The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
A few years ago, after I finished reading John Brown by WEB Dubois, my interest was peaked about insurrections where the slaves themselves took up arms, and not where they were provoked by white men to do so. I wanted to find out more. I came across The Confessions of Nat Turner a little while later thinking it was an actual historic account of the Nat Turner Rebellion. OK, so I was wrong.
William Styron, as it turns out, won the Pulitzer for this book back in 1968. Styron is a white man writing as Nat Turner, a Virginia slave, who lead a bloody insurrection back in 1831. What brought me around to reading this now was an interview with James Baldwin. In the interview, Baldwin was evasive and careful when asked what he thought of Styron’s novel. Baldwin says he has a lot of respect for Styron and his talent, and sincerely likes him as a man, but he cannot understand why, or how, he could write this book from the viewpoint of the slave when the obvious perspective is from that of the slaveholder. This opinion got me excited enough to read the thing myself.
Well, the prize speaks for itself. Baldwin is right, Styron is a wonderful writer. I really enjoyed the book and managed to get a feel for slavery that I had never felt before. Styron doesn’t paint with a single color here, he shows the depths of hell for the individuals destroyed by slavery. He describes the physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological deconstruction of men, women, and children. The one thing I didn’t like was the whole creative non-fiction genre attached to this. I guess when I read non-fiction, I want to know the facts are what they are, and here I didn’t know fact from fiction. I knew going in what the book was, but now I’ll be reading 2-3 more to find out what was real (not such a bad thing I know).
I know this is a bit long. In the end, I liked the story, but I must say that I felt like I had James Baldwin over my shoulder telling me to take it all with a grain of salt - and when I was through reading, he would tell me the real story. We’ll see.
