David Bradley - A Eulogy for Nigger and Other Essays

The word essay is an invitation to try regardless of the subject to state facts with not only accuracy but irony; to not only express ideas but show those ideas developing; to argue not only with logic but with narrative; to do it all at the same time; to, above all, say what needs to be said.

David Bradley

The essay hearkens back to the very root of the word essayer. It involves trying, sometimes failing, but always exploring. Jennifer Kabat

By freeing the mind to wander aimlessly, the essay can attain an intricacy and precision that eludes more linear forms. It discovers unsuspected affinities and connections between disparate phenomena only because it isnt trying toohard to find them. Josh Cohen

C hairing a panel discussion on the essay at Kings Place earlier this year, I suggested (to start some hares) that this was the dominant literary form of our age, since a blog is a sort of essay, and so is a review, and so are newspaper columns. Obituaries, editorials, essays all. Michael Ignatieff, on my right, spoke up for a stricter, more classical definition of what an essay should be, saying that none of the forms of writing I had mentioned qualified in his eyes and as the winner of the 2013 Prize he had authority, and to spare. Phillip Lopate on my left made claims for the tradition of the personal essay, not easily distinguishable from memoir and sometimes fiercely confessional, which he sees as more American than British.

Part of the essays vitality is its openness to hybridisation. Essays can share a border with journalism, with philosophy, with aesthetics, with travel writing. As anybody who has read E. B. Whites Farewell My Lovely! will know, it can even have elements in common with the consumer review. Whites essay, published in 1936, pays tribute to the virtues and foibles of the Model T Ford, and gives a strong sense of the vehicles personality. If it strikes you as odd to imagine a machine as having a personality then you have perhaps forgotten passages like this:

The trick was to leave the ignition switch off, proceed to the animals head, pull the choke (which was a little wire protruding through the radiator), and give the crank two or three nonchalant upward lifts. Then, whistling as though thinking about something else, you would saunter back to the drivers cabin, turn the ignition on, return to the crank, and this time, catching it on the down stroke, give it a quick spin with plenty of That. If this procedure was followed, the engine almost always responded first with a few scattered explosions, then with a tumultuous gunfire, which you checked by racing around to the drivers seat and retarding the throttle. Often, if the emergency brake hadnt been pulled all the way back, the car advanced on you the instant the first explosion occurred and you would hold it back by leaning your weight against it. I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket.

If What Car? was more like that Id subscribe.

The three of us on the panel at Kings Place were judges of this years award, joined in our deliberations by Eileen Battersby and Raymond Tallis, though deliberations is a misleadingly solemn word for a lively process. There were also readers whose job was to prepare a long list. In a fit of self-importance (whats the point of being a chairman of judges if you cant throw your weight around?) I proposed to circulate some criteria to help them. They should be on the lookout for something open-ended and undogmatic, enquiries in the spirit of Montaignes motto Que sais-je? from writers who understand that what matters is not just what we see but how we see it, so that a straight oar looks bent in the water (the example, again, is Montaignes). They would take an idea for a walk just to see where they ended up but then, with the return of common sense, I realised that it was silly to be dogmatising about the importance of being undogmatic.

The surprise of this years submissions, for me and perhaps for other judges also, was the presence of strong emotion, sometimes raw and sometimes shrewdly processed, in a number of successful entries, though the essay is assumed to be a temperate literary form, aspiring to balance and synthesis rather than anything more impassioned. This is true above all of the winning essay, which featured on every judges shortlist, and delivers a thoroughly disconcerting reading experience, richly mischievous, subtle in its anger.

DETROIT. Hundreds of onlookers cheered as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People put to rest a long-standing expression of racism by holding a public burial for the N-word Two Percheron horses pulled a pine box adorned with a black ribbon printed with a derivation of the word. The coffin is to be placed at historically black Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery.

Associated Press, July 9, 2007

I live in the un-LA part of Southern California; Im a little out of the loop. I didnt know about the five-oh beat-down on Rodney King until the video went viral, and was unaware of the jurys verdict until I smelled smoke. By the time I heard about the Low-Speed Chase, OJs Bronco was back in Brentwood, although I was well aware of that verdict; I heard Nancy Grace squealing like a skewered shoat all the way from New York City. Normally, this 411-lag does not bother me; at my age, it seems most news is just old news, recycled and repainted, but in the original color scheme. But word of Niggers burial shocked me. I hadnt known Nigger was even sick.

In hindsight, I see symptoms that Nigger was ailing. The U.S. Geological Survey started changing the names of local landmarks to get Nigger off the maps way back in 62. In 79, Richard Pryor declared he would speak Niggers name no more. In 88, Jesse Jackson said the Americans formerly known as black should be called African Americans, to shift the definition from the racial description to a cultural and ethnic identity. In 91, Niggaz Wit Attitude decided they werent Niggaz4Life; now they were N.W.A.

Still, thered been no change in Niggers vital signs. Unemployment for black excuse me, African Americans was still twice as high as it was for non-African Americans. The median income of African American families was still only 61 percent of that of non-African American families. African Americans still lead in all Department of Justice statistical categories arrests, convictions, length of sentence, being stopped-and-frisked, also being shot to death multiple times.

But thats no excuse. Nigger had been my mentor; I should have kept in closer touch. Especially after the Pryor thing. You wouldnt know it from listening to the Colored People, but Nigger was quite a comedian; he wrote half of Richards jokes. Richard used to say Nigger gave him strength, let him rise above. Calling Niggers name was like a preacher singing hallelujah Richards words, not mine. But then he goes to Africa with white honky bitch again, his words, not mine and comes back saying hes sorry he ever spoke Niggers name. That had to hurt Nigger, not that he would have shown it. But I bet he said a few choice words about Richards mama, whom Nigger knew quite frequently.

Perhaps I should not criticize; it was I who was neglectful. But the way the Colored People buried Nigger made me irate. They did not even pretend to hold a wake, though, as everybody knows, Nigger loved a good time, especially when it was just us chickens. Hed take whatever was on hand, cook it down, spice it up, and serve it on a paper plate like it was on china at the Ritz. Then hed bring out the libation and well, let me put it this way: Jesus needed water; Nigger could make wine from anything. Then hed get out his guitar. Some said the Devil did the tuning, but it was Nigger whod wring the blues out of that old six-string, even with two strings broke. Maybe the Colored People were afraid to have a wake; even dead, Nigger would have been the life of that party.