Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About: The Complete Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Stevenson Wright

In The Messenger (1963), Wright draws so extensively upon his life that fact and fiction often blur. Realistically narrated in the first person by a fair-skinned black Manhattanite named Charles Stevenson, the novel dramatizes the isolation and alienation of persons who fall prey to America's social, economic, and racial caste systems. Stevenson, a New York City messenger, constantly finds himself on the edges of power, yet is utterly devoid of any. A man perceived as neither black nor white, “a minority within a minority,” he is cast adrift in the naturalistic city of New York, where victory and defeat are accepted “with the same marvelous indifference.”

The Messenger brought Wright recognition and modest commercial success, but initially his 1966 novel The Wig was not well-received. Today, however, many people would agree with Ishmael Reed's 1973 assertion that The Wig is “one of the most underrated novels by a black person in this century” (John O'Brien, Interviews with Black Writers, 1973).

Wright's use of fantasy and hyperbole distinguishes The Wig from most African American fiction of the mid-1960s.Set” in an America of tomorrow,” the novel depicts the desperately failed efforts of a twenty-one-year-old black Harlemite named Lester Jefferson to live the American dream. The book ends with his literal (and willed) emasculation, after Jefferson learns that the money he has earned parading around the streets in New York in an electrified chicken suit will prove useless to his successfully courting the black prostitute he has idealized as his “all-American girl.”

The years between 1966 and 1973 found Wright in various foreign and domestic locales. But his literary psyche remained firmly planted in New York City, the setting of the nonfictional pieces he began writing for the Village Voice, Collected, amended, and supplemented, these columns came to comprise Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About (1973), a book filled with the same drug users, male and female prostitutes, abusive policemen, and underinquisitive detectives one finds in his novels. These, plus America's unstinting racism, have rid Wright of his optimism as surely as Mr. Fishback rids Lester Jefferson of his masculinity at the end of The Wig.

In 1993, Wright's novels were collected in a publication again titled Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About: Complete Novels. Reading this collection makes it clear that Charles Wright is an innovator who in breaking with traditional fictional modes during the 1960s helped to negotiate space for Ishmael Reed, Clarence Major, and other African American avantgardists.

Genres: Fiction, African American, Novels, American, The United States Of America, American History

387 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Charles Stevenson Wright (1932–2008) published three passionately idiosyncratic, big-hearted, tragicomedic short novels about mid-20th Century African American existence. He was an innovator who broke with traditional fictional modes and helped negotiate a space for Ishmael Reed, Clarence Major, and other African American avantgardists.

Ismael Reed called his second book, The Wig, “one of the most underrated novels by a black person in this century.”

James Baldwin said: "Charles Wright is a terrific writer, and I hope he goes the distance and lives to be 110."

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Messenger is fantastic and a definite 5* read. The other two less so, though both very much worth your time. Not sure why he is as neglected as he is, but this is a shame.

[Brad B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed this collection of 3 short novels, the writing style is too stream of consciousness for my liking (and The Wig, the middle novel, especially uses considerable symbolism and hyperbole that went over my head). Still, the reader definitely gets a sense of the isolation and loneliness Wright must have felt. The racial injustice that, somehow, still infects our country, is as disturbing as it should be - for example, one character is a neighborhood friend who goes on antique-finding missions in the deep south; we soon learn that those "antiques" include a charred wooden cross, the fur of a police dog, and fire hose nozzles dented by human heads. So while this wasn't a fun read by any stretch, Wright's work gave me a lot to think about.

[Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just for the third novel, "Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About," but, admittedly, could be about all three novels because they fit together like an ascending puzzle that charts Wright's state of mind against the changing (and not so changing) cultural machine of New York City and America. Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About is truly the apex of whatever we might call Wright's mission to mar the boundaries that separate fiction from nonfiction. For the Messenger I would've likened the narrator to a grown up Holden Caulfield - obviously with some very different social positionings that branch out from race, class, sexuality. For the third novel, we're somewhere between the autobiographical, phantasmal Henry Miller and the hilarious, also uniquely metafictional Kurt Vonnegut - all this blended up through Wright's singular, clarity-through-depression presence. This book, like the other two, makes you feel a little dirty (maybe more than a little). Wright's writing style is productively obscene, you cannot engage his observations from a distanced lens; this grants a surprising degree of earnestness - only surprising, because the Wright of The Messenger would probably call that phony. It's a hard novel to concretely talk about: for all the real-life observations, the signs-of-the-timing, this is simply the exploration of one little-known man's mind. And for that simplicity, I'm very appreciative to have gotten the chance to take a stroll.

[BMR, LCSW · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Messenger was the best of the 3 novels included here, written by Charles Stevenson Wright.

I'll have to reread The Wig, because it seems I totally missed the satire.

Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About was less cruel than The Wig, but certainly not as rich as The Messenger.

The stories are centered around a character named...Charles Stevenson. Charlie is used, uses others, and otherwise sort of exists in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City. Hustlers, transwomen, prostitutes of every type, junkies, dirty cops, drunks. This is the real NYC that was run out of Times Square back in the day, to turn it into the neon picture show we now have. There are no happy endings other than death in his world.

The lush, visual descriptions were like reading a movie, but not one you would want to see. It's everything your grandma warned you about regarding The Big City. The best thing I could say about this collection is you could find about 1,000 fantastic book titles in it. LOL!

Recommended for those who prefer the seedier versions of NYC to the polished, Living Single, Gossip Girl, and Sex and the City versions.

[Julie Mickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his third book, Wright resumes the realistic, first-person style of The Messenger (following his surrealistic, satirical departure in his second book, The Wig). IMO Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About is not as good as The Messenger -- which is six-star fantastic -- but it's still worth your time. Again the main character is Wright, perhaps somewhat fictionalized, and again the main draw is his depictions of New York City's seedier side. This time, he's downtown, mostly around the Bowery and Greenwich Village, with excursions to the hotel kitchens of the Catskills and Long Island catering gigs.

The chapters -- more like stand-alone essays or vignettes -- are more reportorial, more emotionally distant and not as tender as in The Messenger. Wright himself would now be in his late-30s and seems more jaded than the sweet-but-street-smart narrator of The Messenger.

In this later era, the late 60s and early 70s, the city would've been white-flighting in earnest and under attack by Robert Moses' freeways and urban renewal; meanwhile, the early '60s hipster-beatnik types had given way to Flower Children gone to seed. Thankfully, there were not enough undesirable hippies to replace the OG undesirables, the classic NYC Bowery bums and sexual deviants. Reefer and booze have been augmented by heroin and even more booze. Wright participates in some of these dissipations -- especially drinking, to the point of crashing at times in SROs and having to sell his belongings -- but manages to intellectually and emotionally stand apart from them, retaining the straightforward ways of thinking and talking perhaps attributable to his rural Missouri, grandma-raised upbringing.

As much as Wright skillfully depicts sadness, bleak humor and desperation in his observed characters, it was Wright's own sadness, desperation and semi-hostile emotional distancing that interested me most. In this period, he's obviously still writing, thankfully, at least; in fact, I'm pretty sure much of this material began as Village Voice columns. However, he seems cantankerously leery of literary success. I'm sure the careerists _were_ a bunch of phonies, but couldn't he have schmoozed just a little bit, just enough to get some of the cushy well-paid magazine assignments that the more famous New Journalists were slurping up in those days? He's invited to hip literati parties -- white, black, both and miscellaneous -- but is cranky about attending, quick to duck out and get drunk. He seems afraid of success, reminding me in this respect of later songwriters like Shane MacGowan and Paul Westerberg in their combinations of intelligence, talent and self-destruction. Which brings me to ... if Charles Wright had been a white man instead of a Black man, you can't help but wonder if 2nd, 3rd and 4th chances would've just kept on coming, if his drinking might've been given the same forbearance as extended to Hunter S Thompson, Norman Mailer (who is actually discussed in this book), and so on?

In short there's that poignant sense of not-quite-fulfilled potential here, and, even though each chapter isn't equally great, it's still work that should be read and known more than it is.

[Gino Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I set out to read "The Messenger," little did I know that I would end up down the rabbit hole reading "The Wig" and "Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About." I was already a quick fan of Wright's witticism and storytelling. I must admit that I am surprised that I was well into my fifties before stumbling upon him as an author to note.

In the like vein of "The Messenger" and "The Wig," "Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About" is a raucous first-person adventure in the day and life of an individual making his way through his life in 1960's New York City. This story kept along the lines of ramblings and streams of consciousness. The way Wright depicted certain scenes made the musings entertaining. It helped that he heaped a fair amount of well-placed humor throughout the story. There was the usual cast of characters, some practically clowns without red nose and flappy shoes. The trips down the rabbit hole of drugs and alcohol were also crafted with hilarity without introducing disgust.

I wonder what else Wright would have written had he not become very much the character in his fictional-biographical sketches. Without a doubt, he had a way with words and a way of making his works intriguing. I guess one can only wonder. But I enjoyed all three of the stories in his trilogy, nevertheless.

[Hank]

Wright's influence is staggering--it's hard to imagine Beatty, Reed, and Everett without his forays into His queerness is more subversive than Baldwin's, and his sense of the squalor and hilarity of American working class life has aged better than the white dirty realism that followed him.

I'm partial to Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About out of these three novels. It seems like the most mature work, and the best blend of satire and character sketches. The Messenger is very accomplished as well, while the Wig left me a little cold. Its satire may be too time-period-specific, and it felt a little gratuitous in its cruelty at times. Still, the Wig has its stans.

Ishmael Reed's intro is exactly what this talented cult writer deserves: https://lithub.com/the-writer-who-rej...

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Messenger is an ultra-hip 1960s counterculture classic, with swinging bebop autofictional prose on a par with Ralph Ellison. The Wig is a riotous romp that serves as a blueprint for the entire canon of Ishmael Reed. Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About is Wright’s swansong—the weakest of the three—rambling sketches of NYC street life taken from the author’s sordid experiences that lacks a coherent throughput. A tremendous prose artist who makes the people and the streets sing from the page in an effortless way, Wright’s three prose works are begging to be reread and rediscovered.

[K.Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read “The Messenger”, the 1st of Charles Wright’s 3 highly praised autobiographical novels published from 1963 to 1973. His eloquent prose reminds me of James Baldwin or Richard Wright. His gritty characters brings to mind Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”. This novel recounts the day to day existence of a messenger, his thoughts about the inhabitants of the various offices he delivers documents to, and his interactions with his friends and neighbors in New York before Times Square became gentrified. I’m hooked.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I abandoned this after the first novel, The Messenger. Wright is a powerful writer, but I got pretty tired of the drugs, sex, misspent life theme. Groundbreaking for its time, and I appreciate that there are people who really appreciate this perspective. Not for me.

[Toni Maddi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first two, The Messenger and The Wig. Both are the most wiggedy-whack books I have ever come across. They are like stream-of-consciousness beat poems to 1960s New York. Just trippy. I dind't have it in me to read the third, Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About.

[MJ Beaufrand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read through The Messenger. After that, I ditched. Five stars to The Messenger.

[Richard O. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Wright's The Wig is like a Jean Genet novel if Genet was black and hanging out in the old Bowery, fraternizing with junkies and drag queens. The novel was favorably blurbed by Baldwin. Wright wrote a regular column for the Village Voice. They were Dispatches from the Bowery. I lived uptown and knew some ex-addicts through my brother. But this was Eugene O'Neill territory that I was unfamiliar with. So I read Wright's column avidly. Then I read all the novels. I like The Wig best--it is most naturalistic--while the other two delve into the late-60s alchemical surreal. But I want to say that I heard Wright's voice, ironic, caustic, observing like a good barmate you could listen to for hours.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first novel is knock out, the second is not quite as good but still incredible, and the third doesn't quite hit the spot, but there are flashes of the energy and wit of the first two in there. How have I never heard of Charles Wright the novelist all through these years. He completely fits in with the beats and the counterculture that grew out of that. His novels crackle with literary references in a low-rent setting and his language zings with metaphors that will make you pause and whistle. His plots are absurdity writ large and his characters are almost instantly recognizable types but not done in a shallow phony way, but alive with an intensity. Great stuff and I feel like I've been cheated to make it halfway through life and only now come across this stuff.