Review of The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

A posthumously published novel by Wright, who told this story in his collection Eight Men.

The expanded version is full of pathos and rage. Injustice in America was nowhere better elaborated than this author’s poignant works.
This makes for a great shorter foray into the awful relations between races at this time. Like his protagonists in Outsider and Native Son, Wright takes a Dostoyevskian view toward crime. The commission of crime seems to entail a poisoning of the soul. Guilt is excruciating. But as the author details in his breathtaking afterward, the strained innocence of his protagonist and his subsequent desperation are a direct product of a sort of inherited guilt, a put-upon guilt, a construct of society capable of physically destroying a person.
In short, this is a tale of a wrongly accused man who lives underground briefly, pulling off absurd though ultimately unrecognized revenge from the shadows because there was only one fate waiting for him from the beginning, the fate he was doomed to suffer as a result of arbitrary factors inherent in society.
A powerful and heart-wrenching and absorbing tale which is slightly overshadowed by his 2 masterpieces. Obviously worth reading for his unadorned portrayal of hatred and despair, and the surprising essay included in the addition, which greatly enhances the reading experience.