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Introduction: Charles Johnson's Middle Passage
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19811 |
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BOOK WORLD
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5 / 1991 |
423 Words |
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Opinion about books, even great books, tends to vary widely. Strong reviews accompanied the publication of Charles Johnson's Middle Passage in July 1990, and the first few printings sold respectably. Then in November it won the National Book Award for fiction. A brief but intense literary controversy had developed among the NBA judges over criteria for selecting competitors, accompanied by accusations that "affirmative action" had entered the nominating process. Middle Passage was later nominated for the National Book Critic's Circle Award, and made the national best-seller list in mid-January 1991. A novel becoming a best-seller for the first time six months after publication is a rare event in contemporary publishing.
Opinion about Middle Passage is divided among the contributors to the symposium this month. Book critic Joseph Coates views the book as a virtual definition of what it means to be an American. Literary scholar Bernard Bell contextualizes the novel, placing it in the tradition of slave-revolt narratives and African-American philosophical fiction. Another literary scholar, Charles Larson, argues that Middle Passage should be viewed as a plundering (linguistically, historically, and philosophically) of Western culture just as the West for centuries has ravaged the cultures of non-Western peoples. Writer Gary Lee profiles and interviews Charles Johnson, finding him a down-to-earth professor and novelist whose real passion is philosophy.
In the excerpt, narrator-protagonist Rutherford Calhoun, a roguish freedman turned thief, attempts to escape marriage and creditors by stowing away aboard the Republic, a slave ship bound for Africa in 1830. In later chapters, through dialogue with other characters, Calhoun explores the dimensions--psychological, intellectual, and spiritual--of relations between races and worldviews. On the return voyage (the so-called middle passage), as the Republic encounters all the dangers that accompanied the transatlantic slave trade--mutiny, slave rebellion, disease, hurricanes, and shipwreck--Calhoun finds himself longing for America. The experience ultimately transforms Calhoun into a mature man, secure in his identity as an American, ready to accept the responsibilities of adulthood.
Although only 209 pages long, Middle Passage is a complex novel. Congratulating Johnson for writing a book whose message "is the absence of the sort of 'message' that stultifies art," George Will called him America's leading literary patriot. For Johnson does not take an ideological position; his novel informs but does not inflame the moral imagination. Middle Passage is a pastiche--a philosophical
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