Murray and Mann

Lauren Walsh:

Thomas Mann’s four-part novel, Joseph and His Brothers (1933-43), a tremendously important book to [Albert] Murray’s thinking, enacts this mix of gravity and lightness, in this case even desolation and resilience. In the titular character, who was sold into slavery, Murray saw a rascally figure of the hero who endures despite the odds. One day, Murray and I read together the opening of Joseph in Egypt (the third book of the novel), where Joseph yammers on to one of his captors, waxing rather philosophical about the interwovenness of individual destinies. Murray laughed in response to the scene, delightedly calling the protagonist a “cocky, conceited S.O.B.” Indeed, even Joseph’s captor notes that he talks too much. But it’s a spirited moment and Murray admired the character’s spunk and intellect, as well as the author’s decision to craft a hero who is arrogant but at times also humbled. After his laughter broke, and in a tone both serious and full of exuberant zest, Murray went on to talk about how “Mann is singin’ it” in his exploration of the human condition and his allegorical confrontation of contemporary problems.

Joseph and His Brothers was foundational to Murray’s aesthetic philosophy and theories of culture. As Murray explains in The Hero and the Blues (1973), “to make the telling more effective is to make the tale more to the point.” In other words, literary craft — sophisticated, textured, allegorical style that elevates prose to fine art — serves socially committed writing that educates, while still “singing.” He also regarded Mann’s Joseph as a timeless and universal hero, a blues hero before there was the blues: one who rises above the obstacles in his path through improvisation and wit, a highly developed figure of unbroken human spirit. For Murray, there was no dissonance in linking this European retelling of a Bible story with the American blues idiom. Joseph, an “excellent epic prototype,” was of a piece with the American blues hero because he “goes beyond his failures in the very blues singing process of acknowledging them.”

This makes a lovely and thought-provoking connection between my 2023 essay on Murray and my series of posts on Mann — from the same year!