I first came to the American slave narrative via a roundabout path. Many years ago, my interest in black music, folklore and culture spurred me to undertake a slow, thorough study of primary documents that might broaden my grasp of those subjects. Back in my student days, my teachers never told me about Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography (first published in 1789) or Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave (1853) and other similar accounts from the antebellum era, but I later stumbled upon them as part of my self-assigned reading list in black cultural history. Yet if I started reading these works because of my research, I came to prize them for their inspiring testimonials and thought-provoking accounts of quiet heroism.
I also read the more familiar memoirs by Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, and later dug into the massive collection of oral histories from former slaves compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project in the late 1930s. Eventually I sought out far more obscure first-person source documents, a process that confirmed my view that the unfiltered reminiscences of participants are almost always a better starting-point in any historical inquiry than the current-day theories of academics. (I still regret my inability to secure a copy of Harry Middleton Hyatt’s massive five-volume collection— a total of 4,766 pages— Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft – Rootwork , an out-of-print rarity that draws on interviews with 1,600 African-Americans, most of them conducted in the 1930s. The last time I checked, a copy of this work cost $6,500. Maybe someone will give it to me as a birthday present someday.)
I do not envy the novelist who tries to match the power or intensity of these accounts in their works of fiction. Yet our nation’s leading storytellers are drawn again and again to this rich, almost inexhaustible subject. The plot of the oppressed seeking freedom is compelling and timeless…and also woven into the fabric of American experience. Even outsiders to African-American culture can relate to it. When my Italian grandfather came to America from Sicily at age 14, he was tricked into signing on with a gang of railroad workers, whose overseers kept him in chains and forced him to work against his will. He had to overcome a guard late one night and make a rapid pre-dawn escape from the chain gang camp before he could launch his own pursuit of the American dream. Many others had similarly troubled introductions to the opportunities of the New World. For them the African-American slave narrative might not be represent their identical story, but they can grasp its emotional and psychological truths as symbolic of their own heritage.
I suspect that emotional connection explains why William Styron, a white writer from the South who later moved North, decided to write The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), a searing literary work which won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction at a time when the Civil Rights movement was stirring up debate in America. But a backlash soon set in, and Styron was accused of “whitened appropriation” of black history. Like other books from that period on racial issues by sympathetic white liberals—such as Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro” or John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me — The Confessions of Nat Turner gradually lost its progressive credentials and disappear from school reading lists as an embarrassing example of white usurpation of the black narrative.
That’s now a distant memory, and the next phase ushered in a new generation of African-American writers who had their own notions about the slave narrative. Their efforts were, in an odd way, both progressive and unprecedented, yet also marked a return to the roots of the genre. In its first manifestation, back in the 19th century, these stories were told by black writers but targeted at a broad general audience, and their purely literary qualities coexisted with a desire to enlighten and influence. That now happened again, with books such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Edward P. Jones The Known World —both of which won the Pulitzer Prize, just as Styron had done a generation earlier. These novels broke new ground, but also harkened back to the firsthand accounts by Northup, Equiano, Douglass and others who created the genre.
Is it still possible to find a new angle on this old story in the current day? Colson Whitehead aims to do just that with his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad . At first glance, the book seems to follow the familiar path of the slave narrative, with all the usual character types and incidents; but as the reader proceeds more deeply into the story, unexpected elements appear in the work. The plot begins to dance across genre categories, and a phantasmagorical quality enters the tale.
At the most basic level, The Underground Railroad is a historical novel dealing with the worst aspects of plantation life in Georgia during the pre-Civil War period. But on top of this chronicle, Whitehead mixes in elements of magical realism and alternate history. Yet these never undercut the intense realism of the unfolding story. The end result is a kind of slave narrative as it might be imagined by Franz Kafka or Gabriel García Márquez, but still retaining the plausibility of a non-fiction memoir. In some ways, I am reminded of Toni Morrison, who defied expectations by inserting a ghost into the fabric of Beloved , yet without misleading anyone into thinking she had written a horror genre story.
Whitehead's story follows the life and times of Cora, a young woman who aims to escape the degradation of the Randall Plantation and make her way North. She is approached by Caesar, an ambitious fellow slave who has seen life outside of Georgia and has come into contact with a representative of the Underground Railroad. His friend can facilitate their secret departure, and Casear proposes that Cora join him on this journey to freedom. Years before, her mother had made a similar escape, somehow managing to elude the slave catchers who followed in her wake. Now the daughter agrees to take the same dangerous course.
So far, these details will be familiar to readers who have read other slave narratives. Yet Whitehead departs dramatically from historical realism when he introduces the actual Underground Railroad. In real life, this network of Abolitionists, former slaves and sympathizers organized a series of safe houses and travel itineraries that allowed the transit of slaves without the detection of the white authorities. Yet in Whitehead’s novel he turns this loose-knit group of paths and people into an actual underground railroad, a kind of subway with railcars, stations and conductors. It’s an alternative transit system for those who can’t use the trains above ground.
“I had the idea for the book about 16 years ago,” Whitehead told an interviewer “recalling how when I was a kid, I thought the Underground Railroad was a literal railroad and when I found out it wasn’t, I was disappointed. So I thought it was a cool idea, and then I thought, ‘Well, what if it actually was a real railroad? That seems like a cool premise for a book.’”
The Underground Railroad thus takes its place alongside a series of high-profile new millennium novels that mix tiny amounts of fantasy with large doses of realism, creating a new hybrid form. Jonathan Lethem set the tone for this new approach with his 2003 novel The Fortress of Solitude , which is a semi- autobiographical novel about the author’s childhood in Brooklyn. The story proceeds with a gritty real-life urban quality, except for a few passages in which the leading protagonists find a superhero’s cape which allows them to fly through the air. Most other writers of ‘literary fiction’ would have feared that this tiny addition—akin to something out of a comic book—might invalidate the social realism of the rest of the book, but Lethem grasped that the introduction of a wee bit of magic could actually amplify the potency of his narrative. In his final novel, The Pale King , David Foster Wallace did something similar: the entire novel follows the rules of realism with scrupulosity, except for one character who can float in the air a few inches from his chair. The Oscar-winning film Birdman starts out with precisely that same notion—a hero who floats above ground—yet once again the plot keeps magical elements mostly in reserve in a story that not only avoids excessive fantasy elements, but is actually a critique of their bloated importance in popular culture.
This genre needs a name. The basic formula can be described succinctly: (1) the book cannot embrace escapism, but must address actual social or personal issues, even dark and tragic ones; (2) an element of magic is introduced into the story; but (3) the realistic elements must account for 90% of the setting and story. Indeed, the fantastic ingredients are rarely allowed to enter into the forefront of the tale. When they do so, they are treated as everyday and normal, hardly worthy of attention. What shall we call these works, stories that represent a breed of fiction similar to magical realism, but downsizing the magic and supersizing the realism? For want of a better label, I will call them hyper-realist fantasies .
The surprising subway isn’t the only odd ingredient here. Whitehead also rewrites nineteenth century history, envisioning a range of political initiatives and agendas that never existed—for example a genocidal plan in North Carolina to kill everyone of African descent and staff plantations with Irish, German and other white immigrants. The ideas on display here are provocative and the story proceeds with energy, although teachers assigning this book in a classroom will need to spend some time educating students on the difference between the fantastic and historical aspects of the narrative.
Even so, the emotional force of The Underground Railroad won’t need explaining. The heroes and villains are presented in stark relief—alas, sometimes in an almost outlandish degree. But this isn’t a novel about nuance and the moral judgments here could hardly be more stark. Indeed, the story proceeds with the clarity, verve and sense of righteousness we have come to expect from Hollywood big-budget films. So much so, that I’d be surprised if this Whitehead’s story doesn’t show up on theater screens in the not-so-distant future.
Ted Gioia's latest book is How to Listen to Jazz (Basic Books)
In The Underground Railroad , antebellum history joins hands with hyper-realist fantasy