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Richard Wright, daemonic genius : a portrait of the man, a critical look at his work
Title
Richard Wright, daemonic genius : a portrait of the man, a critical look at his work / Margaret Walker.
ISBN
156743004X
9781567430042
Published
New York : Amistad : Distributed by Random House, 1993, ©1988.
Physical Description
xix, 444 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Local Notes
BEIN 2018 6379: Number line: "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" on title page verso indicates 1st printing. Paperbound. Accompanied by: one receipt from Endicott Booksellers (1 sheet ; 8 cm); one bookmark from Endicott Booksellers (1 sheet ; 18 cm). From the library of Samuel R. Delany.
Notes
Originally published: New York : Warner Books, ©1988.
Summary
Richard Wright was first a black man and second a writer. The life of this black man is inextricably bound to his writing. Author of 16 books, his first published volume appeared in 1938, when he was 30 years old. When he died at age 52, 22 years later, he had published a dozen books. I have divided rights life and work into five periods: his first 19 years in the violent white South, including his childhood and adolescence; 10 years of maturation in Chicago, when he became a revolutionary, a bohemian, and a professional writer; 10 years of professional success and personal frustration in New York; 10 years of seeking freedom and Paris; and, finally, his last two or three years of trauma and tragedy. Then, I have followed a general outline of relating his published works -- books, articles, poetry, and speeches -- to his life. Each period of his life was dominated by a set of ideas and philosophies that he personally embraced and then inculcated in his writing. A man motivated by ideas and novelist of ideas, his intellectual stature is a first consideration. His intellectual development and his Weltanschauung, or worldview, place him in the forefront of 20th century life and culture, and it is in this area that this book seeks to break ground. - Preface.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
July 28, 2020
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-411) and index.
Contents
Abbreviations : key to Wright's works
pt. I. The young Wright : nineteen years in the violent white South, 1908-1927
1. A certain place : Mississippi, a climate for a genius
2. A definite time : 1908
3. A boy in rompers : angry, bitter and brash
4. The broken home : trauma and the young psyche
5. A boy in knee-pants : reading, writing, and hunger
6. Jackson, Mississippi : fanatically religious relatives, bourgeois Negroes, and racist White folks
7. From Jackson to Memphis : big boy leaves home, almost a man
8. Richard Wright : a gift from the South.
pt. II. Wright begins to sing his broken song : ten Chicago years, 1927-1937
9. A callow youth becomes a man
10. A political animal
11. The Chicago Post Office and the young lions
12. "To be young, gifted, and Black"
13. The WPA : "A Stairway to the Stars"
14. The assault : punk hunting and the Bohemians
15. Daemonic genius and the creative process : "Margaret, if a voice speaks within you, you can live"
16. "I'm off tonight for New York.
pt. III. Wright's Medusa head : the New York years, 1937-1947
17. Medusa is a woman
18. A man of purpose, will, and reason
19. The Faustian man of success
20. Native Son
21. Fame and fortune
22. Marriage and the Medusa Head
23. Horace Cayton, Richard Wright, and the Cayton-Warner Research File
24. Twelve million Black voices
25. An interlude : three pieces
26. Black Boy : autobiography as social history, art, or catharsis?
27. Property, racism, fascism, and the war ends
28. Paris in the Spring.
pt. IV. Wright's political paradox : ten Paris years, 1947-1957
29. The twisted torch : "I lift my lamp beside the golden door"
30. The international man
31. The Third World : men of African and Pan-Africanism
32. Making the movie Native Son
33. "I choose exile"
34. The secular man and The Outsider
35. Black Power : Africa and Pan Africanism
36. Savage Holiday : a Freudian nightmare
37. Pagan Spain : the Spanish Revolution and the Roman Catholic Church
38. Confrontation in Asia : The Bandung Conference and The Color Curtain
39. The farm at Ailly, Normandy : a retreat
40. Présence Africaine : cultural Black Nationalism, and the role and education of the artist
41. White man, listen! The Weltanschauung of a Twentieth Century Man.
pt. V. The return of Mephistopheles : Wright's final years, 1958-1960
42. A fluttering of angel's wings
43. Perimeters and parameters of political intrigue
44. 1958 : the failure of The Long Dream and "Island of hallucinations"
45. 1959 : the fractured personality, a wounded man
46. The crumbling marriage
47. 1960 : Eight Men, a lifetime of stories and storytelling by a man in anguish
48. The mystery of Richard Wright's death
Notes
A bibliographical essay
A guide to Wright studies
Keynote speech given at the International Symposium on Richard Wright, Mississippi's native son
Afterword : Ellen Wright v. Warner Books, Inc. and Margaret Walker.
Subjects
Subjects (Local Yale)
Genre/Form
Biographies.
Biographies.
Also listed under
Samuel R. Delany Library (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library). Reading Library.
United States New York (State) New York.
Bookmark As
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