“A Writer Is What I Want, Not an Interpreter”: Alex Haley and Malcolm X—Conceiving the Autobiographical Self and the Struggle for Authorship

Abstract

This essay examines The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the competing conceptions of authorship and voice between its subject and co-author, Alex Haley. The first section outlines Alex Haley's political framework by giving a close reading of his publications prior to the Autobiography, including several Reader's Digest articles, his co-authored piece for the Saturday Evening Post on which he worked closely with white author Alfred Balk and the FBI, and finally the Playboy interview. The second portion traces the production of the book and the often antagonistic relationship between the book's two authors through correspondence between Malcolm X, Alex Haley, and his literary agent, Paul Reynolds, as well as legal documents from Doubleday Publishing and president Kenneth McCormick's letters. Finally, the third section examines the effects of Haley's ideology on consequent understandings of the Autobiography by exploring the external dictates of the genre and interrogating the larger political implications of representations of Malcolm X through quintessential American images.

Keywords:

• Alex Haley
• autobiography
• Doubleday
• Elijah Muhammad
• Malcolm X
• Nation of Islam

Notes

Mark A. Sanders, “Theorizing the Collaborative Self: The Dynamics of Contour and Content in the Dictated Autobiography,” New Literary History 25, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 454.

Ibid.

Ibid, 446.

Malcolm X and Alex Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Random House, 1965), 523.

It was not until 1961 that the Nation's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, began circulating nationally.

Alex Haley, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” Readers Digest, March 1960, 104.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 442–443.

Manning Marable, Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006), 150.

Manning Marable, “Malcolm X Interview: Manning Marable Interviewed by Amy Goodman,” Democracy Now, February 24, 2005, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7302.

Alex Haley and Alfred Balk, “Black Merchants of Hate,” Saturday Evening Post, January 26, 1963, 74.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 71.

Ibid., 74.

Alex Haley, “She Makes a Joyful Music,” Reader's Digest, November 1961, 202.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 252.

Alex Haley, “The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met,” Reader's Digest, March 1961, 74.

Ibid., 75.

Ibid., 77.

Alex Haley, “Malcolm X Interview,” Playboy, May 1963, 53.

Ibid., 60.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 443.

Haley, “Malcolm X Interview,” 60.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 422.

Ibid.

Author/Collaborator Letter of Agreement, 1 June 1963, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 465.

Letter from Alex Haley to Paul Reynolds, 21 March 1965, Anne Romaine Collection, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 460.

Muhammad Speaks stopped publishing almost anything relating to Malcolm X several years before their break.

Sanders, “Theorizing the Collaborative Self,” 454.

Outline for Autobiography, Undated, Alex Haley Papers, Box 3, Folder 1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Letter from Alex Haley to Oliver Swan, 5 August 1963, Anne Romaine Collection, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Letter from Alex Haley to Ken McCormick and Paul Reynolds, 18 February 1964, Anne Romaine Collection, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Letter from Alex Haley to Murray Fisher, Alex Haley Papers, Box 1a. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Ibid.

Letter from Alex Haley to Malcolm X, 25 September 1963, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Ibid.

Letter from Alex Haley to Malcolm X, 14 November 1963, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Letter from Alex Haley to Malcolm X, 19 November 1963, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Letter from Alex Haley to Paul Reynolds, 26 November 1963, Anne Romaine Collection, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Letter from Alex Haley to Malcolm X, 3 December 1963, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Ibid.

Letter from Alex Haley to Paul Reynolds, 15 October 1964, Anne Romaine Collection, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 24, University of Tennessee Special Collections Library.

Letter from Alex Haley to Paul Reynolds, 21 June 1964, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Malcolm X, “I'm Talking to You, White Man,” Saturday Evening Post, September 12, 1964, 31.

Ibid., 53.

Letter from Alex Haley to Malcolm X, 14 October 1964, Malcolm X Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Letter from Malcolm X to M.S. Handler, 22 September 1964, Alex Haley Papers, Box 3, Folder 1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Letter from Ken McCormick to Alex Haley, 16 March 1965, Ken McCormick Collection of the Records of Doubleday and Company, Folder 2, Library of Congress, 1.

Walter Bradbury, Memo to Nelson Doubleday and Ken McCormick, 5 March 1965. Ken McCormick Collection, Folder 2, Library of Congress.

In a letter to Malcolm Reiss dated 27 May 1966, Ken McCormick expressed regret at not publishing the book: “It still rankles me when I think of hthe [sic] fact that we didn't publish that book. It was a bitter disappointment, but you know the circumstances.”.

I. F. Stone, “The Pilgrimage of Malcolm X.” New York Review of Books, November 11, 1965.

Reverend Albert Cleage and George Breitman, “Myths About Malcolm X: Two Views,” International Socialist Review (September–October 1967), 36.

Ibid., 40.

Ibid., 37.

Ibid., 46.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 306.

Steve Clark, editor, February 1965: The Final Speeches (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), 38.

Malcolm X, “Arabs Send Warm Greetings to ‘Our Brothers’ of Color in the U.S.A.,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 15, 1959.

“Malcolm Rejects Race Separation,” New York Times, May 24, 1964.

George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 68–69.

“Malcolm Rejects Race Separation.”.

Carol Ohmann, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X: A Revolutionary Use of the Franklin Tradition,” American Quarterly 22, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 131.

Clark, February 1965, 98.

Ohmann, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” 148.

Bashir M. El-Beshti, “The Semiotics of Salvation: Malcolm X and the Autobiographical Self,” The Journal of Negro History 82, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 359.

Ibid., 360.

Ibid.

Ibid., 361.

Letter from Malcolm X to Alex Haley, 19 March 1964, Alex Haley Papers, Box 3, Folder 1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Clark, February 1965, 179.

Ibid.

El-Beshti, “The Semiotics of Salvation,” 363.

Sanders, “Theorizing the Collaborative Self,” 455.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, 476.