Fiction doesn’t interest me at all. I haven’t read a novel since Lorna Doone.
I meant to read Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea when it came out, but I didn’t… I’m not interested in being diverted from my own life.
That was Andy Rooney, America’s most lovable and quotable curmudgeon, from his commentaries, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit (2009). His point, which he often reiterated on 60 Minutes, was that fiction could never compete with real life when it comes to genres like mystery, horror, satire, romance, science, and history.
Which brings me to Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.
[It] is an alternate-history novel with a terrifying conceit at its heart. The book is set in a country that largely resembles the contemporary United States. There are references to CNN, search engines, Starbucks and UPS, but there is one significant difference: In Winters’s novel, slavery is still legal in a quartet of Southern states.
(Washington Post, July 1, 2016)
This book revolves around the psychotic, naval-gazing blather of its narrator and protagonist. He is a black fugitive slave hunter who is coping with the angst, hypocrisy, and betrayal inherent in returning runaway slaves to their masters.
I submit, however, that a book that revolves around the mercenary, self-aggrandizing sermons of Mark Burns would be far more interesting. He, of course, is the black Republican preacher who is coping with the angst, hypocrisy, and betrayal inherent in capturing black voters (or “souls”) for the demonstrably racist Donald Trump. And this is “real life.”
Nonetheless, if you’re really into being entertained by the black struggle to survive slavery and overcome its legacy of racial oppression, I suggest you visit the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. It officially opens on September 24, and I guarantee you’ll be entertained as well as educated by the displays.
Frankly, Underground Airlines, which takes such crude license with its “re-imaginings,” especially of black culture, has nothing on the real history of black America.
I should disclose here that a terrific friend gave me this book recently. It is noteworthy that she shares my progressive politics … and happens to be white. That she thought I would find it an interesting read compelled this public commentary.
As it happens, I lost interest in alternate/counterfactual books decades ago, after reading a number of what-if novels (e.g., there seemed to be a cottage industry back then re-imagining what if the Nazis had won).
In fact, like Rooney, I believe it is self-evident that truth is not only stranger but more interesting than fiction…. Surely this year’s U.S. presidential campaign is Exhibit A in this respect. After all, it has been replete with developments, antics, and gaffes that are more the stuff of political lampoons.
Truth be told, I find nothing entertaining about re-imagining what if slavery were never abolished in the “hard four” states, and Jim Crow remained in effect in the others. And it would make no difference if the author of this counterfactual sojourn were black instead of white….
What might be entertaining is re-imagining what if blacks did to whites what whites have done to blacks – in almost any historical context. Re-imagine, for example, seafaring Africans enslaving Europeans, developing a United States of Africa (which is every bit the superpower America is today), and leaving Europe to develop into the partitioned and balkanized mess Africa has become.
You probably know that a number of books have re-imagined some version of this alternate history (e.g., Lion’s Blood, Blond Roots, even Kindred – with its time travel motif). But none of them has been as critically acclaimed as Underground Airlines.
Incidentally, do not confuse this book with Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, which is based on the all too real “inhumanity” of slavery….
But am I the only one who thinks all of these fictional allusions to and bastardization of the Underground Railroad must have Harriet Tubman rolling over in her grave?
NOTE: The person who gave me this book is still a terrific friend.
Related commentaries:
Black Republican preacher Burns…