Editorial
Letter to the Editor from Greg Thomas ’85
By Greg Thomas ’85
March 31, 2016
Tags letter to the editor
I commend Jake Altman-DeSole for an excellent summary of my presentation, “Albert Murray and the Blues Idiom Worldview,” in the Feb. 25, 2016 issue of The Spectator. He did a fine job, with one exception.
Unfortunately, he mis-characterizes a passing reference I made in the lecture portion of the presentation.
In The Hero and the Blues, Murray critiques Richard Wright’s Native Son not only for the manner in which he generalized about black American behavior via the Bigger Thomas character, but because of its “assumption about the nature of human nature as a whole: People who are forced to live in subhuman conditions develop subhuman traits; they react subhumanly and become bad through no fault of their own.”
Mr. Altman-DeSole attributed the point above to me, however the quote from Murray continues: “That many do is cause for alarm, of course, but the generalization is fallacious and misleading nonetheless. Most do not! Many, by one means or another maintain a level of conduct which is quite as normal as that of people in normal circumstances--and so achieve another glory for humanity.”
Albert Murray’s blues idiom hero doesn’t exhibit subhuman traits, he or she overcomes harsh social conditions with elegance, excellence, eloquence, and improvisational skill. That’s a more accurate depiction of the blues idiom worldview, a model not for pity or condescension but, rather, for admiration and emulation.
All best,
Greg Thomas ’85