An Interview with Brent Wade

Abstract

In the summer of 1994, during the National Black Arts Festival held in Atlanta, Brent Wade was gracious enough to share with me his thoughts on his 1992 novel Company Man. The entrance of Wade, a black man in corporate America, into the literary world is somewhat of an anomaly. Since he does not spend the majority of his time in academic settings, the perspective he offers is unfettered by the academy with a candidness that is quite refreshing. In the following conversation, Wade reveals his thoughts on various issues - from racial alienation and black sexuality, to the history of music and Greek mythology. Leak: What writers would you identify as your literary ancestors? Wade: I guess I would pay homage to people like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Richard Wright would be more of an influence on me personally than Ralph Ellison: I just read Invisible Man recently. The first novel I ever read was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I then read Of Mice and Men. Then I was just in the library one day and picked up Native Son and thought that was great; in fact, I read that book twice. During this time, I guess I was in high school. I think those were the first books I picked to read myself. Then I read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. But my tastes in literature are more postmodern. Faulkner is still probably the writer I identify with most. I like what he wrote about, and I like the way he wrote. Although he is considered to be parochial in terms of what he wrote about - the South and race relations - I think he is the opposite of being parochial really. His work is about human nature, the biggest palette of them all. I like the way in which he tackled things. The writers I read now include Don DeLillo, whose writing I really like, and Paul Aster. Playwright August Wilson - man, I think the guy is the most brilliant American playwright we have here at the end of the twentieth century. The way he captures what people mean when they say things . . . it's not just what they say, it's what they mean when they say it. The guy's incredible. I'm not much on poetry, but I like Rita Dove's poetry. I think it's dynamite, although I don't know if I get all of it all the time. I like the way a writer will express something - the words, you know? It's like DeLillo . . . I don't always know that I understand what he's trying to get at in his books, but I just like the way he writes. It's so unique, so original. To return to Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! is not an easy book to read, but the way it's written is so brilliant. And also Light in August - from a structural standpoint, being able to pull that off, is incredible; it's an amazing book. Leak: So structure and form for you are central to the creative process? Wade: Well, those are the things I notice. The story could be so organic that I feel like I'm reading something masterfully done. I guess I notice because I write myself, and the way something is set up and how successfully it's been pulled off say something about the writer's skill. Leak: Do you think there is something distinctive about African American literature, and how would you distinguish the literature of black men from that of black women? Wade: I don't know how to answer that. I really hate labels. Some people think labels are necessary; these are usually people who have some vested interest in a particular label. But since I don't teach anywhere, or write for a newspaper or scholarly journal, I can say what I want, so I don't have much use for subcategories and labels. I mean I would be just as happy to be called a writer, an American writer as anything else. It's a question of how deep one should go into the name game. I don't know what separates women's writing from men's writing. But there are ways in which women seem generally to think and talk about things differently than men do. I don't know how to quantify that in what they write about. …