326 Making It New: 1900–1945gambler and occasional musician in a New York nightclub, he tells us that he acquired
a reputation for both his gambling and his music; indeed, he explains, “I developed
into a remarkable player of rag-time” and “gained the title of ‘the professor.’ ”
Traveling in Europe, more as a companion than the servant of a millionaire friend,
the ex-colored man, by his account of it, was admired for his taste and musical talent
wherever he went. And returning to America, he describes with lipsmacking relish
how he began “to contract the money fever” and how his successful deals and
investments gave him an almost erotic thrill. “What an interesting and absorbing
game is money-making!” is his conclusion. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
could be considered the first instance in African-American fiction of a first-person
narrator, although Harriet Wilson had employed the first person in the opening
chapters of Our Nig. It stands, in this way, as a bridge between nineteenth- and
twentieth-century black literature; and that is a considerable achievement in itself.
But to that achievement can be added several others. It dramatizes the dualism Du
Bois had discovered and spoken of in The Souls of Black Folk. It captures the inner
rituals of the black community, what is called here “the freemasonry of the race,” in
a way that had rarely been done before. It uses a picaresque form, a narrative of
wandering around and beyond America, to enact a search for black identity. Above
all, it presents us with a flawed hero. The subjects of earlier black autobiographies
had tended toward the sensitive, the sympathetic, even the noble. The ex-colored
man is not that at all; on the contrary, he is proud and rendered unattractive by his
pride. And pride comes here before a fall. In the end, he has to recognize his error –
that, as he puts it, “I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.” Sometimes, he
reflects bitterly in the final chapter, “it seems to be that I have never really been a
Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life.” At other times,
he adds, “I feel that I have been a coward and a deserter, and I am possessed by a
strong longing for my mother’s people.” But such feelings come too late. Trapped in
the white world now, with two children who are to all appearances white, the ex-
colored man cannot escape; and he can only reveal his “secret” covertly, anony-
mously, in the pages of this book. It is a remarkable conclusion to a story that plays
subtle variations on the themes of black duality and invisibility – and that makes its
points about race, not by lecturing or heroics, but by something new in African-
American writing, a sadly contracted, alien hero.Building bridges: Women writers
At the same time as African-American writers like Washington, Du Bois, and
Johnson were carving out new territory in black literature, a number of women
writers were building a bridge between the preoccupations of the nineteenth century
and those of the twentieth. These included three major novelists: Edith Wharton
(1862–1937), Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945), and Willa Cather (1873–1947). What is
remarkable about at least two of these writers, Glasgow and Cather, is the degree to
which they relied on a network of mutual support among women writers. Cather, it
was mentioned earlier, received help and advice, and an example of what to writeGGray_c04.indd 326ray_c 04 .indd 326 8 8/1/2011 7:53:46 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 53 : 46 AM