Columbia
Missourian, November 19, 1995
“Few
people have enjoyed being Negro,” Arna Bontemps once commented, “as
much as Langston Hughes.” In his poetry, fiction, drama, criticism
and journalism, Hughes delighted in expressing the realities of
African-American consciousness and existence in a variety of voices,
from educated members of the black bourgeoisie to the working-class
residents of Harlem. With an excellent ear for the vernacular, and
integrating various popular sources (such as jazz and blues) into his
writing, Hughes captured the everyday rhythms and the diversity of
African-American life. “Being colored myself,” he once wrote, “I
find us terrible subjects for all kinds of writing, full of drama and
humor and power and entertainment and evil and love and all sorts of
things.”
Because
of his success as a poet, though, the virtues of Hughes’ other
writings often are overlooked. In this valuable study, Donna Akiba
Sullivan Harper provides an in-depth study of Hughes’ “Simple”
stories which he wrote from the early-1940s until the mid-1960s. The
story line was built on a common theme: Two men from different
economic backgrounds meet in the democratic environment of a bar,
where they discuss a variety of topics. In this setting, the
less-educated character offers opinions that are often humorous,
though his plain-spoken common sense frequently cuts through the fog
of the educated character’s intellectual rationalizing to get to
the heart of the matter. Thus Simple stands in a long American
tradition, from Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley to Mike Royko’s
Slats Grobnik to Norm and Cliff on Cheers.
In
Hughes’ stories, an educated foil, base on Hughes himself, though
eventually given the name Ananias Boyd, regularly meets the
working-class character, originally referred to as his “simple-minded
friend” (later given the name Jesse B. Simple), in a Harlem bar. As
Sullivan writes, “The premise of the Simple stories appeals as the
primary step in the human quest for peace, understanding, and common
ground: two men from different educational and cultural backgrounds
meet on an equal plane, exchange ideas, develop a friendship, and
bridge the gap between them.” But, as Sullivan points out, despite
their many differences, Boyd and Simple share one crucial
characteristic: They “both are black in a racially unbalanced
society.” This shared racial consciousness provides common ground
for the two. In Boyd’s view, Simple’s opinions might occasionally
be ridiculous, but they cannot compare with the absurdity of Jim
Crow.
Much
of Sullivan’s focus is on reconstructing the sociopolitical context
in which Hughes wrote. She argues, for instance, that the origin of
the Simple stories cannot be understood apart from African-Americans’
ambivalent response to American participation in World War II.
“Simple began his dialogues during the years when African Americans
struggled with their own mixed feeling about the United States and
its hypocrisy regarding democracy.” Black Americans resented being
enlisted in a war against Hitler’s racism while the United States
maintained an official policy of racism in the military and defense
industries as well as in large portions of society in general. Civil
rights activists used the war as an opportunity to force concessions
from the government regarding integration and employment. As Sullivan
comments, “From this climate of acute race consciousness sprang
Simple.”
But
Hughes refused to portray his characters as simply victims of racism.
Rather, he understood that blacks responded to prejudice with a
complex mixture of anger, sorrow, humor, resignation, resistance and
withdrawal. As Sullivan shows, essential to Hughes’ nuanced
portrait of Simple was the fact that the series originated in the
black press, beginning as part of a weekly column he began writing
for the Chicago
Defender in 1942.
Within this context, Hughes did not need to explain his various
references to prominent black personalities and aspects of black
culture. He could take for granted that his audience would understand
his allusions. In the black press, Sullivan says, “Simple never
needed to defend his anger about the travesties of American ‘justice’
or to explain his excitement about Lena Horne and Nat King Cole.
Hughes knew that in the Defender
he was free to select topics and use language—including slang—that
he surely would not have chosen for a predominately white audience.”
As Sullivan discusses, the writing of the Simple stories became more
complicated when Hughes began collecting them into book form for a
wider audience.
Hughes
continued writing about Simple for more than two decades, eventually
creating a play, Simply
Heavenly, and being
syndicated in the mainstream New
York Post. But by the
mid-1960s, Hughes’ gentle satire seemed an anachronism and he
retired Simple in 1965. As he would comment two years later, “so
‘out of joint’ are the times, and currently so confusing is the
racial situation, that were Simple to attempt to express the opinions
of the average Harlem ‘man in the streets’ right now, he wouldn’t
be considered as amiable as he used to be, nor the dialogue as
balanced. I am afraid that tolerance is running downhill at a rapid
rate and the situation is a difficult one to kid. And irony, satire,
and humor are so easily taken amiss these days, both uptown and
down.”
Yet,
as Sullivan argues, Simple remains a universally recognized character
type, still popular in this changed racial climate. With her detailed
examination of the processes Hughes used to create and maintain his
genial barfly, Sullivan demonstrates how, in Hughes’ words, “a
fictional character can be ever so ethnic, ever so local and
regional, and still be universal in terms of humanity.”
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