The Chronicle of Higher Education: From the issue dated January 16, 1991
PORTRAIT
Winner of National Book Award Won't Be a 'Voice of Black America'
By Peter Monaghan
Seattle, Washington -- Charles Johnson is finding that winning the National Book Award for fiction -- one of the publishing world's most prestigious prizes -- can make for much exhilaration, and some trepidation.
Since his novel of seafaring and slave running, Middle Passage, was honored in November, Mr. Johnson, a professor of English at the University of Washington, has been juggling a hectic schedule of interviews, readings, book-signing parties, and other public appearances. Patiently -- and happily, he points out -- he has been answering all of the reporters' questions.
While his reputation among readers of contemporary American fiction has been steadily building since the 1970's, the award has attracted scrutiny of a kind new to him. "I don't know what to think about it," he says.
One aspect of his sudden renown, however, he certainly dislikes: the danger that he will be cast as a "voice of black America," as other successful black writers often have been.
To that, he objects: "The whole notion of being a spokesman -- being the black writer -- is ludicrous. We have many writers, in the same way that there's no one `Great American Novel.' No. There's a family of great novels by American writers."
Some fault lies with publishers, Mr. Johnson argues. "If you promote a book as being representative of young black males today, or of the black situation," he says, "you've already packaged it in such a way as to say, `This is capturing the experience of millions of people.' I think that's an insult, really, to black people -- to assume that our experience is so simple that one book can do that."
Mr. Johnson's book does not attempt that. But Middle Passage -- an allegory-laden work -- does address many aspects of the life and history of black America.
The book, which was published by Atheneum, is set in the 1830's. It is the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a recently freed slave who flees responsibility by stowing away on a clipper. What he discovers too late is that the ship is bound for Africa, where it collects slaves. The captives, members of a mystical tribe, eventually mutiny and slaughter most of the crew.
One irony of Mr. Johnson's attempts to avoid being cast as a spokesman for black America is that in saying why he is not a spokesman, he has in a way become one. Sensing he is in a spotlight, he has tried to use the opportunity to call attention to the work of other black writers. "So few black writers are known to the American public," he says. "At any given time it might be only three or four."
Mr. Johnson has been working to spread the word about black writers for some time. He wrote his 1988 book, Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (Indiana University Press), he says, "because I believe in the promotion of African-American writing, and minority writing, and simply great writing -- I don't care where it comes from."
In Being and Race Mr. Johnson set out to dispel the impression that most recent works by black writers have been novels of protest and to show readers "that black writers, each and every one, have a different aesthetic position."
His own fiction has been as idiosyncratic as any of the works he has championed. In addition to Middle Passage, he has written two other novels -- Faith and the Good Thing (1974) and Oxherding Tale (1982) -- and a collection of short stories, The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986). The publication of those books followed six "apprentice novels" that Mr. Johnson wrote before becoming a published author.
His works are philosophical, reflecting Mr. Johnson's academic training. He has a master's degree in philosophy from Southern Illinois University and was close to his doctorate and a career in philosophy when in 1976 the University of Washington offered him a position in its creative-writing program. He directed the program from 1987 until last year.
The hero of Middle Passage, well educated by the clergyman who inherited him as a slave, speaks like the star of a philosophy graduate program, but the novel is also a rousing seafaring yarn. What he wanted to write, Mr. Johnson says, was a book that was "an entertainment and an adventure story," but one that also worked as "a novel that was philosophical."
His books all revolve around such issues as race and freedom, but as much as any of the writers he discusses in Being and Race, he demonstrates a lack of bitterness about the legacy of racism. It is not, he says, that racism does not gall him. Rather, his response is to celebrate black American life and achievement and to ask, in a philosophical mode, what gives rise to prejudice and what response is most worthy.
"I like to be sensitive to political issues when I write," he says. "But I think -- this is going to be a radical statement, maybe -- I think moral questions precede political questions. They logically precede them."
Middle Passage's political element can hardly be overlooked -- a mad, imperialist captain enslaves an ancient, deeply spiritual people and then sails a ship named The Republic to its ruin. "But," says Mr. Johnson, "what is most important, I think, are the more fundamental questions that give rise in the novel to political issues" -- questions concerning slavery, personal responsibility, and society.
Mr. Johnson says the reason he chooses to depict characters who are heroic, rather than smothered by oppression, is simple. In reviewing the place of African Americans in U.S. history, he says: "The negative is obvious. We have spoken a lot about it. But I think we have in some cases forgotten the remarkable triumphs of black people."
He mentions a few -- Mary McLeod Bethune, the educator; Gordon Parks, the photographer; and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. "These," he says "were remarkable human beings who understood racism but stepped over it the way they would a puddle."
Mr. Johnson says he plans to treat aspects of King's life in a fictional way in his next novel.
In an emotional acceptance speech at the National Book Award ceremony, Mr. Johnson predicted that African-American writing in the coming decade would broaden beyond political statement to address more fully "what it means to be a human being who is black." That would entail, he said, "a fiction of increasing intellectual and artistic generosity, one that enables us as a people, as a culture, to move from narrow complaint to broad celebration."
Mr. Johnson's growing literary stature suggests that he will be prominent in such a movement. And he appears to have the energy for the task. In addition to his fiction writing and teaching, he remains a frequent contributor of reviews and essays to national publications.
Next fall he will return from a leave to assume the University of Washington's first endowed professorship in creative writing. Between now and then, he will be busy writing -- both fiction and his autograph.
The opportunity to meet some of his readers face to face while on the book-signing circuit is an aspect of his celebrity that Mr. Johnson says he enjoys and finds useful. In part, he says, it is because he always has considered the idea of the "audience" for his writing to be too abstract a concept.
"The more immediate faces I can write for," he says. "I still write for my friends."
Copyright © 1991 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
