In the key of Tougaloo


FICTION IN THE KEY OF TOUGALOO

After reading



Johnson, Charles. The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling. New York: Scribner, 2016.



I came to a tentative conclusion:  MFA programs are sexy and  dandy, but they waste money and talent that is  going nowhere.  Imagine  what would happen if a person of modest talent that could go somewhere  did give  time, while working a salary-bearing  job, to sustained study of



David Lodge, The Art of Fiction

Lance Jeffers, "The Death of the Defensive Posture"

Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel

Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction and On Moral Fiction

Richard Wright's "Blueprint for Negro Writing"

Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing

Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer

Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature?

Henry James, The Art of the Novel



Said person has an equal chance of making it as a writer in the real world as much as  those who come to the door with expensive  MFA in hand.  Both have an equal chance of writing books for everyday use.  This is not the conclusion Charles Johnson, an excellent teacher,  might approve.  This is the conclusion I choose to make on the basis of my education in literary theory and criticism.



My motive is an open secret, or eventually  will become one.  I want to say a few things about "popular" writing or fiction, the flawed and under-crafted works which make space for resistance, justified anger, and James Brown payback in our tradition of black writing in the United States of America. Candice Love Jackson described that domain in Chapter 25 "From writer to reader:  black popular fiction," The Cambridge History of African American Literature, pp. 655-679. What the academic world says is dreadful and dismisses with panache is consumed by real readers in the actual world with gusto.  The thrown-away has a purpose.



In a forthcoming review essay on novels by two of my former Tougaloo students,  I'll write with cayenne pepper.  I have to protect my reputation as a Tougaloo terrorist. My former students would be disappointed if I failed to ink their fictions as I inked their undergrad papers, reminding them of their sorority with Margaret Walker and Toni Morrison in one case and with W. E. B. DuBois and Albert Murray in the other case.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            November 9, 2019




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas, Kwanzaa, 2018

Blog 12.19.2017 CHRISTMAS I have a reason for not being anxious to celebrate Advent and Christmas Day.   Sixty years ago, my father died on December 25.   Fifty-nine years ago, my favorite uncle died a few days before Christmas.   I do want other people to be happy, but I am most at peace when Christmas has gone with the snow, the sunshine or rain, the wind.   I still say "Merry Christmas."   The only genuine happiness I experience, however, is listening to Handel's "The Messiah" and a few songs I've treasured since childhood,   attending Midnight Mass, having home-made fruitcake   after Mass, and eating a special meal with relatives on the excessively commercialized holiday. KWANZAA Umoja ---Decide with whom you should seek unity. Kujichagulia --Expand the terms of engagement for 2018. Ujima ---Cooperate on a project with people you can trust. Ujamaa --Be frugal.   Shop selectively. Nia ---Remember ou...
Read more

implacable violence, part one

Implacable Violence, Part One The death of Senator John McCain quickens our   interest in how to deal with contemporary   narratives of life history.   McCain's touchstone story pertains to American conservative values, the consequences of trauma,   military and public service, violence, and   a sense of honor.   Barack Obama's differently remarkable narratives direct attention to the absence of military service, class and caste violence, the audacity of hope, centralist values, and diversity in the history of "race."   Narratives about McCain and Obama stand in noteworthy contrast to future narratives about Donald Trump, stories that may place ego in the foreground as they unfold tales of sexism, constipated values,     inadvertent racism, the violence of capitalism, sleight of mouth, and avoidance of military service.   Ego, self-fashioning, and boldness are apparent in the three sets of narrative, but excess lynches the Trump set...
Read more

DuBois and Black Reconstruction

  PROPAGATION OF HISTORY AND FAITH   DuBois, W. E. B.   Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 . (1935; New York: The Free Press, 1998).   Dr. DuBois knew what was problematic about his revisionist history in Black Reconstruction .   He made his intentions clear in his note "To The Reader" (December 1934).   His ideal audience consisted of people who believed a black person in America "and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings…"   DuBois was not trying to convince those who regarded " the Negro as a distinctly inferior creation, who can never successfully take part in modern civilization…"   Indeed, the Negro, in my mind at least, is the chief architect of civilization.   Is it only a matter of accident that Carter G. Woodson's The Mis-Education of the Negro was published   two years before Black Reconstruction ?   No.   It wasn't an accide...
Read more