Customer Reviews

Among the Blacks

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Among the Blacks consists of two works: Padgett's translation of Roussel's early story "parmi les noirs," first published in 1935 in his book Comment j'ai écrit certain de mes livres, together with Padgett's memoir focusing upon his own experience among black people. Roussel's story, about a master mariner named White who encounters an African chief named Booltable, is built upon the kind of whimsical and extravagant word play (its first and last sentences are identical except for one letter in one word -- "pooltable" / "Booltable") for which Roussel was idolized by the French Surrealists. In contrast, as he writes in his Afterword, Padgett's memoir "grew out of the nagging need to come to grips with the frustrations of being a white American who had grown up in a racist environment and who, despite his rejections of racism at an early age, had rarely felt unselfconscious in the company of a black person." Its language is transparent and unmannered, "an attempt somply to tell the trutgh, and to do so with a minimum of artfulness."

I'm not sure what the strategy was.. Maybe Roussel's story was so small, the publishers know they couldn't release it on its own and so had Padgett write an unrelated story with the TINIEST bit of similar ideas (oh, Roussel's character is among black people albeit in a surreal, twisted story.. I think Padgett should have a dry memoir about being around black people.. Hmm.. yeah that fits!). Disregard Padgett's self-absorbed story and just read Roussel's. It's a pretty fevered account of proto-surrealism.