you and said were not valuable so now you find indeed they are valuable they are valuable so that even say listening to The Beatles. One knows that that's not possible without Chuck Berry or the coasters. And it's very amusing that you can turn on say Ed Sullivan and see the Beatles. But you would never see Chuck Berry or the coasters so behind this culture in every say legitimate thrust they make towards meaning there is the black experience. If a factory goes up one of those hands that touched that steel then black and they know what that means. Even separately from say the other men who are doing it because they know it both ways. So it becomes valuable for the black man to realize that He exists and is as valid as any other thing

because his musician Albert Isler told me everything is everything that is there is nothing more valuable than anything else. It's just its function. That makes it say more clear or more powerful or say with a writer it's how he has that information function that makes it useful. I want to say that about influence my locus my own direction is always toward spirit which is the only thing I admit as being real. I say Where am I who am I what's happening who are all these others and related to me. So if I say if Eliot T.S. Eliot says something about the essential strength of language as image I take it to mean me. If LB says something about image as emotional and intellectual complex I take it to mean me. If a poll in error says something about space time relationships of sense

drama and philosophical abstracts as reality for instance Christ as an airplane pilot I take it to mean me something I can use where I am say in my ghetto or outside of that get up but say available as they areas are light is its there. The people I know say young writers and I'm only going to use that because that's the closest to me and I can talk about say young writers in New York. Let's say when I came to New York I started a magazine called UGA which printed. Negro riders like Alan like Tom post BOB HAMILTON Ernie Keane A.B. Spellman I think polite and Spelman are among the finest poets young poets in America now. But also with that publishing I published. Any other person I want to publish so that I found myself publishing that writing which I thought was most valuable. Not writing say that reflected those tired white lives again but necessarily those

people those white people who are talking about a side of America that was more valuable because it hadn't been talked about say Allen Ginsburg. Who gives you the Jewish memory of dissent in this culture as say this culture asks and has asked all the immigrants to strip themselves of the very things that would make their culture valuable so that an Italian who comes into America is an American and the Italian thing is left. The Jew who gets into America is an American and the Jew thing is left. And so now they want to break your back to Negroes so that when you go into that place there'll be no dissent you know there'll be no dissent so that you will be faceless too and so that your literature will reflect some kind of tired thrust that say luxury and comfortable ignorance. I can name some people say as I did Alan polite Tom Hamilton Spellman and myself when we were writing we thought say first of an aesthetic mystical

fulcrum core that is we wanted to talk about what we thought was beautiful what we thought was enduring our spirit and whether it was black white grey green. The fact of our being black would be in it just by the precision of our telling. Say there is a new magazine now called the year that I have a copy of edited by a young negro in New York Lorenzo Thomas who say is taking contemporary American literature say the poetry of Frank OHara can of Coke John Ashbury and say various surreal influences and making it relate to his experience where he is again as Finally a black man let's say on your driver's license. But the spirit is not defined socially. So there is also another new magazine called Who's edited by a young poet Joe Johnson 20 years old again who is a fine

negro poet and poets around him Ishmael Reed. Calvin Herndon. Tom dent. Who began let's say at a social recognition of what the world is and make that an aesthetic by perfecting the way in which they tell it racial social. You know the paradox of style and finally revolution a magazine like The Liberator which begins with a nationalist social outlook editor Dan Watts Harel Cruz Carlos Russell and Liebert Ford some of those young writers who began talking socially nationalistic and making the brute force of that image be our as the people shadow people due to a magazine like Revolution published in France where I edited a Section Five young negro poets. Myself Joe Johnson a

girl named Sonia Sanchez from Alabama. Lorenzo Thomas A.B. SPELLMAN again with no focus other than who we think are think we are. There are writers here on the coast that I know little about Bob Kaufman. David Melville John Richardson John Thomas. Some young poets because I'm closest always to the poets magazine and in Brooklyn Linux Raphael. So the editor called the bridge again separate individual thrusts but all making a social statement just by virtue of them showing up very strong. I don't want to take up. Too much time but. What I think it gets back to is what can you say about the world and who you are and how

to get there. Now I'm suppose to talk about philistinism and the Negro which will probably be along the same lines only I want to say name names maybe to make it a more specific but I will say this now. If you think about Irish literature say from wild times and if you think of wild Shaw Yeats Joyce singed OKC Beckett you think about those those people are Irish. You're not English. And those have been those men have been the strength of English literature now for a long time. So I see now that same role being handed to the negro. And as say the communication which makes this the 20th century the speed of communication. That is I say something somebody will find out about. Maybe tomorrow instead of 1070 so that it becomes possible for writers to come from

any place young negro's old negroes as simply anonymous writers but talking about specific. Experiences which are informed by the place where they are and by what this place is made them. The birth of the world becomes as wide as it is because there's nothing here anyway except what you see or want. And I think that consciousness can be public. It can be public. I have one more thing to say but I can't find it. Oh so now. The young writer the young middle class negro writer is running say from the same America in a sense that the young white writer who will admit that is writing from. I mean even if that America is disguised as say some black professor who's embarrassed by watermelons it's still America not say just that experience is what is America has made him and see the

writers in the ghetto will write about that. The negroes who have say find themselves as a middle class people outside of the ghetto will go where art is and try to do it that way. So the expression and the experience is available wherever you are. All you have to do is like the man said. Tell it exactly as it is that's a.