Call-and-response: tracing the ideological shifts of Richard Wright through his correspondence with friends and fellow literati

African American Review, Spring, 2003 by Matthew M. Briones

As Arnold Rampersad notes, "Almost cynically driven by Wright's desire to co-opt religious faith into radical socialism, his work expresses contempt for men and women of religion, and even for religion itself" ("Demonic"). Not ironically, then, Wright had felt a near-religious reverence for the Party, but after his break, he looked to other holy grails. In a sense, after 1942, his quest would become twofold: one, for the great Negro novel yet to be written and, two, for a greater understanding of existentialism. The God that had failed him must somehow take form and shape in another sphere. In a journal entry from July 30, 1947, written, ironically, aboard the U.S.S. America on its way to Paris, Wright demonstrates his newfound quest. Hazel Rowley accurately captures the mood of the author in the following passage from her biography, Richard Wright: The Life and Times:

"I hope to remain away from American this time as long as possible," he wrote. "Maybe not in France, but certainly away from America."

Both the portholes were open. Wright felt calmed by the quiet swish of the ocean. It had been a long, hot day.... They had done so much in the final days. They had a car in the hold and a cat in the ship's kennel. In his briefcase was half a novel in first draft. In the last week or so, he had never let it out of his sight. His hand was sore from clutching the briefcase. He told himself he must make sure to work on his manuscript every day of the voyage. If only they could settle into a Paris apartment quickly. He did not want to lose momentum. Not again. (Rowley 356)

Wright expresses both his anxiety about his travels and an earnest desire to work on the "great book," which at this chronological point would have been The Outsider, published in 1953. As Robert Bone suggests above, Wright remains as "rootless" and restless as ever in this passage of writing and in his passage across the ocean. Wright constantly seeks meaning for his life, as well as for the life of the American Negro. Certainly, on some level, Wright considered himself a synecdoche for his people: What he sought for himself he sought for them. On July 31, he bandies about such a question, asking of himself the true meaning of freedom but asserting that his current work-in-progress would answer the mystery. Twelve days later, he raises the same issue in his journal, this time certain that his novel will address the people's need, their desire, for freedom (see 31 July and 11 Aug. 1947 entries, Journal). Once more, however, friends' influences, as evidenced by their letters, also served to catalyze Wright's t hinking. A few years earlier, Wright's good friend and sociologist Horace Cayton wrote to him about the potential of future work:

The book that I am thinking that we should do would be a courageous, daring new way of thinking on the part of the Negro for himself. I think we should break with the conventional way of thinking like the French modern painters did; like Joyce did, but not in a decadent and defeatist fashion; like Marx did.