"Ruthless Reverence for Reality:" Rudolph Fisher’s Use of Detective Fiction to Portray the Diversity of Black Harlem in 1932 in The Conjure-Man Dies

Rudolph Fisher is the forgotten literary “genius” of the Harlem Renaissance. Fisher’s genius has been overlooked for two reasons: because he died young at the age of 37 in 1934, and because his master work is a detective novel. Fisher’s detective novel, The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem, uses the forms of that genre –– both classical and hard-boiled –– to portray the ongoing historical reality of life in Harlem in 1932. Fisher both uses and plays with the structures of detective fiction to elucidate the fundamental literary debate of the era: whether the portrayal of Black Americans should be realistic or propagandistic, including issues such which socio-economic class to depict, the use of “Negro dialect,” and even humor. Informed by his career as a physician, The Conjure-Man Dies embodies Fisher’s ethos of writing realistically about Black American life in Harlem amid the pressure of the Harlem Renaissance, when writers were encouraged to use literature as propaganda for racial advancement or, as it was called then, racial uplift. Fisher rejected calls to use his art as racial propaganda, opting instead for acutely observing the reality of Harlem. While Fisher chose realism, his use of genre offered that realistic portrayal to a wider audience by containing it within the familiar structure of detective fiction. He used the formal structure of the classic style to provide his readers the safety of traditional detective fiction, while adapting the hardboiled style’s use of real places, vernacular, and unromanticized characters to build his realistic portrayal. The Conjure-Man Dies offers the reader Fisher’s vivid vision of the diversity that animated Black Harlem in 1932.