An edition of Richard Wright, daemonic genius (1988)

Richard Wright, daemonic genius

a portrait of the man, a critical look at his work

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February 28, 2022 | History
An edition of Richard Wright, daemonic genius (1988)

Richard Wright, daemonic genius

a portrait of the man, a critical look at his work

  • 1 Want to read

Richard Wright was first a black man and second a writer. The life of this black man is inextricably bound to his writing. Author of 16 books, his first published volume appeared in 1938, when he was 30 years old. When he died at age 52, 22 years later, he had published a dozen books. I have divided rights life and work into five periods: his first 19 years in the violent white South, including his childhood and adolescence; 10 years of maturation in Chicago, when he became a revolutionary, a bohemian, and a professional writer; 10 years of professional success and personal frustration in New York; 10 years of seeking freedom and Paris; and, finally, his last two or three years of trauma and tragedy. Then, I have followed a general outline of relating his published works -- books, articles, poetry, and speeches -- to his life. Each period of his life was dominated by a set of ideas and philosophies that he personally embraced and then inculcated in his writing. A man motivated by ideas and novelist of ideas, his intellectual stature is a first consideration. His intellectual development and his Weltanschauung, or worldview, place him in the forefront of 20th century life and culture, and it is in this area that this book seeks to break ground. - Preface.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
444

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Richard Wright, daemonic genius
Richard Wright, daemonic genius: a portrait of the man, a critical look at his work
1993, Amistad, Distributed by Random House
Paperback in English
Cover of: Richard Wright, daemonic genius
Cover of: Richard Wright, daemonic genius

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Abbreviations : key to Wright's works
Introduction
Part one.
The young Wright : nineteen years in the violent white South, 1908-1927
A certain place : Mississippi, a climate for genius
A definite time : 1908
A boy in rompers : angry, bitter and brash
The broken home : trauma and the young psyche
A boy in knee-pants : reading, writing, and hunger
Jackson, Mississippi : fanatically religious relatives, bourgeois Negroes, and racist White folks
From Jackson to Memphis : big boy leaves home, almost a man
Richard Wright : a gift from the South
Part two.
Wright begins to sing his broken song : ten Chicago years, 1927-1937
A callow youth becomes a man
A political animal
The Chicago Post Office and the young lions
"To be young, gifted, and Black"
The WPA : "A Stairway to the Stars"
The assault : punk hunting and the Bohemians
Daemonic genius and the creative process : "Margaret, if a voice speaks within you, you can live"
"I'm off tonight for New York"
Part three.
Wright's Medusa head : the New York years, 1937-1947
Medusa is a woman
A man of purpose, will, and reason
The Faustian man of success
Native Son
Fame and fortune
Marriage and the medusa head
Horace Cayton, Richard Wright, and the Cayton-Warner research file
Twelve Million Black Voices
An interlude : three pieces
Black Boy : autobiography as social history, art, or catharsis?
Property, racism, fascism, and the war ends
Paris in the spring : tra la, la, la
Part four.
Wright's political paradox : ten Paris years, 1947-1957
The twisted torch : "I lift my lamp beside the golden door"
The international man
The Third World : men of African and Pan-Africanism
Making the movie Native Son
"I choose exile"
The secular man and The Outsider
Black Power : Africa and Pan Africanism
Savage Holiday : a Freudian nightmare
Pagan Spain : the Spanish Revolution and the Roman Catholic Church
Confrontation in Asia : The Bandung Conference and The Color Curtain
The farm at Ailly, Normandy : a retreat
Présence Africaine : cultural Black Nationalism, and the role and education of the artist
White man, listen! : The Weltanschauung of a twentieth century man
Part five.
The return of Mephistopheles : Wright's final years, 1958-1960
A fluttering of angel's wings
Perimeters and parameters of political intrigue
1958 : the failure of The Long Dream and "Island of Hallucinations"
1959 : the fractured personality : a wounded man
The crumbling marriage
1960 : Eight Men, a lifetime of stories and storytelling by a man in anguish
The mystery of Richard Wright's death
Notes
A bibliographical essay
A guide to Wright studies
Keynote speech given at the International Symposium on Richard Wright, Mississippi's Native Son
Afterword : Ellen Wright v. Warner Books, Inc. and Margaret Walker

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-411) and index.
Originally published: New York : Warner Books, c1988.

Published in
New York
Genre
Biography.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
813/.52
Library of Congress
PS3545.R815 Z892 1993

The Physical Object

Format
Paperback
Pagination
xix, 444 p.
Number of pages
444
Dimensions
24 x x centimeters

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1738518M
Internet Archive
richardwrightdae00walk
ISBN 10
156743004X
ISBN 13
9781567430042
LCCN
92043758
Library Thing
37381
Goodreads
15623

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February 28, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
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June 18, 2015 Edited by Bryan Tyson Edited without comment.
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