Richard Wright's new novel [The Long Dream] is not a book to be studied from a distance, to gain perspective on a work of art. It should be examined myopically, close to the page, as one reads the chart of a strange and dangerous passage….

The structure of The Long Dream is the step-by-step progress of Fishbelly, a shy black boy, from the safe, warm world of the Negro ghetto into the lawless world between the races where a few Negroes, preying on black and white alike, have the arrogance to live by their wits. It opens up aspects of the South not covered by dictionary words like "segregation" or "miscegenation." Its key words are "rape" and "blood," "lynch" and "hide," "lie" and "scream." And above all, "run." (p. 297)

But structure is not what you should look at in this book. Richard Wright is a man of considerable...