I have a memory problem when it comes to books. I recognize titles I've read, but I have serious difficulty recalling the details of the stories. If a book is well-known and much-talked-about, I have a decent chance of remembering the important parts. But if I have to rely solely on myself to reconnect with a story, I usually have to do some serious re-reading. So I buy books, and I keep them around. If I really enjoy a library book, I usually buy it - sometimes before I've finished reading it the first time through. Because I expect I will want to revisit it some time, in an urgent sort of way. That's how I do it.
I'm currently reading the new memoir by Alexandra Styron, daughter of William Styron, titled Reading My Father. The book interests me on many levels. One, because the father Styron's controversial masterpiece The Confessions of Nat Turner is a startling, unique book, and the author of such work is inherently interesting to me. Also, I have met a few members of his family, and it's impossible to pretend that I'm not curious about their famous patriarch, who apparently had several personality traits similar to my own father. Finally, I've written a manuscript about my father and our relationship. So a purportedly well-written memoir by a daughter about her father is, well, something I should check out. I'm only thirty pages in, so I'll tell you what my early preoccupation is:
Alexandra Styron was born within months of the publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner. It was 1967, the year of my birth. Yes, the civil rights movement was in full swing. Clearly, this book took a lot of balls to write. A white Southern man assuming the voice of a black slave, narrating the circumstances leading to a murderous slave revolt. It's a fascinating undertaking, a great book, and an important piece of our country's literary history.
I re-read Nat Turner about a year ago, after hearing about a book that was published in immediate reaction to the original manuscript. The reaction book is a collection of essays titled William Styron's Nat Turner/ Ten Black Writers Respond. I found the out-of-print Respond on Amazon, through an obscure little book shop in L.A., and I bought it for about six bucks. Then I went out to our local indie book store and bought Nat Turner, figuring I'd read it while I waited for the mail to come. I had read it before, but was unsure when. I'm sure it was in school, before college, when I was way too naive to appreciate the scope of impact of the work. In fact, I had probably assumed the author was black.
Now, the Respond book is - you guessed it - angry. On the back cover is printed:
BECAUSE THERE WERE NO MAJOR BLACK REVIEWS OF WILLIAM STYRON'S
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER TEN BLACK WRITERS RESPOND:
The black writers are pissed off. Offended, disgusted and hostile in their responses. The common thread in their essays is the accusation that Styron's portrait of Nat Turner supports the toxic black stereotypes of the day, and that Turner's true character and motivations are horribly misrepresented. They identify Styron's book as a potent example of the continued defamation of black men (and women). Again, this collection is an important piece of literary history. It's a real document, depicting the raw emotions of a time that some of us take for granted. I know I do. Some of the essays left me thinking, "Oh wow. Don't be so defensive! It's a historical novel, right? It's a story of another time." Then I have to stop myself, to honor the realities of the day. And I imagine Styron and James Baldwin, his friend and confidant (and co-conspirator, some might say) as they sat around that groovy Styron family Connecticut farmhouse and discussed the text, the context, and the potential influence of the book as it was being developed.
All three of these books are a time capsule of my birth year. They remind me of how far we've come, and how much ground we still have to cover.
