Battling Complicity
Open letter to Amor Towles, a New York Times bestselling author:
Dear Mr. Towles,
I’m not in the habit of writing letters to popular authors. Or movies stars. Or any other suppliers of entertainment—intellectual or inane. I do write the occasional letter to an editor of a newspaper or a member of Congress, but even these are rare. In this case, my belief that silence is complicity compels me to write.
I am a fan of your writing. A big fan. I love to read, especially novels that I can actually hold in my hands as I’m lying in bed, exercising my arm muscles as well as my brain. And the greatest novels are those that call to be read more than once. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read A Gentleman in Moscow, but certainly more times than I’ve read any other novel—and there are quite a few that I’ve read more than once (including your Rules of Civility).
You are, perhaps, the writer I once aspired to be.
I was thrilled to hear, on NPR, that you’d published a new book, and I immediately sought it out. However, while reading Table for Two, it grieved my heart to discover the implicit racial bias within. I understand that Americans of all backgrounds are stricken with it. I try my damndest to recognize racist memes when they ooze from my subconscious like tentacles of a malignant cancer. And when I discern their ugly presence, I do all I can to reckon with them. Approaching my eighth decade, I am still trying to figure out what to do or say when this cancer oozes from the mouths of companions. But when it leaped out of your book, it broke my heart.
I’m not talking about your use of the word “colored,” as befits the timeframe of the chapter entitled Litsky, Or your description of many skin colors in the night club within. No, what offended me was the description of passing characters—those who are extras, appearing for only a sentence or two— as African American or Black when you’ve not described race anywhere else in the story.
Denoting the race of your background characters in this manner indicates a presumption on your part that none of the other characters are Black, and the presumption that your audience will, likewise, automatically regard the main characters in the story as white—or at least not African American—unless otherwise directed. The idea that a population at large should simply regard white (or non-Black) as the default race is offensive.
If you were to argue that skin color was not germane to the story, I’d then ask why you bother to tell me the extra character who lost her hat to the wind in Olivia was “a Black girl.” Your painting of the occasional Black brushstroke on an apparently white canvas is gratuitous. It’s racially conscious in a way that is not helpful to the plight of easing our national hang-up on race in general, and dark skin in particular.
It might seem a small thing to you. But it knocked the wind out of me.
But maybe that is normal. I had been in awe of your storytelling capabilities. And we mere mortals often find our heroes to be more human than we expected—or wanted.
Nonetheless, I do believe silence is complicity. I couldn’t keep reading and not acknowledge the problem. I still think you are a mighty fine writer.