[Lawd Today] is less powerful than either Native Son or Black Boy, but it has its own kind of interest.

It is the story of one day in the life of Jake Jackson, a Negro post office clerk in Chicago. (p. 37)

The day is described in unsparing detail. More than two pages, for instance, are devoted to Jake's combing of his recalcitrant hair…. The bridge game, with three sample hands, runs to nine pages. A medicine man's spiel takes six. Wright gives a full account of the processes by which mail is sorted, together with pages of the aimless conversation with which the four friends accompany their work.

Growing up in Chicago, and starting out as a writer in the middle Thirties, Wright could scarcely have failed to be influenced by James T. Farrell, who was just beginning to have a strong effect on American fiction. As Farrell...