BW36: Native Son by Richard Wright

The 22nd  novel in Susan Wise Bauer's list of fiction reads from her book The Well-Educated Mind is The Native Son by Richard Wright.  Written in 1940, The Native Son is  set in 1930's and tells the story of  a 20 year old poor black man, Bigger Thomas, who kills a young white girl.  Wright was determined to portray racism in its grittiest form and his book shocked both the White and African American communities when it was released. 

Amazon Review: 


Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--not from his hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive friend Jan; certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. And yet...

A more compelling story than Native Son has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. That is not to say that Richard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote the first novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnished truth about American social and class relations. As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."
Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black in America--including Wright's own highly successful Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of five stories that focused on the victimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racial segregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyrical idealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressive situations and evoking the reader's pity. In Native Son, Wright was aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character so damaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and with human sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader's compassion:

"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must have been good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."

Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him. --Andrew Himes

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BW35: Ray Bradbury

August 22, 1920 to June 5, 2012

I have been in a creative writing mood lately so was fascinated when I came across Ray Bradbury's speech from a 2001 writing symposium.   He talks about ways for writers to improve their craft by reading one short story, one poem and one essay every night for a 1000 nights.  In particular,  quality short stories from authors such as Roald Dahl, Guy de Maupassant, and the lesser-known Nigel Kneale and John Collier. And one should read a wide variety of essays from areas including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature.  By the end of that period, your mind will be full of ideas and images to use in your writing.  Stuff your head with literature, good literature, not the modern stuff,  and you'll never run out of ideas. He also suggests writers write one short story a week for a full year instead of working on one novel as a way to practice your craft. Maybe I'll take him up on that...next year. *grin*

Seems to me his idea to read one short story, poem and a essay a night could apply for readers as well. You know me and my rabbit trails.  Just think of all the directions our reading could take. And who knows, a few of you may even be inspired to write.  I may just have to come up with a Ray Bradbury mini challenge for next year.  Who knows where it will lead.

Anyway, in honor of Ray Bradbury's birthday,  read one of his works this year.

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BW34: Flufferton Abbey

April Lady

 The moonlight glinted on the pistol, and the hand that held it. Letty cried: "Don't, don't!" and tried with feverish haste to unclasp the single row of pearls from round her throat.

"Not you!" said the highwayman, even more ferociously.

"You!" The pistol was now pointing straight at Nell, but instead of shrinking away, or making hast (as Letty quaveringly implored her to do) to strip off her bracelets and rings and the large pendant that flashed on her breast, she was sitting bolt upright, her incredulous gaze fixed at first on the hand that grasped the pistol, and then lifting to the masked face.

"Quick!" commanded the highwaymen harshly. "If you don't want me to put a bullet through you!"

"Dysart!"

"Hell and the devil confound it!" ejaculated his lordship, adding,however, in a hasty attempt to cover this lapse: "None o' that! Hand over the gewgaws!"

"Take the pistol away!" ordered Nell. "How dare you try to frighten me like this? Of all the outrageous things to do -! It is a great deal too bad of you! What in the world possessed you?"

"Well, if you can't tell that you must be a bigger sapskull than I knew!" said his lordship disgustedly. He pulled off his mask, and called over his shoulder: "Bubbled, Corny!"

"There, what did I tell you?" said Mr Fancot, putting up the weapon with which he had been covering the coachman, and riding up to bow politely to the occupants of the carriage. "You ought to have let me do the trick, dear boy: I said her ladyship would recognise you!"

"Well, I don't know how the devil she should!" said the Viscount,considerably put-out.

"Oh, Dy, how absurd you are!" Nell exclaimed, trying not to laugh."The moonlight was shining on the ring Mama gave you when you came of age! And then you said Not you! to Letty! Of course I recognised you!"

One genre I didn't mention last week is the Regency Romance period which flourished between 1811 to 1820's during the shift from the aristocratic Age of Enlightenment to the artistic movement of Romanticism.  Since the period overlapped the Napoleonic wars, writers expanded on themes of the drama of wounded soldiers, mystery, adventure and of course, romance.  Regency romances are light and fluffy reads and since most are set in England, hence the term Flufferton Abbey. 

The queen of the Regency Romance is undoubtedly Georgette Heyer.  Although Jane Austen lived and wrote her books during the 1800's, Heyer created the Regency England genre of romance novels. Back when I was a teen in the 70's, Harlequin romances and historical romances were my favorite reads and I actually still have a few in my shelves, all yellowed and well read. 


Authors to check out,  besides Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer,  are Julie Quinn, Mary Balogh, and Loretta Chase to name a few.  Be sure to peruse  Goodreads list of  Popular Regency books.  And we can't forget the classic authors whose best known works were written during the Regency period: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Sir Walter Scott as well as poets Lord Byron, William Blake and John Keats.

Join me in flufferton abbey this month and read a book from the regency era. 

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BW33: Armchair Traveling through the 19th century

The 19th century, from 1801 to 1900, brought us the continued development of the United States and Canada,  civil war between the north and the south and ending of slavery; the Victorian age with the reign of Queen Victoria, and the Golden Age of romanticism and poetry in Russia.

Alexander Puskin pushed Russian literature to a whole new level and influenced a new generation of poets including Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (2nd cousin to Leo Tolstoy), Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov and Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov to name a few.

The Victoria period revolved around Queen Victoria and writers who were born and died during that period of time include Lord Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning,  Elizabeth Barrett Browning  Emily Bronte and Charles Dickens to name a few.

In the later half of the century, the United States saw the evolution of penny dreadfuls, later know as dime novels about the Old West with themes of gunslingers, outlaws, and lawmen.

Currently in my backpack are:  Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, Daughters of the Loom by Tracie Peterson, Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson and Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.

Be sure to check out Historical Novels online for their huge selection of 19th Century European, 19th  Century American and  Old West selection of books as well as Goodreads Popular 19th Century literature.

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BW32: 100th Anniversary of World War I

August 1st marks the anniversary of the beginning of World War I.  The event that sparked the war. On June 28, 1914, The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, along with his wife, Sofia,  by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. 

In a nutshell:  Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbia government for the attack and declared war on them on July 28th and shelled the Serbian capital.  Russia, Serbia's ally mobilized again Austria-Hungary on August 1.  Then France allied with Russia and then France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3rd.  When the German army invaded Belgium, Allie Great Britain declared war against Germany. 

To honor the anniversary of World War I, join me in reading All Quiet on the Western Front

Synopsis:  Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.

This month, I'll also be reading Mark Helprin's A Solder of the Great War:

Synopsis: For Alessandro Giullani, the young son of a prosperous Roman Lawyer, golden trees shimmer in the sun beneath a sky of perfect blue. At night the moon is amber and the city of Rome seethes with light. He races horses across the country to the sea, and in the Alps he practices the precise and sublime art of mountain climbing. At the ancient university in Bologna he is a student of painting and the science of beauty. And he falls in love. His is a world of adventure and dreams, of music, storm, and the spirit. Then the Great War intervenes.

Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, still tall and proud, finds himself unexpectedly on the road with an illiterate young factory worker. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers distant, the old man tells the story of his life. How he became a soldier. A hero. A prisoner. A deserter. A wanderer in the hell that claimed Europe. And how he tragically lost one family and gained another.

The boy is dazzled by the action and envious of the richness and color of the story, and realizes that the old man's magnificent tale of love and war is more than a tale: it is the recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.

For more choices, check out Historical Novels selections about World War I,  or Goodreads selections of World War I historical fiction and Non Fiction.

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