Harry ( Harry? ) is painted white by three brothers after they had considered stomping on him, or maybe tar and feathers, for what he did. He had betrayed a numbers runner, his friend Ephraim, to the pigs. Ephraim had taken his true bitch away from him. The runner’s friends trap Harry in his room and force him to strip off his clothes. They pour three cans of white lead paint all over him as he kneels on the floor, the paint so thick on his head only his eyes are black. He escapes into the hall and runs up the roof stairs as they pursue him. The last they see of him is Harry leaping off the roof into the street below, a white nigger lighting up the night.
Five stories, five deaths—four blacks, one white. The violence shows the depth of Willie’s unspent rage. Maybe his tears had scorched the paper and stunk up the pages? On rereading the book Lesser, though he sniffs now and then, smells no smell at all.
Lesser is moved by Willie’s writing. For two reasons: the affecting subject of the work, and the final sad feeling that he has not yet mastered his craft. My God, what he’s lived through. What can I say to a man who’s suffered so much personal pain, so much injustice, who clearly finds in his writing his hope and salvation, who defines himself through it? He comes in the end, as in the old slave narratives, to freedom, through his sense of writing as power—it flies up and carries him with it—but mainly in his belief that he can, in writing, help his people overthrow racism and economic inequality. That his freedom will help earn theirs. The Life he writes, whatever he calls it, moves, pains, inspires, even though it’s been written before, and better, by Richard Wright, Claude Brown, Malcolm X, and in his way, Eldridge Cleaver. Their self discoveries have helped Willie’s. Many black men live the same appalling American adventure, but it takes a unique writer to tell it uniquely, as literature.
To make black more than color or culture, and outrage larger than protest or ideology. Willie has good ideas for stories but doesn’t always build them well; in the end they fall short of effective form. Lesser sees irrelevancy, repetition, underdeveloped material; there are mistakes of arrangement and proportion, ultimately of focus. There’s more to do than he does. On the other hand, he seems to be sensitive to good writing and that may account for his suspicions concerning his own. He writes with feeling, no doubt with pleasure, yet senses he ought to be dissatisfied. He may not even know that his writing shows impatience with the craft of writing. I think he wants me to point this out to him. Should I do it—say what I think, or less?—soft-pedal maybe, encourage, try to even the odds, given what he’s gone through? I wouldn’t want to hurt a sensitive man. Yet if I don’t tell him what I think is true how can I help him improve his work?
And if Lesser suppresses truth Lesser is a fake. If he’s that, how can he go on writing?
When he returned the manuscript to Willie the morning after he had finished his second reading of it, Lesser said he was ready to discuss his work whenever it suited Willie’s convenience. He wanted now to get
it off his chest but wouldn’t press. Willie, dead-pan, except for an absent smile that grazed his lips, as though he had not heard what Lesser had said but having seen his moving lips was more or less acknowledging somebody had spoken, accepted his briefcase without a word. He didn’t so much as glance at it or look at Harry. On Lesser’s afterthought Willie seemed wounded, hurt before the fact?—by me? unless the writer was misreading. Maybe he had a toothache, or hemorrhoids—some personal problem? Whatever that was, his silence translated into annoyance more than wound; perhaps with himself, as though he might be regretting having asked Lesser to read his book and say what he thought might be wrong with it. But in a minute the black’s lips
Five stories, five deaths—four blacks, one white. The violence shows the depth of Willie’s unspent rage. Maybe his tears had scorched the paper and stunk up the pages? On rereading the book Lesser, though he sniffs now and then, smells no smell at all.
Lesser is moved by Willie’s writing. For two reasons: the affecting subject of the work, and the final sad feeling that he has not yet mastered his craft. My God, what he’s lived through. What can I say to a man who’s suffered so much personal pain, so much injustice, who clearly finds in his writing his hope and salvation, who defines himself through it? He comes in the end, as in the old slave narratives, to freedom, through his sense of writing as power—it flies up and carries him with it—but mainly in his belief that he can, in writing, help his people overthrow racism and economic inequality. That his freedom will help earn theirs. The Life he writes, whatever he calls it, moves, pains, inspires, even though it’s been written before, and better, by Richard Wright, Claude Brown, Malcolm X, and in his way, Eldridge Cleaver. Their self discoveries have helped Willie’s. Many black men live the same appalling American adventure, but it takes a unique writer to tell it uniquely, as literature.
To make black more than color or culture, and outrage larger than protest or ideology. Willie has good ideas for stories but doesn’t always build them well; in the end they fall short of effective form. Lesser sees irrelevancy, repetition, underdeveloped material; there are mistakes of arrangement and proportion, ultimately of focus. There’s more to do than he does. On the other hand, he seems to be sensitive to good writing and that may account for his suspicions concerning his own. He writes with feeling, no doubt with pleasure, yet senses he ought to be dissatisfied. He may not even know that his writing shows impatience with the craft of writing. I think he wants me to point this out to him. Should I do it—say what I think, or less?—soft-pedal maybe, encourage, try to even the odds, given what he’s gone through? I wouldn’t want to hurt a sensitive man. Yet if I don’t tell him what I think is true how can I help him improve his work?
And if Lesser suppresses truth Lesser is a fake. If he’s that, how can he go on writing?
When he returned the manuscript to Willie the morning after he had finished his second reading of it, Lesser said he was ready to discuss his work whenever it suited Willie’s convenience. He wanted now to get
it off his chest but wouldn’t press. Willie, dead-pan, except for an absent smile that grazed his lips, as though he had not heard what Lesser had said but having seen his moving lips was more or less acknowledging somebody had spoken, accepted his briefcase without a word. He didn’t so much as glance at it or look at Harry. On Lesser’s afterthought Willie seemed wounded, hurt before the fact?—by me? unless the writer was misreading. Maybe he had a toothache, or hemorrhoids—some personal problem? Whatever that was, his silence translated into annoyance more than wound; perhaps with himself, as though he might be regretting having asked Lesser to read his book and say what he thought might be wrong with it. But in a minute the black’s lips
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