NYT: “Malcolm X himself contributed to many of the fictions (in the “Autobiography”), Mr. Marable argues, by exaggerating, glossing over or omitting important incidents in his life. These episodes include a criminal career far more modest than he claimed, an early homosexual relationship with a white businessman, his mother’s confinement in a mental hospital for nearly 25 years and secret meetings with leaders of groups as divergent as the Ku Klux Klan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” shows, for instance, that at a time when Malcolm X claimed in the autobiography to have “devoted himself to increasingly violent crime” in New York, he was actually in Lansing, Mich., his hometown. Mr. Marable attributes the embroidery of “amateurish attempts at gangsterism” to Malcolm X’s wish to demonstrate that the Nation of Islam’s gospel of pride and self-respect had the power to redeem even the most depraved criminal.
“In many ways, the published book is more Haley’s than its author’s,” Mr. Marable writes, noting that Haley, who died in 1992, was a liberal Republican and staunch integrationist who held “racial separation and religious extremism in contempt” but was “fascinated by the tortured tale of Malcolm’s personal life.”
” The Marable book also sheds new light on Malcolm X’s departure from the Nation of Islam and the subsequent feud with the organization and its founder, Elijah Muhammad, preceding his assassination. That split is usually attributed to theological and political differences and the jealousy of Muhammad’s children and inner circle.
But Mr. Marable also points to an episode of almost Oedipal sexual duplicity, in which Elijah Muhammad impregnated a woman Malcolm X had loved since he was a young man. “Malcolm must have felt a deep sense of betrayal,” Mr. Marable writes. “
Catching up, again.
NYT: “Malcolm X himself contributed to many of the fictions (in the “Autobiography”), Mr. Marable argues, by exaggerating, glossing over or omitting important incidents in his life. - These episodes include a criminal career far more modest than he claimed, an early homosexual relationship with a white businessman..."
Read more at # 18 , then # 5 and # 6 .
[Thanks for the pings. - So... 0bama, who's your father?]