In that same summer, Wideman fell in love, became broken-hearted, and saw pictures of dead Emmett Till in Jet magazine. That summer, he was sad, confused, angry and so, he says, was his father. There were other parallels, too; so many lines drawn from fathers to sons that made Wideman and his dad “afraid of each other.”
With that in mind, Wideman requested Louis Till’s file and discovered “helter-skelter” papers and a “hodgepodge of this and that…” Emmitt Till had been just “a kid” when hanged, the probable victim of an “ugly story.” Had he been around to “school his son… about the south,” would Emmett have come home alive? Can a man change the outcome of his child’s existence?
Though “Writing to Save a Life” is an intriguing, even provocative book, it may be a struggle to read. For sure, it’s going to take some getting used to.
In with news clips, files, history, current events, and reconstructions of what might have happened decades ago to Louis, Mamie, and Emmett Till, Wideman melts his own experiences and his imagination. That’s a great method of storytelling, and it lends urgency and relevancy but it’s not very well delineated here—meaning that it sometimes takes a minute to understand when this book takes a fictional turn and when it turns back again.
(“Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File” by John Edgar Wideman, c.2016, Scribner, $25/$34 Canada, 195 pages.)
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