This white writer wrote a slave narrative because James Baldwin dared him
William Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner” was criticized for being a ‘caricatured’ representation of the famous slave rebel
The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron’s powerful, incendiary 1967 novel, was actually conceived on a dare — from James Baldwin, no less.
William Styron had invited fellow writer James Baldwin to stay in his Roxbury, Connecticut guesthouse, after hearing from then-Harper’s editor Robert Silvers that “Jimmy” was sick of New York City. Baldwin ended up living with Styron for nine months, during which the two read and wrote by day and smoked and drank Jack Daniel’s at night, according to Sam Tanenhaus in Vanity Fair. At the time, Styron had begun researching Confessions of Nat Turner, his first person fictionalized account of a slave revolt, but it was Baldwin who challenged him to write it from Nat Turner’s perspective — a shocking suggestion considering that Turner was black.
The book (and prospective film, which was never made) was controversial, to say the least. A group of group of black writers assembled responses to what they saw as the caricatured and fraught representation of Turner in a 1968 volume titled William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Baldwin declined to contribute.
In May of 1968, Baldwin sat down to moderate a debate between Styron and actor and activist Ossie Davis, whom he also considered a friend. Davis was leading a protest against the film version of Confessions, which he called “flagrant libel against one of our greatest heroes.” Baldwin was marvelously diplomatic, but he defended Styron’s right to engage in a “confrontation with his history.” “No one can tell a writer what he can and cannot write,” he said.
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