Native Son - Richard Wright [209]
On August 22, 1939, Aswell wrote to Wright: “And incidentally the Book Club wants to know whether, if they do choose Native Son, you would be willing to make some changes in that scene early in the book where Bigger and his friends are sitting in the moving picture theatre. I think you will recognize the scene I mean and will understand why the Book Club finds it objectionable. They are not a particularly squeamish crowd, but that scene, after all, is a bit on the raw side. I daresay you could revise it in a way to suggest what happens rather than to tell it explicitly.”
This scene, as contained in the typescripts, the Fales Collection proofs, and the bound set of proofs, was drastically altered for the published text. Wright rewrote the entire scene, making only passing reference to a newsreel and describing at length a feature film, The Gay Woman. In so doing, he eliminated all mention of Mary Dalton (who is featured in the newsreel in the original scene) and all references to masturbation. This change also required him to revise other passages further on, including the prosecutor’s speech at Bigger’s trial. Other changes were also requested: toning down explicit sexual language, altering details of plot, and shortening the speeches of Bigger’s lawyer and the district attorney. A few paragraphs were added, and some changes may have been made to avoid resetting long stretches of type. On September 28, 1939, Aswell wrote to Wright: “I have looked over your revisions, and they seem to me to take care of everything essential. I want, however, to look them over once more just to make sure that we haven’t missed anything. As for the question of Bigger’s articulateness at the end, it is my recollection that only one person questioned this, and that most of them had not noticed it in reading the book and did not attach great importance to it when it was pointed out. My hunch is to let it stand as you have it. There is no news as yet, but there may be shortly.” Later, on January 11, 1940, Aswell wrote in a letter to Wright, “We’ve had a cable from London that Gollancz will bring out an English edition. In this connection, you will be interested to know that Gollancz turned it down flatly when they reviewed the first uncorrected proofs. After you made the changes for the Book Club, we sent Gollancz a revised set, and this apparently made them change their minds and they accepted it.”
By January 1940, the Book-of-the-Month Club had decided to accept the novel. The changes requested by the book club had previously been incorporated into a new set of proofs, which Wright reviewed in November 1939. Native Son, with an introduction by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, was published on March 1, 1940, by Harper and Brothers and was a dual-selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. All subsequent editions used this revised text. In July 1940, Wright sent Aswell a list of three corrections to be made in later printings. These were not incorporated into the plates until late 1941 or early 1942. All have to do with Chicago geography: “Adams Street” becomes “Seventh Street” at 65:4 in this volume; “northward” becomes “westward” at 173:16; and “HALSTEAD” (a street name) becomes “HALSTED” at 255:33.
Because major alterations were made in Native Son as a consequence of the book club’s intervention in the publication process, the text of Native Son presented in this volume is that of the bound page proofs, which were sent to Book-of-the-Month Club in August 1939, and which are now held at the Beinecke Library (Zan W936 94C na) at Yale University. The three corrections Wright sent to Aswell in 1940 have been incorporated into the text. All changes in wording that Wright made between August 1939 and the publication of the first edition in 1940 are presented in the notes.
“How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” was delivered as a lecture on March 12, 1940, at Columbia University and was delivered again a few weeks later at the Schomberg Library in Harlem. Most of the text appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature for June 1, 1940, and a more condensed version was published in Negro Digest in the fall of 1940. The first complete printed text was published by Harper and Brothers as a separate 39-page pamphlet in August 1940. Harper and Brothers had intended to use the essay as an introduction to a special