Richard Wright : Daemonic Genius

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Summary: With Friends Like These....
Review: Richard Wright, author of NATIVE SON, BLACK BOY, and THE OUTSIDER, is a major American writer. He desrves a major biography.

RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS by Margaret Walker is more like a major hatchet-job.

Dr. Walker is a noted author in her own right, with the bestseller JUBILEE to her credit. She was also friendly with Langston Hughes, Frank Yerby, and James Baldwin. And she had a three-and-a-half year friendship with Wright himself, beginning in 1936.

Much of DAEMONIC GENIUS is based upon Walker's memories of that relationship. That the friendship ended badly (according to Walker, due to Wright) seems to be the central theme of the book. It's also its central fault.

Walker spends pages and pages describing her feelings over the break up. She then analyzes every relationship Wright ever had in the light of those feelings. Along the way, she sprinkles in biographical passages almost as an afterthought. If your interest is in Walker's perspective on Wright's psyche and how it affected his work, this might be fine. If you're interested in an objective presentation of Wright's life and work, you will find Walker's pontifications downright annoying. It might even occur to you that Walker is getting even with the man for some perceived wrong 30 years after his death.

Such are Walker's feelings about Wright that she seems inconsistent in her conclusions. The first few chapters of her book gloss over Wright's upbringing by referring to BLACK BOY, implying that the 1945 work covers those years authoritatively. Yet when she comes to discuss the book itself, she describes it as, "not a book of purely factual and verifiable incidents." There are many such paradoxes in the narrative.

Too, Walker details many unkind psycholgical insights about Wright's widow, Ellen. Much has been made of the fact that Ellen tried to put a stop to Walker's book through court action, claiming violation of copyright. I personally think she could have made a better case for character assassination.

In short, then, the definitive biography of Richard Wright has yet to be written. And students of Wright would probably be better off giving RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS a pass.

Rating:
Summary: Real Thoughts
Review: This book was hard to keep up with at first I thought it was a biography on Richard Wright.After reading and really getting into the book I then realized that she had a right to speak and write of their relationship. I felt that the book was informative and helpful in understanding a different side of Richard Wright. Everybody has more than one side to them.