When We Endorse, the Devil Finds Work
If the term agent
provocateur can be transformed to yield a positive meaning, it is to be
noted that Howard Rambsy II is an American cultural scholar who succeeds in
doing so. Since 2013, he has
consistently provoked readers of his "Cultural Front" blogspot to
think about what is debilitating, what is neutral, and what is wholesome in
American cultural commerce. His July 30,
2015 entry "From Baldwin to Morrison & Coats: a brief history of
endorsements" is typical.
Rambsy invites us to reread the letter "Black Writers
in Praise of Toni Morrison" (New
York Times, January 24, 1988), a tribute signed by 48 scholars, writers,
and artists who proclaimed: "Your gifts to us have changed and made more
gentle our real time together. And so we
write, here, hoping not to delay, not to arrive, in any way, late with this,
our simple tribute to the seismic character and beauty of your writing. And furthermore, in grateful wonder at the
advent of "Beloved" you most recent gift to our community, our
country, our conscience, our courage flourishing as it grows, we here record
our pride, our respect and our appreciation for the treasury of your findings
and invention." The prose was
purple; the sentiment, genuine. The urgency of the letter was prompted by
recognizing that James Baldwin "never received the honor of these
keystones to the canon of American literature: the National Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize: never." When
Baldwin's funeral was held on December 8, 1987, Morrison did not have these
keystones in her hands.
The letter is an intra-ethnic endorsement of Morrison's
achievements. It is crucial for
interpretation of American cultural history to notice it was published in the New York Times rather than in the Baltimore Afro-American or the Philadelphia
Defender.
Rambsy provokes me to wonder to what extent the letter
reiterates the yearnings of James Weldon Johnson's 1921 and 1931 prefaces for The Book of American Negro Poetry. I wonder how the act gives substance to the
shadow of contradiction. Why after being
accorded respect by some Americans did Morrison need to be
"canonized" by other Americans associated with the so-called
mainstream literary establishment or thought-and taste-control mafia? One easy answer: canonization brings a few
dollars as well as placement in the fluid list that complements a redefined
American literary history. Fate or luck
or accident ultimately ordained that Morrison would receive a global
keystone. It is reasonable to surmise
that the letter assisted Fate.
When Rambsy draws attention to what has occurred in 2015,
skepticism dawns. He quotes only a
portion of Toni Morrison's blurb for
Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me.
The blurb in full reads:
"I've been
wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James
Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The language of Between the World
and Me, like Coates's journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully
redemptive. And its examination of the
hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."
I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Morrison's
expression, for I recognize that what plagued her did not plague everyone
between 1987 and 2015. Reading W. E. B.
DuBois, Margaret Walker, Cornel West, Kalamu ya Salaam, Michelle Alexander, Arnold Rampersad, Amiri Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas, bell hooks, Tom Dent, Houston Baker, Angela Davis, Trudier Harris, Richard Wright and others did
not allow me to have a sense that an intellectual void existed. I chose to seek
critical insights rather than redemption and undelivered moral comfort
What I'll
want to determine, once I read Coates's book, is something about the tension
which results from his directing readers to Wright in the title and using the
epistolary form in the contents which evokes Baldwin. I suspect most
reviewers are comfortable with the moral distance or "transcendent freedom"
that can be had from reading someone's
letter to a nephew or a son. That kind of reading is less painful than
dealing with a kind of direct association with horror that Wright
demands. That is the key. The more Coates is characterized as a new
embodiment of Baldwin, the less one has to suffer what Wright demanded that
women and men must suffer to render life meaningful. My embrace of Wright
obviously sets me apart from Coates's reviewers who seek to minimize the sharing of
pain by attributing its force mainly to the victims (black people) and less so to
those who perpetuate reasons (thug-terrorists domestic and global) for the body
to be in pain. Should I discover that Coates does not examine the hazards
and hopes of male, female and other-gendered life, I shall be assured that he
is not a clone of James Baldwin but a thinker who stands on the shoulders of
giants and projects a vision that is not naively transcendent.
Jerry W. Ward,
Jr. August 3, 2015
