Action takes place on the eve of the Rights movement but it forecasts the chaos which would come later. This is a reversal of expectations to consider inasmuch as it reaches beyond the frame of the fiction. This looks forward to the reassertion of the Klan and the terrible, adolescent me-ism of the ‘70’s. (139/5)
One of the main tasks is to dramatize the theories which lead to the unleashing of violence. This should come during an earlier period—but not too early—when the Senator discusses the problem of power with an ambitious white southern politician who sees that he can never become president of the U.S. This frustration increases when he observes another southerner change and become pro-Negro and thus move toward a wider acceptability as possible nominee … (140/2)
Make Washington function in Hickman’s mind as a place of power and mystery, frustration and possibility. It is historical, it is the past, it is slavery, the Emancipation and a continuation of the betrayal of Reconstruction. He would have to imagine or try to imagine what Bliss knew about the city and its structure of power. He would wonder how, given his early background, Bliss could have gone so far in the gaining and manipulation of power, the juxtapositions of experience and intelligence which allowed him to make his way. (139/4)
If it were a jam session all would start from single incident then proceed to give their own versions. This would allow for extremes of variation while based upon the basic themes, but the ‘truth’ would remain in the minds of Hickman and Bliss (not Sunraider). // What the white woman gives Hickman is a promise—a descendent of slaves is entrusted with the future and must train the future out of the limitations imposed by his experience. (138/5)
Looking back it seems that three people were involved. A woman, a politician and a preacher. And yet that leaves out many others, and especially the young man who brought down the intricate structure of time and emotion, the joker, the wild card. The unexpected emotional agent of chaos. But even so, this leaves out another woman, long dead, and by her own hand, and the earlier metamorphosis of the man who was responsible and who later paid for his willfulness with his life and who thus was exposed for what he was and for who and what he had been. [Editors’ Note: Written on postmarked envelope dated March 24, 1977; Ellison has sketched an American flag in the middle of the note.] (138/2)
Important Note//Hickman and contingent arrive in Washington, attracting attention by their number and dress and the fact that they arrive in a chartered plane and are obviously in a hurry and on a mission of some kind. There would be an advantage in plunging the reader immediately into the mind of Hickman since the issues motivating their arrival could be presented directly and in the fragmented details in which they’d be presented in his mind. Janey’s warning letter would play a part in this, as would his memories of Bliss and his regret and bewilderment over what the boy had become. The other advantage would lie in the opportunity to play upon the tension implicit in the unsuccessful quest as it builds from home to frustration through its cycles of purpose, passion, through partial perception to a realignment of purpose leading to other degrees of passion to different orders of perception-frustration. The assumption here is that McIntyre would be eliminated along with the forms of irony his consciousness provides. // What must be considered here is the advantage of approaching the group from outside, which would prepare the reader for the mystery of experience, background and purpose that the group embodies. They must retain their strangeness—So perhaps the best strategy is to proceed as begun but with earlier shift to the dramatic mode centered in Hickman’s point of view. Concentrate on scene. (140/2)
Note // Hickman // He is intelligent but untrained in theology. Skilled with words, he reads and mixes his diction as required by his audience. He is also an artist in the deeper sense and [h]as actually been a jazz musician. He has been a ladies’ man, but this ceased when he became a preacher. Devout and serious, he is unable to forget his old, profane way of speaking and of thinking of experience. Vernacular term[s] and phrases bloom in his mind even as he corrects them with more pious formulations. In other words he is of mixed culture and frequently formulates the sacred in profane terms—at least within his mind. Orally he checks himself. // He has been a great gambler and although never a drunkard, he has known the uses of alcohol. // Dramatize the matter of culture variations that are possible for one of his background. He is of a unique combination that has gone unaccounted for by sociology. He is without formal training but of keen intelligence, an intelligence which he hides behind his personal and group idiom. He has his own unique way of looking at the U.S. and is much concerned with the meaning of history. There is mysticism involved in his hope for the boy, and an attempt to transcend the hopelessness of racism. After the horrors connected with or coincidental with his coming into possession of the child, he reverts to religion and in his despair begins to grope toward a plan. This involves bringing up the child in love and dedication in the hope that properly raised and trained the child’s color and features, his inner substance and his appearance would make it possible for him to enter into the wider affairs of the nation and work toward the betterment of his people and the moral health of the nation. (140/3)
Bliss realizes political and social weakness of Hickman and other Negroes when he’s taken from his coffin, and this becomes mixed with his yearning for a mother—whom he now identifies with the red headed woman who tried to snatch him from his coffin. Which was a symbol of resurrection in drama of redemption that Hickman has structured around it. But he goes seeking for life among whites, using the agency of racism to punish Negroes for being weak, and to achieve power of his own. As with many politicians politics is a drama in which he plays a role that doesn’t necessarily jibe with his own feelings. Nevertheless he feels humiliated by a fate that threw him among Negroes and deprived him of the satisfaction of knowing whether he is a Negro by blood or only by culture and upbringing. He tells himself that he hates Negroes but can’t deny his love for Hickman. Resents this too. // He is a man who sees the weakness in the way societal hierarchy has dealt with race and it is through the chink that he enters white society and exploits it. (140/6)
From 1956 Note Book // Blisses’ purpose (immediate) is to get money to carry him further west. Secondarily and psychologically, it is to manipulate possibility and identities of the townspeople and to take revenge upon his own life. And to play! He is the artist as child in this. // So the script, scenario, plot—must: 1) tie in with the larger plot, 2) must present the large writ small and in a variation, 3) it must provide townspeople opportunity to lose old identities for something less good and, 4) it must lead to chaos and to birth of Severen. (141/4)
Bliss Proteus Rhinehart returned to his part very much as a man to his mother or a dog to his vomit, and that’s no lie. The thing just happened that way and here he was, flickering before the eye like the film of a cinema camera gone wild. (140/6)
Bliss must sense that Hickman is coming. This is to occur in flashback when he reviews his sensations before the shooting. He hadn’t thought of Hickman for some time now, and eliminated him from his consciousness. But now, as his mind was distracted by some of the problems of the day, the figure of the big man strayed across the field of his consciousness, leaving him uneasy. He had contained guilt for a long time, had become disciplined to the task; power required it and it was human even manly to sustain the pain which arose through necessary action. (140/7)
Sunraider is not killed because he abandoned Severen’s mother, nor because of his overt political acts, but because he betrayed his past and thus provided Severen the deepest intellectual-emotional motives for murder. He’s murdered by way of proving that Severen was free of acceptance of whiteness which was source of Blisses confusion. (139/2)
One way of getting Wilhite more involved is to have him tell Hickman what Hickman knows deep within his own mind but refuses to acknowledge: that the Senator is beyond saving, and that the group knows this. They go along because they love Hickman and because there simply
has to be something on which they can pin their earthly hopes. // Consider the idea, if introduced in Hickman’s consciousness, should not be presented there in isolated completion; rather, it should be introduced with the voices of others who are central to the plot. It must battle with them, try to convince, anticipate or foreshadow. It should sound with the ideas of the others, and thus it should contain some impression of Wilhite, Bliss become the Senator, Janey, Severen, and certain of the members from the old days. It should also argue with McIntyre—which suggests that he will have come in contact with McIntyre before the shooting. If this is done, then the significant incidents will take on a richer meaning, and will themselves become parts of an intricate dialogue. Rockmore will himself have something significant to say about Hickman’s idea—which it refutes. Nor is there any reason why McIntyre’s dream sequence should be separate from central dialogue. In fact it is a dialogue which issues from McIntyre’s involvement in Hickman’s idea-quest. // But Severen remains the problem. Is he as assassin to be left out of it? Impossible. It is he who puts the whole idea to crucial testing. Therefore we must render his consciousness on the brink of the Senate incident. He must be aware of Hickman in Washington and Hickman must be aware that he is somewhere at large. But they will have met earlier. (140/3)
This man McIntyre is a modern reporter who goes around with a compact tape recorder which he uses instead of the regulation sheets of folded paper. He is thus able to come away with the exact dialogue, the exact words of the interviewee. He thus [is] able to report to Vannec in detail and to present McMillen’s story in transcription. He is no less confused by what he sees and hears but for once his is accurate. // One must keep to this device; it offers endless opportunities nevertheless, it is no explanation of how McMillen comes by his detailed memory or his ability to recall the action so completely. The answer here, of course, is that he remembers what he remembers, that he is telling the story to a group of white men and thus under psychological pressure to shape the story, to give it form in a way which eliminates that which he finds resistant, that which he fears is too loaded with taboo, and that which was insignificant to his sense of the facts. In short, McMillen is a story-teller and thus an artist. While McIntyre who has wanted to be an artist can only be a reporter because he is dominated by facts—and even then is without the insight which would raise the facts to broader significance. (140/4)
Hickman and Leroy // It seems that Leroy is telling Hickman about an initiation ritual in which the figure in his dark room is conducting. Thus the seven questions—or mistakes—have to do with a riddle. But in the street scene Leroy is putting Hickman through an initiation in which Leroy and his fantasies constitute the riddle. That riddle points to politics and thus to the complex meaning which lies in Hickman’s relationship with Sunraider. What is the secret knowledge which underlies all this craziness? (140/2)
Janey could reveal secret out of guilt; or, Oedipus-like, Severen could badger Love until Love tells him directly. Or someone could show Severen a snapshot of his mother and Bliss. This perhaps could be the owner of the movie house who has a collection of photographs taken of entertainers who had performed in theater. But by putting information together Severen learns enough to proceed to Washington. (139/4)
The burning of the Cadillac and Jessie Rockmore’s rejection of God are of the same substance. They represent a collapse of walls which kept despair within bounds. And while both are comic they are nevertheless tragic in what they imply for the nation. They should prepare us for the shooting. (140/6)
Rockmore is trying to say that what the president views [as] peace is actually the Civil War continued in the form of words and the manipulation of prejudices. // N.B. Try introducing Hickman and Wilhite immediately after McIntyre leaves the building. And this time it is he who leaves the door open. (RE 51, 9/14/93)
Rereading the Rockmore incident it appears that along with the car burning and the encounter with the senator’s secretary et al, trivial chaos is building to some kind of disaster. Each complaint—LeeWillie’s, the crossedeyed woman’s, Rockmore’s—are all concerned with serious matters that are not allowed to be viewed seriously. Lonnie Barnes, like A. B. McDonald is a fool who aspires to play a serious role in government. Sunraider is a trickster who plays a serious role, and perhaps it is he who is behind what’s happening. (139/6)
Ellison: Oh for God’s sake! I didn’t make the statement, Hickman made the statement. He was preaching a sermon about transformation; the recovery—the refusal—to be decimated by slavery. Besides, he was speaking as a Christian minister of the role of his religion in giving unity and a sense of hope to a people that had been deliberately deprived of continuity with their past and its traditions. (139/1)
THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN PLOTTING // The blue-print of the plot should contain scenes on a rising note of dramatic intensity, leading to the crisis and climax. // No scene within a story has value unless it develops conflict of at least a minor sort.
A………. Plot Idea.
B………. Sub-plot (stairs)
C………. Collateral Material: Characterization, atmosphere, motivation.
Use one chief character at a time.
Milk the sub-scenes for everything emotional and dramatic that is inherent in them.
Nota Bene: Remember that the sound of your machine, typewriter or computer, helps you work! Start it going, even if at random. (139/4)
TWO EARLY DRAFTS OF THE OPENING OF BOOK II
Editors’ Note: The surviving 4- and 11-page drafts of the opening of Book II are impossible to date precisely. The former opens the 185-page partial draft of Book II from which Ellison in 1959 culled and edited “And Hickman Arrives” for Saul Bellow’s journal, Noble Savage, published in 1960. Like the prologue to Book I, which became the opening of “And Hickman Arrives,” this early draft is spare and dramatic, focused keenly and single-mindedly on the immediate action of the assassination from the perspective of Senator Sunraider, aka Bliss, as he is struck down on the floor of the Senate.
The subsequent 11-page draft is undated. In its expanding themes and focus it lies between the earlier 4-page draft and the longer 24-page draft found in Book II. In it Ellison gives a taste of Sunraider’s somewhat florid and ambivalent speech, which is greatly expanded, to mixed effect, in the longest draft of Book II, published of the current volume (and also as chapter 2 of Juneteenth in 1999).
Considered together with the long opening of Book II published here, these drafts show Ellison’s growing purpose and his evolving concern with the Senator’s ambiguous political rhetoric.
I
[Circa 1959, the opening of a 185-page partial draft of Book II]
The Senator had no idea what struck him. He had been in the full-throated roar of his rhetoric, had moved beyond the mere meaning of his words onto that plane of verbal exhilaration for which he was notorious and, having placed his audience under the spell of his eloquence, had then decided in the capriciousness of his virtuosity to better the old Senate record for shattering the building’s window panes by the sheer resonance of the projected voice. It was then he saw the tall young man rising in the distant visitor’s gallery and leaning casually across the rail as though about to point out some detail of a scene to some still seated friend, pausing there in space, the light behind his head. And he thought, I’ve lost this one, he’s leaving. How can he escape me? Then as he continued in the full flow of his / suddenly pieces of glass / were bursting from the chandelier above him. My God! he thought, it’s the chandelier; I’ve shattered the chandelier! hearing the dry, popping sound even before he realized that he had been hit or that the man was shooting at him. Me, he thought. It’s come to me at last … with a silencer noiselessly, still standing, his arms outflung in rhetorical gesture, as something struck his side with the impact of a solid invisible club; then again, the right side this time, and he staggered backwards then forward, thinking, “I’m going … I’m …“and he knew it was important to retreat, to fall backwa
rds, but it was as though he was propped up and held by an invisible cable. Nor could he get his arms down, yet his eyes were recording with the impassive and precise inclusiveness of a motion picture camera thrown suddenly out of phase; the image of the remote man high there in the gallery above firing down at him as calmly as if he were shooting clay pigeons sailing from a trap on a remote shooting range; he could see the others, those on the floor and those around the man above, caught in their attitudes of surprise, disbelief or horror, turning slowly with puppet gestures, some rising, some looking at their neighbors, but none moving even now toward the calm man, who seemed as detached from his act and the rise and fall of his pistol arm as he was from the Senator. A silencer, he thought with awe. And the others are thrown out of stance. What breed of men are—who’s laying me low …? down …? who? When it was as though someone had dragged a poker at white heat straight down the center of his scalp and at last he felt himself going over backwards, crashing against a chair, thinking, Down and feeling something searing hot on the sole of his right foot and his mind spinning out of control even as he heard himself cry out words he knew should not be uttered but which he could no longer control: “Lord, Lawd!” he cried, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” his voice rising with hysterical shrillness like that of a Negro preacher who sounded in his practiced fervor somewhat like an accomplished actor shouting his lines. And as his words flew up he heard from far away a sound as of shattering glass, and even as he heard his voice begin its echoed return he was filled with a profound sense of self-betrayal as though stripped naked in the Senate. He had the sensation of perspiration bursting from his face like water from a suddenly activated sprinkler. Still trying to rise now he was gripped by the hot impression that somehow he was trying to fold a huge white circus tent into a packet while a playful wind kept blowing it out of his hands; listening all the time for he was waiting for his voice to ricochet back to him; and now he seemed to hear the words floating calmly down, “For thou had forsaken me …” But no longer his words nor his echoed voice and now he felt, hearing what sounded like singing, a sudden fear, thinking, No! No! and trying desperately to sit up, thinking, Hickman? But how? His voice? Hickman? Then the very idea that Hickman was there above him raised him up, clutching onto a chair, into a sitting position, trying to see clearly above him as now there came another shot, but this one he did not feel.
Three Days Before the Shooting . . . Page 149
