The Norton Anthology of African American Literature

ALTHOUGH anthologies of black American writing have been published by the score over the last 150 years, this enormous tome is sure to attract attention, because of the authority of the "Norton Anthology" brand name and the celebrity of co-editor Henry Louis Gates Jr. The multitalented Mr. Gates is a master political operator in the growth industry of multicultural studies, an impressive researcher into the history of black literature, and a graceful writer for general audiences.

Robert Conquest once observed that professors tend to be most conservative about their own area of expertise. Thus, Mr. Gates proclaims that his anthology defines the "canon" of the "best" African-American writing, even though these are normally fighting words within cutting-edge English departments. Lesser multiculturalists disparage the very notion of objective merit. They contend that literary canons are assembled to further the interests of the powerful, and that celebrating artistic excellence instead of social relevance "marginalizes" the poor.

To my surprise, this book heightened my respect for these philistine cliches of the academic Left. In truth, canons are created by and for self-interested elites -- but there are many elites besides that all-purpose bogeyman, the White Male Power Structure. The Nile-like length of this book, for example, benefits its editors and other professors of African-American literature. By "canonizing" 120 writers (at least a quarter of whom are decent but quite dispensable) they have legitimized a vast supply of subject matter to stoke their specialty's publish-or-perish fires for years to come. In contrast, Gates & Co. were much more cavalier about the needs of those who will try to read their book. To squeeze 2,709 pages into a size that coeds would find "comfortably portable" (or, let's be frank, tolerably luggable), they had to specify paper of a thinness (and consequent transparency) seldom seen outside European public lavatories. Because you can see right through to the type on the other side of each page, stay close to a strong reading lamp and a bottle of aspirin.

Mr. Gates defends his old-fashioned philosophy of meritocratic selections as necessary to disprove theories of black intellectual inferiority. (Why this logic should not also rule out other forms of affirmative action remains unexplained.) Of course, no anthology, nor anything else, could prove that any two groups are equal in all ways, since this current dogma of uniform equality is simply not true: human beings possess, in varying degrees, so many different skills that any non-random group is bound to be inferior on average to any other group in some manner. Indeed, this anthology reconfirms the inferiority of white Americans in certain mental talents. The most interesting black artists have not tried to demonstrate equality with whites through redundant me-too works. Instead, they have pioneered new forms, from ragtime to rap, that whites would never have dreamed of.

So where does African-American literature rank? Its leading figures are certainly impressive. My personal favorites include turn-of-the-century man of letters James Weldon Johnson, poet Langston Hughes, dramatist August Wilson, and the delightful right-wing memoirist Zora Neale Hurston. Nevertheless, in the hierarchy of black achievement, literature would still have to fall somewhere in the vast middle ground, below the realms where blacks are world-conquering (e.g., music) and above those where they have yet to make much of a mark (e.g., high-tech entrepreneurship).

In contrast, the editors view the current state of black literature triumphantly, citing novelist Toni Morrison's 1993 Nobel Prize, a 1994 Atlantic cover story that claimed that blacks have replaced Jews as the leading "public intellectuals," and the burgeoning number of African-American Studies programs. Yet, black writers remain far rarer than their abundant publicity would imply: they account for only 0.4 per cent of professional authors. The explanation of this paradox is that blacks dominate one particular topic -- Being Black in America -- which might be the juiciest subject of our era. In contrast, they don't yet publish much on other themes. Notice that you almost never find yourself saying: "Gee, I didn't know that writer was black." The only author in the anthology that I was surprised to learn was black was science-fiction novelist Samuel R. Delany.

Specializing in blackness offers many advantages to black writers. Nonetheless, some disquieting trends are apparent in the final section showcasing 35 current authors: 1) Black writers are increasingly employed by universities, often in teaching poetry-writing workshops and other notorious pyramid schemes. While these are acceptable diversions for wealthy white students, there are obvious ethical questions about attempting to lure smart black kids into making disastrous career choices, such as writing poetry.