On the one Du
Bois book that all Americans should read.
I never quite
got around to making my own nomination for the
National Big Read, perhaps because I have so many books that I’d really
love to ask all Americans to read: such as The
Marrow of Tradition, Ceremony, and
The Namesake, to name only three of
the chief contenders. I’d gladly make the case for any and all of those novels,
but it’s also possible to argue that for such a shared book it might make more
sense to go with non-fiction: with a compelling personal narrative of
significant American experiences, or a convincing sociological engagement with complex
communal issues, or an inspiring philosophical call for national unity and
progress. And it just so happens that W.E.B.
Du Bois, at the youthful (I hope!) age of 35, published a book that was all
those things and a great deal more: The Souls of Black
Folk (1903).
In two of the
three posts cited in my intro blurb above I referenced “Of
the Training of Black Men,” and certainly that individual chapter
represents the whole of Souls, and
its ability to move between those different genres and styles (along with other
historical and cultural ones), very effectively. It also illustrates two of the
other striking formal elements to Du Bois’s work in the book—his use of
epigraphs and allusions from the full (available) range of world history,
literature, philosophy, mythology, and religion, to put his voice and book in
conversation with everyone and everything else (and demonstrate just why
Shakespeare does not wince when Du Bois sits with him); and his inclusion of a
bit of musical notation at the start of each chapter, notes and melodies drawn
from the “sorrow songs” (the African American and slave spirituals) about which
he writes eloquently in
the book’s concluding chapter. These two intertextual elements exemplify
the book’s unique combination of breadth and depth, its coupling of a
world-wide reach with an incredibly nuanced depiction of its titular American
community.
In many ways, I’d
say that it’s precisely that combination of depth and breadth that defines Du
Bois’s greatness. On the one hand, he spent much of his near-century of life
writing, thinking, and working unceasingly in response to one specific (if also
sweeping and vital) issue: “the problem of the color-line,” as he put it at the
outset of Souls. Yet on the other
hand, to read Du Bois is to find serious and significant engagement with, it
seems, every meaningful historical, cultural, and human question of his era,
and many of ours as well. And Souls achieves
that balance remarkably well: the book is sophisticated enough in its specific
analyses to be considered one of
the earliest works of American sociology; yet it’s sweeping enough in its
philosophical, personal, literary, and artistic elements and achievements that
I’d nominate it for a National Big Read text with no hesitation. What if the
Great American Novel isn’t a novel at all, but a genre-busting book by one of
our most inspiring icons?
Next Du Bois
readings tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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