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Even a Pulitzer Prize winning book in a non-fiction category does not guarantee its veracity, and Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention seems to be riddled with problems. A Lie of Invention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X sets forth a number of these problems in a collection of 16 essays and two interviews. One critic even goes so far as to call Marable’s work “an abomination.”
Most of the critics take Marable to task for choosing questionable scholarly tactics such as sensationalizing his subject. For example, in The Autobiography of Malcom X, Malcolm relates a story about “Rudy” who would be paid to sprinkle talcum powder over a wealthy millionaire’s naked body. With no evidence whatsoever, Marable claims that “Rudy” is a fabrication by Malcolm, and Malcolm actually was the person who performed this ritual for the millionaire. Marable finds other clues indicating Malcolm’s homosexuality.
The critics all charge that Marable used innuendo, supposition, and reliance on rumor in order to make his work more salacious, and distinguish it from earlier biographies of Malcolm. Several critics charge that Marable doesn’t bring out any new facts in his book. All “new” material is couched in language of “might have,” or “it is probable,” and similar distancing language. Even worse than providing no source at all for some of his more scandalous claims, Marable sometimes cites himself in the very book he is writing as sources!
The flip side of this — straining to escalate suspicions into verified facts — is Marable’s failure to interview or take oral histories from characters who are still living. The most significant omission is an oral history from Ella Collins, Malcolm’s half-sister. Collins plays such a significant role in Malcolm’s life, that the absence of an oral history from her seems odd. Marable cites only 16 oral histories/interviews as his primary source material. Plenty of potential subjects for oral histories were still living during the two decades Marable spent working on this text, but Marable did not seem interested in taking advantage of these opportunities.
One excellent point that multiple critics in this volume drive home is the influence of the author on his biography. In the Autobiography, Malcolm’s politics is made to seem like Alex Haley’s preferred ideology of social democracy. Similarly with Marable’s book: influenced by his sympathies for socialism and communism, he makes Malcom seem more like a socialist.
In spite of the flaws in Marable’s text, throwing it out in its entirety does not seem necessary. The reader just needs to read the book using critical thinking skills. Watch out for qualifying phrases, the “might have”s, the “probably”s, and “it is likely that”s. Such terminology almost always signals that speculative material follows. This book makes a fine companion to Marable’s biography, and I recommend reading both sequentially.
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