![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Whether they were wholly uninterested in politics of any sort, or whether they were politically inclined, aware, or aggressive, the fact of their race or the race of their characters doomed them to a “political-only” analysis of their worth. That wisdom, which seems to have been unavailable to Chaucer, or Dante, or Catullus, or Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or Dickens, is still with us, and, in 1969 it placed an inordinate burden on African American writers. What could be so bad about being socially astute, politically aware in literature? Conventional wisdom agrees that political fiction is not art that such work is less likely to have aesthetic value because politics-all politics-is agenda and therefore its presence taints aesthetic production. In the fifties, when I was a student, the embarrassment of being called a politically minded writer was so acute, the fear of critical derision for channeling one’s creativity toward the state of social affairs so profound, it made me wonder: Why the panic? The flight from any accusation of revealing an awareness of the political world in one’s fiction turned my attention to the source of the panic and the means by which writers sought to ease it. They don’t want glory like that in nobody’s heart.” ![]() “Nobody knew my rose of the world but me…. This book is for Ford and Slade, whom I miss although they have not left me. COPYRIGHT It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you. ![]()
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