The men looked round the basement with flashlights.

 

1930s pressmen

[Image source: https://dk.pinterest.com/pin/88805423879125677/ .]

  "But Britten," asked one of the men, "why did the old man want this Erlone released?"

  "Figure it out for yourself," Britten said.

  "Then he thinks Erlone had something to do with the snatching of his daughter and wanted him out so he could give her back?"

   "I don't know," Britten said.

   "Aw, come on, Britten."

   "Use your imagination."

   Two more of the men buttoned their coats, pulled their hats low over their eyes and left. Bigger knew that they were going to phone in more information to their papers; they were going to tell about Jan's trying to convert him to communism, the Communist literature Jan had given him, the rum, the half-packed trunk being taken down to the station, and lastly, about the kidnap note and the demand for ten thousand dollars. The men looked round the basement with flashlights. Bigger still leaned against the wall. Britten sat on the steps. The fire whispered in the furnace. Bigger knew that soon he would have to clean the ashes out, for the fire was not burning as hotly as it should. He would do that as soon as some of the excitement died down and all of the men left.

   "It's pretty bad, hunh, Bigger?" Britten asked.

   "Yessuh."

   "I'd bet a million dollars that this is Jan's smart idea."

   Bigger said nothing. He was limp all over; he was standing up here against this wall by some strength not his own. Hours past he had given up trying to exert himself any more; he could no longer call up any energy  So he just forgot it and found himself coasting along.

   It was getting a little chilly; the fire was dying. The draft could scarcely be heard. Then the basement door burst open suddenly and one of the men who had gone to telephone came in, his mouth open, his face wet and red from the snow.

   "Say!" he called. 

   "Yeah?"

   "What is it?"

   "My city editor just told me that that Erlone fellow won't leave jail."

   For a moment the strangeness of the news made them all stare silently. Bigger roused himself and tried to make out just what it meant. Then someone asked the question he longed to ask.

   "Won't leave? What you mean?"

   "Well, this Erlone refused to go when they told him that Mr Dalton had requested his release. It seems he had got wind of the kidnapping and said that he didn't want to go out."

   "That means he's guilty!" said Britten. "He doesn't want to leave jail because he knows they'll shadow him and find out where the girl is, see? He's scared."

   "What else?"

   "Well, this Erlone says he's got a dozen people to swear that he did not come here last night."

   Bigger's body stiffened and he leaned forward slightly. 

   "That's a lie!" Britten said."This boy here saw him."

   "Is that right, boy?"

   Bigger hesitated. He suspected a trap. But if Jan really had an alibi, then he had to talk; he had to steer them away from himself.

(From Richard Wright's Native Son (1940).)

This is a relative lull in one of the elongated, crowded scenes for which Native Son is famous. The Daltons have made their appeals, the flashbulbs have stopped popping, surely the reporters will go away now. The reader's on edge, even if maybe Bigger isn't. We feel his exhaustion, but he's also excited, here at close quarters with white pressmen and with the white world of Chicago at a critical juncture, having this story unfold around him, a story that no-one yet suspects has Bigger at its centre. 

The natural thing might have been to run, but Bigger is back at the scene, he wants to steer and also to watch. Later on, the sole interest he'll retain is reading about himself in the papers. It isn't about fame but about power; the power to sway events, to write on the sky; a power that has always been denied to him until this day.  

The press pack is a brilliant example of the just-go-with-it way that Wright composed Native Son. Bigger registers their horrible eagerness when they know they're going to be fed some dope, their callousness in the midst of tragedy. At the same time there's a freshness in their outlook, the hungry professional alertness reflected in how they continue to throw their flashlights around the basement, as if a story lurks in its corners. The press are too self-interested to be inflexible, they are the controllers of prejudice not controlled by it.  They aren't worried about maintaining status over a black man. (Unlike Britten, who has all the predictable racist and anti-Red attitudes of his time, and who Bigger easily fools.) If everyone, black or white, is seen as just story material, what difference does it make?

The reporters even try to make clumsy overtures to Bigger (though no more clumsy than Jan's and Mary's were). The guy who addresses Bigger as "Mike" (America's commonest name) is evidently being friendly, saying "you're one of us" -- maybe he's genuine, but that's what you can never know with a pressman.

Bigger almost snaps at him. He's numbed to the institutional racism of being addressed as "boy" (he's 20) and answering "Yessuh". It's only when white people change the tune that he's shocked into feeling, and sees anew all his accumulated despair and hate and fury. 

It was a dangerous moment. Bigger recovers himself, and by the time of this extract he's coasting. 

But now the endgame approaches, with Jan's impressive roster of witnesses, and with, above all, the fateful cooling of the furnace. The strangely egalitarian temper of the press pack,  willing to muck in with the black boy's work, gifts them the story they've been looking for. From now on Bigger's hopeless power will be meted out only on his girl Bessie.

Men in Southside Chicago, 1940

[Image source: https://mymodernmet.com/southside-chicago-great-migration/ . One of Edwin Rosskam's photographs from Chicago's Black Belt, taken in July 1940. Richard Wright acted as the Rosskams' guide to the area. In 1941 they collaborated on the book 12 Million Black Voices.]

One of the billboard posters in the background advertises the touring production of The Man Who Came to Dinner, with Alexander Woollcott finally getting to play the lead role, originally written with him in mind. Another poster advertises Life With Father; both these hit plays were gently subversive and utterly inoffensive comedies.

In Native Son Bigger is keenly aware of billboards like these. They are a glimpse of -- indeed a hammered-home message about -- the world he's excluded from. 

Chicago skyline with snowstorm, 1930

[Image source: https://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/photo-chicago-skyline-panorama-aerial-sunset-with-snow-storm-note-building-under-construction-in-center-distance-1930/photo-chicago-skyline-panorama-aerial-sunset-with-snow-storm-note-building-under-construction-in-center-distance-1930/ . From Chuckman's collection of vintage photos of Chicago.]

Native Son is one of the most demonstrably significant novels. It changed the discourse about race forever; effectively, it was the first book to bring what we now call "institutional racism" into sharp relief, to show how it played out. The ground had been importantly prepared by Wright's first book Uncle Tom's Children (1938); an influential audience were already listening for what he did next. When Native Son was published on 1st March 1940 it was already a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, the Club News comparing it to The Grapes of Wrath (1939). On 12th March Wright gave his brilliant lecture "How Bigger Was Born" at Columbia; it was published as a pamphlet soon afterwards, and is included in modern editions of Native Son.

Books as significant as this always have their detractors and in a way it's right they should, because they have already made the world a different place from how it was when they were written. There's a fine risky freedom about the writing both in the novel and the essay, a boldness of trusting to inspiration without worrying how it's going to be received.