Richard Wright’s ‘new’ work
His 1941 novel“The Man Who Lived Underground” is a tale of police brutality, sanitized back then and published whole now.
Richard Wright, in the winter of 1941, was the most successful Black author in America. Only 14 years earlier, he had made the Great Migration, moving from Memphis to Chicago. He had enrolled in the 10th grade in Hyde Park but quickly dropped out and went to work. He sorted mail for the Chicago post office, and he cared for medical-research animals at what was then Michael Reese Hospital, and he sold insurance policies door-to-door on the South Side. Also, he started to write books, and in 1940, his novel “Native Son” was a sensation. As one critic famously presumed, after reading the novel’s blunt-force approach to race and poverty, American culture would be changed forever. Wright was a star, and the bestselling author at Harper & Brothers (later HarperCollins), the fabled New York publishing house that claimed the “Little House on the Prairie” series and Thornton Wilder, among others.
Wright’s agent and editors wanted to capitalize on his acclaim.
A year later, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Wright delivered the slender book he had been writing for months in a frenzy. It was titled “The Man Who Lived Underground,” and it was not the novel his editors expected. They anticipated a book titled “Black Hope,” about domestic workers. Wright gave them a novel devoid of hope, about a Black man pulled off the street by police and falsely accused of murder, then beaten and tortured, only to escape into the sewer system where he is transformed by an epiphany that life aboveground was impossible.
Wright saw the book as a
creative leap forward, as existentialist as his prose had been realist.
But it didn’t go over well at Harper.
Though Wright was one of the hottest young authors in the country, the publisher rejected the novel, for vague reasons. About half of the book was later
“Not Yeti” by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Claire Keane.
(Ages 4 to 8. Viking. $17.99. Due May 18.) It’s a monster-filled world, but Yeti just doesn’t fit in. He doesn’t yell and stomp and hurl insults. Instead, “he crochets sweaters for penguins. He compliments the weeds as he passes them by on his morning walks.” Of course, it’s not easy to be different; there are times when Yeti isn’t much appreciated by the other monsters, despite his offers of tasty banana bread and free babysitting. As he builds a tiny library, rehomes his fleas and communes with the whales, Yeti finds he is often alone. Left out of a monstrous party, Yeti takes a deep breath, plans his own bash ... and finds out that he may be a one-ofa-kind monster, but he’s not a lonely one. Brimming with playful illustrations and hairy monsters, this story is the perfect tale for children (and adults) who are carving their own paths.