cover image RICHARD WRIGHT: The Life and Times

RICHARD WRIGHT: The Life and Times

Hazel Rowley, . . Holt/Macrae, $35 (608pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-4776-9

Born into crushing poverty in rural Mississippi, Richard Wright (1908–1960) became one of the most celebrated African-American writers of his time, best known for the controversial Native Son and his autobiographical Black Boy. Wright spent his writing career bearing witness to American racism; in Native Son's unforgettable Bigger Thomas, he created a character too furious, uncompromising and vivid for mainstream white society to ignore. But Wright's literary success was not easily won. His Communist Party connections disbarred him from the establishment; his later renunciation of those same connections made him a pariah on the left, accused of pandering to white expectations. At this point, says Rowley, Wright was so embattled that he "could no longer see degrees of subtleties." Rowley (Christina Stead: A Biography) explores the roots of Wright's simmering fury and his conflicted drive toward social commentary. She renders accessible the facts of Wright's life and earnestly attempts to reconstruct his milieu. The narrative, however, is marred by its own sincerity: Rowley often succumbs to a biographer's rapt psychologizing ("five-year-old Richard had to help with the shopping... he felt proud to be so grown up"), and her efforts to enliven the story by resorting to present tense tableaux are ill-fated at best ("The big city is frightening. The traffic is chaotic.... What a din!"). These misguided stylistic choices make it difficult to consider Rowley's work with the gravity her research deserves; still, her competent treatment of Wright's life should satisfy those seeking to know more about the man behind the seminal work. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Aug. 14)