The Best of Richard Wright
The character development in "Cross" as an intellectual, bemused by his past, but confronted by his present, presents many challenges to a young man fighting personal demons inorder to account for his actions as a productive vexed individual. Cross Damon is a product of any era where hopes fade away as obstacles seemingly come out of nowhere, at the same time when confusing them with oppurtunity.
Excitingly sad tale of young man caught in the vice grips of lift without the personal attributes of an identifiable accountability thread in his make-up, where finding his way out of trouble gets him deeper into it.
Absolute Nihilist Bunk
Wright presents a view of existentialism in an ultimately negative and nihilistic perspective. I'm not critical of existentialism, but rather Wright's inadequate rendition of it!
The character of Cross NEVER does personally transcend race! Cross isn't a supportor of Fascism or Communism, but we never learn if he has beliefs at all. He ends up murdering whites and blacks, friends and enemies, a fascist and a communist. The latter because he was abusive and untrue to his wife. Yet Cross himself was cheating on his own wife, ritually beat her, abandoned his children, and caused his mistress to end up getting an abortion with their child. Cross's character wants us to criticise "the oppressive meaningless racist white society," and yet he consistantly lies, resorts to violence, condemns others, and virtually never makes a "good" decision himself. When I read a book this long, that's filled with so much rhetoric I want to have something tangible in the end, but we're left with nothing! In the end Cross's character states that he was never understood, and yet his life has been comprised of deceit, hypocritical judgement, murder, and a continuous series of ideas never amounting to anything. Cross has the ability to make decisions, (his ability to think and react are never taken from him), and yet he continues to make awful decisions. Blaming his condition on a "limited environment that is dominated by the evil white racist Americans" never absolves him of his own misdeeds. Wright completely fails in presenting a clear, intelligent view of existentialism. His French, German, and Dutch superiors capture the idea much better (i.e. Sartre). I don't know why anyone would believe this is a treatise worthy of reading, except as an example of a poor example! As always, in this P.C. environment we get a glimpse of the undeniably selective view of racism in the history of humanity. You'd be left to believe that those of the white race are the ONLY ones capable of creating a racist society, or being racist period. However, for the 0.1 percent of people who actually see history in it's entire scope know that this notion is an outright falsehood. Some who are uninformed will try to tell you that Wright's motives weren't centered on the topic of white racism, or the idea of race at all, but rather the ideas of existentialism compared within that setting. Anyone who reads the novel knows this is untrue as well. Cross's character consistantly reacts and thinks in racial ways throughout the novel.
It almost seems that Wright wanted to write a racist novel with the idea of existentialism as subterfuge in order to validate a book with graphic scenes of black on white violence, scenes of interracial sex, and anti-Communist/anti-Fascist rhetoric, to justify and/or legitimize his own deviant political and social behaviors! I support this claim with the following scenarios that come from this book: 1. Cross's character beating the head of a deceased white person who's corpse is conveniantly in Cross's way after the accident on the train, and in order to escape the wreckage Cross kicks and eventually pistol whips the head in order to move it. 2. The fact that Cross, who's character is black, ends up having sex with every white female character that has some precise mention in the narrative. The only exceptions are: an older and fatter white female in the restaurant scene who turns out to be an "evil racist" & the other prostitute who is conveniently "with" one of Cross's black friends. 3. The scene in which two white men are trying to kill one another, one is a fascist, the other a communist, and Cross takes delight in the two whites committing violence upon one another. 4. The blonde character who's named Eva (gee that's original!), who writes in her journal how she wishes her skin was continually tan, and how she's become disenchanted with the color pink because it is associated with her evil, superficial, white, communist husband! Subsequently to this she seeks refuge in the character of Cross who's made out to be her "black salvation".
I want the time back from my life I wasted reading this poorly written narrative. Richard Wright should have done us all a favor and left explaining existentialism to the experts. I'll never read any of Wright's other novels because the experience of reading this novel was too close to some form of literary terrorism. If "Native Son" and "Black Boy" are great novels, that's fine. However, in WRIGHT'S "The Outsider" he's dead WRONG!
Stirring tale of Alienation, Flight, Trouble
Richard Wright (1908-1960) covers racism, exploitation, and existentialism in this engaging story. Cross Damon is an alienated young black man in Chicago in 1950 with a wife and family he doesn't really love, and an unfulfilling postal job. Dissatisfied with his life, he eagerly takes the plunge when given an unexpected chance to skip town unnoticed with a bundle of money. Moving to New York City, he soon becomes mixed up with violent communists and a white district attorney whose disability makes him, like African Americans, an outsider in U.S. society. Damon is bright and not uneducated, but he's also devious, violent, and unable to sidestep troublesome associates one must avoid.
Like most books by Richard Wright, "The Outsider" attacks racial injustice in a readably engaging manner...but is a bit long-winded. Unlike earlier efforts like "Native Son," here Wright disdains communists as violent and oppressive. Perhaps that was due to McCarthyism, but more likely it stems from the fact that the murderous oppression of Stalin and communist police states was better known by 1950.
A thoroughly engrossing journey
The Outsider is a thrilling novel that reads quickly, and memorably. Like "The Fugitive" our hero finds himself suddenly outside of both society and his own sense of identity. He is forced to recreate himself as he struggles to stay ahead of danger, only to find that his new persona liberates a charisma that thrusts him into the spotlight, threatening to betray him to his pursuers. As in the "The Grapes of Wrath", our hero is forced to confront his concept of who and how he had lived while becoming both politically and ideologically self-aware. This transformative process remains as compelling, current, and relevant today as when Wright penned the novel.
This first-rate novel is given short shrift by those who enjoy genuflecting to the myth of an intellectual heritage, to which it owes no homage nor apology, above the thrilling strength of the prose itself.
The Fugitive is a zesty hoot of novel full of suspenseful twists and thoughtful choices.
Wright's my favorite till the end...
The outsider is a Bigger Thomas a.k.a Cross Damon, he is a man that questions everything around him and plans for his life, not death. Destiny helps him start his life in a different way in which he meets Eva, someone he comes to love and can understand him. But the communists are in the way and makes his life miserably after having him suspect of killing two of their Party members. It was sad at the end for him to die as Bigger die but it felt so real and sad to have such an ending.
This book once again makes Richard Wright the most coiuragious author of his time. If Bigger didn't know the Communists and how they work, Cross did and it can be said we have seen the other side of the coin. I recommend it to everybody, communist and facist alike!
