Reading Order
Eight Men Reading Order
Eight Men (1961) by Richard Wright is his final short story collection — published posthumously, the year after his death in Paris in November 1960 — containing eight stories that span his career, from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, and that represent the full range of his short fiction. The collection includes 'The Man Who Was Almost a Man,' about a teenage boy in the rural South who buys a gun and kills a mule by accident; 'The Man Who Lived Underground,' a novella about a Black man who hides in the sewers below a city after being coerced into confessing to a crime he did not commit; 'Big Black Good Man,' about a large Black sailor and the white Danish hotel clerk who is terrified of him; and five other stories. Eight Men is best known for 'The Man Who Lived Underground' — a Kafkaesque novella that is one of Wright's most formally experimental and most philosophically ambitious works, and that shows the influence of existentialist philosophy (Wright was living in Paris and was part of the French existentialist circle) on his thinking about race and consciousness. The sewer-dweller's underground existence and his strange, estranged relationship to the surface world above is a companion piece to the invisible narrator's underground existence at the end of Invisible Man, and the two works illuminate each other in important ways.
Where to start
Read Native Son (1940) and Invisible Man (1952) first — they are Wright's and Ellison's masterworks and essential context. Eight Men is best read after Native Son. Any HarperCollins paperback.
Complete Eight Men Book List
- 1Buy
Eight Men
Richard Wright·1961·The posthumous collection — eight stories spanning Wright's career; 'The Man Who Lived Underground,' 'The Man Who Was Almost a Man,' 'Big Black Good Man'; the full range of his short fiction; Kafkaesque, existentialist, and naturalist modes in the same collection. - 2Buy
Native Son
Richard Wright·1940·Wright's masterpiece — the essential companion; Bigger Thomas's Chicago is the naturalist companion to the existentialist underground of the collection's central novella. - 3Buy
Uncle Tom's Children
Richard Wright·1938·Wright's debut collection — the companion and predecessor; the Southern stories of Uncle Tom's Children are the naturalist companion to the more formally experimental stories of Eight Men. - 4Buy
Black Boy
Richard Wright·1945·Wright's autobiography — the companion memoir; the autobiography gives context for 'The Man Who Was Almost a Man' and the other stories rooted in the Southern childhood. - 5Buy
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison·1952·Ellison's masterpiece — the companion in African American fiction; the invisible narrator's underground existence at the end of Invisible Man is the companion to the sewer-dweller's underground in 'The Man Who Lived Underground'; both represent the African American intellectual's relationship to American society from below. - 6Buy
The Trial
Franz Kafka·1925·Kafka's novel — the companion in existentialist and absurdist fiction; 'The Man Who Lived Underground' is explicitly Kafkaesque, and Wright's reading of Kafka in Paris is one of the most important literary influences on his late work. - 7Buy
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky·1864·Dostoevsky's novella — the predecessor in underground fiction; the narrator who retreats from society into a underground space is the Russian 19th-century version of Wright's African American sewer-dweller. - 8Buy
The Outsider
Richard Wright·1953·Wright's companion novel — the most explicitly existentialist of his longer works; Cross Damon's philosophy of violent freedom is the philosophical companion to the underground man's estranged consciousness.
Eight Men — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Eight Men about?
Eight Men is a collection of eight stories spanning Wright's career from the early 1930s to the late 1950s. The stories vary in setting and mode: some are set in the rural South of his childhood, some in the urban North, one in a foreign country. The most celebrated is 'The Man Who Lived Underground,' a novella about Fred Daniels, a Black man who is coerced by police into confessing to a murder he did not commit and who hides in the sewers beneath a city, from where he observes the surface world with a terrible, estranged clarity. Other notable stories include 'The Man Who Was Almost a Man' (a teenage boy in the rural South who accidentally kills a mule with the gun he has bought to prove his manhood) and 'Big Black Good Man' (about a large Black sailor and the white Danish hotel clerk whose fear of him reveals the unconscious racism beneath his self-image as a tolerant man).
What is 'The Man Who Lived Underground' about?
'The Man Who Lived Underground' is a novella about Fred Daniels, a Black man who is beaten by police until he confesses to a murder he did not commit. He escapes into the sewer system beneath the city and spends several days underground, living in the sewers and observing the surface world through gratings: a church service, a movie theater, a butcher's shop, a radio store, a jewelry store that he breaks into. Underground, he develops a strange, estranged relationship to money, to religion, to the rhythms of the world above. When he eventually tries to return to the surface and to confess his innocence, he is shot by the police. The story is Wright's most formally experimental and philosophically ambitious work, showing the influence of the existentialism he encountered in Paris.
Why did Wright live in Paris?
Richard Wright moved to Paris in 1947, partly because of the racial violence and discrimination he faced in the United States and partly because of his friendship with the French existentialists — Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus — who welcomed him as a major American writer. In Paris, Wright was free from the racial restrictions of American life, and he engaged deeply with existentialist philosophy, which shaped his later work including The Outsider (1953) and the stories in Eight Men. He died in Paris in 1960, and Eight Men was published posthumously in 1961. Wright's Paris years are less studied than his American years, but his late work shows a significant philosophical development beyond the naturalism of Native Son.
How does Eight Men compare to Uncle Tom's Children?
Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Eight Men (1961) represent the beginning and the end of Wright's short fiction career, and the comparison shows how far his thinking evolved over the decades. Uncle Tom's Children is a relatively unified collection — all five stories are about racial violence in the Deep South, and all are written in a naturalist mode. Eight Men is more various: the stories span several decades and several modes, from the naturalist Southern stories to the Kafkaesque 'Man Who Lived Underground' to the more philosophical stories of the Paris years. The later collection shows Wright's engagement with existentialism and with a more universal philosophy of consciousness, while the earlier collection shows his most direct confrontation with American racial violence.
What should I read after Eight Men?
After Eight Men, Native Son (1940) is Wright's masterpiece and the essential companion. Uncle Tom's Children (1938) is the debut collection. Black Boy (1945) is his autobiography. The Outsider (1953) is the companion novel for readers interested in Wright's existentialist period. For short fiction in the same tradition of African American social realism, Ernest Gaines's collection Bloodline is an important companion.
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