The Return of the Theological Novel

By now, Brandon Taylor’s readers expect his novels to coalesce around deep philosophical thought. His latest, Minor Black Figures, follows the way of his oeuvre. But this time, it’s not contemplations on science (as in Real Life) or reflections on dance (as in The Late Americans) that drive the novel forward. In Minor Black Figures, it is, of all things, ideas about God that function as the engine of the book.

Setting conversations about art and theology into the machine of New York cosmopolitan life, Taylor creates an existential pressure chamber rife with queer longing and Black ennui. The novel follows Wyeth, a young Black painter who has experienced a measure of material success following the racial reckoning of 2020. He encounters Keating, a blond former Jesuit priest in-the-making, at a bar in the West Village. The two gay men have a physical exchange, so to speak, but they also trade ideas at the intersection of painting and theology. Wyeth is an atheist, but he must come to see the spiritual energy required to create truly human portraiture. Keating is a man of moral acuity, but he must understand that sometimes art depicts the realities that we want, not the ones we have.

But the main thrust of the novel is the search for a Black painter who has fallen into obscurity. Wyeth, in his capacity as an art restorer’s assistant, is tasked with unearthing this minor Black figure. Along the way, he is faced with ethical questions about who should be whose subject and what it means to be a Black artist: “But Wyeth wondered about the much-contested dimension between the black gaze and the white subject.” In essence, does painting white subjects detract from the artists’ Blackness? Wyeth is responding to an age-old tradition of communal self-interrogation by Black gay artists. James Baldwin’s earliest subjects are white gay men. Reginald Sheppard writes about the emotional immaturity of gazing upon white gays in his essay “On Not Being White.” The idea is that the Black artist grows out of this artistic juvenility and into a Black field of view where there are major Black figures, waiting to be depicted in their complexity. But Wyeth seems to contest this view, both in what he wants to paint and the white figure at the center of his gaze.

Wyeth’s scrutiny also extends to a collective of artists who call themselves MangoWave and lead with their identity as people of color. To be sure, Wyeth himself could not escape the 2020 wave that seemed to sweep minor Black artists into the limelight. But what sets him apart from these “grifters,” in his mind, is that he wants to interrogate identity. He says, “It’s a black painting. Because I’m black. And I painted.”

Brandon Taylor’s use of the lowercase “b” in a novel about Black people is an important point of conversation. It is not just about style standards, or even a minor political point (think bell hooks). It’s almost as though he is drawing a distinction between “black” and “Black.” The former is widening, depoliticizing, and leaves room for collective definition. The latter is perhaps more of a personal identity, which only the individual can decide. Either way, Taylor’s choice seems to aid in the overarching question: What does it mean to be Black? That a painting of a white individual is given the title Black Man only adds to this destabilization of meaning.

Taylor’s choice of theology is admittedly odd. There are not many recent novels that engage with questions of religion and belief. The characters have barefaced meditations on theological topics like grace and free will that span pages.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Wyeth said.

“About grace?” Keating asked. “It’s a tough one. When I taught Sunday school to kids, I always said that grace makes it so that God is always on your side.”

It seems unusual that such a sophisticated novel should essay on an idea that is taught to children. But the idea of grace is complex. Who deserves it and who does not? And in the age of increasing theocratic rule, setting theological concepts in conversation with queerness, with art, with French films, with sex is timely. Theologians have been doing this since time immemorial. Fiction writers once produced much more work that invited theological inquiry. With Minor Black Figures, Taylor signals that maybe it is time to talk about God again, just as it is time to talk about being black.