The Negro writer in America

On the second day of the negro writers conference held a seal a more Kenneth Rexroth and I asked the first three conference speakers so unders reading Harvey's widows and Lloyd Jones to join us in a discussion in a manner typical of the conference. The conversation did not remain confined to literary matters for very long. Which is to be expected when dealing with a body of writing so deeply embedded in to use a euphemism controversy. We begin with Mr. Swift as his impressions of the conference audience. I sense a kind of tension. In some of the comments from the floor as well as any of what I heard of Leroy Jones talk this morning I get tied up in little bit late but in some of the things that he said as well as a question to asked of me earlier in the morning questions were asked of him later in the morning a kind of tension between in the minds of the young to go intellectuals between wanting out of the whole thing. And as John saying I don't want to be president of a country like this. And the other hand I kind of pride of the accomplishments that in a sense will you

know they are within the society. The new young people are coming along with the voices and poetry and fiction drama and so forth. And this seems resolved as in a sense I think it ought to be. Saunders Redding I want I frequently get the feeling. But the so-called younger writers on earth are talking to themselves. You know I get the feeling that there is. An imperfect kind of communication I suppose that this is this is true and. You know. This is the normal sort of result of age differences. You know that the communication between the this generation. And the next is rather imperfect. You see what I mean and this is certainly in this in this conference has had has led to.

The asking of questions which had obvious answers. Yes the oratorical going through. Yes well Kenneth Rexroth other question here. Sure a lot of the country is a nation which has become frightfully fashionable words show the. Rebbe he wants to be emulated. We have alienated stockbrokers hated presidents presidents was. Really on there. But the thing is that the negro situation is a little essential regular American economic life in the past a situation of alienation from the subcultures alienated from the dominant culture Well this provides a large number of people with a mask of alienation. As I said it would have been very convenient BOTA lair had he been a negro So he did next best thing a girl in fact happened to been part

Malagasy she wasn't a little she's gone down in history as well and he let her die in the street. But the I think that a great many people I think this is one reason for the popularity of so much people fiction today. It's like a popularity beat fiction it provides the same kind of excitement that cowboy programs provide children of suburbanites just because of the popularity of young white audiences white readers Yeah but negro to upper middle class and he goes call it. But the so that you got several different factors you've got that the what should be the normal Elya nation other creative personality. Then you've got a special problem. In the nation from Bush Law Society and its goals and so forth and then you've got the Negro thing and all these emergency costs in a very complex Bray and no altogether too many people exploiting all along as a

rock but I don't think these issues are made clear because in the past they have to face the majority of Negro writers or anything but it hated what they wanted to become was distinguished genteel. From them. Authors this is something which really hasn't been true since the Harlem Renaissance. And yet to come back was saying originally I think there is a kind of tension between what the young negro intellectuals like the people in the audience read in question this morning say that they want and between what they seem to be wanting in their writings the young story writers and poets. And when you said to you I don't want to be president of a country like this. This is it seems to me one state who kind of comes with just saying I don't have the kind of ambitions that the negro writers of two generations back had for themselves. I don't want to become white. This is this is.

The feds have had no more ammunition on the other hand they are saying that look at what all of our good young people are accomplishing and they are accomplishing that within the confines of you know the language of the of the master race and the culture of the master race and everything else. Well this is this business of the negro writer wanting to be something other than he is is is a rough generalization that actually there are there are many instances where of course it breaks down completely unless you begin talking about the business of expressing themselves in in a particular kind of way not the things not the thing said but the way of saying it yours. I think it breaks down for instance who as early as says 903 with the Souls of Black Folk.

I think before that time there was there was a great deal to this. I think since that time there's been relatively little relatively little. Certainly the Renaissance except for for. Oh one or two people a man who wanted to write a novel all in elliptical sentences for instance and this kind of thing. There's been practically little of this of wanting to be other than what you don't know yet. Also people who have this problem isn't real I mean the best example she was not insincere which I'll bet is that the autobiography of Belle Thompson this kind of woman she has she got the statements of a 14 I still don't believe that I still love her I really don't. I still believe that all of you know that look at all that when you're a bell Townson harebell Thompsons and American daughters and something this listened to came out about 15 years ago.

Tara blasted out of his head and when she did the same sort of thing on you know she she assumed the same point of view when she didn't do her book on their travels in Africa. You know these things. How do you think you want to know them. You just know the name. And I never. Once looked at the how the how would something like that to reporters. But with sort of a novelized the cut of his boyhood Midwest relate to this as well in the book. Gordon Parks. Oh darn. Oh god that was who for me that that book was simply gone. Yeah it was a bad book I grade but that came obviously from the life of somebody who had lived in a typical existence. Yeah he now he's one of those guys who I mean who wants to be on with what he did. Same question that I said Did you read that you read. No no no no I'm still trying to

get through you know now that I'm. Being mellow. Well I got I mean yeah I got I didn't dare look at deeper and richer like oh now that that book was simply simply horrible. You know from the point of view of denying that there was any validity to these to these Negro feelings let's put it this way. You see I'm trying to say that. That the Negro in America is just like the white man in America. You see and for God's sake let him you know stop beating this dead horse I mean it was simply a bad book badly written and and everything you know. And yet it did come I would guess that it must have grown from the man's experience of growing up as one of the top when you go your ways that's a little less you know you wouldn't you feel I could feel or I thought I could feel a complete insincere and all this just all the work doesn't cut the violence in the end and so I don't remember what happened as something awful letter or whatever.

There's that duality that the bar is May Now this same man and had been down to Brazil where he had made these most striking photographs you know for for life. And many of these Life published because I suppose they were too striking. Did this picture story on these deprived peoples generally of dark skins in in Brazil easy now let me go down that with a great deal of sympathy do you see a kind of sympathy which does not enter into this this kind of sympathy and understanding that does not enter into this book. I mean it's you know there is that duality there is that strangeness which I think I don't suppose anybody really can account for except that we are basically schizophrenia. Leroy Jones negroes yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's been for the culture it's been a useful I mean for

the mainstream American culture it's been a useful kind of schizophrenia because it's kept the society from blowing up a long time ago I think because I think it's had this this. Result so far is critical judgments of writing by Negroes is concerned. I think it has removed from consideration those very writings that is from critical consideration those very writings which would help. Us understand you know would which would help the American culture to understand itself. You see as I tried to say last night was a just last night. And there is this kind of economy which has been bad for America. You know you're you're deciding Negroes can't do anything worth worthwhile there's no point in reading this stuff to us has been bad for you.

I don't mean you personally necessarily but it will be American. Well see now there's another factor here that I think was really that I don't want to act as his interpreter. But. It seems to me the underlying theme of really well his old dog was directed against the scepter of. The mediocrity which is which is that the absent bad style the failure to be able to admit the person to experience and I think we have also been the danger as long as ever a couple of good lynchings. Maybe like the trees scattered around some place that we accepted this whether it was by black or white as a great Were you know racial or racial fiction I think that

we can be too placid in the standards that we apply. This shows itself of course in the period of the thirties or in Communist literature generally. What's the name of that historical novelist that quit the communist party with a great up. How if in fact Howard Fast to have longevity he I mean he was a lousy writer before he discovered the worker's fatherly role in learning it all. While he was a pretty rough couple books monied about Nat Turner's and him it was a lousy book and I don't see why these things I mean I think that one of the things that that maybe just really Roy Jones has always represented to me is the harshest kind of criticism that this is even if this is true of his jazz criticism I sort of take apart a young guy who learns who's a great hope nobody else had the guts to do it you know where to go and beat you.

Why should we put up with mediocrity just because just because we're well I use anybody who's anybody who's asking us to. I mean certainly I don't think I think the day is past 21 and the negro the negro as reader. Considers it a worthwhile accomplishment that a book is published. I think that critical judgment now interferes. Im. In that very small body of negroes who are readers. You see I don't think that they are they are asking. That they are praising mediocrity any longer. Oh I misunderstood you see after all these mince mass 10:03 fiction. Yeah I don't think they're not written by any bells and I can't remember all the stuff I read at all. Probably just like you and Larry like you Leroy has now that it

is very easy to say because it is the general picture is pretty true if you sit down an elderly read it through your life and if you know nothing about it in the first place you probably didn't get a fairly accurate picture. Decision of the American society is like you know to some charitable I'm not talking about our Leading I was talking about all this that well this is true but you see part of that of course. As well I don't know it's probably not happening now is as much as it did years ago. When when the negro and the negro cause was a kind of fat juicy and then he barley could get any darn thing published. You know on the negro as oh yeah that's right that's right what he thought about the 20s. Yes the fourth time in the 20s this was true and eventually of course that was that was mediocre talent said just just fate why you see me they took me to the white light of the chic white letters like that back it up with invective.

Certainly all that with that group. Yes. For instance said anything about or draw a negro. For a time couldn't get published music and and negroes took advantage of this. You know what there's another Taylor GORTON And then there was well van back of course and then there was a fella named M. and what was his first name who wrote something called sweet man and did you ever hear this and then there was Gertrude millin from South Africa educating Lee right you know he's the director. Yeah yeah wallowing Kemi noirs rules the market for these things which were awful as as as as I thought they were and they were simply terrible and yet I must say in a defense of things that have happened in the past I've been repeating some risk in Caldwell stories out of the early thirties and before he went on to this other stuff that he's been doing over the years and I can't think of another white writer who has written about

negroes with the kind of ferocious intensity and passion of those early stories Neal of the Rising Sun and something and then they go on like a well-led that I have a blade in the trial of a blade uncolored Yeah extraordinary how this powerful is dire enough to bring tears that even you know it was it was awfully good. Percy fell from that high pitch variation but nevertheless it was there. YOUNG Yeah yeah I like I think I'd like to ask you a question the religion was just witnesses talk. If I understood you rightly you were drawing a parallel between writers became let's say from a Jewish tradition or from Italian tradition or Italian Americans who. Made a virtue of their backgrounds or use them in such a way as to become fine writers who were. I can't follow your argument entirely but do you think that there is a real parallel between the Negro American and

any of these other groups when it comes to becoming a writer or writing in the United States or other unique problems which change the situation drastically. We're considering Negro Americans. Why don't they have the right to talk about whether or not their unique problems for Negro Americans but I think as a writer the mother the various racial groups that you referred to have all gone through personal crises of. Trying to establish their identity and what there was in the past that was valuable and worthwhile and relayed to them as Americans whatever the hell being an American was and is and this is something that is going to go away it's a groping with and grappling with too and when I talk about the negro the negro writer in a sense or you know in my mind becoming a typical American I didn't mean in a pet as a way of petting him and I had become a white man. About Us Nothing could be more ugly in my mind than that. I'm talking about the American as someone who's no longer a white man. This is what is in the process of happening it seems to me. Yeah well Leslie Fiedler asked me in Buffalo he said we were talking we were arguing with

something and he said Do you know who the most significant negro character is in fiction and I stand by what I mean you would never say who is the most significant white character in fiction unless you mean Moby Dick. Thank you very much. But that's that kind of thinking is not say like aggressively toward oppressing you but it is oppressive because it exists. And Leslie Fiedler of course thinks of himself as some kind of liberated individual. And yet he finally is not. If you can read it in liberating you. Yeah if he can propose if he can propose that and then to propose that it come from Faulkner you know which means he's never read Melville is you know absurd. It's really funny. It's very funny but Harvey you were right when we were at that place together in new year you had a you know Elizabeth heart was not there you

know not a writer. I was there with her at another time. Time here's a woman I don't know why this should come in except that that it has been until recently impossible for the Negro to make himself known to white people. You know for what he is. There was an occasion when they gave a party one of these you know I don't party. I was the only I was the only time fellow named Charles Siebert came a little later and there were several people there from the faculty at Bennington College and it was one of these women's birthdays or something and a chap said that anyone who's not up to it I said if we're going to do a trick of levitation you're saying. So they stretch this girl out of you can raise that lovely Vader thing that they had to pick up.

I stretch this girl out from a chair you see and two people were to stand at her shoulders and two people at her feet and. I was to stand at her feet and this chap said to me you know don't have I don't want you down there you got me. President and I stood out like I said did. Do you understand did you understand this. She said no. I mean what what's with it what what's it all about. And I said you did not realize that this guy did not want me touching that girl's leg because I'm a new grad and she said no I don't think so. This was true tall and I know darn well it was true or at least I felt that it was true and this made it true for me. You know you say that it's just impossible it was just impossible. All right and that is why these these new writers are so important

because they are now getting through using to a much larger audience. And then our writers did their early. I want to ask the royal questions and so he seems to probably have visited perhaps the angriest black man and Cuban and in exile Robert Williams What would have a how would you consider his writings as they relate to Negro writing of the century and of this period. Well the best piece of fact social writing I've seen recently has been his book negroes with guns which told about the Monroe North Carolina incident. He's the clearest and most honest man I've seen in terms of dealing with what's actually happening and what he would propose to say offer as an alternative. You know he's the clear also wanted to ask in relation to his current little exile the publication of the Crusader where he he sees an era our

reign of terror descending on America and as this is being perhaps the only solution for the league grow situation here. Do you have you read his a young athletes the Crusader. Do you consider this a a valid prediction of yours. Absolutely I think that what's happening in Harlem and Rochester and Jersey City and now Kansas City will happen in every you know large city in America. You know because and there will be finally probably Martial Law in. The large city. But what I mean to do. Oh excuse me what I want to ask you this morning as I was walking away from here on down the road isn't it strange that a conference like this could be going out with none of these things mentioned that are in the hood and those are the headlines of every newspaper all around us. Yeah yeah. Well I went to Harlem in a sense this was an indictment of maybe if I hadn't spoken of the other is nice I could only answer that I've I've been a very bad state for what is happening now here as well as over in

Vietnam and I was one of the findings in Mississippi and it's not very easy for me to get up and say anything really well when you know I went before I came to Buffalo I'm going to you know went to Harlem right after the riots and to Bedford-Stuyvesant And when you see that they could cut off the entire I mean the blockade you know that whole look what the young boys up there call it the compound. Now you know oh you call it the compound because when they can block it off like they would say blockade Cuba and then expect you still to be loyal to that force. You know it becomes absurd so now those young boys walk down the street and make remarks at the policeman you know just as a common expression of the of you know. That hatred but they're not doing anything at all about it but being you know they're walking in street groups of 10 to abreast the police like it was occupied Berlin in 1945 or

something with a ridiculous thing is the way the pres York restoration Rochester just as I read it other states all talk about this is uh this was something organized. I mean it is said a fresh extraordinary thing about this is that this is genuine spontaneity these people aren't organized by anything except a charity of which they live. RUSSERT Is must organize it as anybody and you're all saying go on and kill another nigger was not organized. Believe me it tears streaming down her face but. You know let's again met duality. Dammit I remember going to another striking photograph the death of Roosevelt. Did you ever see that cover like a listening we broke. Yeah you know Negro man where this negro man.

Standing there you know tears Scott it was it was most eloquent. All right. That's one extreme that's the other extreme of the same darn thing it seems to me this is this girl yelling kill another negro. On the one hand there is that sense of. Of. Deprivation so complete that it says. It's despair. See that there's nothing that can be done about it. On the other hand there is that sense of. Of the ability you know to to to to change this thing and and this fellow who wept at the death of Roosevelt was one of those who was feeling that things were beginning to change. See this is what keeps us Americanized. Well I'd like to have the right because I think he's closer to this the rest of us. Don't you feel. That. It's just like Bach musicians if you talk these guys you discover that I guess from their uncles or maybe their parents.

There's a whole lot of old time Stalinist stuff they still use you know they don't talk about a civic republican a black male but there are all kinds of catchphrases that the older generation about these Asians picked up somewhere. So that as a kind of reverberations. Of you know of the 30s the program accomplished so I think today one of the things that I notice amongst all kinds of people that I meet you know around where I live is a kind of rebirth a ration of black nationalism in the Muslims and all sorts of people have got an ideology in our heads now refuse to say this is how I'm a black man and this is become a part of it just passes from lip to lip. One person says another person says it. And all sorts of things. I mean the oppression of the power structure of the ruling class and the whatever is creating in the spontaneous thing an ideology and it's

an ideology that better watch out they better stop creating or it'll bite them. Don't you think this is true don't you feel is spreading what that line from the Lijah from Malcolm Irvine men of black nationalist spreads as an instinctive response to the situation on the part of kids that drop out of grammar school. Don't you think this is true. Yeah it does it does it becomes available you know and guide the way into that thinking becomes available. But you know finally kind of I'm thinking that. You can't ask. As a man told me that I was irrational one time angry and irrational and I was saying though I didn't think I was I thought I was trying to make it clear I was insisting on clarity you know which might have made a scene. But suddenly after being after living in this kind of irrational nightmare the white man suddenly says well you have to be rational about it so

that this police thing for instance you cannot sit down with a man and discuss police brutality. That is the question of whether there is police brutality or not. You can't tell him Finally unless you say as he says you're angry if I say there is police brutality there is there is when say the average negro in the street doesn't have to tell you that you know he knows it and he knows it and that essential disaster in American society is the thing that cannot be gotten to you know cannot be gotten to by so-called rational talk except say. I mean in the term it used now you can't have say the NAACP come in and talk to man about police brutality. You know because that's infested individual negroes in specific ways that they alone can tell you you know and say any attempt to put it and discuss it within the framework of say their rationality. Yeah it is something entirely different you know. Yeah yeah. I would enjoy Rio would you agree with with with Byard Ruston

was analyses of seem to me what's been going on to be closer to what I gather to be the heart of the matter than any other single human being united states listed 18 months or two years that finally the Negro must have allies willy nilly must have allies but I think I have 2010 and I just want to make a yappy between the fact that the effect of that and the political situation we've been talking about of a nigger being driven into a corner in the most hideous ruthless way in the large American cities and we're all agreed it is going to spread. And the. New Guy's intellectual and creative man being essentially apart again I would say willy nilly of Western culture is not going to be a part of Chinese culture Oriental comment about American culture Western culture and his that his country basic contribution is a part of western culture. Just so he has to be is well in the in part of American society unless one opts for the program of this or that black nationalist group and says let's get out and get back over to Africa.

One must turn and look for allies. No they won't. They must know that I might turn. I might but say the poor negro Where is his ally they are on the street with him. The only man he sees white there is a cop and who finally becomes just a target. You know when you make a ghetto you enforce that ghetto thinking he doesn't have any allies he didn't see any white man there except the man that owns those still stores that take his money and his policeman and exploiting any kind of exploitation comes from the white man and that's their reference. My reference is different because I'm not there in the compound before the people in the compound. They don't. There are no allies there is only themselves. When they see a white man for the first time clearly will probably be only as a target. Well this has been a good discussion. It seems to me I mean a good conversation as it were.