Richard
A novelist who has finally published something that sold. Cass's husband, and the person least changed by Rufus's death.
To be taken seriously as a writer, by Vivaldo in particular. He raises the book with him at the bar the night he sells it, presses him for a judgment at the publication lunch, and will not let the subject go when he is given a compliment instead of an opinion.
The book
At a glance
- Novelist; formerly a schoolteacher, and Vivaldo Moore's high-school English instructor
- Close to forty; he began writing at twenty-five
- Cass; two sons, Paul and Michael
- The Strangled Men, a murder novel of over three hundred pages
- Polish
- A quartermaster depot in North Africa
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeRichard Silenski gets what everyone else in James Baldwin's novel wants. He has just sold a murder novel called The Strangled Men, and over the course of the book it is published, sells, attracts a television producer and an interested film studio, and produces a second contract. He is close to forty. He started writing at twenty-five and spent fifteen years not arriving.
He is Polish by background and was Vivaldo Moore's English instructor in high school; he and his wife Cass are Vivaldo's oldest friends, and they knew Vivaldo as a brat. He spent most of the war in a quartermaster depot in North Africa, where, as far as Cass could gather, he passed the time defending Arab shoeshine boys and beggars from the French. He and Cass have two sons.
Baldwin gives him the least interior space of the principals and does not use it to make him a villain. He is warm, funny with his children, quick to say he loves everyone in the room, and genuinely glad to see people. What he cannot do is take an honest reading of his own work. He asks Vivaldo for a verdict, will not accept the polite one he gets, and cannot be told the truth, which is that Vivaldo thinks the book does not exist.
He is also the one member of the group who kept Rufus Scott at a distance and says so afterwards, telling Cass that he did not love Rufus the way the rest of them did, that he suspected some of their fuss was because Rufus was Black, and that he could not forgive what Rufus did to Leona.
How the book draws them
- The pipeHe is introduced sitting alone at a table in the back room at Benno's, smoking it, while his wife brings people down the steps to him. He knocks it out and puts it in his pocket when it is time to look for the waiter. It is the only prop the book gives him.
- BoyishHe comes into his own living room looking harried and boyish in an old grey sweater over a white T-shirt, carrying his belt in his hands, and admits shamefacedly that he only pretended he was going to use it on his son. Eric, meeting him again after three years, thinks he looks handsome and boyish and big.
- The faceIn full sunlight it shows lines across the forehead, around and under the eyes, and around the mouth and chin. Vivaldo calls it a tough face and a good face and one he has loved for a long time, and thinks it lacks something he cannot name and that his judgment is unjust.
- The bookJagged red letters on a dark blue ground: The Strangled Men. A novel of murder, by Richard Silenski. Over three hundred pages. On the back, his open, good-natured face, and a paragraph summarizing his life that ends with the ages of his two sons.
- What his oldest friend actually thinksThat it is an able, intelligent, mildly perceptive tour de force which will never mean anything to anyone; that in the place in Vivaldo's mind where books live, Richard's book does not exist. Vivaldo says none of this, and Richard keeps asking.
- Success, itemizedBy midsummer he can list it: a new book coming, Hollywood possibly buying the first one, and a television project. Steve Ellis, a producer with a reputation as the champion of doomed causes, is in his living room, and Cass is expected to be pleasant to Ellis's wife.
- After his sons are attackedThree Black boys have beaten Michael in the park. In front of the children he is steady and kind, telling Michael that he and Paul will teach him tricks so that nobody bothers him again. Out of their hearing he calls the boys little black bastards, says they could have killed the kid, and asks why they cannot take it out on each other. He is not as calm as he is pretending to be.
- The Sunday fightHe wants to move out of town; Cass says she is not attracted to the literary colonies he wants them to join. It escalates, in front of a guest, until Richard is white in the face and breathing hard and inviting her to tell everyone that the Silenskis, that model couple, are having their Sunday fight.
- Two verdicts on RufusIn the days after the death he tells Cass, mildly, that Rufus was heading that way and nothing and no one could have stopped him. Later he says he did not love Rufus the way the others did, that he had to look on him as another guy, and that he could not forgive him for what he did to Leona.
- How he sleepsCass comes home after two in the morning to find him on the sofa, fully dressed except for his shoes, a half-glass of vodka and a dead cigarette on the table beside him. He sleeps very silently, and his face looks tormented and very young.