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The Lynchers
Almost 30 years before 9/11, John Edgar Wideman published his third novel, a revolutionary and controversial story about four African-American men who hatch a terrorist plot to shake a complacent America to its foundations. They see their plan to lynch a white cop as the ultimate symbolic act of protest in a racist, hypocritical society mired in fundamental inequalities that contradict its "Home of the Free" credo. Critic Saunders Redding raved, "It is all here...the history of Negro America raised to the grandeur of superb fiction, as Tolstoy did it for the history of the Russian people in the Napoleonic era in War and Peace. I think The Lynchers is far and away the truest, the most moving, and the most brilliantly crafted novel of Negro life in almost a quarter of a century--that is, since Ellison's Invisible Man, which in some ways it surpasses."
- GenresFictionAfrican American
270 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
2 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
95 books408 followersA widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 25, 2008
In some ways, John Edgar Wideman's The Lynchers (1973) functions as a continuation of Ernest J. Gaines' Bloodline. Both texts focus on the ways in which black men are disenfranchised and emasculated by poverty, racism, and American culture (past and present). However, where the men of Gaines' stories make some progress toward reclaiming their masculinity or individuality, on a small scale at least, the men of Wideman's The Lynchers are incapable of making such progress, despite the changes in the larger political situation (this book is set in the 1960s, whereas several of Gaines' stories are set before the Civil Rights movement really gained momentum).
The Lynchers focuses on four black men in their 30s who come together to plot a "lynching in blackface," a lynching of a white policeman, meant to be a symbolic gesture, a reversal of African American history, as well as the beginning of a new era in which the black people of America would be galvanized into action, finally willing to unite and resist their white oppressors. As the novel progresses, the reader learns more and more about this plan and the plan becomes ever more real and concrete. At first, it is, both to the reader and to most of the men involved in the plan, an intriguing idea, appealing in its perverse poetry, but not much more; however, by the final third of the book, it has been given a face and a sequence and all that remains is to see it enacted. Even more, the significance that Littleman (who conceived the plan) gives the lynching begins to become more than the ramblings of an insane man and becomes plausible. Of course this is the necessary next step in American race relations. Of course this lynching will unleash violence on both sides and through this violence create a new world. Of course, as Littleman says, this is a "recipe for liberation or death. One or the other. Doesn't matter which comes first. But one or the other is coming...." (193).
Of course, even as their plan takes shape, the circumstances that make this plan necessary are revealed. The violence that imbricates their lives already, the poverty of their lives (not just financial, but spiritual and intellectual as well), and the personal flaws they each carry--all of these things sabotage their perceived avenue to salvation. They cannot save themselves; how can they save the race?
Written in a modernist stream-of-consciousness style that alternates from one point of view to another regularly, Wideman's novel is a fascinating look into the minds of these men. The plan they develop is interesting in itself, but the central focus of the book is not that plan or what might happen afterward but the men who are drawn into the plan, why they are drawn into it, how they interact with each other and the larger culture, and their thought processes as they play their roles in Littleman's scheme.
Having said that, the genius of Wideman's novel is not even to be found there, for the entrance into these varied character's minds does more than illustrate the individuals' lives and thoughts; it creates an almost choral effect, a collective consciousness that is brought out through these particular men. Opal Palmer Adisa writes, "he writes in a collective, multi-vocal mode of narration that is somewhat reminiscent of the black church," and this technique is what makes the novel really work. The central characters, flawed as they are, stand in for a larger body of people, for all the other people who have been fucked by the system (by the Man, as Littleman likes to say) and who do not have the strength to resist any longer; their plan, crazy as it is, has a role to play in the larger historical context. Wideman makes this historical context unavoidably clear by beginning the novel with "Matter Prefatory" (reminiscent of the opening of Melville's Moby Dick) that speaks to the place of black people in America and to the role that lynching in particular has played in the power relations between black and white in American history.
And Wideman constantly addresses the question of sanity/insanity throughout The Lynchers. Are these men really crazy? Their plan seems crazy, but is it really? Again, as in Gaines' Bloodline, we are faced with this conundrum: in a world that treats a whole race of people as if they are not quite people, treats them like animals and rapes and kills them regularly, what behavior is sane? Is it more sane to live in this society or to challenge it? Wilkerson, one of the men involved in the plan, asks this question himself: "Was insanity torment or when you stopped tormenting yourself about those things you couldn't change?" (213). And later, he asks, "How could you allow yourself to see the decay and dying without either killing white people or going mad?" (215). For him, at this point, insanity would be not killing white people, not fighting back, even if fighting back would mean his own death and the deaths of many others.
This is a book that is beautifully written at times, even when it is dealing with truly ugly things, and it is a book that succeeds spectacularly in its illustration of failure. This is a tricky success to claim, however, for in this success The Lynchers walks the line between convincing the reader that the world really is this hopeless and fucked up and convincing the reader that the world's fucked-up-ness is the result of something in particular, something that can be changed.
The Lynchers focuses on four black men in their 30s who come together to plot a "lynching in blackface," a lynching of a white policeman, meant to be a symbolic gesture, a reversal of African American history, as well as the beginning of a new era in which the black people of America would be galvanized into action, finally willing to unite and resist their white oppressors. As the novel progresses, the reader learns more and more about this plan and the plan becomes ever more real and concrete. At first, it is, both to the reader and to most of the men involved in the plan, an intriguing idea, appealing in its perverse poetry, but not much more; however, by the final third of the book, it has been given a face and a sequence and all that remains is to see it enacted. Even more, the significance that Littleman (who conceived the plan) gives the lynching begins to become more than the ramblings of an insane man and becomes plausible. Of course this is the necessary next step in American race relations. Of course this lynching will unleash violence on both sides and through this violence create a new world. Of course, as Littleman says, this is a "recipe for liberation or death. One or the other. Doesn't matter which comes first. But one or the other is coming...." (193).
Of course, even as their plan takes shape, the circumstances that make this plan necessary are revealed. The violence that imbricates their lives already, the poverty of their lives (not just financial, but spiritual and intellectual as well), and the personal flaws they each carry--all of these things sabotage their perceived avenue to salvation. They cannot save themselves; how can they save the race?
Written in a modernist stream-of-consciousness style that alternates from one point of view to another regularly, Wideman's novel is a fascinating look into the minds of these men. The plan they develop is interesting in itself, but the central focus of the book is not that plan or what might happen afterward but the men who are drawn into the plan, why they are drawn into it, how they interact with each other and the larger culture, and their thought processes as they play their roles in Littleman's scheme.
Having said that, the genius of Wideman's novel is not even to be found there, for the entrance into these varied character's minds does more than illustrate the individuals' lives and thoughts; it creates an almost choral effect, a collective consciousness that is brought out through these particular men. Opal Palmer Adisa writes, "he writes in a collective, multi-vocal mode of narration that is somewhat reminiscent of the black church," and this technique is what makes the novel really work. The central characters, flawed as they are, stand in for a larger body of people, for all the other people who have been fucked by the system (by the Man, as Littleman likes to say) and who do not have the strength to resist any longer; their plan, crazy as it is, has a role to play in the larger historical context. Wideman makes this historical context unavoidably clear by beginning the novel with "Matter Prefatory" (reminiscent of the opening of Melville's Moby Dick) that speaks to the place of black people in America and to the role that lynching in particular has played in the power relations between black and white in American history.
And Wideman constantly addresses the question of sanity/insanity throughout The Lynchers. Are these men really crazy? Their plan seems crazy, but is it really? Again, as in Gaines' Bloodline, we are faced with this conundrum: in a world that treats a whole race of people as if they are not quite people, treats them like animals and rapes and kills them regularly, what behavior is sane? Is it more sane to live in this society or to challenge it? Wilkerson, one of the men involved in the plan, asks this question himself: "Was insanity torment or when you stopped tormenting yourself about those things you couldn't change?" (213). And later, he asks, "How could you allow yourself to see the decay and dying without either killing white people or going mad?" (215). For him, at this point, insanity would be not killing white people, not fighting back, even if fighting back would mean his own death and the deaths of many others.
This is a book that is beautifully written at times, even when it is dealing with truly ugly things, and it is a book that succeeds spectacularly in its illustration of failure. This is a tricky success to claim, however, for in this success The Lynchers walks the line between convincing the reader that the world really is this hopeless and fucked up and convincing the reader that the world's fucked-up-ness is the result of something in particular, something that can be changed.
November 19, 2018
i loved the premise of this, but the prose was too difficult to get through, too meandering, though I think that was done purposefully.
March 14, 2019
The style got in the way of the substance for me, but it's Wideman, and worth reading. Some of it was hard reading, but the good parts soared.
April 10, 2021
crazyyyy good writing. loved how wideman bent time and space would reread
February 24, 2013
I read this for my African-American literature class, and it is perhaps the best novel from the 1970's black aesthetics. Four black men in Philadelphia plot the public lynching of a white cop (just a cop, not any specific cop) to rouse the black caste against white oppression. The reasoning is that the white world can no longer turn a blind eye to the centuries of oppression in place in American culture with such a blatantly violent act so often carried out against blacks when it is suddenly done to a white authority figure.
***Spoiler***
I also contend that the ending is absolutely successful. The plot to lynch the cop does ultimately fail, but the idea is planted in the orderly's head at the hospital and he reacts accordingly: through violence. Littleman is simply a Paraclete of Black Power, not capable to accomplish the task himself he paved the way for others to step up and fill his spot. I believe this is a utopian space created very carefully by Wideman that could not be accurately described because true freedom from racial prejudice is literally unthinkable in his time (and ours, most likely).
***Spoiler***
I also contend that the ending is absolutely successful. The plot to lynch the cop does ultimately fail, but the idea is planted in the orderly's head at the hospital and he reacts accordingly: through violence. Littleman is simply a Paraclete of Black Power, not capable to accomplish the task himself he paved the way for others to step up and fill his spot. I believe this is a utopian space created very carefully by Wideman that could not be accurately described because true freedom from racial prejudice is literally unthinkable in his time (and ours, most likely).
November 21, 2012
This is objectively speaking a good book. I can't explain why I didn't personally like it. On the surface it's very similar to many other Wideman works that I did like. I can't rationalize why I didn't connect with this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews