The Man Who Lived Underground: The ‘gripping’ New York Times Bestseller

Product Information

Fred’s escape underground, however, soon yields new problems. Shortly after his descent, a stream of sewage water threatens to sweep him away. After narrowly avoiding the peril, Fred contemplates the subterranean dangers he now faces—disease, drowning, a gas leak. “He should leave, but an irrational notion made him remain.” Rather than risk being arrested and incarcerated, Fred decides to stay underground and fend for his survival there. 17 There is a strong existentialist and nihilistic bent to the character of Fred once he is underground and no longer within the grasp of society. The injustice he experiences forces him to question his morals, his values, his perception of what is valuable in the world and his religion. As a historical note, torture (the “third degree”) was an acceptable method to coerce police confessions through the mid-1930s until it was outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1936 in Brown v. Mississippi.

In his next visit, Daniels comes on a movie theater. Like the embalming room, this place offers him a boon—sandwiches belonging to an old man working in the coal bin, as well as more tools for his effort to transform the cave into his lodging. as a clash between God and the devil, but as Wright was speaking—after the London Blitz but before the bombing of Pearl Harbor—America’s potentialFinally, this devastatinginquiryinto oppression and delusion, this timelesstour de force, emerges in full,the work Wright was most passionate about, as he explains in the profoundly illuminating essay, ‘Memories of My Grandmother,’ also published here for the first time.This blazing literary meteor should land in every collection.” There is an extended essay included with the novel entitled “Memories of My Grandmother” that enables our appalled eyes to see where so much of the story we've just read originated. The fact that Christian religion played such a big role in Wright's formation into a man capable of the kind of wordsmithing he does isn't a big surprise. I'm very grateful that the author's daughter required the essay to be published within the book containing the novel...it's a long piece and, even if you're on the fence about reading the novel, I hope you'll consider procuring it to read the essay alone. It is a marvelous explication of how each generation forms the next, for good and ill. Fred Daniels is an honest upright man. He is a husband and soon-to-be father. Then one day he is rustled up by the cops and accused of a crime he did not commit. He is beaten, brutalized and forced to sign a confession. When he sees his chance he escapes and runs underground. Down in the darkness he is able to see more as a man apart from the world.

Before Ralph Ellison’s unnamed narrator took residence beneath the surface of the world in Invisible Man, there was Fred Daniels—the protagonist of Richard Wright’s long-awaited novel, The Man Who Lived Underground . The tragic tale of Daniels was borne from a lifetime of experiences, which Wright explains in the accompanying essay, “Memories of My Grandmother.” Wright’s love of “invisible man” films, his grandmother’s intense expression of her religion, Negro folk art, and the harsh reality of racism in America culminated into a work that, put mildly, he felt was his most purely inspired. The next stop—at a radio shop—provides him with a radio for his new abode. Daniels hooks it up in his cave, expecting to hear music that will soothe him as he pauses from his frenetic adventures. Instead, he hears a catalog of news events, all of which suggest the irrationality of a world of war and destruction and hatred. Daniels adds this information to his growing sense of himself and the world he has momentarily left, not behind him, but above him. Though his job survived the early years of the Depression, his position was eliminated in 1931, and Wright went on relief. The next year, he began attending meetings of the local John Reed Club, a literary offshoot of the Communist Party. In time he became a party member and worked with the Federal Writers’ Project. In 1938, he published a short story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children, and two years later he published the novel for which he is best known: Native Son. It was in the midst of this period of early success, when Wright was a member of the Communist Party and still close to the days of his impoverished childhood, that he wrote The Man Who Lived Underground. 8 As I listened to this audiobook, I kept thinking that it was important to have this published. However, I wasn’t enjoying it very much. I preferred the parts of the story that bookended Fred’s time underground. This was previously published as a short story and maybe I would have liked that more. Included in the audiobook, and ebook, is an essay titled “Memories of my Grandmother” which ties certain of the author’s experiences to the book. I can’t say that the essay helped me much. Comments like Quinn’s, along with the cuts made to the novel, suggest that editors and publishers were uncomfortable with the original book’s subject matter and tone, John Kulka, the editorial director of Library of America, said in an interview.

Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Propulsive, haunting. . . . The graphic, gripping book ends with a revealing companion essay that further explains the themes of this searing novel.”— Oprah Daily His nihilism in feeling that everything is right (or basically that there is no such thing as what’s “right”) is driven by the injustice he has experienced. It forces him to think about god or why people would would believe in a god, since he no longer does. When everyone leaves, Fred goes in through the holes he’s tunneled through and opens the safe to take the money. He also finally looks around and sees that he’s in a real estate and insurance office. As he looks around, he also sees the typewriter and decides to take that as well.

To read The Man Who Lived Underground today . . . is to recognize an author who knew his work could be shelved for decades without depreciation. Because this is America. Because police misconduct, to use the genteel 2021 term, is ageless." — Chicago Tribune The memory of his religious convictions reminds him of his ties to the world. He feels a responsibility to save the other people by doing something to alert others to the truths he has learned.Finally, this devastatinginquiryinto oppression and delusion, this timelesstour de force, emerges in full,the work Wright was most passionate about, as he explains in the profoundly illuminating essay, 'Memories of My Grandmother,' also published here for the first time.This blazing literary meteor should land in every collection."— Booklist (starred review) Fred repeatedly insists on his innocence and pleads to be let go so he can return to his pregnant wife, Rachel, but the beating continues and he eventually passes out. When Fred comes to, the cops beat him unconscious again. When he wakes up a second time, the district attorney is present. He tells Fred that he can see his wife if he signs a typed confession. “Yes, all he had to do was write his name and they would take him home, home to Rachel…. Elation seized him,” Wright tells us; “truly, he felt nothing important could come from his signing his name to that splash of white that danced before his eyes.” Though Fred finally agrees, he has been beaten too savagely to control his body: The DA has to take his hand and guide it so he can sign the paper. 12 The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any ‘greatest writers of the 20 th century’ list that doesn’t start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright’s most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book.” Kiese Laymon These two dreams tell us a lot about Fred’s state of mind at this point. He is deeply fearful of the police, and he is relieved to be seen as dead or something fearful if it means being left alone. Mentally, he has separated himself from “the world that had rejected him”. The incident with the police showed him that he had no place in that world.