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Philosopher, Novelist, Patriot
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19823 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1991 |
2,475 Words |
| Author
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Gary Lee
Gary Lee is a Washington-based journalist who occasionally
writes on the arts. |
Over coffee in a hotel bar in Washington, Charles Johnson is running through the gamut of his passions--two young children back home in Seattle, rigorous workouts at a local gym, and other down-to-earth pleasures. Settling into his second cup, he is getting lost in reminiscence, when suddenly his eyes and voice begin to dance in the way that a man reacts when musing about baseball, the beach, or whatever it is he turns to for fun at the end of a week. For Johnson, it is Hegel, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Heidegger.
Like Middle Passage, the novel that has catapulted him into sudden fame, Johnson is a deeply human shell encasing a rock-hard intellect. Only the fourth black author to win the National Book Award, Johnson is, on one hand, the stuff folk heroes are made of: a popular college professor who likes writing novels and finally hit pay dirt on the third try. Profiled in People magazine, celebrated on talk shows, he is always polite, conversational, and funny. During a recent book tour, he had a day named after him in Baltimore; in Washington, D.C., he got a rock star's reception. His reading on the spacious third floor of a bookstore was so jam packed that the owner had to set up a speaker in a corner of the basement so the overflow crowd could listen.
At heart, however, the 42-year-old Johnson is a teacher and student of philosophical thought. Before being invited to teach creative writing, he was on his way to getting a doctorate in philosophy. Fourteen years later, it is still his preferred passion. "One thing I try to do in everything I write," he says, "is to popularize philosophical ideas."
Like its author, Middle Passage is easily accessible to a broad audience. A seafarer's tale carved in the mold of Moby Dick, it tells of a black gambler living in antebellum New Orleans who stows away on a ship bound for Africa's western coast. The story is riveting enough; Johnson acknowledges using devices including humor to enhance its popular appeal.
It is also an allegory, an elucidation of American history, and a social commentary. The characters symbolize absolutes like Good, Evil, and Wisdom. The plot addresses the subject of slavery, one of the most complex aspects of the American past. And the moral of the story is that even a cheater and ne'er-do-well, when confronted by deeply humane ideas, can make good.
The popular tale and the philosophical one are carefully intertwined, like an upstairs-downstairs thriller. "Some people can
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