Word: blacks
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With resignation rather than fury, he decides to try "a wee bit of Mao" and hires a professional killer to assassinate the killer-policeman. It is as if nothing less than a brutal act of violence will keep him awake-as if, in fact, all Americans, both black and white, are frozen in various sleepwalking postures from which only further atrocity can hope to rouse them...
Williams is as devastating on hypocritical blacks as on complacent whites. While Browning tours the country fund raising for his organization, Williams acid-etches his caricatures: the moneyed Ebony set, keeping up with the black Joneses; solemn costume wearers, going "the African route"; showbiz swingers, balling their way to integration-by-orgy; militants with the Che Guevara slogans and a handy barracks in the California hills...
...Williams' account, all suffer from role fatigue-the sort of exhaustion afflicting actors in a play that has run too long. One of the whites says: "I think I am very tired of being a Jew." Williams, clearly, is very tired of being a black. He seems to assume that his characters, whether they know it or not, are stifled as much by the kind of ennui that immobilizes men trapped in situations they cannot control as by the terror of their predicament...
...civilization's triumph over rude nature, and turn it upside down. In this position Crusoe's diligence, rationality, racial pride and Christian ethics-the very qualities that in Defoe's handling ensured Crusoe's survival-get lost while Crusoe accepts the "primitive" values of his black manservant. Call the book Friday to make the irony unmistakable. So much for Western civilization...
...them off with gunpowder and English pluck, names the captive Friday, and sets about turning him into a proper British slave. He succeeds to the extent that Friday learns English and performs complicated chores. But the Negro-Indian half-caste will go no further; he refuses to be a black Englishman. Although he is tireless, he is not diligent. He is clever, but not rational. For him, the Church of England, punitive ditch digging and goatskin trousers are merely the mystifying apparatus of Crusoe's games. At last, Crusoe realizes that Friday's instincts may be more sensible...