The Man Who Lived Underground: The ‘gripping’ New York Times Bestseller

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Underground, Daniels becomes truly invisible. He is no longer a husband. Never thinks of himself as a father. The underground strips the markers of his identity just as any prison sentence does. And so, while the book is no longer concerned with the police and arrests and beatdowns, Wright forces readers to ask what the cost of this freedom is. The Man Who Lived Underground is an aggressively literary and intellectual story. If taken at face value, the story seems somewhat ridiculous, so you really have to appreciate and try to understand what it’s trying to say to enjoy much of the story. When he manages to get through, he sees that he is in a meat market. Just then, someone comes in to cleave a chunk of meat before leaving again. From there, he digs another hole and is able to get into the basement. He opens a door, but then he is spotted by a woman, Alice, who screams. Fred runs away. Alice tells the men around her that she saw a man through the doorway, but they insist she is hysterical and imagining things. The men joke that Alice should be fired and just get married. Fred also sees that the safe he was looking for is just behind where Alice is standing. Thanks to NetGalley and Library of America for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on April 20, 2021.

Next, Fred finds himself digging into a basement coal bin. He climbs through into the basement of a building where he carefully walks until he reaches a sink. He enjoys the small comfort of washing his hands and takes a long sip of water. Above him, he hears voices. Driven by curiosity, Fred heads up the stairs and realizes he is in a movie theater. I’m telling you that Richard Wright minced no words and spared no details illustrating the realities that America did not wish then and still does not want to engage with surrounding police brutality. It was necessary but that doesn’t make the stripping away of life, not by murder but by damage, any easier to read. This is the first time this story has been published in its original, uncut version and thus, presented uncensored as the author had intended it to be. Previously, during the author’s lifetime, it was only published in short story form which eliminated much of the more powerful and revelatory scenes, especially at the beginning and the end. It’s not difficult to see why a publisher was reluctant to see this full length version go to print when it was first written, considering those times. But it is fortunate the author’s wishes to have it published in complete form are finally being honored in the present. He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver, the radio, and the money were on the same level of value, all meant the same thing to him. They were the toys of the men who lived in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left, the world that had condemned him. 22 After stealing a number of items, Fred tunnels into the basement of a real estate office that “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” From his hiding place, he watches someone enter the combination to a safe. When that person leaves, Fred opens the safe himself, thinking to steal the money in it. But something unusual happens: 19The men continue hounding him to sign it, and they place a pen in Fred’s hand. When Fred tries to sign a pain shoots up his arm, so the D.A. guides his arm and a semi-legible scribble is produced. They compare it to another document with Fred’s signature to ensure it will hold up, and they discuss taking him home to see his wife briefly to protect against accusations of mistreating him. Fred then drifts off into unconsciousness. The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright is a novella published in April 2021, the truncated form of which was published as a short story in Wright’s Eight Men collection. Written in the early 1940’s, Wright’s publisher declined to publish it in its full form, fearing it was too graphic and controversial. The tragedy here is not what ultimately befalls Daniels, but how a single interaction with the police causes him to profoundly question his own identity. For a time, Daniels is optimistic. He believes the ordeal is “a dream, but soon he would awaken and marvel at how real it had seemed.” And then, once he enters the interrogation room, the confession feels inevitable. As much as I wanted the officers to believe some evidence that Daniels offers, I expected the brutal beatdown and forced admission of guilt that follows. He would go to the station, clear everything up, make a statement. What statement? He did not know. He was the statement, and since it was all so clear to him, surely he would, in one way or another, make it clear to others. 28

My guess is that he aspired to develop a new approach to his fiction with this novel but never managed to settle on a format to achieve this. Wright also sensed a link between his love of free-form, non-sequential Jazz music and paintings by Salvador Dali. When Fred goes to see him, he’s with Johnson and Murphy, and Murphy recognizes him. Fred tells them that he doesn’t want to run away and that he’ll sign whatever now. However, the officers aren’t interested. They says that they caught the guy who was actually responsible, an Italian (“Eyetalian”) man. The memory of his religious convictions reminds him of his ties to the world. He feels a responsibility to save the other people by doing something to alert others to the truths he has learned. Moves continuously forward with its masterful blend of action and reflection, a kind of philosophy on the run. . . . Whether or not The Man Who Lived Underground is Wright’s single finest work, it must be counted among his most significant.”A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. Daniels walks into the story with the pride of a man happy to have worked for an honest week’s pay. Between beatings and racial epithets, Wright captures Daniels as he cycles through feelings of fear, rage, and confusion. None of his childlike, raw emotions allow him to articulate anything beyond barely coherent pleading. This moment initiates the disintegration of his humanity, which Wright wants to highlight. In fact, Daniels’s wife calling out to him amid her fear and pain is perhaps the final time that he is named outright. The police refer to him as “boy” or worse. The character’s most effective response to the police was to slink away from his overseers and retreat into the sewer, where the narrator simply refers to Daniels as “he.” Here he becomes invisible to all of society—essentially free.