Langston Hughes. Autobiography: I Wonder as I Wander.

Langston Hughes. Autobiography: I Wonder as I Wander. Vol. 14. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2003.426 pp. $39.95.

This volume is among the last to appear in the University of Missouri Press s laudatory project entitled The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, "a compilation of the novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, and other published works, by one of the twentieth century's most prolific and influential African American authors." The compilation is designed to "make available Hughes's most famous works as well as lesser-known and out-of-print selections." Each volume includes a "Chronology" of the native Missourian's life and works by Arnold Rampersad, chair of the Editorial Board, as well as a critical "Introduction" by the specific editor for that volume, in this instance, Joseph McLaren, who also edited the first of the two autobiographical works, The Big Sea (2002). That initial volume, McLaren notes, "blends personal, social, and cultural observations" and "commentary on a range of issues" by Hughes from the 1920s; although it summarizes his travels to "some thirty-two ports," the primary value resides in its accounts of memorable years during the Harlem Renaissance and of life in Paris in the decade of the twenties.

McLaren's introduction to I Wonder as I Wander shares features with his earlier preface: an objective analysis of the context for the Hughes undertaking, a balanced description of the mixed responses to the volume after publication, and attention to "The Travelogue as a Political and Cultural Statement," each aspect contributing to the structure of the writer's endeavor "to create a travelogue that defines persona as a cultural-political witness and journalist." This second volume covers primarily the years from 1931 through 1937, and reflects the author's sojourns not only in the United States but also in the Caribbean, the Soviet Union, the Far East, France, and Spain, with special attention to the latter's Civil War and the rise of Fascism in Europe.

An interesting aspect of McLaren's report concerns the mixed reactions of individual reviewers to I Wonder (for example, J. Saunders Redding: "frank and charming, though neither events nor people are seen in depth. Mr. Hughes, it seems, did more wandering than wondering") and the relatively sparse sales ("under three thousand copies for the initial two years"); yet these factors did not prevent "the sustaining merit" of the book from generating several successive editions by other publishers after the first edition by Rinehart and Company. In that regard a slight emendation to footnote 16 on page 7 is needed, I believe. That note's claim that the book "was published by Hill and Wang in 1956, 1964, and 1993; by Octagon in 1974 and 1986; and by Thunder's Mouth Press in 1986," might more accurately assert the facts as "Hill and Wang in 1964 (first) and 1993 (second); by Octagon in 1974 and 1986; and by Thunder's Mouth Press in 1986." For the latter publication Margaret Walker penned a brief but insightful "Foreword" that deserves at least a mentioning by McLaren, perhaps in footnote 10 on page 391, which acknowledges Hughes's encouragement of Walker's early poetry but does not acknowledge her contribution to the 1986 edition.

By and large the editorial apparatus of this book helps readers identify people, places, events, and works integral to the memoir's progress through the period under discussion; an occasional lapse can be noticed, however. Curiously, McLaren never cites sources for the titles of Hughes's two autobiographies, though he includes Walker's suggestion that "both volumes have titles from folk expressions." She further asserted that the title of the second book had been taken from "Black folklore and is part of the folk-song or Negro spiritual," namely the traditional Christmas song: "I wonder as I wander out under the sky/How Jesus the Savior did come for to die/For poor on'ry people like you and like I/I wonder as I wander out under the sky." This song also has been described as "traditional: author unknown" and as an "Appalachian carol." In 1933 the rudiments of the song were first heard by John Jacob Niles, recorded by him, and printed in textual form by him during five years of concertizing (www.john-jacob.com/media).

The title assumes ironic dimensions when associated with Hughes's observations about travel both at home and abroad: It augments the same awareness as some of his poetry, motivated, as he proclaimed in 1941 in "Concerning 'Goodbye, Christ,'" by the "intention in mind of shocking into being in religious people a consciousness of the admitted shortcomings of the church in regard to the condition of the poor and oppressed of the world." Faith Berry's 1973 edition, Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes, is invaluable for previously inaccessible materials that elucidate political and social attitudes the poet expressed overseas.

Rampersad noted in his introduction to the Hill and Wang edition that "Hughes never surrenders his basic approach, which is anecdotal rather than analytical, gently ironic rather than preachy or pedantic. He remains true to his balancing between joy and irony." Earlier, Walker indicated too that the book is "a piece of social history and more than a travelogue or picaresque journey, it is surely all three." McLaren argues quite cogently that, by the end of I Wonder as I Wander, Hughes the journalist and professional writer has become "a citizen of the world and knowledgeable in global politics" and thus is ready to "return home to Harlem to answer through writing his era's questions of identity, race, and culture, which had their parallels in the places he had traversed."

All three of these judgments about Hughes's presentations and self-representations are rooted in the orthodox notion of autobiography as a narrative account of the experience of the individual traveler while depicting and revealing his life and character for a public audience. But "experience," as Jacques Derrida pointed out, "lives and proclaims itself as the exclusion of writing, that is to say of the invoking of an 'exterior,' 'sensible,' 'spatial' signifier interrupting self-presence." Thus, Hughes contributes to human archives not only personal subjectivity but also social reality and, ultimately, history.

Fred L. Standley

Florida State University