Number 14 - The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

This month's book group read. It won a Pulitzer prize, so it must have something going for it.

It certainly does, but I'm still in two minds on this one. 

The story foillows Cora, a slave in pre-civil-war USA.  She escapes via the Underground Railroad of the title - here reimagined as an actual railroad. The conducter on the first train she catches tells her that if she looks out of the window while she's travelling, she'll see the real face of America.  Being an underground train, all there is is darkness when she looks.

This is a book that needs to be read in long stretches.  Picking it up for twenty minutes at a time (like I tend to on my lunch break) isn't good enough on this.

I found it always took me a few pages to tune into the style of writing and grasp the rhythms of it. This meant the more fragmented the read, the less satisfying the book. And unfortunately, my reading has been fragmented this last two weeks.

When I did manage a few good long hour plus reading sessions, this was an excellent read that flowed nicely and truly had me absorbed into the story.

It has a matter of fact feel to the prose which I thought put too much distance between the characters and myself and some places where I should have found myself quite upset or shocked at the fate of the characters felt a little flat.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it.  The section set in South Carolina, which feels like paradise for the runaway slaves was brilliantly done, steadily peeling back the layers and revealing possibly the darkest underside in any section of the book. I won't say more about that sequence because of spoilers, but it was certainly the most shocking sequence.

Cora was a good protagonist, intelligent, likeable and capable.  She never ceases to be a believable character. When bad things are happening, she reacts accordingly.

The story is extremely episodic. Each new stop on the railroad leads to a different set of problems, with racism sometimes buried deep beneath a layer of superficial acceptance, and sometimes signified by dead slaves strung up on every pole for a mile.

However, Whitehead chooses most of the time to jump into each new episode a few weeks after the characters' arrival and jump back and forwards in the timeline to explain how they got to the situation they're currently in.  This was occasionally confusing, particularly when dozens of characters are introduced in a mater of three pages. He also isn't the best at foreshadowing which is a technique he uses in a few sections to not great effect.

So overall this is a mixed bag.  It has a lot to recommend it, but also has some distinct flaws.  I actually think this felt like a more real depiction of slave life than Uncle Tom's cabin which I read last year (and which of course was contemporaneous to the slave trade).

It may be just that I didn't get enough long stretches to read this in, that might be the reason I can't decide on this.  It certainly feels like an important book. But why wasn't I more moved by the tragedies that occured - with the exception of one near the end of the book (no spoilers)?

If book group actually happens next week, I may expand on my comments.

Number 8 - Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Never has context been more central to my appreciation of a book.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's first novel - Uncle Tom's Cabin - was the first world-wide bestseller. It ahs been translated into scores of languages and has been credited as a contrbutary factor in the starting of the American Civil War.

It's place in history is undoubtedly huge.  It was a wake up call for Americans to the evils of the slave trade. HBS was a staunch abolitionist and she wrote this in response to a law that entered the American statutes that dictated that anyone in the North was legally obliged to send any runaway slaves they found back down south to their owners.

It caused an uproar on publication and was banned in many states. It provided a human face for the typical slave in Uncle Tom and a face of evil for slave traders in the vile Legree when he appears towards the end of the story.

In recent years Uncle Tom has become something of a symbol of sitting back and letting people walk over you, and aquiescing to all demands. True enough, Tom does let himself be walked over, but he stands up for his beliefs and refuses to bow to the will of his final owner when ordered to beat the other slaves or give up the location of escapees, so the lack of moral courage ascribed by some to the character is not true. This stereotype of the moral coward is certainly not present in the book.

It's one of the most important novels in American history almost without a shadow of a doubt.

However, as a 21st century Englishman, how does the book read? My first comment was about context and this book has to be taken in the context in which it was written.

The character of Uncle Tom himself is far from a moral coward, but is actually the archetype of the magical negro trope which is so prevalent today.  He is christ-like, eternally patient and accepts everything that happens to him as part of God's plan. His prescence and his failth causes those around him to convert to christianity on a regular basis. All the people he spends time with become better people. Even Legree finds his wickedness tested.

The narrative voice is far too willing to interject with its own commentary on what is happening.  After yet another child has been sold out of its mother's arms, or another slave has been beaten, the writer editorialises and tells us how bad what just happened was and all the reasons it goes against all that is good.

On the occasions when she allows actions to speak for themselves, the dramatic effect is so much greater.  Even when she uses the slightly more subtle approach of having another character in the scene passing comment on what just happened it improves things.  But when she herself interrupts the narrative... the pace of the book slows horribly.

The language used even by the omniscient third person narrator is horribly racist in today's terms.  There are so many sweeping generalisations about this or that being "typical of their race", the descriptions of some of the characters - especially when Topsy is introduced - can be cringe inducing to our modern ears. Characters are referred to throughout as quadroons and mulattos and n*****rs.

The book occasionally approaches levels of saccharine shmaltz that left me wondering if literature could make a person diabetic. The death of Eva is so overblown and sentimentalised that a modern reader will struggle to find sympathy. The escape of the Cassie and Emmeline wouldn't be out of place in an Enid Blyton novel.

The structure of the narrative is distinctly odd.  At the same time as Tom's first owner (apparently a nice guy but he would prefer to sell Tom and separate him from his wife and children than sell the spare sideboard from the 15th spare bedroom or some of his wife's jewellry) sells Tom, a pair of slaves (George and Eliza) escape with their young son who should be sold with Tom.  The early part of the book follows them as far as a quaker house not far south of Canada as well as following Tom to his new owners.

We then spend 4 years with Tom and his new owner before returning to Gerge and Eliza, still at the quaker house, newly escaped four years ago.  You would expect the narrative to now ftake them up to date with Tom, but it doesn't.  It follows for two days till they cross the border into Canada and then we jump back to four years later and back to Tom's narrative. The placement of this chapter is entirely wrong. It jarred massively with me.

Any non Christians may feel they're being picked on in this book. Atheism is generally seen as a lack of moral character and a deficiency. Although Augustine StClare is an atheist for most of his time on the pages, he is a jolly good fellow and a good owner to Tom.  Even he though is more of a non-church-goer than an atheist.  He's lost his faith in the church because he doesn't believe their teachings about why slavery is morally and biblically correct. His beliefs aren't strong enough of course for him to relinquish his slaves, it just means he doesn't have them flogged. And on his death ed, his moral character is restored when he accepts Christ into his life. Legree is an out and out atheist and theerfore totally evil.  His slave handlers on the farm are equally evil.


There were some plusses to the book.

The character of Marie StClare is wonderfully drawn. You wouldn't want to meet her in real life although we can all identify some people in our lives exactly like her.  No one could possibly suffer the way they do. No one ever had to udergo such trials in life as she. Her maid is so selfish for wanting to sleep at night while Marie has insomnia, etc etc

When HBS lets the action speak for itself, there are some very effective sections of writing. The characters in general are well drawn. The story is engaging despite the flaws in the narrative technique.

By many modern standards this is not a well written book - as listed above. But this is where the importance of seeing the context of the story comes from. It was written chapter by chapter as a polemic for an abolitionist magazine and compiled into the shape we know it in now. It's whole intent was actually to attack organised religion and its attitude towards slavery.

The church in America in those days believed that black people were inferior and without souls and therefore merely chattel to be used as one wished. One of the principle things HBS was doing was reaching out to the churchgoing public and pointing out the sheer hypocricy of the church's stance.

And it did what it set out to do. It hit the audience it needed to. It spurred people into action and advanced the abolitionist movement immeasurably.  There is a story (possibly apocryphal) that when HBS met Abe Lincoln after the civil war, Lincoln said to her "What do you think of the war you started?". The importance of this book is undeniable.

I'm certainly glad I read it.  I'm also very glad to have found a gorgeous hardcover dated 1904 complete with some beautiful artwork, 8 full colour plates and over 200 daguerrotype pictures scattered through it. The quality of the packaging was in places better than the contents.

6.5 out of 10.