“Conduction”
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
from the June 10 & 17, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
It’s always great to welcome in the summer with the annual New Yorker fiction issue. This year’s issue features three pieces, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Conduction.”
While the other two authors featured in this issue are unknown to me (and I suspect many out there), Ta-Nehisi Coates is not. His journalism has been an important part of the last decade in America, and his epistolary Between the World and Me was a deservedly acclaimed book that is just as important to read now as it was four years ago when it came out.
Here we have an excerpt from his forthcoming debut novel, The Water Dancer, which will surely be a hit when it arrives in September. I personally cannot wait. Coates is a great writer, and that shows in this opening to “Conduction,” where he gives his narrator an intelligent and appropriately nineteenth-century voice:
I departed Virginia with few effects to my name and no real farewells, on a hot summer Monday morning, four months after I had run from Lockless, the plantation of my birth, the plantation of my father. And, though I knew that I would be, somehow, called back there, it was for now behind me—along with the crimes of my father, the slave-catchers known as Ryland’s Hounds, and the spectre of my dancing mother, whom I could barely remember, a void in me that I knew was somehow tied to her sale. I walked most of that day and spent the night in the small farmhouse of an old widower sympathetic to the cause. Then, on Tuesday, I set out for the town of Clarksburg, where the first leg of my train journey would commence.
The plan was to cross through Virginia by the North West Virginia Railroad and then, once in Maryland, link up with the Baltimore & Ohio and proceed east and north up into the free lands of Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia. There was a shorter route, due north, but there had been some recent troubles with Ryland along the rail there, and it was felt that the audacity of this approach, right through the slave port of Baltimore, would not be expected. When I reached the Clarksburg station, I spotted Hawkins and Bland sitting beneath a red awning, where a flock of blackbirds perched. Hawkins was fanning himself with his hat. Bland was looking down the track, in the opposite direction from where the train would approach. We all made sure to take no note of one another.
While I’m usually against excerpts, I’m definitely going to read this one. The author and the taste I got compel me to.
So what do you think of the story? Does it encourage you to read the book?
I have read some of Coates’ non-fiction. That made me curious enough to read this excerpt, even though it is an excerpt. Overall it was not bad, but ultimately it did not make me particularly curious to read the rest of the book. In the early part of the piece Coates falls int a trap of seeming more like he is describing the story to someone than telling the story. As an essayist, this is a more natural voice for him, but it does not work in fiction. The excerpt did not really stand alone as a whole story, so it was not a particularly satisfying read in that regard.
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One very minor thing that I found quite odd was the name of the main character – Hiram Walker. As soon as I heard the name I wondered if there was an intended connection to the famous distiller. I looked it up and the actual Hiram Walker was born in 1816 and started his distillery in Detroit in 1858, which places it in the right era for the story. But there is nothing in the story that seems to make a connection (and the fictional Hiram Walker of the story is an escaped slave while the distiller was white). If there is no actual connection, it’s an odd choice to give the character that name. But if there is a connection, it’s odd to read a piece that gives no hint as to what that might be.
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One thing I wonder about Coates’ book (The Water Dancer) when it comes out is whether the success of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad might hurt it by comparison. Whitehead’s book has, according Literary Hub, won more different major awards than any other book ever (4, including the Pulitzer and the National Book Award). It might get overlooked if it is seen as another book about the same subject with magical elements added. The comparisons to Whitehead are almost inevitable and will be a hard standard to measure up to.
I just finished reading this haunting story about the irreparable damage slavery can inflict. I was deeply moved.
With respect to name choosing for the story, I wonder why the author chose Ryland, which is a beloved family name to me. The Virginia Rylands were and still are small farmers, educators and ministers, venerable and quite the opposite of the fictional family as portrayed in this piece. In general, authors should think about the consequences of their picking a name “out of a hat” for all the world to judge.
Edward Ayers, well known Civil War historian, published an important article about Robert Ryland which Coates should read: https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1131&context=history-faculty-publications. Perhaps if the story is later incorporated in a book, he will be wise enough to change the name of “Ryland’s Hounds” into something more historically accurate. This is not a trivial matter.
Cate, Coates did not pull the name “Ryland” out of a hat. He is making a reference to actual historical fact. Here is an excerpt from an account given by Martha Robinson about travelling to Richmond to escape from slavery in the early 1860s:
It was about eight o’clock when we started. Along about twelve we heard the yelping of blood-hounds. My poor heart started jumping as the sound neared and neared. I knew every minute that we would be caught and carried back, but Uncle Jack kept saying, “Dem’s Ryland’s hounds; I’ve outdistanced them before and I’ll outdistance them this time.”
David said this story reads more like the author is describing a story rather than telling a story. That’s what I felt as well.
But the “telling” doesn’t work for me either. It takes me out of the story. I didn’t feel immersed in what was happening to the character(s). It felt like it was being told NOW, which is odd, of course, because it’s set in the mid 1800s I suppose.
I also immediately thought of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead which might phase the minds of more than a few readers. I don’t think Coates’ use of language holds up to Whitehead’s, but maybe that’s more a personal taste in writing style.
Clearly Coates is a good writer but this excerpt didn’t catch me.
The Water Dancer employs elements of Magical Realism. Indeed, the entire notion of Conduction is somewhat in the vein of Toni Morrison in Beloved or Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Water Dancer, while revisiting the same historical moment of the Underground Railroad is nothing like Whitehead’s book. They are only superficially comparable. Read the entire novel before passing judgement.
In general, that’s a fair point, Alan, but there are two reasons I’d say that’s not the case here:
1) The comment you’re responding to was written before the entire novel was published.
2) The comment was written to respond to the excerpt itself, so I think it’s fair for readers to talk about what the excerpt is without referring to the novel. Since these excerpts are published in large part to build an appetite for the novel, I want people to be able to judge them.
Of course it’s great when someone comes after reading the novel to point out where first impressions were off. Because of that, I’m very glad you pointed out the differences, as I still haven’t read The Water Dancer but would like to.
Fair point Trevor. That raises the difficult question as to whether The New Yorker or any other respected source for fiction should publish a fragment of a novel if it can’t stand on it own merits as a short story. Do you think this excerpt lacks a satisfactory sense of closure?
Many authors describe a story instead of telling one. In my opinion, this style of fiction writing is, in my opinion, only moderately successful. I did go on to read The Water Dancer in full. I felt I had given it my best attention, but like with most Magical Realism works, I felt toyed with.