Intrusions


INTRUSIONS

The Outsider: A Note on Productive Frustration of Reading for Older Readers



 Authorial intrusion is a literary device wherein the writer of a fictional work disrupts the narrative or story in order to address the reader directly.  Although 18th and 19th century readers of novels did not often object to being informed, edified, or preached at by novelists, 21st century readers may be annoyed by authorial intrusion.  It destroys the "pleasure" of the text, the imaginative dwelling in a "world" that imitates or represents the world in which we actually live.  When I referred in a previous memo to Wright's insertion of "language typically used in non-fiction in a context of fiction," I was referring to authorial intrusion.



It's my opinion that Richard Wright used authorial intrusion to create a  productive frustration of reading.  His intrusion  is very obvious in Black Boy; it is nicely marked off for us.  But in his fiction,  many of his intrusions are covert rather than overt.  He did not want readers to be enthralled by fiction; he wanted readers to be fully aware that fictions only  provide a temporary escape from the problems of everyday life.  He was disappointed that some "privileged" readers escaped too easily after reading Uncle Tom's Children.  And he wrote Native Son in such a way that they could not exit with tears.


The escape through transaction with the text  gives us some relief, but escape does not resolve the problems dealt with in fiction. Wright discourages passivity.  The covert intrusions in some of his later novels virtually lock us into dread of consciousness.  For example, they  cast light on the main points or "messages" of The Outsider regarding  art, totalitarianism, race, the absurdity of human existence in this world.  The intrusions may help us to understand why Cross Damon took the existential risk of becoming an ethical criminal, but such understanding still allows us to object to Damon's negative morality or negative human subjectivity. We are locked in but not completely enslaved.



As we grapple with Books Three, Four, and Five of The Outsider,  I suggest that we use the intrusions to think very critically about

·         imperialism, Communism, Fascism

·         the Cold War and Marxism as "an intellectual instrument" (197)

·         the points of view shared by the author and the protagonist about how "isms" might enslave us

·         bad faith (253)

·         logic versus emotion (254)

·         "bourgeois law" (266)

·         "demonic contagions of jazz (269)

·         what is absolute power (267)

·         Godlessness and nature (274-275)

·         the moral complexity of being a "little god" (308)

·         "the contagion of lawlessness" (309)

·         innocence and the horror of being innocent



In our conversations  about the novel, we ought to consider what Wright's narrative and its embedded intrusions may  force us to recognize about ourselves. We may arrive at a better understanding of our guilt and our innocence during the years of our being under the stars.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            March 14, 2018


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