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leslie115's review against another edition
4.0
I can imagine how the first part of this novel prevented it from being published during Wright's lifetime: the torture of Fred Daniels brings to mind the still-current issue of police brutality, but the absurdity of the situation also made me think of Kafka. For better or worse, the rest of the novel did not maintain that level of anxiety as it played upon the theme of guilt; the ending is predictable yet appropriate.
The inclusion of Wright's essay, "Memories of My Grandmother," makes this book a must-read because it describes Wright's influences for the novel: the true crime account of a burglar living in the sewers of Los Angeles; Universal Pictures "Invisible Man" films; and above all, his maternal grandmother's ability to link seemingly random concepts and artifacts into a meaningful whole. I'm not sure whether the essay should be read before the novel, but Wright's description of surrealism ("a way of seeing relations between things"; characterized by "a certain psychological distance—even when it deals with realistic subject matter—from the functional meanings of society") makes it a useful framework for interpreting the novel.
The inclusion of Wright's essay, "Memories of My Grandmother," makes this book a must-read because it describes Wright's influences for the novel: the true crime account of a burglar living in the sewers of Los Angeles; Universal Pictures "Invisible Man" films; and above all, his maternal grandmother's ability to link seemingly random concepts and artifacts into a meaningful whole. I'm not sure whether the essay should be read before the novel, but Wright's description of surrealism ("a way of seeing relations between things"; characterized by "a certain psychological distance—even when it deals with realistic subject matter—from the functional meanings of society") makes it a useful framework for interpreting the novel.
superglue's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
4.0
clairealex's review against another edition
5.0
If you ever thought you would withstand torture, the opening scene vividly presents how difficult that would be. The underground scenes start out seeming to be the mental deterioration that accompanies isolation, but soon shifts to more mystical content. The reflections in Notes About My Grandmother made me want to start from the beginning again.
The ending made me think of the difficulty described by mystics in conveying their visions to people who did not share them. Add to that the difficulty of communicating through racial bias. It is a timely book on the subject of police brutality, among other things.
It is a book worth rereading many times.
The ending made me think of the difficulty described by mystics in conveying their visions to people who did not share them. Add to that the difficulty of communicating through racial bias. It is a timely book on the subject of police brutality, among other things.
It is a book worth rereading many times.
amolotkov's review against another edition
5.0
A phenomenal novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground" is a surrealist investigation of racism and the nature of guilt that operates on several metaphorical levels to engage, delight and horrify. Unforgettable.
saareman's review against another edition
4.0
Underground Son
Review of the Library of America hardcover edition (Unpublished manuscript from 1941/42, first published April, 2021)
I read Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy (1945/2020) in its 75th Anniversary expanded edition only earlier this year, thanks to a subscription to Shakespeare & Co.'s Year of Reading Lost Treasures. It was interesting to read there in the biographical timeline information about the lost, unfinished and/or unpublished early Wright works such as the first published story The Voodoo of Hell's Half Acre (1923) [no copies have been found of the newspaper where it was first printed], the unfinished early novels Little Sister (1939) & Black Hope (1941) and the early rejected novels such as Cesspool (1935) [later published as Lawd Today! (1963)], Tarbaby's Dawn (1937, still unpublished) and The Man Who Lived Underground (1941-42). As fate would have it, the latter has now been published in 2021.
The plot is easily summarized.
This newly published 2021 edition includes the essay Memories of my Grandmother which provides an extremely thorough background to the themes which are either overt or hidden in The Man Who Lived Underground. At first you can't even imagine how Wright's grandmother's religious faith would even relate to the novel, but Wright explains it with a great amount of detail. Even the fantastical story about someone living underground was based on a real-life incident in Hollywood, California that Wright read about in a True Detective magazine. The religious parallel to an innocent man condemned for crimes he didn't commit and who later 'rises' was the main metaphor that I drew from the story, but Wright's essay explains so much more about his grandmother's view of the world which was not 'real' to everyone else.
80 years later, this story still has the power to shock and disturb. The Library of America has filled a significant publishing gap in Wright's works by finally producing this excellent edition which includes Afterwords by Wright's daughter and grandson.
Trivia and Links
‘It couldn’t be more relevant’: the unseen Richard Wright novel finally getting its due by David Smith for The Guardian April 22, 2021.
Kenya Barris adapting The Man Who Lives Underground for Paramount by Lacey Rose for The Hollywood Reporter, June 23, 2021.
Review of the Library of America hardcover edition (Unpublished manuscript from 1941/42, first published April, 2021)
I read Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy (1945/2020) in its 75th Anniversary expanded edition only earlier this year, thanks to a subscription to Shakespeare & Co.'s Year of Reading Lost Treasures. It was interesting to read there in the biographical timeline information about the lost, unfinished and/or unpublished early Wright works such as the first published story The Voodoo of Hell's Half Acre (1923) [no copies have been found of the newspaper where it was first printed], the unfinished early novels Little Sister (1939) & Black Hope (1941) and the early rejected novels such as Cesspool (1935) [later published as Lawd Today! (1963)], Tarbaby's Dawn (1937, still unpublished) and The Man Who Lived Underground (1941-42). As fate would have it, the latter has now been published in 2021.
The plot is easily summarized.
Spoiler
A Black-American handyman, Fred Daniels is arrested on suspicion of committing murders in a house nearby to where he works. He is brought to the police station and brutally beaten and interrogated until he signs a confession. Through a chance trip allowed by the police to visit his wife in the hospital (who is giving birth), Daniels manages to escape and hides down a manhole in the sewers. He lives underground for several days digging passages into basements and secretly observing events in various businesses. Having an eventual revelation he emerges from underground and turns himself back into the police in order to reveal what he knows but it all ends with fatal consequences. Meanwhile, the criminal behind the original murders had been caught and the police know that Daniels was in fact innocent.This newly published 2021 edition includes the essay Memories of my Grandmother which provides an extremely thorough background to the themes which are either overt or hidden in The Man Who Lived Underground. At first you can't even imagine how Wright's grandmother's religious faith would even relate to the novel, but Wright explains it with a great amount of detail. Even the fantastical story about someone living underground was based on a real-life incident in Hollywood, California that Wright read about in a True Detective magazine. The religious parallel to an innocent man condemned for crimes he didn't commit and who later 'rises' was the main metaphor that I drew from the story, but Wright's essay explains so much more about his grandmother's view of the world which was not 'real' to everyone else.
80 years later, this story still has the power to shock and disturb. The Library of America has filled a significant publishing gap in Wright's works by finally producing this excellent edition which includes Afterwords by Wright's daughter and grandson.
Trivia and Links
‘It couldn’t be more relevant’: the unseen Richard Wright novel finally getting its due by David Smith for The Guardian April 22, 2021.
Kenya Barris adapting The Man Who Lives Underground for Paramount by Lacey Rose for The Hollywood Reporter, June 23, 2021.
aurora410's review against another edition
5.0
"And then a strange and new knowledge overwhelmed him: he was all people. In some unutterable fashion he was all people and they were he; by the identity of their emotions they were one, and he was one with them. And this was the oneness that linked man to man, in life or death. Yet even with this knowledge, this identification with others, this obliteration of self, another knowledge swept through him too, banishing all fear and doubt and loss: he now knew too the inexpressible value and importance of himself...He did not think these things; he felt them through images." (106)
"Outside of time and space, he looked down upon the earth and saw that each fleeting day was a day of dying, that men died slowly with each passing moment as much as they did in war, that human grief and sorrow were utterly insufficient to this vast, dreary spectacle." (113)
"This tendency of freely juxtaposing totally unrelated images and symbols and then tying them into some overall concept, mood, feeling is a trait of Black thinking and feeling that has always fascinated me...The ability to tie the many floating items of her environment together into one meaningful whole was the function of her religious attitude." (176)
"events that create fear or enchantment in a young mind are the ones whose impressions last longest; it may be that the neural paths of response made in the young form the streets, tracks, and roadways over which the vehicles of later experiences run.......what is the eaffect of the story of Christ's death and agony upon the cross upon children of 5 or 6 years of age. I've heard parents express horror at their children listening to crime stories on the radio; yet on Sunday mornings they never hesitate to sent them off to Sunday school to hear the most horrific story of all." (180)
"The cardinal joy in such writing stems from the feeling of freedom! That, above all. Here, in The Man Who Lived Underground, for the first time in my writing, I could burrow into places of American life where I'd never gone before, and link that life organically with my basic theme; and not only link it, but link it in a way that carried-to my mind and feelings-an unmistakable relationship." (190)
"breaking represents a point in life where the past falls away and the character must, in order to go on living, fling himself upon the face of the formless night and create a world, a new world, in which to live." (192)
"Tradition is a dream, and he who does not dream cannot feel his own past, and he who does not feel the past cannot feel the need for the future. A dream is tense and tension is the prelude to action." (194)
"Outside of time and space, he looked down upon the earth and saw that each fleeting day was a day of dying, that men died slowly with each passing moment as much as they did in war, that human grief and sorrow were utterly insufficient to this vast, dreary spectacle." (113)
"This tendency of freely juxtaposing totally unrelated images and symbols and then tying them into some overall concept, mood, feeling is a trait of Black thinking and feeling that has always fascinated me...The ability to tie the many floating items of her environment together into one meaningful whole was the function of her religious attitude." (176)
"events that create fear or enchantment in a young mind are the ones whose impressions last longest; it may be that the neural paths of response made in the young form the streets, tracks, and roadways over which the vehicles of later experiences run.......what is the eaffect of the story of Christ's death and agony upon the cross upon children of 5 or 6 years of age. I've heard parents express horror at their children listening to crime stories on the radio; yet on Sunday mornings they never hesitate to sent them off to Sunday school to hear the most horrific story of all." (180)
"The cardinal joy in such writing stems from the feeling of freedom! That, above all. Here, in The Man Who Lived Underground, for the first time in my writing, I could burrow into places of American life where I'd never gone before, and link that life organically with my basic theme; and not only link it, but link it in a way that carried-to my mind and feelings-an unmistakable relationship." (190)
"breaking represents a point in life where the past falls away and the character must, in order to go on living, fling himself upon the face of the formless night and create a world, a new world, in which to live." (192)
"Tradition is a dream, and he who does not dream cannot feel his own past, and he who does not feel the past cannot feel the need for the future. A dream is tense and tension is the prelude to action." (194)
michaelclorah's review against another edition
4.0
THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND is vivid and dark and break-you-down human. For such a short book (just over 150 pages), it had a few passages that bogged down for me (and admittedly, the very real claustrophobia I felt while imagining being in those small, dark tunnels probably didn't help me LOL), but it's a moving portrait of struggling to fit into an unfair society and also failing to exist outside it. The essay about Wright's grandmother adds some interesting illumination to the intent of the novella.
ojadeu's review against another edition
3.0
The scene is set. Fred Daniels, casually returning from a day’s work, is approached by police officers who unjustly and arbitrarily accuse him of a murder. As a Black man, I was triggered from page one, but even in the relatability of the trauma, I kept turning the page to see what would happen next. And—after a number of pages turned— Fred, the protagonist, eventually sacrifices his life aboveground to live a life of darkness underground, ultimately conforming and adjusting to the darkness the sewers bring and the obscurity that colors his new world.
The Man Who Lived Underground was an interesting read. It starts off like a 100m dash, speeding you through an array of pictures and emotions, but once Fred goes underground, it feels like something is lost? Maybe that’s the whole point? Even in what Fred finds, as the reader, I was a bit confused as to how it connected back to the plot. Or was there even a plot anymore? Did Fred forsake his past life for what his present life rendered? What’s going on?
However, upon finishing the book, Wright includes a rather reminiscent, sophisticated, layered, and—dare I say, conflictingly heartfelt— essay called ‘Memories of My Grandmother’ which ties it all together: the surrealism, the allegorical value, the reasoning, and the rhyme (as he uses “jazz” to explain the beat, break, and boom that underscores the overtones of the story). This part of the novel is a MUST read. I don’t think I would’ve been able to fully grasp the depth of the story, and it’s profound significance to Wright, had I not read it. In fact, reading this part made me appreciate not just the story in itself, but it elicited a marvel in the meticulous crafting of how Wright chose to illustrate Fred’s fate (because I was PISSED for a good moment and you’ll see why once you read it).
The Man Who Lived Underground was an interesting read. It starts off like a 100m dash, speeding you through an array of pictures and emotions, but once Fred goes underground, it feels like something is lost? Maybe that’s the whole point? Even in what Fred finds, as the reader, I was a bit confused as to how it connected back to the plot. Or was there even a plot anymore? Did Fred forsake his past life for what his present life rendered? What’s going on?
However, upon finishing the book, Wright includes a rather reminiscent, sophisticated, layered, and—dare I say, conflictingly heartfelt— essay called ‘Memories of My Grandmother’ which ties it all together: the surrealism, the allegorical value, the reasoning, and the rhyme (as he uses “jazz” to explain the beat, break, and boom that underscores the overtones of the story). This part of the novel is a MUST read. I don’t think I would’ve been able to fully grasp the depth of the story, and it’s profound significance to Wright, had I not read it. In fact, reading this part made me appreciate not just the story in itself, but it elicited a marvel in the meticulous crafting of how Wright chose to illustrate Fred’s fate (because I was PISSED for a good moment and you’ll see why once you read it).