Imperium in Imperio
It is, I suppose, possible that Imperium in Imperio, the long-neglected and recently-revived book by Sutton Griggs, may not be the worst novel written in the United States in the nineteenth century. Still, it's hard to imagine how any work of fiction could be inferior to this sorry contrivance. I can conceive, barely, that there might be novels more overrun with clichés than this one. I can almost envision a book that would be even more dependent on threadbare fictional conventions. Having read Cooper, I can definitely picture a work that would be at least equally ludicrous in its infrequent ventures into original invention. What boggles the mind is the thought of another novel combining these elements as consistently as Griggs manages to combine them in this idiotic distillation of Southern romanticism and black nationalism.
From start to finish, the novel is an aesthetic disaster. It moves in a narrow circle from banality to bathos to bombast and back again. All of Griggs's heroic characters are impossible paragons of strength, intelligence, courage, and oratory. Usually, they strike one of a hanfdul of poses which, by the time Griggs wrote, had long since been worn out by generations of American imitators of Scott. When Griggs aims for originality, however, things actually take a turn for the worse. I don't know which was more absurd: the strapping young black man who disguises himself as a nurse in order to spy on some white people, fooling everyone (including his wife) until an attempted rape leads to the discovery of his secret; the same character's escape from death, despite being hung and shot in the head, when he overpowers an anatomist who tries to dissect him; or that character not being lynched, despite having murdered a white man. Then again, the pinnacle of silliness may be the young woman who commits suicide rather than marry a mulatto, because she had once read a book which argued that miscegenation was detrimental to the black race.
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to pillory this piece of fluff. Griggs, I learn from the book's fawning introduction, abandoned novel-writing in favor of pamphleteering. A sound decision, on the evidence of this trifle. Maybe I was irked by the fact that so flimsy a contraption has been recently published, and published as a Modern LIbrary "Classic."
From start to finish, the novel is an aesthetic disaster. It moves in a narrow circle from banality to bathos to bombast and back again. All of Griggs's heroic characters are impossible paragons of strength, intelligence, courage, and oratory. Usually, they strike one of a hanfdul of poses which, by the time Griggs wrote, had long since been worn out by generations of American imitators of Scott. When Griggs aims for originality, however, things actually take a turn for the worse. I don't know which was more absurd: the strapping young black man who disguises himself as a nurse in order to spy on some white people, fooling everyone (including his wife) until an attempted rape leads to the discovery of his secret; the same character's escape from death, despite being hung and shot in the head, when he overpowers an anatomist who tries to dissect him; or that character not being lynched, despite having murdered a white man. Then again, the pinnacle of silliness may be the young woman who commits suicide rather than marry a mulatto, because she had once read a book which argued that miscegenation was detrimental to the black race.
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to pillory this piece of fluff. Griggs, I learn from the book's fawning introduction, abandoned novel-writing in favor of pamphleteering. A sound decision, on the evidence of this trifle. Maybe I was irked by the fact that so flimsy a contraption has been recently published, and published as a Modern LIbrary "Classic."