The Chaneysville Incident

THE CHANEYSVILLE INCIDENT

by David Bradley

 

Award: PEN/Faulkner Winner 1982

 

Nomination: National Book Finalist 1983, NY Times Finalist 1981

 

Date Read: September 9, 2020

 

The Chaneysville Incident is a powerful novel that addresses the history of slavery and the byproducts of racism in this country. John Washington, a historian, returns home to help his childhood mentor, who is gravely ill. While his mentor dies, John is confronted with the legacy of slavery that courses through his family’s history.

 

The interconnectedness of each character and the dire situations they are forced to confront are tragic and abominable. I will never understand how humans could justify owning other humans or how being owned would challenge any sane human’s sense of self. It boggles the mind, yet Bradley succeeds in offering a glimpse of a variety of ways to deal with these concepts.

 

John’s live-in girlfriend, Judith, eventually comes to John’s childhood home, even though he had expressly insisted she not. One of the aspects of this novel that I don’t understand is why Judith stays at his side, because John is bitter and treats her like shit. I also cannot fathom why John would be with a white woman, considering the justifiable contempt he holds for whites in general. This just makes no sense to me. Yet this is the contrivance for John relating all of this history. He attempts to explain it to her, while trying to make sense of it himself. Cozied up in a cabin with no indoor plumbing and a dirt floor, drinking toddies, the history of this particular area in Pennsylvania is divulged.

 

The second aspect of this novel that I don’t understand is how John can recount in such detail the history of the people he is describing. While he has books and journals from their past, he could never know their exact conversations, how they held one another, the smells and sights they saw. The vividness of the recounting is hard to buy.

 

All that being said, this is a powerful novel, based on actual events, that I am grateful for having read. I know that some hate it but I would say it’s one of the best novels I have read this year (so far).

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