SOURCE: “Paradigms of the Early Past,” in The Way of the New World: The Black Novel in America, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975, pp. 1‐24.

In the following excerpt, Gayle presents an overview of The Condition and Blake, concluding that Delany's rejection of the tradition of the Black novel that existed in America up to his time took away the foundation for later Black writers.

… [Delany] was firm in his conviction that “the man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress—the man struck is the man to cry out—We must be our own representatives and advocates.”¹ Only men of such stature, those capable of thinking for themselves and believing in unity of race and purpose, are able to understand the historical forces arrayed against them and move forthrightly in the cause of liberation. It is no accident of history that men from Caesar to present...