- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Non-Fiction; Reprint edition (Sep 1 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 156743004X
- ISBN-13: 978-1567430042
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 748 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
An angry and deeply ambivalent man emerges from this passionately committed profile of novelist-essayist Richard Wright (1908-1960). In Walker's estimation, the author of Native Son and Black Boy hated black women and treated the two white women he married sadistically. Self-hatred pushed Wright to conceive of himself as "a white American with a black skin," even as he plunged into Pan-Africanism, Marxism and Freud for an anchor to his fractured self. Walker ( Jubilee ) and Wright were friends in the 1930s when they both worked on the WPA Writers' Project in Chicago. Combining biography, criticism and memoir, this excellent, flesh-and-blood portrait gets closer to the inner man than any previous volume. The author's claim for Wright as a Southern Gothic writer as well as an Afro-American one is buttressed by her intense account of his formative years in rural Mississippi. She also limns his bohemian life in New York and Paris, where he wrote eight books, unjustly neglected today. Photos.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
The hardcover publication of this work resulted in a landmark case, Ellen Wright v. Warner Books Inc. and Margaret Walker.The court ruled in favor of Walker and Warner Books Inc. in a precedent setting opinion.The court's decision, as well as the opinion of the presiding judges is included in this volume.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Real Thoughts,
By A Customer
This review is from: Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (Paperback)
This book was hard to keep up with at first I thought it was a biography on Richard Wright.After reading and really getting into the book I then realized that she had a right to speak and write of their relationship. I felt that the book was informative and helpful in understanding a different side of Richard Wright. Everybody has more than one side to them.
2.0 out of 5 stars
With Friends Like These....,
By A Customer
This review is from: Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (Paperback)
Richard Wright, author of NATIVE SON, BLACK BOY, and THE OUTSIDER, is a major American writer. He desrves a major biography.RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS by Margaret Walker is more like a major hatchet-job. Dr. Walker is a noted author in her own right, with the bestseller JUBILEE to her credit. She was also friendly with Langston Hughes, Frank Yerby, and James Baldwin. And she had a three-and-a-half year friendship with Wright himself, beginning in 1936. Much of DAEMONIC GENIUS is based upon Walker's memories of that relationship. That the friendship ended badly (according to Walker, due to Wright) seems to be the central theme of the book. It's also its central fault. Walker spends pages and pages describing her feelings over the break up. She then analyzes every relationship Wright ever had in the light of those feelings. Along the way, she sprinkles in biographical passages almost as an afterthought. If your interest is in Walker's perspective on Wright's psyche and how it affected his work, this might be fine. If you're interested in an objective presentation of Wright's life and work, you will find Walker's pontifications downright annoying. It might even occur to you that Walker is getting even with the man for some perceived wrong 30 years after his death. Such are Walker's feelings about Wright that she seems inconsistent in her conclusions. The first few chapters of her book gloss over Wright's upbringing by referring to BLACK BOY, implying that the 1945 work covers those years authoritatively. Yet when she comes to discuss the book itself, she describes it as, "not a book of purely factual and verifiable incidents." There are many such paradoxes in the narrative. Too, Walker details many unkind psycholgical insights about Wright's widow, Ellen. Much has been made of the fact that Ellen tried to put a stop to Walker's book through court action, claiming violation of copyright. I personally think she could have made a better case for character assassination. In short, then, the definitive biography of Richard Wright has yet to be written. And students of Wright would probably be better off giving RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS a pass.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
2.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
With Friends Like These....,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (Paperback)
Richard Wright, author of NATIVE SON, BLACK BOY, and THE OUTSIDER, is a major American writer. He desrves a major biography.RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS by Margaret Walker is more like a major hatchet-job. Dr. Walker is a noted author in her own right, with the bestseller JUBILEE to her credit. She was also friendly with Langston Hughes, Frank Yerby, and James Baldwin. And she had a three-and-a-half year friendship with Wright himself, beginning in 1936. Much of DAEMONIC GENIUS is based upon Walker's memories of that relationship. That the friendship ended badly (according to Walker, due to Wright) seems to be the central theme of the book. It's also its central fault. Walker spends pages and pages describing her feelings over the break up. She then analyzes every relationship Wright ever had in the light of those feelings. Along the way, she sprinkles in biographical passages almost as an afterthought. If your interest is in Walker's perspective on Wright's psyche and how it affected his work, this might be fine. If you're interested in an objective presentation of Wright's life and work, you will find Walker's pontifications downright annoying. It might even occur to you that Walker is getting even with the man for some perceived wrong 30 years after his death. Such are Walker's feelings about Wright that she seems inconsistent in her conclusions. The first few chapters of her book gloss over Wright's upbringing by referring to BLACK BOY, implying that the 1945 work covers those years authoritatively. Yet when she comes to discuss the book itself, she describes it as, "not a book of purely factual and verifiable incidents." There are many such paradoxes in the narrative. Too, Walker details many unkind psycholgical insights about Wright's widow, Ellen. Much has been made of the fact that Ellen tried to put a stop to Walker's book through court action, claiming violation of copyright. I personally think she could have made a better case for character assassination. In short, then, the definitive biography of Richard Wright has yet to be written. And students of Wright would probably be better off giving RICHARD WRIGHT: DAEMONIC GENIUS a pass. 3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Real Thoughts,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (Paperback)
This book was hard to keep up with at first I thought it was a biography on Richard Wright.After reading and really getting into the book I then realized that she had a right to speak and write of their relationship. I felt that the book was informative and helpful in understanding a different side of Richard Wright. Everybody has more than one side to them.
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