The Confessions of Nat Turner in Reading with Style

Sep 24, 2014 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: awards-pulitzer, 5-star-reads, kindle, awards-nba, mid-20th-century

I have so many thoughts on this. It is a powerful novel. Early on, I thought if they had awarded two Pulitzers in 1968, this could have won it twice. Reading it now close to 50 years after publication, and with 21st Century eyes, I don't understand the controversy.

The edition I read opens with an author's note. The first sentence tells the basis for the novel. In August, 1831, in a remote region of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of Ame I have so many thoughts on this. It is a powerful novel. Early on, I thought if they had awarded two Pulitzers in 1968, this could have won it twice. Reading it now close to 50 years after publication, and with 21st Century eyes, I don't understand the controversy.

The edition I read opens with an author's note. The first sentence tells the basis for the novel. In August, 1831, in a remote region of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery. This introductory material is brief, and ends with his statement it has been my own intention to try to re-create a man and his era, and to produce a work that is less an "historical novel" in conventional terms than a meditation on history. There is also a lengthier afterward in which he discusses how he came to write the novel, some of the controversy, and his reasoning for some of the positions he took regarding Nat Turner.

Turner was defininitely a religious fanatic, and, while Christian, is not that different than the religious fanatics operating elsewhere in the world today. If the controversy had centered on this fanaticism rather than accusing Styron of racism, it might have been fair. But Turner wasn't killing people because their religion didn't conform to his religious views, he was killing them because whites treated blacks like animals. (The truth is that Turner's reason for his actions is unknown, so my interpretation of this reason comes from reading the novel. This might not be correct, but I believe a quite reasonable interpretation.)

Apparently there was dissent that a white man could write in the first person of a black man. To me, that is about as narrow-minded as saying that a woman can't write as a man. And then there was the controversy of a black man lusting after a white woman. I didn't read this that way. Turner was celibate. Part of his response to Margaret Whitehead was hatred of being thought to be an animal, not a man. The following perhaps describes both what I found to be superior prose and how Turner's rage could easily bubble to the surface. He is describing a man with whom he became very close, and who exemplifies how the slaves were reduced to something sub-human by white slave owners.

He had the face one might imagine to be the face of an African chieftain -- soldierly, fearless, scary, and resplendent in its bold symmetry -- yet there was something wrong with the eyes, and the eyes, or at least the expression they often took on, as now, reduced the face to a kind of harmless, dull, malleable docility. They were the eyes of a child, trustful and dependent, soft doe's eyes mossed over with a kind of furtive, fearful glaze, and as I looked at them now -- the womanish eyes in the massive, sovereign face mooning dumbly at the rabbit's blood -- I was seized by rage. I heard Cobb fumbling around in the cider press, clinking and clattering. We were out of earshot. "Black toadeater," I said. "snivelin' black toadeatin' white man's bootlickin' scum! You, Hark! Black scum!"

Turner's "Confession" exists. Though Turner could both read and write, this confession was taken down and written by his defense attorney, Thomas R. Gray . Although Styron questions whether this "confession" might be Gray's interpretation, he concludes that the insurrection happened as presented in this document. But there is nothing else in the official record or document that tells us about Turner's early life, nor anything further about his personality. This is a work of fiction - superb historical fiction to my thinking.

It is not for everyone. I will not quote the many parts that readers today might find offensive in referring to blacks - and those potentially offensive words are not just sprinkled occasionally on the pages. Some of it is very raw, but, as such, feels very historically accurate. To me, it is unfortunate that Styron left us so few works of novel-length fiction. I hope to read those that exist. ...more

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