Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940
Bigger Thomas shook white liberal America into confronting the rage produced by racism. Wright published it in 1940 and refused to let readers sympathize from a safe distance; the novel is deliberately brutal. Baldwin later criticized it, but that critical conversation is itself part of the canon.
The case against
Book Three parks the story so Max, the Communist lawyer, can deliver a courtroom speech that runs for pages and argues the thesis the novel already dramatized. Bigger is built as a sociological specimen first and a person second, by design; the design has costs. And Bessie, Bigger's girlfriend, gets treated as a plot device rather than a person, by the novel as much as by its hero.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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