Stephen Carter Books

ABOUT JERICHO'S FALL

Thursday July 2, 2009

A reporter asked me about my decision to write, in Jericho's Fall, a novel with a protagonist not a member of what I have called in my other novels "the darker nation."  A couple of reviewers have also commented that my main character, Beck DeForde, is white.

Is she?  How do they know?  Beck is in a sense an experiment.  Her race is never mentioned in the book.  Indeed, we receive no physical description of her at all, except that she worries about her weight.  I wondered whether, if I wrote a novel with a race-less character, the readers would default to white.  Evidently the answer is yes.

When I published my first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, several interviewers asked me why I so often referred to various characters as "white."  They found this unusual in fiction.  Perhaps it is.  That is because the literary default is whiteness.  Other colors must be specified.  For me, in Emperor, to specify when a character was white evidently subverted this understanding.

Don't get me wrong.  My novels are entertainments.  They are thrillers.  They are not intended to make broad claims about race.  It makes no difference to me whether readers find Beck black or white.  She can be tall or short, slim or full-figured, whatever the reader finds comfortable -- and plausible.  I just hope that my readers will enjoy the book.

Posted by Stephen Carter at 01:55pm