Richard Wright (author) - Paris

Paris

Wright moved to Paris in 1946, and became a permanent American expatriate. In Paris, he became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. His Existentialist phase was depicted in his second novel, The Outsider (1953), which described an African-American character's involvement with the Communist Party in New York. He also was friends with fellow expatriate writers Chester Himes and James Baldwin, although the relationship with the latter ended in acrimony after Baldwin published his essay Everybody's Protest Novel (collected in Notes of a Native Son), in which he criticized Wright's stereotypical portrayal of Bigger Thomas. In 1954 he published a minor novel, Savage Holiday.

After becoming a French citizen in 1947, Wright continued to travel through Europe, Asia, and Africa. These experiences were the basis of numerous nonfiction works. In 1949, Wright contributed to the anti-communist anthology The God That Failed; his essay had been published in the Atlantic Monthly three years earlier and was derived from the unpublished portion of Black Boy. He was invited to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which he rejected, correctly suspecting that it had connections with the CIA. The CIA and FBI had Wright under surveillance starting in 1943. Due to McCarthyism, Wright was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s, but, in 1950, starred as the teenager Bigger Thomas (Wright was 42) in an Argentinian film version of Native Son.

In mid-1953, Wright traveled to the Gold Coast, where Kwame Nkrumah was leading the country to independence from British rule. Before Wright returned to Paris, he gave a confidential report to the United States consulate in Accra on some of the things he had learned about Nkrumah and his political party. After Wright returned to Paris he met twice with an officer from the U.S. Department of State. The officer's report includes what Wright had learned from Nkrumah advisor George Padmore about Nkrumah's plans for the Gold Coast after its independence (as Ghana). Padmore, a Trinidadian living in London, believed Wright to be a good friend, as his many letters in the Wright papers at Yale's Beinecke Library attest, and their correspondence continued. Wright's book on his journey, Black Power, was published in in 1954; its London publisher was Padmore's, Dennis Dobson.

In addition to whatever political motivations Wright had for reporting to American officials, he was in the uncomfortable position of an American who did not want to go back to the United States and needed to have his passport renewed. According to Wright biographer Addison Gayle, just a few months later Wright answered questions at the American embassy in Paris about people he had met in the Communist Party who were at this point being prosecuted under the Smith Act.

Exploring the reasons Wright appeared to have little to say about the civil rights movement unfolding in the United States in the 1950s, historian Carol Polsgrove has gathered evidence of what his fellow writer Chester Himes called the "extraordinary pressure" Wright was under not to write about the American scene. Even Ebony magazine delayed publishing his essay, "I Choose Exile" until he suggested it would be better to publish it in a white periodical, "since a white periodical would be less vulnerable to accusations of disloyalty." He thought the Atlantic Monthly was interested, but in the end, the piece went unpublished.

In 1955, Wright visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference and recorded his observations in The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Wright was upbeat about the possibilities posed by this meeting between recently oppressed nations.

Other works by Richard Wright included White Man, Listen! (1957); a novel The Long Dream in 1958; as well as a collection of short stories, Eight Men, published in 1961, shortly after his death. His works primarily dealt with the poverty, anger, and protests of northern and southern urban black Americans.

His agent, Paul Reynolds, sent overwhelmingly negative criticism of Wright's four-hundred page "Island of Hallucinations" manuscript in February 1959. Despite that, in March Wright outlined a novel in which Fish was to be liberated from his racial conditioning and become a dominating character. By May 1959, Wright wanted to leave Paris and live in London. He felt French politics had become increasingly submissive to American pressure. The peaceful Parisian atmosphere he had enjoyed had been shattered by quarrels and attacks instigated by enemies of the expatriate black writers.

On June 26, 1959, after a party marking the French publication of White Man, Listen! Wright became ill, victim of a virulent attack of amoebic dysentery probably contracted during his stay on the Gold Coast. By November 1959 his wife had found a London apartment, but Wright's illness and "four hassles in twelve days" with British immigration officials ended his desire to live in England.

On February 19, 1960 Wright learned from Reynolds that the New York premiere of the stage adaptation of The Long Dream received such bad reviews that the adapter, Ketti Frings, had decided to cancel further performances. Meanwhile, Wright was running into additional problems trying to get The Long Dream published in France. These setbacks prevented his finishing revisions of Island of Hallucinations, which he needed to get a commitment from Doubleday.

In June 1960, Wright recorded a series of discussions for French radio dealing primarily with his books and literary career. He also covered the racial situation in the United States and the world, and specifically denounced American policy in Africa. In late September, to cover extra expenses for his daughter Julia's move from London to Paris to attend the Sorbonne, Wright wrote blurbs for record jackets for Nicole Barclay, director of the largest record company in Paris.

In spite of his financial straits, Wright refused to compromise his principles. He declined to participate in a series of programs for Canadian radio because he suspected American control. For the same reason, Wright rejected an invitation from the Congress for Cultural Freedom to go to India to speak at a conference in memory of Leo Tolstoy. Still interested in literature, Wright helped Kyle Onstott get Mandingo (1957) published in France.

His last display of explosive energy occurred on November 8, 1960, in his polemical lecture, "The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States", delivered to students and members of the American Church in Paris. Wright argued that American society reduced the most militant members of the black community to slaves whenever they wanted to question the racial status quo. He offered as proof the subversive attacks of the Communists against Native Son and the quarrels which James Baldwin and other authors sought with him.

On November 26, 1960, Wright talked enthusiastically about Daddy Goodness with Langston Hughes and gave him the manuscript. Wright contracted Amoebic dysentery on a visit to Africa in 1957, and despite various treatments, his health deteriorated over the next three years. He died in Paris of a heart attack at the age of 52. He was interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery. However, Wright's daughter Julia claimed that her father was murdered.

A number of Wright's works have been published posthumously. Some of Wright's more shocking passages dealing with race, sex, and politics were cut or omitted before original publication. In 1991, unexpurgated versions of Native Son, Black Boy, and his other works were published. In addition, in 1994, his novella Rite of Passage was published for the first time.

In the last years of his life, Wright became enamored with the haiku and wrote over 4,000 such poems. In 1998 a book was published (Haiku: This Other World, ISBN 0-385-72024-6) with 817 of his own favorite haikus. Many of these haikus still maintain an uplifting quality even as they deal with coming to terms with loneliness, death, and the forces of nature.

A collection of Wright's travel writings was published by the Mississippi University Press in 2001. At his death, Wright left an unfinished book, A Father's Law. It deals with a black policeman and the son he suspects of murder. Wright's daughter Julia Wright published A Father's Law in January 2008. An omnibus edition containing Wright's political works was published under the title Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen!