'Oxherding Tale' and 'Siddhartha:' philosophy, fiction, and the emergence of a hidden tradition

African American Review, Winter, 1996 by Rudolph P. Byrd

Notes

1. Currently, Johnson is engaged in completing a fourth novel, Dreamer, based upon the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dreamer promises to occupy an important place in the philosopher/novelist's expanding canon, thus potentially altering his present estimation of Oxherding Tale.

2. For commentary on the "doctrine of inner realization" or enlightenment, see Suzuki. There are fascinating correspondences between the ways in which the Buddha, Hesse, and Johnson describe this expansive state of consciousness.

Works Cited

Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. 1951. New York: Bantam, 1971.

Johnson, Charles. Oxherding Tale. 1982. New York: Plume, 1995.

-----. "Philosophy and Black Fiction." Obsidian 6 (1980): 55-61.

Suzuki, D. T. "Zen as Chinese Interpretation of the Doctrine of Enlightenment." Essays in Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1961. 39-117.

Rudolph P. Byrd is Associate Professor of American Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts and Director of the Program of African American Studies at Emory University.