Stranger still, Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," published just
5 years before "Benito Cereno," which, like "Moby Dick," begins by
pretending to be a sailor's yarn, but becomes racist paranoia elevated to
cosmic levels. I'd hate to say more and ruin the shock. Bear with the first
20 or so pages, which get a bit tedious. If Baudelaire had been from the
American south he might have written this book.
Mark
At 09:11 AM 8/11/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>> That's "Benito Cereno."
>
>OK, I admit my spelling is shot to whatsit.
>
>But one odd thing about BC is that it's (as far as I know -- Twain's Huck,
>Harris's Uncle Remus, Uncle [natch] Tom) -- the +only+ 19thC American tale
>that presents blacks in terms of who they really were, in terms of
>background, rather than via the white (octaroon, etc.) eye. And [excuse the
>non-pc phrase] non-submissive niggers.
>
>The untold story -- what about all those 19thC slave revolts? John Brown's
>body is still mouldering, Nat Turner got written up in his death-cell by a
>white middle-class New York reporter. +Then+ gets novelitised by Styron.
>
>One of the things that grabbed me about Berry's "Morant Bay" -- Berry's
>blacks were non-submissive.
>
>Robin Hamilton.
>
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