As for the personal side of the novel, I like Rutherford I guess, although he’s unfortunately rather realistic in terms of average people and what happens to the downtrodden—not acting ‘the right way’ did Not begin in 1968–although he does have a nice hero’s journey and comes out okay. Actually at first the book didn’t quite take to me that well, in terms of ‘interest’, but now that I’m at the end I have to say that it’s quite pretty.

As for the social side and the big takeaway, I have to say that for me it’s that the pre-slavery Africans were Not benighted savages without culture or whatever. This book helped me to understand what I read in the “African American Heritage Hymnal”: “In much of American and Western history individuals for generations have been led to believe that the African humanity housed in the bowels of slave ships was a mass of ignorance, illiteracy, superstition, and madness. It was the work of a slave culture to transport all intrinsic and extrinsic wickedness of the slave trade, the slave masters, and the slave mistresses throughout the western world through contrived myths that would seek to partially exonerate the oppressors and miseducate the victims. This was partly successful. However, there are two quotes, often used by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Carlyle—“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again” and “No lie can live forever”—that demonstrate how the myths of the slave masters were exposed and vetoed. There is a European proverb that says: “Lies have short legs.” Eventually, truth will overtake falsehood. It might take an hour or two, or even a century or two. Therefore, there was in slave culture an inherent contradiction that would eventually contribute to its downfall. But the walls of tyranny do not fall gently.”

Or, more simply, the Allmuseri are pretty fracking cool, and they were cool a long time before they got kidnapped and smuggled into slave ships.

And it’s appropriate, you know, to see that, because Christ did not come to help us exploit people or lie to them, and I think in the future, in the good days of God, eventually people will have to see that the people of God do have links to the “primitive peoples” of the world, and that although all cultures are in a state of becoming and are not perfect, these cultures can be redeemed and have the kindness brought out of them, because they already have value, and not only the “classical” cultures that even and sometimes even especially were for European crusaders the One Thing, you know…. We will have to see that, if we do not want people to take the other horn of the dilemma and say, Christianity is not all “modern” and “rational” and, though we will not say so, “European”, and so it must be condemned so that people can become, not, in the main, indeed, *scientific* atheists who smugly explain that the abstract belief “God” is not “true” regardless of what it leads to, but, generally some sort of variation of the theme of buy-nice-things-materialists who are friendly and like their friends when they feel good, and believe in the God of holiday indulgences and other corporate guidelines as long as things work out for them.

But I did like the reference to the Odyssey, you know. —But at night, Black Penelope unweaves the Garment of Destiny….

…. …. Another theme in this book is the (antebellum) Black elite and Black slave-holders, something I’m also encountering in “A Black Women’s History of the United States”. Now, I am I guess a moderate, because I think that everyone has the ability to be heard, regardless of whether or not you’re a radical or a moderate, (although I guess if you were too deep into the politics of whiteness, this alone would make me a triple un-good radical), but obviously this has something to do with me being white. I feel some affinity with snobbish white people, as well as with the most unfortunate, and the former affinity would probably be less if I were Black. (Which doesn’t prove that I would then be better or truer, but you never know.) But anyway, certainly with the antebellum Black elite/Black slave-holders, you get the dangers of an amoral (or immoral) moderation. The Black slave-holders were following the logic of gradualism, the logic of the system, the logic of individualism! Surely, if both master and slave are Black—if a single Black person can make it in the slave-holding system, why, what then? (mad British cartoon scientist) What then, my boys?

Surely, they must be on to something, Professor! 😸🤪

But, you know—then there’s morality, right.

A story of a ship that leaves New Orleans for the west coast of Africa to pick up a load of kidnapped Allmuseiri who've been stolen to sell for slaves. It's told from the viewpoint of a man who stows away on the ship to escape marriage. A death-dealing storm on the way back home changes the plans or the rich men who commissioned the voyage. Vivid imagery.
I'm left with questions about what happened to the god on board? ( )

First, readers need to understand that this is not a narrative about the slave trade, any more than Moby Dick is about the whaling industry. Instead, it’s a rich and fascinating exploration of the human nature, class, race, religion, slavery, freedom, and – above all – the great American experiment … all couched in the lush seductive prose of a poet and scholar who has no compunction inviting philosophy, mythology, world literature, mathematics, and natural sciences to the party.

Though written over 30yrs ago, this story is also “woke” in ways that 1970s U.S. could never have appreciated and contains content that is unnervingly relevant to todays’ society. It’s almost as if Middle Passage has been sitting out there waiting for society to catch up with it.

Where to start? Perhaps with two of literature’s more fascinating characters: Rutherford Calhoun, a freed, African American bondsman and likeable rogue who finds himself unwittingly crewing a slave trading ship across the Middle Passage; and Captain Ebenezer Falcon, the larger-than-life, vain-glorious, sensualist, autodidact, goblin-like, scene-stealing captain of The Republic. Note the ship’s name, because on one level, this book is most definitely an exploration of the American Republic and the “Protestant ethic” upon which it is supposedly built. In both characters, Johnson cunningly juxtapositions all the things that we like to believe make Americans great – our work ethic, our self-taught genius, our unwavering faith in self-determination – with all the traits that simultaneously taint us: our unbound capitalist greed, our conviction of moral superiority. It’s no coincidence that the moment the ship (“parts of which are always being replaced, so that the ship that sets forth on the journey scarcely resembles the ship that arrives at the end of it” – get it?) finally flounders is when these two opposing forces become so incompatible that the whole system rips apart. A warning ... or a prediction?

Or wait – maybe this is a book about human nature? Johnson suggests this when he has Falcon warn us in advance: “The sea does things to your head, Calhoun, terrible unravelings of belief that aren’t in a cultured man’s metaphysic.” (And just in case you missed that allusion, Johnson adds an ACTUAL primitive God locked up in a box in the hold of the ship.) So it should come as no surprise that this is also an exploration of dual nature of humanity – our yearning for a collective utopia (“E Pluribus Unum – from many, one”) vs. our determined individualism; our belief in religious freedom vs. our practice of religious intolerance; our allegiance to free will even as we wield concepts like Manifest Destiny to justify slavery; our celebration of peace except when the most convenient way to establish peace is by waging war. Is it even possible for a species possessing so many "transcendental rifts" in their nature to live happy or just lives?

Or wait – maybe this is a book about slavery? A decent book club could spend the entire meeting just parsing the novel’s various views on racism – from the novel’s depiction of the Allmuseri as more civilized than the “civilization” set to enslave them (which, in turn, begs comparison with certain Native American cultures), to Falcon’s belief that “equal opportunity” is responsible for robbing blacks of the educational rigor they need to flourish, to Calhoun’s meditations on his own identity as a highly-educated, freed black American vs. the relationship he forms with Ngonyama and Baleka - there’s plenty of ground to cover.

But wait – are we sure this isn’t about politics? Because Falcon’s leadership dynamic – “Never explain; never apologize!” - has a sort of ripped-from-the-headlines feel about it, and there’s that scene where they use conditioning to train the ships’ dogs to loath the captain’s enemies, so that when the time comes, the captain knows he can always call on his dogs to faithfully protect him, regardless of morality, which reminds me of a certain President and his unquestioningly loyal followers ....

The truth, of course, is that the novel is all of these and more, all tied up in an unbelievably short, taut narrative stuffed with a cast of magnificently memorable grotesques, rousing sea adventure, outrageously funny anecdotes (dark but genuinely funny), madly creative set-pieces, and possibly some of the most vivid prose I’ve read in ages, efficient where it needs to be efficient (“Had [Cringle] been a woman … he’d be the kind who could do Leibnizian logic or Ptolemaic astronomy but hid the fact in order not to frighten off suitors; or, if a slave, one who could bend spoons with his mind but didn’t so white people wouldn’t get panicky”), funny where it needs to be funny (“Madame Marie Toulouse, a Creole who had spent her young womanhood as the mistress of first a banker, then a famous actor, a minister, and finally a mortician … [having] used the principle of
‘one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go’”), and evocative where it needs to be evocative (“… sitting on the rain-leached pier in heavy, liquescent air, in shimmering light so soft and opalescent that sunlight could not fully pierce the fine erotic mist, limpid and luminous at dusk …”).

Trust me, you won’t regret the time you spend reading this … or the time you then spend rereading large parts of it again (and possibly again) when you realize how much content you failed to understand or appreciate the first time through! ( )

Okay, I recognize that I am not as perceptive as some readers in understanding why an author takes certain approaches and uses certain techniques. I am bright enough to recognize what is being done most of the time, but not always able to determine why it is being done. This is the case with Middle Passage. For instance,

I recognize that the narrator's (Calhoun) voice is much different at the beginning of the story than in later journal entries. What I struggled with is that in the first few journal entries it felt like this individual was from the 1960's or 70's, not the 1830's. Also, Calhoun is very funny, glib, light-hearted in the early entries, but his tone better aligns with the events later in the story. This discrepancy seems odd since he did not begin writing the journal entries until later in the storyline.

I did not understand the existence of the Allmuseri's god below decks. What did he represent? What was he supposed to bring to the story? It brought an aspect of the mystical to a story that seemed like it would have been more powerful staying in the real-world.

Events in the plot seemed too convenient. The uprising by the Allmuseri's happened so closely to when the mutiny was to take place. Calhoun gets saved by a ship on which Papa and Isadora are passengers?

What are we to think of Calhoun? He provides the key to Ngonyama supposedly to help the Allmuseri's gain their freedom, but at other times he speaks highly of the reliance between he and his shipmates that is necessary to survive. He gives up the group of his shipmates including Cringle--a man he supposedly admires at some level, who are planning the mutiny, to Falcon--a man he supposedly detests. Clearly, Calhoun is confused about his allegiances. I am confused about what I can find to like or admire about the guy.

I recognize that Calhoun's ideas of what he wants from life and what freedom means to him changes as a result of his experiences, but then who wouldn't be transformed by what he survived?

I am sure at least some of my comments are my inability as a reader to measure up to the novel, but when there is this much that bothers me I tend to think it is not all me. ( )

A beautiful tale written by a gifted author. ( )