The Blue Period - (Thinking Literature) by Jesse McCarthy

About the Book

"To be a Black writer in the early years of the Cold War was to face a stark predicament. On the one hand, revolutionary Communism promised egalitarianism and lit the sparks of anticolonial struggle, but was hostile to conceptions of personal freedom. On the other hand, the great force opposing the Soviets at midcentury was itself the very fountainhead of racial prejudice, represented in the United States by Jim Crow. Jesse McCarthy argues that Black writers of this time were equally alienated from the left and the right and channeled that alienation into remarkable experiments in literary form. Embracing racial affect and interiority, they forged an aesthetic resistance premised on fierce dissent from both US racial liberalism and Soviet Communism. Ranging from the end of World War II to the rise of Black Power in the 1960s, from Richard Wright and James Baldwin to Gwendolyn Brooks and Paule Marshall and others, Jesse McCarthy shows how Black writers defined a distinctive moment in American literary culture that McCarthy calls "the Blue Period.""--

Book Synopsis

Addresses the political and aesthetic evolution of African American literature and its authors during the Cold War, an era McCarthy calls "the Blue Period."

In the years after World War II, to be a black writer was to face a stark predicament. The contest between the Soviet Union and the United States was a global one--an ideological battle that dominated almost every aspect of the cultural agenda. On the one hand was the Soviet Union, espousing revolutionary communism that promised egalitarianism while being hostile to conceptions of personal freedom. On the other hand was the United States, a country steeped in racial prejudice and the policies of Jim Crow.

Black writers of this time were equally alienated from the left and the right, Jesse McCarthy argues, and they channeled that alienation into remarkable experiments in literary form. Embracing racial affect and interiority, they forged an aesthetic resistance premised on fierce dissent from both US racial liberalism and Soviet communism. From the end of World War II to the rise of the Black Power movement in the 1960s, authors such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Paule Marshall defined a distinctive moment in American literary culture that McCarthy terms the Blue Period.

In McCarthy's hands, this notion of the Blue Period provides a fresh critical framework that challenges long-held disciplinary and archival assumptions. Black writers in the early Cold War went underground, McCarthy argues, not to depoliticize or liberalize their work, but to make it more radical--keeping alive affective commitments for a future time.

Review Quotes

"[McCarthy] encourages his readers to reimagine the geographical, political, and temporal scope of midcentury Black writers through the lens of a famous traditional color in Black music, 'the blue.' Critics, in his estimation, have lost sight of the 'strategic retreat' that he identifies across a variety of Black authors writing between 1945-1965. . . He untethers 'Blue Period' figures like James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and Richard Wright from the routine questions about their affiliations with communism or liberalism, claiming that this focus on whether or not these Black writers' works were either politically engaging or reactionary prevents critics from reimagining the 'radical political intent' demonstrated by Black writers of this era. . . . McCarthy collects all these writers as part of his jazz room that pulsates with underground rhythms. The Blue Period overall is outstanding, masterfully crafted, brilliantly written, and impeccably researched."-- "Critical Inquiry"

"In The Blue Period, Jesse McCarthy zooms in on Black authors who lived and wrote between 1945 and 1965 . . . Alongside Black painters and Black musicians, they produced ambiguous and emotional art that McCarthy calls 'blue.' It's an exciting new window into well-known writers like Ralph Ellison and Gwendolyn Brooks, and it offers a chance to rediscover forgotten figures like Vincent O. Carter. It's also a reminder that in our own period --one marked by distraction and information and a reflexive obsession with the present--the quaint act of thinking historically, of thinking periodically, remains valuable, even radical."-- "The Boston Globe"

"'Blue is the color of a flame at its hottest point, ' McCarthy reminds us, 'but also its most focused.' The same is true of this book. Over the course of five breathtaking, carefully argued chapters, McCarthy rereads canonical writers as well as less familiar ones, inscribing authors such as Vincent O. Carter and Paule Marshall as key figures in the black literary tradition. These writers' retreat to a physical and metaphorical underground was not a retreat from politics, according to McCarthy, but rather a voyage into the interior where a new, existential vantage point on political life and futurity becomes possible. In his lucid and engaging style, McCarthy combines subtle historicism with close reading and interdisciplinary insight. The result is a pathbreaking study--and robust defense--of African American literature of the era."-- "Vaughn Rasberry, Stanford University"

"McCarthy reckons with a generation of black writers just getting started in the 1950s who refused the partisan pressures of their Cold War context. James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Aimé Cesaire, and others, made an audacious retreat into the subtleties of the black interior, writing for a future they had no assurance would ever come. Considering the recent 'return of the prophet' Baldwin after decades of critical neglect, McCarthy's claim seems almost obvious--if it weren't for the fact that, before The Blue Period, we hadn't seen it. The Blue Period demonstrates what a clear-eyed and compelling literary history can do for us today--less to explain how readers might have understood the work at the time, more to offer access into what Reinhart Kosselleck called 'futures past.'"-- "Stephen Best, University of California, Berkeley"

About the Author

Jesse McCarthy is assistant professor of English and African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is the editor of the Norton Library edition of W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk and the first volume of Minor Notes, an anthology of African American poetry. He is also the author of Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? Essays, winner of the 2022 Whiting Award for Non-Fiction, and the novel The Fugitivities.