Employing close reading of a kind usually associated with the study of
lyric poetry, this book offers a general framework for reading
African-American (and American) literature.
This book springs from two premises. The first is that, with a nod
toward Marianne Moore, America is - has always been - an imaginary place
with real people living in it. The second is that slavery and its
legacies explain how and why this is the case. The second premise
assumes that slavery - and, after that fell, white supremacy generally -
have been necessary adjuncts to American capitalism. Mark Richardson
registers these two premises at the level of style and rhetoric - in the
texture as much as in the "arguments" of the books he engages. His book
is written to appeal to a general reader. It begins with Frederick
Douglass, continues with W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, and Richard
Wright, and treats works by writers not often discussed in books
concerning race in American literature - for example, Stephen Crane and
Jack Kerouac. It brings to bear on such books as Douglass's My Bondage
and My Freedom, Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, and Crane's The Red
Badge of Courage a degree and quality of attention one usually
associates with the study of lyric poetry. The book offers a general
framework within which to read African-American (and American)
literature.
Mark Richardson is Professor of English at Doshisha University, Kyoto,
Japan. He is co-editor of The Letters of Robert Frost (Harvard
University Press) and author of The Ordeal of Robert Frost (University
of Illinois Press, 1997).
