Perversion the Social Relation

IfSctPrMintoStyrwTsfft*Michael P. BiblerPublished at precisely the moment when the arguments about race hadreached crisis proportions in the United States, William Styron's 1967novel The Confessions of Nat Turner became one of those rare sticksof literary dynamite that threatened to blow the already fragile nationinto irreparable fragments. 1 In retrospect, it was almost inevitable thatthe bulk of the novel's readers would immediately divide into polarizedcamps presenting only two ways to read the text: either we mustcarefully praise this white southerner for daring to write from the perspectiveof a black hero, or we must condemn him forthwith. 2 Yet,surprisingly, as the academic battles over race, history, and literary representationspread into the streets, the textual ingredient that madethe novel so explosive—the part that inflamed and rallied readers themost—involved an altogether different category of identity than race:homosexuality. Without any historical evidence to support him, Styronignored the real Nat Turner's marriage to a woman and instead representedhis controversial protagonist as having only one sexual encounterin his entire life, this time with a male slave named Willis. Many in theblack community interpreted this change as a serious affront and attackedStyron for it. Indeed, in perhaps the most organized responseto the novel—William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond(1968)—each of the contributors treats Styron's admittedly unusual decisionto include this homosexual scene as the one thing that, above allelse, should galvanize the black community into an angry and cohesive