Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

No doubt about it, Mr . Williams
can write ; he proved that with
Night Song and Sissies but the Williams
of this novel transcends the
artist and becomes the seer, the
prophet .
One of the poor points of the
book was the author's main characters'
consistent relationship with
white women . Max and Harry had
white wives, and Max forever
wanted a redhead . When will we
stop hating ourselves and start loving
our own women? As one black
woman put it, "Williams makes a
fool of himself in this respect . I
guess he couldn't write any other
way since he has one for a wife . It
is interesting to note that the black
man will share his hard times with
the black woman, but when it
comes to fame and fortune, it looks
better with a white woman at his
side ." Williams is ambiguous when
he states that, "It was one thing to
sleep with white women, but quite
another to marry them ." Yet the
two main figures in his novel had
white wives-a part of being accepted,
I guess .
After seriously thinking about
the ending for some time, my conclusion
is that it could happen . . .
Mainly because we know for a fact
that black FBI and CIA agents do
exist ; they are being used today in
Africa and in the black communities
of the United States . As for
the 50-minute transatlantic call
Max makes to Minister Q (Mal-
NEGRO DIGEST March 1968
0
eolm X) to tell about the `'King
Alfred Contingency," I regard it as
extreme stupidity, but then, main,
what else would a "negro"~do?
Max, as King "negro," had in actuality
lost meaningful contact with
his people . He had left "home° a
long time ago and had no intention
of coming back . If Max had been
in tune he would have had brothers
in Europe who would have helped
him .
The value of this novel cannot
be measured in terms of copies sold
or reviews written . To date it has
not sold as well as Confes .sior~ .s of
Nat Turner for obvious reasons,
and most of the major white critics
completely overlooked it . This, I
believe, is an indication of its importance
. Ramparts magazine
called it the "toughest novel of the
fall" and ran an excerpt in its December
1967 issue . This, too, indicates
its value for this is the first
time, if 1 am not mistaken, that a
novel by an Afro-American has
been excerpted in a major white
publication . * Yes, John A . ~~l'illiams
has written a dangerous novel
and when the order comes down
from the Regime that "books with
dangerous teachings should be publicly
burnt," The Man Who Cried
AM will start the fire.-Do :v L .
LEE
' The writer is mistaken . The new novel
of James Baldwin, Tell Me Hog+~ Long
The Train's Been Gone, for example,
was excerpted in the February 1967 issue
of McCall's magazine .-F~i~Ox
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