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| Wallace Thurman |
Wallace Thurman blasted onto the
Harlem scene on Labor Day, 1925 and “almost overnight he became the kingfish of
Aframerican literature” (Watson 86). He was seen by many young artists as their
leader, “the fullest embodiment of outrageous, amoral independence among them”
(Lewis 193). But the acclaim was not enough to halt the tragic downward-spiral
that Thurman’s life had already undertaken. This essay contends that Wallace
Thurman attempted to exemplify the all-American ideal of individualism through
his life and writings, but his well-intentioned attempt fantastically failed. His
individualism lapsed into disillusionment and eventual self-destruction.
As
an intellectual, theorist, and literary critic, Wallace Thurman was more
independent, radical, and on the edge than any other member of the young
generation Harlemites. Amritjit Singh, a respected literary critic who is quite
sympathetic to Thurman and his writings, said Thurman was in search of himself
as an artist and deeply committed to individualism and racial transcendence (9).
Thurman once said there was no such thing as “colored America.” There was no
place in the country where a black person could be either an individual or a
vital factor. They only contributed to social problems (Thurman, “Quoth” 88). This
quote is particularly enticing. If there was no place in this country supposedly
full of opportunity for an African-American person to be an individual, that
leaves Thurman—who was completely devoted to individualism—on the edge as a
radical and a bohemian. It is not difficult to sense an amount of bitterness in
his words. That bitterness, and as a result Thurman’s lifelong focus on
individualism, may have roots in his upbringing.
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| Thurman as a baby in Salt Lake City |
Thurman’s
awareness of his own “otherness” began very early in his life. Born in Salt
Lake City, Utah in 1902, Thurman was part of a glaring minority. Much of his
life in Utah was spent with his grandmother, “Ma Jack,” who was a key figure in
his life and development as a young man (Singh 3). Daniel Walden, a Professor
Emeritus of American Studies and English from Penn State University, cites the
widely unknown fact that Thurman’s paternal grandmother was of Native American
descent and married a Jewish peddler (230). The web of Thurman’s own racial
composition adds a complicated twist to his struggle for identity. The
struggles of a young Black man growing up in the white-dominated Utah, he had
to deal with the idea of his own mixed race. This idea had the potential to set
Thurman apart, possibly further than other African-Americans in Utah at that
time.
The social tumult
that was present for Thurman in his community also made its way into his family.
Thurman’s father left when Wallace was an infant, and they did not meet again
until Wallace was thirty years old. It seems as though his mother was not very
fond of him either, which may explain why Thurman was so connected with his
grandmother (Encyclopedia 328). As a
young man Thurman not only experienced estrangement out in his community, but
at home within his family. The tumult he found at home bred introversion: the beginnings
of Thurman’s obsession for independence
Thurman’s
early family history and minority status made him very lonely as a child and a
teen. He moved around as a child, and attended grade school for varying periods
of time in Boise, Idaho, Omaha, Nebraska, and Chicago, Illinois. During these
early years, Thurman plagued with sickness and infirmity. He returned to Salt
Lake City to attend high school and two years of college at the University of
Utah, when he had a nervous breakdown and dropped out of premed studies. “Thus
is my checkerboard past,” recalled Thurman (“Autobiographical” 91-92). This
history is what, according to Singh, caused Thurman to rely heavily on books
(4). His reliance on literature was both a blessing and a curse. It was this
love of literature that led to his desire to write, but it was also a catalyst
in his further estrangement from others. Long periods of sickness such as
Thurman’s make it difficult to foster associations with others, further
influencing him to turn inward.
All
of these experiences as a young man influenced Thurman’s individualist ideology.
He felt strongly that the pursuit of individuality would provide the tools
needed to overcome racism, and that it was an artist’s duty to “shake off psychological
shackles” and pursue an “egoistic philosophy”. He rejected the
methodology of the “old guard” as a waste of time and effort. Thurman’s views
were at odds with the emerging black middle class, which held fast to the
ideology that all art and literature by and about blacks needed to project them
in a positive light. To Thurman, this ideology was based on the very dangerous
premise that all of his race must think, act, and write the same way. Fighting
against this ideology and premise became the “consuming passion of his life” (Singh
10, 18). Thurman’s life experience did not reflect the perpetual-positive image
being portrayed by the older generation. Life was often negative, and to deny
that would be to deny his own experience.
Thurman felt that
many of the New Negro writers were too self-conscious and needed to be more
objective (Encyclopedia 328). Thurman
mocked the sunny picture painted by many artists and writers of the period, and
became increasingly distressed by it. According to one scholar, though Thurman
satirized on the aesthetic of the black middle class, he still wrote under the influence
of its integration position (Davis 90). I am inclined to agree with this claim,
because it is impossible to deny such an obtrusive influence. In this case, the
influence that surrounded Thurman pushed him the other way.
Thurman
believed that the pursuit of individualism would have far reaching effects on
the African-American population. Individual “salvation,” as he put it, would
lead to general emancipation from the racial shackles still binding his
people’s future. Thurman’s two novels The
Blacker the Berry and Infants of the
Spring both dealt with the challenges of achieving—to use Singh’s words—
“black personhood” and Thurman’s own individuality (10, 13). “The time has now
come,” said Thurman, “when the Negro artist can be his true self and pander to
the stupidities of no one, either white or black” (quoted in Singh 19). It is
most important, Thurman claimed in Infants,
to choose your own path, find yourself, and remain true to yourself (240).
Daniel Walden stated in connection with this passage that in Thurman’s mind,
only in letting each person choose his or her own path can anything be
accomplished. Individuality is the thing to
strive for, each person seeking his own salvation (Walden 234).
Ironically,
the man who argued so fiercely for individualism is rarely viewed today as an
individual. Many people see Thurman simply as the embodiment of the Harlem
Renaissance, and study him for this reason alone. His unique portrayal of
common themes such as black personhood, the nature of blackness, and artists’
roles in society sets him apart from the rest. As others saw his as one apart in
a positive way, over time he became increasingly disillusioned with himself and
his role as an individual, and he began to drown his disillusion with drink
(Singh 14).
Thurman’s
otherness became apparent to everyone who came in contact with him. He lived an
“erotic, bohemian” lifestyle and “flaunted his otherness.” He was a “gay rebel,”
and was brilliant, consumptive and desperate, drank heavily and pursued public
sex (Singh 5, 14, Watson 85-88, Walden 230). Thurman said of himself, “Perhaps
I am the incarnation of the cosmic clown” (quoted in Watson 86). David Levering
Lewis, back-to-back Pulitzer Prize winner and Professor of History at New York
University, observed that Thurman was seen by many of the emerging black middle
class as gauche and immature (236). In the words of Langston Hughes, “He was a
strange kind of fellow, who liked to drink gin, but didn’t like to drink gin;
who liked being a Negro, but felt it a great handicap; who adored bohemianism,
but thought it wrong to be a bohemian.” (quoted in Walden 235, Watson 87).
Thurman was an outsider, even to himself, and said he felt no spiritual
connection with others (Thurman, “Notes” 236).
An
exemplary black Bohemian, Thurman was also a homosexual. Though in some of his
letters he denied his homosexuality, his close friends and associates knew him
as bisexual. His view of his own homosexuality was ambiguous, and he described
it as abnormal and pathological (Singh 5, 16). He was married for a short time,
roughly six months, to Louise Thompson. Thurman always stated that the marriage
did not work out because their personalities did not mesh, but Thompson claimed
the turbulent issue was Thurman’s homosexuality (Lewis 279). Other members of
the New Negro movement have written about Thurman’s boyfriend, Harold “Bunny”
Stephanson, a white, blond-haired man seen with Thurman around town (Watson
89). Homosexuality played a behind the scenes role in much of Thurman’s life
and writings (see Paul in Infants),
but such a lifestyle connected with his alcoholism, his effeminate nature, and
very dark complexion perpetuated his deeply ingrained image as an outsider
(Watson 86).
Though
perhaps the most radical and uncompromising figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Thurman
often acted from the middle-ground. Many of his peers saw Thurman’s boiling
self-hatred stemming from his black skin (Singh 9, 13-15). Interestingly, Thurman
fit in better with, and spent more time with whites than the other, lighter-skinned
blacks. This was not, however, a universal experience for him. He was often
unhappy when he was with blacks, and rejected when he was with whites. He
exhausted himself in his efforts to please the public, while trying to write
with New Negro honesty (Walden 236). The man was intensely conflicted and stuck
in the middle (Thurman, “Notes” 238). From this middle-ground, Thurman chose
radical and often forbidden themes for his work: intraracial color prejudice in
The Blacker the Berry, forced
sterilizations in his screenplay for the film Staatsgewalt—which was banned upon release. He wrote to express his
otherness in an attempt to become a true artist and representative of the young
generation of African-Americans.
After
a failed effort to turn his individualism into artistic genius, Thurman
remained bewildered. “Stability of thought eluded him. His poetry was tortured
and verbose. Mental chaos promised insanity.” It was then that he chose to dive
into the varied aspects of life and experience (Thurman, “Notes” 236). Thurman
took the idea of breaking racial barriers through personal success to the
extreme. He thought that failure to become a great artist meant failure to
transcend being a Negro (Lewis 278). Amritjit Singh claims that Thurman was not
so much disappointed in the New Negro Renaissance, but hopeful of something
more (20). Most other scholars, and I, disagree. Disappointment with himself
was compounded by Thurman’s impossibly high standards he set for himself as a
writer. Thurman, who wanted to be a truly great writer, stuck out from the
group of young New Negro writers like a sore thumb. He was a
jack-of-all-trades, and never had the opportunity to hone the techniques of any
one style or genre. In the words of Langston Hughes, Thurman “found his own
pages vastly wanting” (quoted in Lewis 236).
Disillusionment
poured into every part of Thurman’s mind, work, and life. He had a love-hate
relationship with Harlem. He hated the “world in general, and all of [his]
friends” (quoted in Lewis 279). Desperation, despair, alienation and struggle permeated
every aspect of his life. He could not resolve the tension he felt between his
love for the energy of the city and his need for the quiet of the country. He
was not happy in either (Singh 5, 16, Davis 109).
The novel Infants of the Spring was a portrayal of
Thurman’s disillusion. The title came from Hamlet
by William Shakespeare. The quote
from which the title came refers to the vulnerability of early blooming flowers.
Thurman compared these young buds to the young generation of the New Negro
Movement, part of whom Thurman included himself as the character Raymond.
“Canker galls the infants of the spring,” said Shakespeare, and to Thurman the
canker took two forms in the New Negro Movement. First, the writers who wrote
simply because they were literate and wanted to show whites they were capable
of doing so, and second, the writers who thought that if their work was
considered “Negroid” it would be automatically inferior (Lewis 280). Infants was also a commentary on the
Harlem Renaissance, which Thurman thought had failed. No foundation had been
laid, and the movement was destined to die. The one redeeming trait of the
movement was the art, which would survive beyond the lives of the artists (Thurman,
Infants 62, 284). Thurman said that
he began to feel “an immense discouragement, a sensation of unbearable
isolation, a perpetual fear of some remote disaster, an utter disbelief in [his]
capacity, a total absence of desire, and an impossibility of finding any kind
of interest.” (quoted in Lewis 279).
Thurman’s
disillusionment deteriorated dramatically into self-destruction. He found
himself to be, to his own chagrin, “merely a journalistic writer.” He became melancholy
and suicide prone (Thurman, “Notes” 237, Davis 109). As Walden put it, “If he
had the talent, his heavy-handedness, mixed with equal parts of disillusion and
despair, of himself and the alleged achievements of the 1920s, overcame his
native ability” (236).
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| Cover Art for Thurman's The Blacker the Berry by Aaron Douglas |
Thurman’s
self-destruction was paralleled by that of one of his characters. According to
Lewis, Emma Lou from The Blacker the
Berry was “obviously Wallace Thurman.” (237). Singh, on the other hand,
states that Lewis’s observation is too hasty and does not take into account
Thurman’s biting wit and his articulate and bohemian intellect (Singh 14). I
agree with Lewis, for the parallels are too complex to ignore. The black
heroine in the novel is not portrayed as beautiful. As was mentioned above,
Thurman used this character to point out the discrimination found within the
black community, and it is evident that Thurman was most angry at blacks who
discriminated against other blacks (Davis 110). Black was not fashionable, but
was seen as quite the opposite. Therefore the title must be read ironically when
compared with the old adage from whence it came: “The blacker the berry, the
sweeter the juice.” Emma Lou was too black, and tragically too aware of her
blackness (Walden 233).
Much like in
Thurman’s life, Emma Lou’s tragic circumstance is perpetuated by her own
thoughts and actions—for even she began to believe that “her luscious black
complexion was somewhat of a liability” (Thurman, Blacker 9). Emma Lou exhausted herself trying to impress the right
sort of people, but if anyone were to ask her what that type was, she would not
be able to give an answer (Lewis 237). Similarly, Thurman was conflicted
between his efforts to please the public and sell his novels and his efforts to
be a forward thinking New Negro. Emma Lou’s depression deepened when she
thought the darkness of her own pigmentation caused the separation of her
mother and step-father (Thurman, Blacker 19,
21). It is likely that Thurman’s ability to portray these feelings so
eloquently stemmed from his own feelings along the same vein—his mother was
married six times, leaving little record of why each marriage split up. Emma
Lou, like Thurman, went to California in an attempt to escape the pain caused
by internal and external racial tensions. For Emma Lou, like Thurman, this was
a failed attempt. She was rejected by white schoolmates and went to extreme
measures to try and look whiter. She was used and abused as a result of her
obsession and preoccupation with blackness, which eventually caused her demise
(Davis 110).
Davis and Walden
claim that The Blacker the Berry failed
because of its lack of subtlety, and according to Davis “surely, no Negro was
ever as color-struck as Emma is depicted, no one quite so foolish.” Thurman
wrote as an outsider, seeing starkness between the two sides, but it needs to
be looked at in shades of gray (Davis 110-11, Walden 233). Davis’s statement is
much too harsh and too broad. Though there may not have been many who went to
such extremes as Emma Lou in action, it is likely that many may have felt just as color-struck. It seems that
Thurman himself was, and his faith in the power of the arts to ennoble the
individual was ultimately not enough. He was not sure he had the genius enough
to do it. Having failed, like Raymond in Infants
of the Spring, the painful question was asked, “Is there no way out?”
(Lewis 280-81).
In a
mental-whirlwind of self-destruction, Thurman wrote in “Notes on a Stepchild,” “Perhaps
self murder was the easiest way out after all” (237). An individualistic life
marked with despair, self-hatred, and a reliance on bad gin led to an early
death and an abrupt end to a promising career. Thurman spent the last six
months of his life in the hospital on Welfare Island, a tragically ironic
ending considering his work to bring to light the terrible circumstances
therein (see Interne by Wallace
Thurman and Abraham L. Furman). He lived it up at the end and finally
collapsed. He died, destitute, in a tuberculosis ward
(Walden 230-36, Watson 165-67).
The abrupt and
tragic end to Thurman’s life and career is perhaps the greatest expression of
the life he lived. In his “Autobiographical Statement,” Thurman stated that “three
years in Harlem have seen me become a New Negro (for no reason at all and
without my consent)” (91-92). He played a central role in the development of
Harlem’s artistic opinions and ideas. He believed strongly that individual
salvation would lead to general emancipation from racial oppression (Singh 2,
10). But his ultra-focus on individualism spiraled out of control, leading to
an obsessive focus on his acute otherness and a general disillusionment with
his prospects as an artist. Disillusionment deteriorated into self-destruction,
and that self-destruction made Thurman’s work much more powerful and meaningful
in hindsight. Many scholars feel that Thurman failed in the initial goals he
set for his own works, which is true. But the real meaning and power of his
work came about because of his
failure. “He failed,” Walden and I contend, “but he failed magnificently”
(236).
Works
Cited
Davis,
Arthur P. From the Dark Tower:
Afro-American Writers 1900-1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard U.P., 1974.
Print.
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. ed.
Aberjhani and Sandra L. West. New York: Facts on File, 2003. 328-330. Print.
Lewis,
David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue.
New York: Knopf, 1984. Print.
Singh,
Amritjit. “Introduction: Wallace Thurman and the Harlem Renaissance”. The Collected Works of Wallace Thurman: A
Harlem Renaissance Reader. ed. Amritjit Singh and Daniel M. Scott III. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U.P., 2003. 1-28. Print.
Thurman,
Wallace. “Autobiographical Statement”. The
Collected Works of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader. ed. Amritjit
Singh and Daniel M. Scott III. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U.P., 2003. 91-92.
Print.
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The Blacker the Berry. 1929. New
York: AMS, 1972. Print.
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Infants of the Spring. 1932. Foreword
by Amritjit Singh. Boston: Northeastern U.P., 1992. Print.
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“Notes on a Stepchild”. The Collected
Works of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader. ed. Amritjit Singh
and Daniel M. Scott III. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U.P., 2003. 235-240. Print.
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“Quoth Brigham Young—This is the Place”. The
Collected Works of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader. ed.
Amritjit Singh and Daniel M. Scott III. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U.P., 2003.
86-91. Print.
Walden,
Daniel. “‘The Canker Galls . . . ,’ or, The Short Promising Life of Wallace
Thurman”. Harlem Renaissance Re-examined.
ed. Victor A. Kramer and Robert A. Russ. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1997. 229-237.
Print.
Watson,
Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of
African-American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon, 1995. Print.
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