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FREEDOMWAYS    THIRD QUARTER 1966

in large part, an outgrowth of the seminar. The content is as diverse and impressive as the list of contributors: Robert Bone, Arna Bontemps, Horace R. Cayton, Ossie Davis, Nat Hentoff, M. Carl Holman, LeRoi Jones, Albert Murray, Saunders Redding, Harvey Swados and Melvin B. Tolson (with an introduction by Herbert Hill).

As suggested by the title, the book is, in fact, charged with anger, but not unlike the joy produced by pains of birth, that which lies beyond bears witness to a most creative anger.

Take, for example, Horace R. Cayton’s. Especially memorable essay, “Ideological Forces in the Work of Negro Writers.” Cayton, in no uncertain terms, discusses the “residue of hate” in his heart, but one is ever conscious, imperatively so, of the committed sociologist’s vision of humanity that, together with the artist’s spirt, reaches far beyond the popular, conventional sociological visions of charity.

Nat Hentoff, in “The Other Side of the Blues,” once again interprets the work of Negroes, and the Negro experience, with accuracy seldom demonstrated by white Americans. The essay is permeated by “Hentoff Idealism” which might occasionally cause one to balk, but his honesty is compelling.

Who other than LeRoi Jones should speak of “Philistinism and the Negro Writer,” and he does so with authority. “For myself,” writes Jones, “I aspire to the craziness of all honest men, that is, the craziness that will make a man keep talking even after everyone else says he shouldn’t.” This essay, if read honestly, is but further proof that the distance between Mr. Jones and most of his black critics (which has absolutely nothing to do with his white critics, who are, for the most part, detractors) has much to do with Mr. Jones’ having come to terms with the very stark fact that 22 million victims of white nationalism -if you will- need far more than love, good will, integration or a “war on poverty.”

“Something Different, Something More” is an intellectually probing essay by a talented writer, Albert Murray, who utilizes numerous resources in an exploration of Truth, employing deftness so skillfully as to almost obscure the fact that his version of Truth is that version defined by a system of untruth-to preserve the system! Murray’s plight is that of the black artist who, as Dr. Nathan Hare has observed, seeks safety in an art-for-art’s-sake approach. In the bargain- and the author is indeed a part, integral to be sure, of a shrewd bargain-Murray puts down Baldwin, Wright, Negritude, Black Arts movements (managing to preserve little, excepting the author of

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