Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of
Keith Foulcher is Honorary Associate in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney and the coeditor of
Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of
Keith Foulcher is Honorary Associate in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney and the coeditor of
Asrul Sani’s “Richard Wright: The Artist Turned Intellectual” (1956)
-
Published:March 2016
2016. "Asrul Sani’s “Richard Wright: The Artist Turned Intellectual” (1956)", Indonesian Notebook: A Sourcebook on Richard Wright and the Bandung Conference, Brian Russell Roberts, Keith Foulcher
Download citation file:
In a 1956 review of Wright’s novel The Outsider, Asrul Sani recalls his personal encounters with Wright one year earlier and restates his admiration for him as a true artist. However, his review is critical of Wright’s 1953 novel, because in Asrul’s judgment Wright is so fixated on advancing intellectual arguments about the human condition in The Outsider that he loses touch with his emotional attachments to the African American condition, which is the source of his talent as a writer. Asrul believes that this is the result of Wright’s interest in the philosophy of existentialism, which he has come to know through his personal friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. For Wright as an artist, Asrul Sani sees this turn to intellectualism as a serious failure of judgment.
Advertisement
