Reading Road Trip 2020

Current location: Virginia

How can a man be allowed to feel such emptiness and defeat?

I'm starting to realize that the people I attract in real life are the same types I seek out in literature: the broken people who can be honest about their brokenness, maybe laugh a little about it, too.

It's not that I want to be broken, or delight in my tribe of broken members. It's more about an acceptance, finally, on my part. The world is full of imperfection and broken parts. I've come to terms with my reality. I'm never going to be on the “shiny, happy squad,” and neither are my people. The woman standing at the school drop-off in her power suit and stiletto heels, shouting rhyming mantras to her matching children, is never going to attract my attention. I want the mess in the corner, the woman with coffee stains on her sweatshirt, a big messy tangle in her hair, laughing because her child won't stop crying or release the sticky death grip on her hand.

Don't get me wrong, though. My people have integrity. I make no allowances for liars or lies. As soon as a character, real or literary, starts lying to me. . . they're out of my tribe.

My people are honest, and they “strive for high ideals,” (to steal from “The Desiderata”). They are heroic in behavior, but anti-heroes nonetheless: the Holden Caulfields, the Gus McCraes, the Olive Kitteridges. . . the Nat Turners.

Yes, a new character has joined my team: Nat Turner. A man who, in two weeks time, has won me over and wrecked me with his steadfast devotion to the Holy Spirit and his determination to look up, always, when everything is looking down. “Lord, please?”

I should have known that Nat would be a natural addition to my group. He was born. . . feeling different. In a good way. Made to feel special by the different way he was treated, then made to feel awkward, for the rest of his life, because of his differences.

Nat is like a shiny, black spider on a web. A work of art. Superior to the flies buzzing around him, yet dependent upon them for his food source; vulnerable to the human who can knock him from his web at a mere whim.

He was hopeful as a child. It was, in fact, in Nat's childhood that I started to fall in love with him. If a young Black slave in 1810 can look out in enthusiasm on a new day and think, “I feel wildly alive. I shiver feverishly in the glory of self,” then, by God, anyone can do it.

But, when Nat's kindhearted slave-owner (an oxymoron for sure, but true), takes a shine to the boy and decides to make him his project, prove to the naysayers for once and for all that a slave is only hindered by his environment, Nat becomes different from both his Black peers and his white owners. He grows to be a Renaissance man, but a Renaissance man, minus the enlightened country.

In case it is unclear to anyone reading this, especially to someone less familiar with U.S. History, Nat Turner was a real man, a man made famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) by carrying out the only known slave rebellion in American history. This, William Styron's 1966 novel, is a fusion of facts and fantasy. What this Pulitzer Prize winning novel does. . . is make Nat Turner real for you.

Well, he certainly became real for me, “the center of an orbit around whose path I must make a ceaseless pilgrimage.”

And, as for William Styron. . . well, sir, you're one of my kind, too. I admire the way you brought Nat Turner to life in such a vivid and powerful way. Your ability to blend fact and fiction to create a truly engaging and thought-provoking story is truly remarkable. I look forward to reading more of your works and continuing my journey through the world of literature with you as my guide.

Overall, my Reading Road Trip 2020 has been an eye-opening and enriching experience. I've discovered new characters and authors that have touched my heart and expanded my understanding of the world. I can't wait to see where this journey takes me next.

Styron's Nat Turner appears to be mired in controversy, which makes me reluctant to add my opinion to the mix. However, what the heck? I thought the book was well-written.

It presented another aspect of possible antebellum history. Styron included the old cliché of a black man desiring a white woman, which gave me a headache. The book opened up a complex set of moral issues for me.

Who would condone murder, but then who in their right mind would own another person? To contrast this book, I'm also reading Stephen Oates' "Fires of Jubilee," which is a historical account of the same time and incident and is helping me distinguish between fact and fiction.

I also have a copy of "Ten Black Writers Respond" on its way. If nothing else, Styron's book promotes a need to know and understand. Even if it hadn't done this for me, I'd still read it because of its literary value.

The controversy surrounding Styron's Nat Turner is intense, but I believe the book has its merits. It offers a unique perspective on a dark period in American history and forces readers to grapple with difficult moral questions.

While some may object to the portrayal of certain characters and events, I think it's important to approach the book with an open mind and consider the context in which it was written.

Overall, I found Styron's Nat Turner to be a thought-provoking and engaging read that has left a lasting impression on me.

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron is a truly remarkable and thought-provoking work. It presents a stark and disturbing account of the impact of human kindness in the context of the harsh reality of Negro slavery in pre-civil war America. The story is told through the first-person narrative of Nat Turner, who shares the details of his youth and young adulthood as an enslaved man. He also reveals his vision of a holy war between the blacks and the whites, believing that he was divinely called by God to lead a revolt against slavery and annihilate all the white people in southeastern Virginia.

The revolt that Nat Turner led in 1831 was relatively small in scale and was quickly quelled. However, unbeknownst to him at the time, it served as a crucial tipping point for the Civil War. This book offers a deep and poignant exploration of the complex and tragic history of slavery in America.

Author William Styron originally published this work in 1967 through Random House. It falls into the genres of literary fiction and historical fiction. The book has received numerous accolades, including the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was also nominated for the 1968 National Book Award for Fiction. It is available in various formats such as hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio cassette, making it accessible to a wide range of readers.

I didn't really have a liking for it at all. In fact, I found it extremely weird, and I don't understand why Styron felt the need to write this. However, I have to admit that it was well-written, so I'm kind of in a dilemma.

Discussing it in class was truly crazy. I'm pretty sure that half of my classmates are actually just racist.

On the positive side, there was an analyzation about code switching, although it was a confusing and likely inaccurate portrayal since it was written by a white guy writing what seemed like fan fiction. There was also some exploration of gay themes, which I personally enjoy, but it was extremely odd because why would you write multiple excerpts of gay fanfiction about a real man who had endured struggles far beyond what the author could possibly imagine and who had also orchestrated the murder of around 60 people? There were some compelling thoughts about God, and the writing was occasionally so poetic and amazing, delving into themes of repression, lust, Christian values, and fear.

On the negative side, what the hell was this? Nat Turner must be absolutely rolling in his grave. There was a nice gay relationship that was immediately ruined and replaced with a white fetishist molester of Nat, which could potentially be a self-insert character for Styron. This is all truly insane. It's literally just fanfiction. It's very weird for a white man to write this book completely unfounded. To me, it feels like trauma porn. It made me deeply uncomfortable. I hate class and feel awful for everyone with basic concepts of critical race who had to A) read this weird trauma porny fantasy, B) listen to everyone's truly insane opinions, and C) our teacher keeps making us read sections aloud about the brutalization of slaves, including multiple students saying "Negro." It's all very odd.

JANUARY

4.
  
by
  
William Styron

Finish date: 06 January 2022

Genre: historical fiction

Rating: D

Review:

This book, "The Confessions of Nat Turner" by William Styron, is loosely based on a historical slave revolt. It attempts to tell the story from a slave's perspective, yet it is written by a white man. While W. Styron won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968, this particular work just did not resonate with me at all. It has been languishing on my Kindle for 5 years. I'm glad to be done with it. #GoodRiddance

I found the narrative to be somewhat forced and lacking in authenticity. The author's attempt to step into the shoes of a slave and capture his experiences and emotions felt a bit off. Maybe it's because of the inherent differences in perspective and background. Overall, it was a disappointment and not a book that I would recommend.

When I embarked on reading this book for my Durham book group, I had entirely wiped from my memory the history of how this work was received. In fact, this aspect might be even more crucial than the brilliant way the piece is written. After all, it won the Pulitzer Prize. I firmly believe it's an extraordinary work. However, I was aware that Styron was treading on certain minefields by imagining the inner workings of a black man's mind in 1831.

Subsequently, I read the 1992 afterword by the author and grasped the nature of the controversy he had stepped into. He was actually labeled as a racist by many African-Americans. From my white perspective, this (perhaps understandably) eludes me. To this day, African-Americans have scorned this book as unworthy of a read. As part of my review, I will post a lengthy 2016 Vanity Fair article about the whole affair. Styron was clearly scarred by the experience. “Bill’s going to catch it from black and white,” Styron's friend James Baldwin asserted as the book came out. “Styron is probing something very dangerous, deep and painful in the national psyche. I hope it starts a tremendous fight, so that people will learn what they really think about each other.” And we're still striving to have that extremely difficult dialogue today, albeit with limited success. Nevertheless, \\"Nat' is still a very important work for all Americans to read: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/20...

This novel, if it had been translated in 2023 with the 2023-style patrols like BLM & Co., would have been a work of science fiction... but fortunately that didn't happen, so welcome the ignorant blacks who speak strangely and are beaten by the whites. Then the blacks rebelled, but the rebellion was a flash in the pan.

Styron was attacked by the black intelligentsia because, according to him, a white man couldn't tell the life of a black slave, but he was defended by his personal friend James Baldwin and by Steiner who wrote in the NYT.

Pulitzer Prize in 1968.

It should be clear that if a novel was written a century ago and is translated in 2023, I want to read the word "negro". But also if the novel is written in 2023 and set in the 1930s.

Welp, this book is indeed quite problematic.

It was penned during a period when the attitudes regarding appropriation and projection were on the verge of undergoing a dramatic transformation, and it unfortunately bears the印记 of well-intentioned whiteness.

Interestingly, James Baldwin had challenged Styron to narrate the novel from the perspective of Nat Turner. However, precious little is known about Turner aside from a few documents written by whites during the time of his trial. For me, it is the point of view that constitutes a major flaw because Nat doesn't truly possess a distinct voice. There is a languid, pastoral voice that recounts the natural beauties of the land, a more straightforward plot-driven autobiographical voice, a dialect-heavy voice intended to appease whites, and bizarrely, that same aw shucks dialect when speaking to Nat's enslaved peers. Add in some religiosity as well.

Unsurprisingly, there are several race and gender issues that are jarring. Despite numerous physical descriptions that mention "high yellow" skin tones, the frequent rape of black women by white males goes unmentioned, even in the case of an overseer strong-arming Nat's own mother. And of course, Nat's one attraction is to a young white girl.

So many things had a different impact in 1967 compared to today. But perhaps even a flawed novel can contribute to the learning curve.

I've read Sophie's Choice a long time ago, and before this book, I marveled at the fact that an author could ask us to accept so many questions and contradictions that are never resolved, and yet we are inevitably satisfied. In fact, when we close the book, we look more closely at our own mysteries and suddenly start thinking of them as less than mundane.

In 1831, a black slave sits in a jail cell. After leading a slave revolt that left over 50 whites dead, he is contemplating his impending fate and running over the contradictions that led him there. Sometimes the voice of God calls to him clearly, and sometimes he ponders whether the voice of God only exists in his head. He preaches hate and butchery, but cannot himself kill except for a mercy killing of one who he has a strange attraction and yet repulsion for. His revolt leads to the retaliation of the white population against the blacks, so that 200 blacks who had nothing to do with this revolt died. The small emancipation voice in the legislation fades, and stricter slave laws are put into effect.

So, what was the point?

Nat Turner is caught up in this world of contradictions. Capable of feeling love, he is also capable of quelling it to act out his revenge. His curious choice of eliminating everyone - not just the whites who have been cruel to their slaves, but their small children, their kind daughters - makes him a monster. But his observations and insight also make him a man of compassion. And since these two aspects never meet, all of us are left wondering, what did he really expect to accomplish and why?

And the larger theme is, do these dangerous contradictions exist today? Which road do we take, and what reasoning must go with it? Was Nat a folk hero or a lunatic?

Styron deftly forces us to decide for ourselves. And in the end, we are somehow compelled to make that choice, aware that what really shows through Styron's stylishly winding prose is that the heat of life will keep on humming and confusing us, with its offal and its flowers.

Poignant prose. 5 out of 5 and a Pulitzer thrown in.

Highly recommended.

Even while hagiographers and detractors attempt to plump up the hero’s life to best suit a particular version of events, social and historical memorial forces—eroding and blurring, misremembering and reimagining—reduce the hero to an outline or a meme.

For example, George Washington is known as the father of our country, with the famous line “I cannot tell a lie.” Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as a martyred civil rights leader and his “I had a dream” speech is iconic. Generally, these are innocuous and unquestioned. However, there are cases like Woodrow Wilson. He is considered the founder of the United Nations, but there is also another side to him as a deranged, racist president who dragged the US into the first World War.

What’s interesting is that the circumstances around great events are often pre-determined to some extent. The slave uprising led by Nat Turner in Southampton, Virginia, in 1831 was the first of its kind. 50 Whites were killed, along with about 70 Black upstarts who were martially killed, legally executed, or sent into slavery in the Deep South. But there were also another 250 Blacks and freemen killed by the general populace in retaliation and fear, and a rash of new laws were enacted to further suppress and limit the freedoms of slaves and freemen. This event is full of ambivalence. Nat Turner can be seen as a freedom fighter, a mass murderer, or a misguided no-account.

While history has currently favored the side of egalitarian freedom, it is still difficult to read the events of 1831. In purely historical terms, the rippling outward effect of Nat Turner as a racial inspiration seems much smaller compared to the larger result of upsetting the status quo, leading to more Blacks being killed and more repression being imposed. The loss of life and the further restriction of slaves’ “rights” seem contrary to elevating Nat Turner as a Black messiah.

Styron says it’s not his objective to write a historical novel but a meditation on history. He wonders if the course of history would have moved in the same way if there had been no such uprising. What were the sources of this uprising? Did they come from a single man? What kind of man was he? Were the circumstances ripe for such an uprising that it could have been led by any man, perhaps a slave like the blood-mad Will? Of course, Styron has still written a historical novel. The particulars of his story blend his version of Nat Turner into a man and a messianic warrior. At the climax of the actual uprising, Turner is filled with doubts about himself and whether he correctly interpreted the messages he received from God. He is also troubled by the moral conflicts imposed by the need to kill all the Whites along his army’s path to freedom. Additionally, there are traits given to Nat Turner that make him dubious even about the people he means to lead to freedom and salvation. There are also ambiguous relations with “good” Whites, which manifest in violent visions of himself loving/raping a White woman.

The story is framed within the confines of Turner’s imprisonment, trial, and execution, a period of several weeks where he can reflect on his life and the more immediate events of the uprising. This tale is well told, moving largely chronologically through his life as a precocious, pampered house slave, to an apprentice carpenter with the promise of being made a freeman, to an abused and over-worked menial, and finally to a relatively comfortable position as a valued hired-out craftsman and a regarded preacher to his brethren slaves. There is no question that Turner is an extraordinary man—intelligent, creative, and sensitive. But in his portrait, there is little social commerce with other slaves. His intelligence and favored position have put him in a limbo; raised by his first master and family to be more than a slave, he is forced to see his ambitions stifled and his lot no better than that of the ignorant Blacks around him.

In this limbo existence, it becomes difficult to see Turner as a true messiah and spokesman for those he wants to lead to freedom. I suspect that it’s Styron’s literary integrity that impels him to create a flawed and ambivalent hero. I suspect that the novel’s detractors would prefer to see Turner more single-minded and more identifiable as a slave whose allegiance was with his brethren. The issues of race in the United States still lead to an ambivalence of perspective for both Blacks and Whites. There are injustices that have not been fully corrected, and there remain hard feelings that have never been resolved because injustices continue to prevail in a systemic way. Styron’s vision of a Black hero is one that shares these ambivalences—whether to love or hate, whether to co-exist or annihilate—without any middle ground that contentedly satisfies.

Despite what Styron has done, the outlines of Nat Turner’s life and accomplishments still resolve to “Nat Turner, leader of the first slave uprising in the United States.” The details in this novel do not change the meme. The event occurred, and some Blacks found inspiration in it, while many more Whites (and some Blacks) found reason to become more intolerant. Did it ultimately help or harm abolition and manumission? Styron’s novel does not begin to answer this question, but it does suggest that meditating on history may be little more than creating diverting fictions to fit the facts.

I'm strongly tempted to award this a mere 1 star. However, it does contain certain historical perspectives that are worthy of perusal. Just bear in mind that Styron has distorted some aspects of history and attributed unjustifiable motives to Turner. Turner was, by his own words to Thomas Ruffin Gray, a religious fanatic and a lunatic. Gray was the lawyer who sat down with Turner while he awaited execution and penned the first 'Confessions'. It can be freely downloaded here and should be read by anyone who reads this book, preferably beforehand so that you don't get drawn in and deceived. I gave it a 5-star review here. (2/15/2018 update of the original link, as the old one was broken.)

Turner believed himself fated for great deeds due to visions he attributed to his god and filtered through a warped religion. His warped confession offers a chilling insight into life through the eyes of a serial killer, a seriously deranged individual. His 'rebellion' was nothing more than a frenzied killing spree with no other real purpose. They killed at least 10 men, 14 women, and 31 infants and children. His name should be consigned to history alongside the likes of Hitler, Jim Jones, and David Berkowitz - crazy murderers.

Regrettably, Styron's fictional account tends to excuse many of Turner's actions and even portrays him in a heroic light. I fail to see how this ostensibly intelligent and charismatic man (Turner) could have so botched a genuine rebellion. His confession to Gray reveals that he was guided by the holy spirit towards some sort of judgment day. It reads nothing like a man desiring physical freedom (he had escaped and returned on his own, unlike his father who escaped and never came back) but rather like a deranged man aiming for a baptism in blood.

Reading about the reprisals that occurred after this 'rebellion' makes for even more harrowing reading. The immediate executions and beatings were horrific, but the impact on the anti-slave movement was devastating. Turner managed to shatter the growing sentiment that Jefferson had labored so hard to foster and which finally seemed to be coming to fruition in VA.

I don't usually read historical novels, and there are quite a few reasons for this. Two of them come to mind: if the author's concept is not just to amuse, to tell an adventure, love, etc. story among the ornaments, but also to convey ideas properly - I just read Illyés' Dózsa György* - and if these ideas are distorted - then and there they could not have existed in that form. I am interested in the reconstructive attempt - and if the reconstructive attempt connects the past and the present, then come on: but let it be understood with me that what is thought and思想史-ly conceivable, I can accept - otherwise it is a skanzen, operetta, multicolor film, or even worse: propaganda art. The other follows from this: if the present relevance of the conveyed idea is emphasized, the relationships between the characters are overshadowed, the characters become servants of the ideas, their personality, their "chemistry" becomes secondary - but this, together with the well-reconstructed thoughts and worldviews, would interest me - to get a picture of why we are the way we are now.

Styron, at least in my eyes, does not fall into these traps. Although he could have fallen into them, it is quite clear that this is not (just) about the beginning of the 19th century. Here, such people, ideas and thoughts appear that it is enough to look around - for example, on Facebook, to taste from their density. I read it and felt that yes, this is really how that person is, with these words and deeds a flesh-and-blood person, I believe that such a person could have lived in Virginia two hundred years ago, and then the next and the next came - all with believable thoughts and feelings: there is neither accusatory stigmatization nor idealization or degradation**. It is shocking to see what it means to become a slave, to be born as a slave, to grow old as a slave, how this distorts the personality, how it makes the person a spiritual slave. And the whites: the scale is wide from the sadist to the "saints"*** - where even the saints cannot free themselves from the customs and the environment - and it is also shocking to see their helplessness.

Sophie's Choice raised these questions, so to speak, to a universal level - I feel that these are already at a universal level here, and this is a much more compact novel as a whole.

* I didn't read it by chance. It occurred to me that I haven't read such a Hungarian "historical novel" yet, where the portrayal of the Hungarian peasantry, the rural poor, the landless, etc. was not an attempt to prove a later ideology, communism or nationalism (within that, in the 19th century, national independence). For example, how good it is now that we have abolished servitude. Or how much this nation has suffered, let's be proud of our Hungarianness. (Perhaps those historical or seemingly historical works that would dissect the East European slave roots of our present-day strongly East European society in the style of Styron do not reach me.)

** There are two exceptions. The first is Mr. Gray, S. exaggerated this figure a little, at least in my perception, already at the beginning of the story as far as his physical relationship is concerned. The other is a scene, the baptism, this character, again only in my perception, could have appeared as the front of the oppressed people.

*** Nat Turner calls one of his masters a saint. If this person spoke up today, we would consider him a racist. (How far has the world advanced?) - Apart from the sadists, there are no purely "good" and "bad" people - and Styron also works here with an apparently and characteristically and technically neutral ideological point of view - precisely because of this, one is horrified when listening in on some conversations. - I mentioned propaganda art in the text. In a broader sense, this is also, for example, a humanist book, or a provocative one: a liberal, democratic, human rights book - but precisely because of the lack of a point of view and didacticism, our sensitive, racist and respectful reader friends can also enjoy it.