The Underground Railroad - Colin Whitehead

( Pulitzer Award for Fiction, 2017 )

"I saw cotton
and I saw 'bacc
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin'
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?"
                         ( from "Southern Man" - Neil Young )

Yes, the Slave owning Southern Man was cruel to the level of sadism and savagery. It is a known fact. However if the aim of a work of literature is to hint, under the license of artistic freedom, a general cruelty where a parent upholds a child punishing of an escaped slave, or fighting for a chance to punish a slave ? .

The Underground Railroad was the Pulitzer award winning novel for 2017, and admittedly the primary reason for me to take notice of the book, and my decision to read it. Upon completion, I have but mixed feelings about it. On a year of reading, where the 2016 Pulitzer winner "The Sympathizer" proved to be a much more complete and engrossing novel than it's successor, Whitehead's stretching of history - his license at fiction clearly - didn't quite leave me impressed and in awe, as Viet Thanh Nguyen did. My honest take is that Whitehead discounted the endless sacrifices that the slave community made, by some of the stretches he made - and it didn't add much, as pure literature either. In summary it didn't carry the ring of truth that Alex Haley's Roots did. But that is not to say that Whitehead had taken many liberties when detailing the horrors of the South's punishment. For example the punishment meted out to Big Anthony, whose torturing included having his mouth stuffed with his manhood and sewn, doused in oil and roasted was previously whipped for three days as entertainment for guests. Whipping as entertainment ? Here's the part:

"On the second day a band of visitors arrived in a carriage, august souls from Atlanta and Savannah. Swell ladies and gentlemen that Terrance had met on his travels.... They ate at a table setup on the lawn, savouring Alice's turtle soup and mutton and devising compliments for the cook, who would never receive them. Big Anthony was whipped for the duration of their meal, and they ate slow. The newspaperman scribbled on paper between bites. Desert came and the revelers moved inside to be free of the mosquitoes while Big Anthony's punishment continued."

This detail tends to suggest that it was not the sadistic slave owner, but a whole community which was sadistic. For the then Whites to feel that slavery is a natural thing, a "lesser being" serving the civilised is one thing. Yet, to paint a scene of generalization of a society which was immune to cruelty and possibly deriving a pleasure thereby, isn't within the limits of artistic freedom ( if it was that).

As a whole the novel, is of a genre bending sort, rather than being of mixed genres It takes the "Underground Railroad", literally and does a bit of time travel at the various stations. It doesn't stop at the exposure of crude brutal punishments of the slave owners. It exposes the finer mechanisms of Eugenics, using the unsuspecting Blacks as mice for their experimenting.

The overall tone of the book suggests a sense of exaggeration. Possibly the topic in purview is not ideal for mixing of genres, here. A few characters and incidents here and there start to minimise the tone of generalization the book carries. Donald and Ethel; the white station masters; Cora's own frowns at white children. But this was not enough to dilute the general community wide cruelty that is quoted above or the ones that took outside at the park opposite Dona;d and Ethel's house. End result being a book that leaves the reader with mixed opinion about the nature of writing - that, and the feeling that Alex Haley did a mighty good job when writing Roots. And without doubt last year's winner Paul Beatty did a commendable job discussing racism in America, with proper use of humour and satire.