Richard Wright's The Outsider … disappointed many critics who, for more than a decade, had waited for a second novel from the author of Native Son…. (p. 40)

The critics were partially correct. The Outsider fails to evoke the emotional intensity which stunned readers of Native Son in 1940 and which continues to affect many readers who discover the book for the first time in 1969. The Outsider's frequent echoes of [Dostoyevsky's] Crime and Punishment and of the now familiar tenets of existentialism—these disclose the conscious craftsmanship of a well-read author. Thus, the book lacks the aura of uniqueness, originality, and artless spontaneity which characterizes Wright's first novel. Native Son seems to be a hoarse cry from the heart of the ghetto; The Outsider is an idea shaped by philosophical men who have conquered their emotions.

Nevertheless, The Outsider should not be judged merely as a failure by a competent...