Louis was not quite 23. General Eisenhower wanted to tidy things
up, “ordering expeditious completion of all capital court-martials in
Europe.” The court-martials were disproportionately of black
soldiers.Wideman’s near obsession is with the father and son, his
“yearning to make some sense out of the American darkness that
disconnects colored fathers from sons, a darkness in which sons
and fathers lose track of one another.” At one time, Wideman
wanted to write a novel about their relationship, but he gave that
idea up after, apparently, multiple attempts. Finally—and this is
what Writing to Save a Lifebecame—he settled on a book that is
part essay, a good part fiction (imaginary scenes between Louis Till
and Wideman, for example), and in large part his own memoir
about what it means to be a black father, son, brother in the United
States. This is a subject that he has written about many times
before. The brilliant fusion of the several genres that inform this
book are further illuminated in the following statement:

“Nothing closer to truth than truth—but the truth is—not even truth is close to truth. So we create fiction. As a writer searching for Louis Till, I choose to assume certain prerogatives—license might be a more accurate word. I assume the risk of allowing my fiction to enter other people’s true stories. And to be fair, I let other people’s stories trespass the truth of mine.”

What we do know about Louis Till is that he beat his wife during their short marriage. There was a restraining order against him, and when that did not work, the judge ordered him to enlist or go to jail. He enlisted. [Wideman’s father was in the Army at the same time.] If black men were second-class citizens in the United States, conditions were no better in the military. When Wideman was eventually able to get a copy of the government’s file on Louis because of the Freedom of Information Act, what he discovered was little surprise. He cannot assert with final authority that Louis was innocent, but discrepancies in the thick file demonstrate that Private Till was “sentenced to death on the basis of being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “Colored soldiers whom the army considered second-class citizens were suspects who possessed no rights investigators need respect.” Till’s crime was “a crime of being.” Not being white.

There are no real surprises here. The agony of Writing to Save a Lifeis the parallel story of John Edgar Wideman’s own life, beginning with Chicago and looking at the photos of Emmett Till dead. Wideman’s parents also had a difficult marriage. His own relationship with his father was complicated, equally conflicted. There’s a wrenching scene in the book when Wideman’s mother accuses him of being selfish, “Just like him,” that is, like his father, of not accepting responsibility for those around him. “When she addressed those words to me, my mother acknowledged the vulnerable place inside herself where my father reigned absolutely. Unopposed, unopposable, my view back then, because he didn’t care. To have her or loose her—neither mattered to him. He didn’t give a good goddamn push come to shove, about her or anyone else. Didn’t care.”

Wideman sees his mother as Mamie Till’s double and then he makes the most unsettling statement of his book: “A disturbingly simple fact: every time a him, a colored male person they love, man or boy, leaves and the door shuts behind him, door to a dwelling in which they are attempting to make something of their lives together, there’s a good chance that he, him, that colored male person, won’t return. Not when she expects anyway. Or needs him most. Maybe not ever. Once he leaves the space they are struggling to secure for their mutual benefit, for the benefit maybe of their children, once he’s beyond the door and out in a world which does not love him, there are no guarantees.” Either the world will kill him or he will do something that becomes the equivalent of suicide.

Wideman knows of what he speaks. Besides the conflicts between his parents, he has a brother who is in prison for life and a son also in prison for a twenty-five year term. These personal details are not the primary concern of Writing to Save a Life but their relationship to the precariousness of too many black lives, especially males. And to modulate his concern, when Wideman visits Louis Till’s grave in a cemetery for American soldiers in France, he discovers the discrimination against black soldiers that continued even with their burial. Louis Till “had more to fear from his own army than from Hitler’s legions. Nazi Germany did not invent war or race or genocide. Many wars waged before and after World War II. Wars being waged today whose purpose is to eliminate entire or so-called races of people. Us. My people. Done to us. Done to others. Done by us. Done to each other.”

Yes, there are places in Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till Filewhere Wideman’s mixed genre goes astray. But what I wish is that the book will gain as much attention and as many readers as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, that it will sit atop the New York Times bestseller list. It’s that important.