Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About

by Charles Stevenson Wright

Charles Wright (1932-2008) was hailed as an important literary talent when his debut novel appeared in 1963. He published three books between 1963 and 1973, all autobiographical novels about black street life in New York City, before disappearing into alcoholism and despair. This is his third and last book. Cover by Milton Glaser. 215 pages; 8.25 x 5.5 inches.

215 pages, Hardcover

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

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's where it all comes together for Wright, and dies as a necessity of that same fulfillment.

Look: Charlie (I can call him Charlie) only wrote three books; all are canon; and they deserve being read in the chronology of their original sequence. Like Federman, there is a connective tissue between it all, despite there being far too little of it. Fuck me, what a tragedy. No exaggeration. The ache in it comes from the foreknowledge that Charlie never published another goddamn word DESPITE living for decades over end. He just...walked away from it. He just didn't need it.

To say more would be to tarnish something far greater than is within my ken to fuck with, and that applies to all Wright. Really, this is just the final chiseling off of a life-as-fictionalized masterwork in danger of disappearing from readership. He gave his all, and we owe Charlie the economy of our too-precious fucking attentions otherwise committed to the Daily Doom of the Uber-Chyron slowly inching its way across the bottom of of our closed eyelids.

Wright was right: we just don't need it. Fuck 'em all; we got love power.

[Richard Trepsas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific read. Funny, tragic, insightful, and sad: about a struggling writer from and in the ghetto. Peppered with mini-tales from forays into lower Manhattan, being uncomfortable in the social whirl of the artistic/literary intelligentsia, & navigating the jungles of Harlem in New York City. The "Great Society" never stops the dystopia all around him. Civil rights promised/dashed, omnipresent racism, dysfunctional poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods yet filled with laughter, sex, drugs, amazingly resourceful inner-city kids in broken families circa 1968-1972. Looking at our Nation today: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a continuation of The Messenger and The Wig. We get more glimpses into Charles's unorthodox life, refusing to let go of who he is: a dishwasher and substance abuser street walker at heart. An interesting man and a life of little compromise when it came to the fame and literary society he could have indulged in, but didn't.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The consummation of an incomplete project.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The culmination of 3~ approximately perfect novels. They need each other; they are in response to each other; these novels are the extent of Wright’s corpus.* (Nb Beckett’s “trilogy” is always called three novels; no symbols/ implications except where intended).

*perhaps there are some unpublished essays/ Village voice columns out there. I’d love to have all his so far uncollected work in a book.