A review by korrick
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

4.0

Richard Wright is one of many authors whom I read at the right time somewhat for the wrong, or more accurately very 'good intention'ed', reasons. This means, at some point in my future, it'd be best for me to backtrack and go through those works of said authors that I claimed as favorites/five stars/even four stars back in the day, and make sure it wasn't the high of 'I am morally correct!' blinkering me to my actual opinions. In the case of Wright, I'll still be tackling his [b:Native Son|15622|Native Son|Richard Wright|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1627788308l/15622._SX50_.jpg|3159084] at some point, but when this particular work revealed itself eight years after it was first submitted to the ungrateful publishers, it appeared to be a rather fortuitous opportunity to tackle something technically old, and yet revealingly new. As it stands, this work gets into the marrow of something the entire reading scene could afford to learn from, especially when it concerns those folks that conflate artistic license with artist morals and want to send us all back to the days when women read too many novels and degenerates pained too many pictures. Outside of that, and there is quite a bit to go after, this work tackles in a manner that is all the more effective for its simplicity the state of Blackness in white supremacy: how the violent arbitration is capable of unmooring en masse its singled out victims, leaving an alienation that is simultaneously valuable for its insights (valuable: food, shelter, companionship. not valuable: whiteness, the police, capitalism) and dangerous to the bearer of its paradigm. Wright talks religion, Freud, and sociopathology, while Malcolm Wright, his grandchild, speaks of othering and Plato's cave, which offers such an interesting juxtaposition of authorial interpretation of 1940s US and descendant hypothesizing of 2010s France (or wherever the grandchild these days) that I won't call out the lazy ableism too much. In any case, I'm confident in saying that, if this had been published back in 1942 as was Wright's initial intent, it would have built up the canon. The fact that we're able to have it now is a blessing, and if it leads at least one hyper-contemporary reader back to some of their roots, all the better.