The Confessions Of Nat Turner (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
This book was published in 1967. It was at the time of black power and the civil rights movement. The book was a big hit and won the Pulitzer Prize and then ran into the headwinds of controversy. I had forgotten that in the many years that passed. How could this rich, white, southern man write about the experience of a black slave? Soon, though, a group of African American writers attacked the book, accusing Styron of distorting history, of co-opting their hero, and of demeaning Turner by endowing him with love for one of his victims, a young white woman. These critics saw Styron as usurping their history, much as white people had usurped the labor and the very lives of their ancestors. They rejected the notion that a white southerner—or any white person, for that matter—could fathom the mind of a slave.Source: http://www.enotes.com/topics/confessi... What did the white populous say of the Turner rebellion?Yet, your Honors, I will endeavor to make it plain that all such rebellions are not only likely to be exceedingly rare in occurrence but are ultimately doomed to failure, and this as a result of the basic weakness and inferiority, the moral deficiency of the Negro character. As with any worthwhile book, there are useful bits of knowledge scattered throughout. You may know that it was illegal for slaves to read but there were ways this was ignored, such as the labeling of spices and ingredients in the pantry. Thus the world is filled with uncut diamonds. Although I have come late to the joys of reading and still cannot properly “read,” I have known the crude shapes of simple words ever since I was six, when Samuel Turner, a methodical, tidy, and organized master, and long impatient with baking alum turning into white flour and cinnamon being confused with nutmeg, and vice versa, set about labeling every chest and jar and canister and keg and bag in the huge cellar beneath the kitchen where my mother dispatched me hourly every day. It seemed not to matter to him that upon the Negroes— none of whom could read— these hieroglyphs in red paintwould have no effect at all: still Little Morning would be forced to dip a probing brown finger in the keg plainly marked MOLASSES, and even so there would be lapses, with salt served to sweeten the breakfast tea. Nonetheless, the system satisfied Samuel Turner’s sense of order, and although at that time he was unaware of my existence, the neat plain letters outlined by the glow of an oil lamp in the chill vault served as my first and only primer. It was a great leap from MINT and CITRON and SALTPETRE and BACON to The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, but there exists both a frustration and a surfeit when one’s entire literature is the hundred labels in a dim cellar, and my desire to possess the book overwhelmed my fear. Setting aside the controversy that the book created in the days following its publication is not easy for me. I want to hold it accountable for the troubles it deserves and earned. But there is a section midway in the book that sticks with me regardless of the politics of the story, then or now. Let me share that section in my own words:The plantation where Nat has lived for many years has failed. Nat is a teenager and holds a promise from the master of being freed by the age of 25. The plantation has been dismantled and sold off, including all the slaves. There is much emotion and tension about the changes. The past life is viewed with some sentiment and the promises of the future are nervously considered. Nat ponders his existence in a way that is hard to imagine. He is a black slave who has been promised a future that strains his imagination and his trust. The writing is powerful but is overpowered by consideration of what the situation must have been like when it was a reality and the book characters were flesh and blood. Styron gets some credit for a stunning portrayal but it is the reader who has the power of recreating the scene mentally from the mere words. The power of the controversy magnifies the reality into an Imax-like scene and it explodes from the pages.Another aspect of the book is Nat’s description of how he consciously assumes the attitude and demeanor of a slave even though it is not his true being. The effectiveness of this is nearly impossible for me, a white male, to evaluate. Similarly, it is impossible for me to know how well author Styron has accomplished that task. It is on the basis of alleging the impossibility of a white male succeeding in that task that Styron was taken to the woodshed by his critics in the 1960s. The validity of that criticism resonates with me. As for myself, I was a very special case and I decided upon humility, a soft voice, and houndlike obedience. Without these qualities, the fact that I could read and that I was also a student of the Bible might have become for Moore (he being both illiterate and a primitive atheist) an insufferable burden to his peace of mind. But since I was neither sullen nor impudent but comported myself with studied meekness, even a man so shaken with nigger-hatred as Moore could only treat me with passable decency and at the very worst advertise me to his neighbors as a kind of ludicrous freak.…At such moments, though Moore’s hatred for me glittered like a cold bead amid the drowned blue center of his better eye, I knew that somehow this patience would get me through. Indeed, after a while it tended to neutralize his hatred, so that he was eventually forced to treat me with a sort of grudging, grim, resigned good will.So all through the long years of my twenties I was, in my outward aspects at least, the most pliant, unremarkable young slave anyone could ever imagine. My chores were toilsome and obnoxious and boring. But with forbearance on my part and through daily prayer they never became really intolerable, and I resolved to follow Moore’s commands with all the amiability I could muster. I am sometimes motivated by political correctness. Reviewing this book may be one of those occasions. For the furor this book created in 1968 when it both won the Pulitzer Prize and the castigation of a number of Black writers, does have an impact on me. I am a white male, always have been, always will be. As such, I have benefited from many unearned privileges. I am embarrassed by that. I remember 1968 and my privileged position as a college student exempt for a time from the draft when others were going to Vietnam.My white, liberal self wants to be made uncomfortable reliving the experience of a black, nineteenth century slave in Virginia. Virginia has its own ignominious history in the struggle for black racial and civil rights. That ignoble history comes up close to the present time when the town where I currently live filled its public swimming pool with dirt rather than integrate and staunchly defended separate but equal. Nat Turner is a part of that Virginia history as is William Styron. At the end of the Kindle Edition of the book there is an Afterword titled “Nat Turner Revisited” that apparently, based on the copyright date, was written in 1976. Written by Styron, it is probably described as both insightful and inciting.I find the story of the controversy that surrounds the book almost more interesting than the book itself! If you have an interest in the dangers of historical fiction writing or in the Black Power movement of the 1960s, you should look into this controversy. I have several failings. One is that in a debate I often lean toward whatever is the most recent thing I have read or heard. The last word often unfairly carries the heaviest weight for me. In this case, my last word is this Afterword by Styron. He makes a compelling case for several decisions he made in writing the book that tread on issues of accuracy.However, in the Last Word contest I have yet to read the 1968 book “William Styron’s Nat Turner” in which ten black writers severely criticize Styron. I have that book on order and look forward to reading it. There is also an interesting exchange of Letters to the Editor online from the NY Review of Books that is alluded to in Styron’s Afterword. You can find that at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi....I am not certain that it is fair to grade this book based in part on the controversy it created. But it was in my mind as I read the book and as I wondered about the legitimacy of the criticisms. I read this book a long time ago and was mostly unconscious that I was a white male reading a book by a white male putting himself in the mind of a black slave. I liked the experience of reading this book in my younger, less sensitive years. Now I read it with more empathy for the criticisms that were piled on the book and I feel obligated to downgrade the work from four to three stars. Subject to revision based on what I glean about the controversy in the future. But three stars for the moment.
My gut first reaction to The Confessions of Nat Turner was something like wow, holy f---, this is brilliant. Then I started flipping through some of the contemporary reviews, the historians who thought Styron's portrayal of a slave revolt in the 1830s was "psychologically sick" and "morally senile," who said Styron himself possessed a "vile racist imagination."Oh no.So... after thinking about it for a bit, here's what I'd say. One way to look at the long, angry controversy around The Confessions of Nat Turner is to start with a few basic questions: Why do historical novels exist. What are they for. Why read them. etc.One possible answer is that the main value of the historical novel is to conjure up people and moments from history to life. Historical novels fill in the blanks that non-fiction can't, by adding thoughts and texture and moments of humanity to the known facts. If that's what you're after, then it's signally important that the novelist get those facts right—or at least justify any liberties taken.But not everyone agrees with that view of the historical novel. Georg Lukacs, for one, said it didn't matter if historical novels stayed glued to the known facts. "On the contrary," Lukacs wrote, "the novelist must be at liberty to treat these as he likes, if he is to reproduce the much more complex and ramifying totality with historical faithfulness."This is all from Lukacs' book, The Historical Novel. He went on to argue that "the writer's relation to historical reality—be he playwright or novelist—can be no different in principle from his relation to reality as a whole." A historical novel isn’t supposed to be history refashioned with a novelist's tools; it’s a novel written with historical material.I'm only bringing this up because it seems that a lot of critics over the years have accused William Styron of writing bad history with The Confessions of Nat Turner. Whereas Styron thought he was following Lukacs' advice. And that seems like a key distinction here.So here are some known facts. The real Nat Turner was a gifted black man who led a slave revolt in southern Virginia in 1831, killing 55 white people before he was eventually captured, interrogated, and hanged. What evidence we have about his life comes from a brief 21-page "confession" that Turner dictated to a white lawyer in the days before his execution. The lawyer's recollections of Turner may be unreliable.Styron took that scant material and went about re-imagining Turner's life—his upbringing, his life as a slave, and what led him to mass murder. The liberties Styron took with Turner's life infuriated critics. One of the earliest detractors was Lerone Bennett Jr., who catalogued the distortions in an October 1968 issue of Ebony. A sample:--In the novel, Turner has an infatuation with a white teenage girl that only incenses his hatred of whites more generally, even though there's no historical evidence to suggest this affair ever happened. Plenty of critics thought Styron's invention played on long-standing racist stereotypes and fears of black sexuality.--In the novel, Turner's mother is a complacent house slave, whereas there's evidence to suggest that she was, in real life, virulently anti-slavery.--In the novel, Nat Turner's rebellion is eventually halted by other black slaves who fight for their masters. Styron seems to be enthralled by the idea that other black men were the reason Turner failed. But there's no historical support for this.And so on.For Bennett, these distortions were a mortal sin. "Instead of following the traditional technique of the historical novelist, who works within the tension of accepted facts," he wrote, "Styron forces history to move within the groove of his preconceived ideas." You can read similar dissections of the novel in the New York Review of Books here.One thing to note is that these critics are arguing history. Not fiction. Not the aims of novels or the uses of the imagination. They're saying that Styron's novel failed to bring the real Nat Turner to life—or, at least, the proper Nat Turner. Scholars have been trying to claim Nat Turner for various purposes for years. And Styron was setting that process back.The reaction from novelists was different. James Baldwin, for one, famously admired Styron's novel: " The book meant something to me because it was a white Southern writer's attempt to deal with something that was tormenting him and frightening him," Baldwin said. "I respect him very much for that."Baldwin wasn’t even sure the book had been executed flawlessly. He conceded that Styron's attempt to see things through Turner's eyes "may have been a great error." But Baldwin was interested to see how a white man from the South—whose own grandmother had owned two slave girls in the 1850s and lamented bitterly their emancipation by the Union Army—how that white man would confront the "complex and ramifying totality" of slavery.Bennett, for his part, was less sympathetic on this score: "Styron is writing for his very life, throwing up smokescreen after smokescreen to hide himself from the truth of the American experience," he wrote in Ebony.I'm not actually sure who's right, Bennett or Baldwin. Sorry. What I can add, feebly, is that this a beautifully written book. Here are a few small snippets selected at random:able to disgorge without effort peals of jolly, senseless laughter.dreams of giant black angels striding amid a spindrift immensity of stars.deafened as a little boy by a blow on the skull from a drunken overseer, he had since heard only thumps and rustlings.there lurked in his heart a basic albeit leaden decencygrasshoppers stitched and stirred in restless fidget among the grassBeautiful writing isn't always enough. But it'd be a shame to let it go unnoticed.
What do You think about The Confessions Of Nat Turner (1992)?
The Confessions of Nat Turner is my first Styron novel, and it proves that Styron is a true writer's writer. It is undeniable that he composes some utterly breathtaking prose. As for the story, which takes the scant historical fact of slave rebellion leader Nat Turner and turns it into a bold feat of writerly imagination, it is disturbing, haunting, and totally engrossing. In a way, Nat Turner is the link connecting two other masterworks of Southern Literature (a genre fast becoming my favorite): Faulkner's The Light in August and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.Like Styron himself, who admits as much in his essential essay "Nat Turner Revisited" in the back of the 25th Anniversary Edition, I have been fascinated by the Nat Turner myth for a long time. Although Styron's telling was (and may still be) highly controversial [possibly a understatement, considering what I've read so far], it brings a tangible humanity to a being who was always more symbol than actual historical figure. What he produced was an epic and I believe dignified first-person narrative that illuminates the past and leaves us questioning our present--big moral questions that make us uneasy and cut to the bone.I'm sure many readers will take issue with the ethical questions about race and storytelling here. For example, should a white writer (or can he) capture the voice or experience of a black man or woman? Should a reader value such a rendering? But for this reader at least, I'm awed by Styron's scope and his brave attempt to say something about the impact of slavery on a South he grew up in and could never quite make peace with. Nat Turner, thus, says something about all Americans worth wrestling with. And for this reason, this book deserves to be read.
—Dominic
With few exceptions (OK one really) I am always disappointed and let down by historical fiction. The lone exception was "Burr" by Gore Vidal which was great because so little is actually known and documented about Aaron Burr. "The Confessions of Nat Turner" started out promising for the same reason. Nat Turner led the only large scale slave rebellion in the US during in 1830's in Virginia. The only historical account is a 7000 word confession transcribed by a court appointed attorney (who was himself a slave owner). You figure this to be the type of story historical fiction is meant for, flushing out the gaps of the historical narrative with some well thought out and well researched filler that can give the reader an idea of what probably happened. Mostly this work succeeds in doing just that but there are two plot-lines that I just can't stand that also happen to be the most fictional and least based on fact. The first is the enlightened plantation owner that educates Nat as a child. I can't stomach the stereotype and it turns out to be completely fictional. The tidewater area in Virginia did not have plantations so Nat more than likely spent his whole life on a farm with one or two other slaves. He probably learned to read and write much differently than described. The second plot-line concerns Margaret Whitehead who Nat Turner actually confessed to killing (the only one he confessed to killing in fact). Margaret was a young seminary student who was the daughter of a preacher and land owner. Styron goes the route of assigning a motive of sexual frustration and lust for Nat's murder. I just think that was way too stereotypical and easy. I would have preferred something a little more creative there. In the end, a good read but disappointing.
—Stephen
William Styron's The Confessions of Nat TurnerTHE GATHERINGWhereupon all members of the congregation are seated.THE LECTIONARYFirst ReadingOn Being Brought from Africa to America'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.Some view our sable race with scornful eye,"Their colour is a diabolic die."Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.Phyllis Wheatley, a slave poet, 1753–1784To be continued...
—Mike
