Customer Reviews

The Long Dream

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Native Son" was great, barring the party-line that marred the last third. "Black Boy" haunts. His existential stuff is first-rate. But.... But here is Mr. Wright's best. We find here the story of poor Fishbelly, whose father holds the highest position possible for the Mississippi oppressed at the time: undertaker. The events that overtake him strike the reader across the face as rudely as those in previous novels; the civilized are outraged. Read this in the name of liberty.

Wow! What a book. The book was written so percisely that I felt that I was reading a true story. I felt that the characters were real people facing racism in the south during the 1940's. I read his first novel Native Son and loved it! I just happened across this book (The Long Dream) and decided to try it out. I'm so glad I did. Although this was a book of fiction, it was written in such a way that it made you believe that it was a true story. Fishbelly, the main character dealt with the inner struggle of hatred toward white people and people of his own race. He watched how his father bent his knees, dropped his shoulders and shuffle his feet when talking to white people. Fishbelly felt his father was coward for acting that way in front of whites, therefore, hating his father for acting so cowardly, and hating white people for having that kind of power over black people. His father tells him that "A black man's a dream, son, a dream that can't come true." Only later when Fishbelly was falsely accused of raping a white woman did he realize why his father behaved the way he did. The plot thickens at the turning of each page. This book is well worth taking the time to read, you won't regret it.

I have read Wright's Black Boy, his compelling autobiography that depicted the enormity of racism in America. The Long Dream is no different. However, in this novel other factors surface, all which contribute to the rise and fall of the Tucker family. Clintonville, the town in which the family resides, is plagued by not only overt racism, but an inconspicuous corruption as well.

The plot is captivating. I give this novel 4 stars instead of 5 only because I do not think that Wright made as many connections to the title as I would have liked to seen. Nonetheless, this book is meritorious and is an excellent read on the heinousness perpetrated by whites in the 20th century.

Any thoughtful German born in the 20th Century and still able to read today needs to dwell with the atrocities of the Third Reich in mind. No, I don't suggest that every German does or should meditate incessantly on guilt and horror; the books are there to remind him/her. Mann, Grass, Döblin, Fallada, Roth, Keun, Koeppen, Lenz, Sebald, Mueller, Erpenbeck ... can you name a single important German writer of the last two or three generations who hasn't written about the Holocaust?

America and American novelists, it's somewhat shameful to note, have shrugged off the horrors of their history more casually. Yes, of course, there have been profound American novels about World War 2, and about "being Jewish" in America, and about the "Southern Consciousness". But, for better or worse, American writers have been able to escape preoccupation with the "sins of their fathers" and brothers. Slavery, that unconscionable disgrace to the Land of the Free, has become as remote as romance, though currently there's a plague of apologists for slavery and secession along with rabid denouncers of Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant and 'statist'.

But what about Jim Crow? Segregation/apartheid? The hundred years of ugly, hateful, violent racism from 1865 to 1965 (and beyond)? Get ready, some of you in amazonia, to froth and howl, because I do think the Long Nightmare of lynch-law segregation in America can be compared to the Nazi death camps, and I am disturbed that so many Americans have no consciousness of their nation's shame.

Richard Wright's last published novel "The Long Dream" (1958) is the most horrifying depiction of Jim Crow racism I've ever read. Most of Wright's fiction, including his best-known novel Native Son, is set in the urban North and expresses, sometimes too didactically, the author's political convictions. The Long Dream is set in small-town Mississippi, closer therefore to Wright's autobiographical books, "Black Boy" and "Uncle Tom's Children". Richard Wright could no more help loading his narrative with philosophy than Tolstoy or Zola; he explicates and ruminates sociologically where other writers might artfully leave their 'message' tacit. Nonetheless, this is a powerful, painful, compelling novel, far too good to be as little read as it is.

There are two agonistic themes in The Long Dream, the universal theme of father/son conflict and the historically specific theme of a young black man's conflict with a white society that viciously intends to crush his development. The boy Rex, nicknamed 'Fish', is entrapped (as all sons are) in the life of his father, Tyree, a mortician/brothel-keeper who thrives through toadying to the corrupt powers-that-be of the racist white world. Tyree's ego is strong enough to give him the illusion that he knows "how to handle white folk", a knowledge he hopes to jam into his son's head at any cost. It's obvious to the reader from the start that Tyree is doomed, and the suspense is whether Fish will find another modus vivendi -- a different accommodation, a triumphant rebellion, an escape -- or be degraded and destroyed by the same malevolent white tyranny.

Critics and readers-at-large in 1958, when The Long Dream appeared, found the violence portrayed in the novel distressing. Several prominent critics asserted that Wright was exaggerating the virulence of white racism in the South. Such extremism, they said, was a thing of the past, and perhaps 'sleeping dogs' might best be left lying in the shade. The novel, among other horrors, describes the ghastly fate of a young black man who is dragged to death behind a car. Incredible? I hope you've been reading the newspapers this week, in September 2011! Perhaps Northerners, both white and black, might have imagined that Wright was 'out of touch', living in France, with the progress in race relations in America after World War 2. They were deluded, as the ferocious white back-lash against the Civil Rights movement of the next decade soon proved. Wright was if anything a moderate prophet. There is no exaggeration in this book; every vile deed and every loathsome thought was a daily reality for black Americans under Jim Crow oppression.

"Fish" is not a simple character, a good little boy whom we can empathize with. "Fish" has as much nastiness in him as any tattooed gang-banger you'd be afraid to cross in a dark parking lot today. But Fish also has a spark of intelligence and aspiration, and you as a reader will NEED to know what becomes of him. Tyree Tucker, the father, is no simple figure either; both his goodness and his corruption are compellingly real in Richard Wright's portrayal of him. The greatness of this novel, I'd say, is in the rich realization of its principal characters. There are more comfortable novels of black America -- more pastoral, more benign, more loving in their depiction of the strengths of African-American culture -- but there are few if any novels more brutally true.

Several years ago when I read "Native Son", I was both disturbed and angered. Though the plot and setting of this book is quite different, it left me with the same feelings. The conditions for African-Americans in the South during this time period were appalling. "The Long Dream" follows a different theme which analyzes the graft and corruption that allowed these conditions to exist.

The evolution of the Rex "Fishbelly" Tucker character is amazing. Richard Wright begins the story with Fishbelly (Fish) as a naive child. By the end of the book, his cunning ways may surprise the reader. Fish's father Tyree is officially an undertaker. But with the willing hand of the currupt southern politicians, he also runs several brothels and dancehalls as well as managing tenements. In many ways, he is a chosen and easily dispensible pawn. But an event causing the political machine to turn on Tyree in a shocking way.

These events cause Fish to take on roles that he is not ready to accept. Quitting school and taking a greater role in the business not only causes an arrogance to develop in Fish, but it also entraps him under the thumb of the same political machine that turned on his father.

The one real omission in the context of the book is the title. The title fits with the plot early in the story, but the author seems to have let go of the premise. This does not affect the overall story, it just makes the reader wonder if he/she missed something.

The Long Dream is one of those forgotten novels by a great writer. But it shouldn't be. It's a mature novel and deals with the reality and futility of being a black man in the Jim Crow south. I think the other reviewer describes the story well, but I just want to add some weight to the reviews for a VERY hidden classic!

What a great read. I was completely drawn into the story; the characters came alive on the pages. It was a beautifully painted picture of a very ugly time in our history. This book will stay with me long after the last page is turned.