from the audience: “How come your muse had an Irish name and not an African?” “Why was your real woman Indian and not Black?” “Who do you write for: black orwhite people?” “I read somewhere that Black critics don't respect your work ’cause it ain't militant enough and white critics don't dare say anything about your books ’cause they might offend the Black critics. How you feel about this?” All Mason's answers were as awkward as the sound of a bugle suddenly blown in a quiet reading library. Answering was like trying to launder dirty money. Eh?
Two days later Mason was back in the city then soon up in Bronxville on the campus of Sarah Lawrence. His audience in the big dining room of an old mansion: three shy boys and fifty brash smart sincere cocky innocent girls, the sons and daughters of New England gentility—the children who'd turned their backs on law, medicine and business. Standing before them Mason felt like da Vinci's Last Supper: peeling, water-stained, “conscious” of his own death, badly faded: like the tunnels in Italy: his last stand. Again: he wanted to talk first, read later. “I want to talk with you about the differences between fiction and reality, real characters and fake people—not because it's cute or literary but because my life depends on it. (For me the most important aspects of a work of fiction are: quality of imagination, uniqueness of the angle of the author's vision, and the degree to which he/she pushes the language for all it's worth.) You see, I'm in the process of inventing myself—in self-defense, of course. Think of me as a character in a book. I have to win my way, prove myself, keep The Narrator on his toes, off my back—treat ’im like a camp dog. No matter how bad , morally, I might be I gotta earn your interest: if not your sympathy and treasured understanding. My quest is not to be Mister Parabola. I needn't tell you I'm not the Invisible Man: yet race—or its absence—remains part of my identity: I am concerned with an encamped deeper sense of who I am, this character that is me. Senghor said: ‘We must movebeyond Negritude without disowning it.’ Soyinka reminded us that ‘a tiger does not shout about its tigertude, he jumps.’ So I will jump like a tiger. I am approaching this in a binocular sense. My two eyes see two different things; levels of different things. Along with giving up my illusions and losses I denounce (and make public) any interest in the Cyclopian view of reality. The primary responsibility of literature involves creating truth. The text is not just a pretext. I stand before you. I am not the object of the text . . . ” Well, he'd lost his audience, but soon moved on to the reading anyway:
“ . . . he was still. Hamburger and flies on the formica counter. Big Trailways mobile-tomb out under tree. Restless folks stretching their cramped limbs. Florence Soukhanov ordered onion rings—only, oh, and a Coke. She was now gazing at the flies. Where were his fries? Oh, never . . . That pile of mashed cars back on the highway: a forced connection there. He picked up the glass salt shaker and sprinkled the white crystals on the grill-fried pattie while holding the top part of the bun—like a coffin-lid—up. Others at the counter focused on their own. Mister Lascar-face with his wife, Mrs. Goby. And two biddies down at the end. And Miss Willow Goose there eating her cottage cheese off the top of her Diet Spree. Vinegar Joe, on the other side of Florence, dumping stale truck-stop mustard on his hot dog. The Oomph Girl; Aze Simmons—with football shoulders; Max Schmeling with the short-order ribs (sucking the bones); Tan Thunderbolt eating a double-burger; Uncle Joe chomping on Heinz Tomato Ketchup-covered fried chops; Dum-Dora and Chollie-my-Boy in a booth facing two bowls of strawberry and chocolate ice cream covered with pecans, walnuts, whipcream and hot fudge. And, pray-tell, who was that old woman back there at the
Two days later Mason was back in the city then soon up in Bronxville on the campus of Sarah Lawrence. His audience in the big dining room of an old mansion: three shy boys and fifty brash smart sincere cocky innocent girls, the sons and daughters of New England gentility—the children who'd turned their backs on law, medicine and business. Standing before them Mason felt like da Vinci's Last Supper: peeling, water-stained, “conscious” of his own death, badly faded: like the tunnels in Italy: his last stand. Again: he wanted to talk first, read later. “I want to talk with you about the differences between fiction and reality, real characters and fake people—not because it's cute or literary but because my life depends on it. (For me the most important aspects of a work of fiction are: quality of imagination, uniqueness of the angle of the author's vision, and the degree to which he/she pushes the language for all it's worth.) You see, I'm in the process of inventing myself—in self-defense, of course. Think of me as a character in a book. I have to win my way, prove myself, keep The Narrator on his toes, off my back—treat ’im like a camp dog. No matter how bad , morally, I might be I gotta earn your interest: if not your sympathy and treasured understanding. My quest is not to be Mister Parabola. I needn't tell you I'm not the Invisible Man: yet race—or its absence—remains part of my identity: I am concerned with an encamped deeper sense of who I am, this character that is me. Senghor said: ‘We must movebeyond Negritude without disowning it.’ Soyinka reminded us that ‘a tiger does not shout about its tigertude, he jumps.’ So I will jump like a tiger. I am approaching this in a binocular sense. My two eyes see two different things; levels of different things. Along with giving up my illusions and losses I denounce (and make public) any interest in the Cyclopian view of reality. The primary responsibility of literature involves creating truth. The text is not just a pretext. I stand before you. I am not the object of the text . . . ” Well, he'd lost his audience, but soon moved on to the reading anyway:
“ . . . he was still. Hamburger and flies on the formica counter. Big Trailways mobile-tomb out under tree. Restless folks stretching their cramped limbs. Florence Soukhanov ordered onion rings—only, oh, and a Coke. She was now gazing at the flies. Where were his fries? Oh, never . . . That pile of mashed cars back on the highway: a forced connection there. He picked up the glass salt shaker and sprinkled the white crystals on the grill-fried pattie while holding the top part of the bun—like a coffin-lid—up. Others at the counter focused on their own. Mister Lascar-face with his wife, Mrs. Goby. And two biddies down at the end. And Miss Willow Goose there eating her cottage cheese off the top of her Diet Spree. Vinegar Joe, on the other side of Florence, dumping stale truck-stop mustard on his hot dog. The Oomph Girl; Aze Simmons—with football shoulders; Max Schmeling with the short-order ribs (sucking the bones); Tan Thunderbolt eating a double-burger; Uncle Joe chomping on Heinz Tomato Ketchup-covered fried chops; Dum-Dora and Chollie-my-Boy in a booth facing two bowls of strawberry and chocolate ice cream covered with pecans, walnuts, whipcream and hot fudge. And, pray-tell, who was that old woman back there at the
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