‘The Wig’ is one of my favorites. So how could I forget about it?
You would hope it’s impossible to forget about one of your favorite books, but it happened to me, and I’m now determined to make sure I don’t forget this book again, or its author.
The book is “The Wig” by Charles Stevenson Wright, which I first read maybe a decade ago when I was dropping down a rabbit hole of post-war African American writers who had been briefly prominent but had not ultimately wound up in the literary canon in that manner of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, or somewhat later, Toni Morrison. I had read the works of another “forgotten” writer William Melvin Kelley (“A Different Drummer,” “Dem”) and had the fairly obvious epiphany that there must be more writers like this, daring experimentalists writing amazing books who had slipped from our collective grasp.
Wright published three novels in his lifetime, all between 1963 and 1973, “The Messenger” (1963), “The Wig” (1966), and “Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About” (1973). Wright lived until 2008, but never published after 1973 as he apparently struggled with alcoholism.
I’d forgotten about “The Wig” until it was recently featured in a New York
Times story about the 22 funniest novels since the publication of “Catch-22” (1961), in which Times critic Dwight Garner, a Wright fan, chose “The Wig” as one of the entries. Garner has aptly described Wright as “Richard Pryor on paper.” “The Wig” hinges on an absurd premise, where a young Black man looking to make a splash in the white world in 1960’s New York City uses an entire jar of hair relaxer to create, in Garner’s words, “hair so resplendent, and later so vividly red” that the narrator believes he will be hailed as a genius.
“The Wig” is a book I flipped over when I read it, having found a copy of the out-of-print title in the library. It is antic and plotless. The narrator, who calls his hair “the wig” does not achieve fame and fortune, but his quixotic travails provide ample opportunity for Wright’s unique perspective on race and business in America, along with the business of race in America.
Reading “The Wig,” I couldn’t believe that it was out of print and I’d never heard of it before. It seemed like obvious genius to me, singular and special. And then I finished the book, returned it to the university library, and over time, let it slip.
There’s an obvious irony here as Wright himself is largely forgotten except by champions like Garner. Since I first read “The Wig” there has been another republishing of Wright’s three novels collected together in 2019, fronted by an appreciation from novelist and playwright Ishmael Reed, but even that looks to be out of print again.
What can I say? I read a lot of books, which means I’m always shoving one book out of my brain as another one arrives. Not having a copy of the book of my own, I didn’t have the visual aid on a shelf for my memory. I’m sure some can relate.
But also, Wright’s work is so singular that it’s not often that I’d be reminded of “The Wig” by reading someone else. Reed has some similarities, but he is a maximalist while Wright’s books are slim. Paul Beatty (“The Sellout”) has the same kind of antic humor, but his work is more sturdily plotted than Wright’s. Reading “The Wig” you have no idea what words are coming next.
Wonderful.
Since I’ve now acquired a very special first edition copy that will sit forever in a place of honor on my shelves, I will not forget this book again.