mother, who had separated from his father, a la-
borer, had died. His maternal grandparents, who
showered him with unconditional love and taught
him to love reading, raised Wright. Victimized by
the inequalities of “separate but equal” education
that denied access to the best and most up-to-date
educational material, Wright turned to newspa-
pers and magazines to enhance his commitment
to personal development.
By age 10 Wright began writing stories, which
he would read to disbelieving classmates who ac-
cused him of copying them from the Reader’s Di-
gest. Wright, who was drafted into the U.S. Army
after graduating high school, never attended col-
lege. Although he meandered about from Califor-
nia to Missouri, he remained an avid reader and
a committed writer, spending summers at the
Lowney Handy Writers Colony in Marshall, Il-
linois. Although, as his work reflects, Wright was
deeply influenced by Ernest Hemingway and F.
Scott Fitzgerald, he also recalls the tremendous
impact RICHARD WRIGHT had on him during his
teens after he had read a Life magazine article on
BLACK BOY. Richard Wright’s story of southern life
under Jim Crow ethics would be a life-changing
experience for Charles Wright.
Although Charles Wright did not find a pub-
lisher for “No Regrets,” the first novel he wrote,
he did for his second, The Messenger, which, pub-
lished in 1963 by Farrar, Straus, and Company,
received rave reviews. Wright was showered with
accolades by the leading African-American author
JAMES BALDWIN. The fair-skinned protagonist of
The Messenger, 29-year-old Charles Stevenson (the
autobiographical resonance throughout the novel
is by no means incidental), is a liminal character
engaged, through his job as a New York City mes-
senger in the Rockefeller Center, in a quest for
meaning and knowledge. He continuously finds
himself surrounded by the power denied him be-
cause of his race and class: He is a black laborer
earning minimum wages, living in a room con-
demned by the Housing Authority, surrounded
by members of the underclass: pimps, prostitutes,
drug addicts, gypsies, and every imaginable type
of hustler. He is surrounded by powerful individu-
als who have achieved the American dream that
is denied him. Stevenson declares, “This country
has split open my head with a golden eagle’s beak.
Regardless of how I try, the parts won’t come to-
gether” (The Messenger, 4).
Near the end of The Messenger, Stevenson re-
turns to Missouri to visit his aging grandmother
and reflect on his life. Recalling past memories and
experiences while sitting in the courthouse square
of the small midwestern town in which he grew
up, Charles declares, “My life seemed like that of a
tomcat who had slunk down too many alleys and
had gotten nothing but a whore’s bag of experi-
ence” (111–112). Back in his dark, cluttered room
in Manhattan, Charles again contemplates the
“Why of my life, the meaning” (116). Finding no
green light at the end of the novel, Charles decides
to leave New York to continue his Sisyphean jour-
ney. Lawrence Hogue argues that, given Charles’s
growing awareness of his loneliness, The Messenger
is fundamentally an existentialist novel that moves
beyond the black/white binary critical model often
used to examine and assess the African-American
literary text.
After the success of The Messenger, however,
Wright’s next novel, The Wig (1966), which he
wrote in 29 days, was not well received. Lester Jef-
ferson, the protagonist of The Wig, like Charles in
The Messenger, is a black male questing after the
American dream. In his attempt to better his con-
dition in modern New York, he has unsuccessfully
assumed every imaginable charlatan mask. Failing,
he designs a master disguise to improve his chances
by straightening (conking) his hair to end up with
“good hair”—hair that approximates the straight
hair of white Americans rather than “kinky” hair
associated with African Americans.
With his new, smooth-haired identity, Les-
ter was “reborn, purified, anointed, beautified”
(The Wig, 141). His new wig (slang for hair), he
is convinced, “is going to see me through these
troubled times” (143). Although Lester tempo-
rarily succeeds in getting his all-American girl (a
prostitute named the Deb who is in love with his
“good hair”), and although he lands a high-paying
job—his avenue to The Great Society although he
has to don a chicken costume and crawl around
on all fours shouting, “Cock-a-doodle-doo....Wright, Charles Stevenson 563