That’s because it was rushed. He’d had advance after advance and grant after grant to finish it but kept delaying it, and finally his publishers said “Get it to us on X date or give us back the money… we mean it!” That’s why Kunta Kinte’s story lasts several hundred pages, Kizzy’s a couple of hundred, Chicken George a good while, and then everything from Civil War to Alex lasts about 30 pages.
As for the lawsuits and all… let’s see, how to tread lightly on a sensitive topic---- Alex Haley wasn’t a good researcher and he wasn’t above making the research fit his conclusion. There’s a LOT of problems with ROOTS.
In his defense, he never claimed that it was a work of non-fiction altogether. Basically, he got his family’s pedigree and wrote a novel that placed in the family stories he’d heard and used the family tree and used fiction to flesh out the characters. Absolutely no problem with that, especially since there was the disclaimer (I think he may actually have coined the word “faction”).
However, much of his research doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. For example, there’s no way the slave Toby at the Waller Plantation in Virginia- whose records he appended to his African ancestor- could have been the one who came over on the Lord Ligonier that he identified as the slave ship. The LL came over in 1765, the slave was here in the 1750s, and he died before Kizzy (identified as Toby/Kunta Kinte’s daughter in the book) was ever conceived.
Likewise, the one thing in the photocopy of the mimeograph pamphlet from the Lea family that does make a good point is that plantation records show that Kizzy had many children and some were born before Lea owned her (in the novel Kizzy is sold away for helping a slave escape when she’s about 15; in reality she was [this is from later research and not the photocopied mimeographed typed pamphlet] probably a bequest or debt payment [the Leas and the Wallers were related] and her children came with her, so at least some of them weren’t her master’s [not Lea anyway]).
Anyway, there’s lots of little stuff, but as said- it’s a novel, and Haley never claimed it wasn’t. It could be argued that he should have made explicit what was handed down in the family or backed by record from what was strictly his own invention (i.e. Kizzy’s participation in the Underground Railroad), but, c’est la vie.
More damning were the accusations of deliberately altering research and plagiarism, and he was sued for the both the historical research components and the literary components. A professor of African culture sued him for using- verbatim- the professor’s writings in describing Gambia and Mandinka society- this one was settled out of court. The big one was the Harold Courlander suit, who claimed that Haley had essentially lifted the story of Kunta Kinte from Courlander’s novel The African- and the judge evidently agreed. On the eve of the verdict it was settled out of court for $650,000 and admission of “unintentional” plagiarism.
The griot that Haley connected the stories with- “he went into the jungle to cut a log for a drum and was never seen again” of the griot + “and he came here cause he was cutting himself a log for a drum and the slavers cotched him” of his aunts- there’s a big controversy over this. Some say that Haley willfully distorted the griot’s story, others that he was duped by the griot who knew what Haley was searching for and wanted publicity for the village of Juffureh and added this, some say the incident simply never happened. I would LOVE to know that it did happen exactly as described- it’s just so powerful- but we’ll probably never know for certain.
There are allegations the book had a lot of “doctors” who fixed up Haley’s not great manuscript. This may not be true but it’s probably based in fact- you can actually tell in reading the book when the “voice” changes- this section just does not read like it’s from the same writer who wrote that one.
A bizarre but verified factoid: when Haley was in development of the miniseries (and this comes straight from David Wolper, the producer, and is on the ROOTS commentary on DVD) he specifically state that he wanted no black screenwriters to work on the project. His justification was that they would want to add their own agenda and he was afraid they’d try to make all black characters too saintly and all whites too evil.
Anyway, Wiki has a good synopsis of his plagiarism trials and other allegations. For that matter the re-release of the book actually addresses them in a lengthy new preface.
It’s one of those things that I almost hate to mention, because warts and all ROOTS was a very important book and really did have just a tremendous impact on American culture (not just black either- you can see a real renaissance in genealogy, public history, and other great “awarenesses” spring from this time). The other thing I hate about bringing it up is that,as you might imagine, several white supremacists who’ve probably never read any book longer than a Chick pamphlet have nevertheless had a field day with this (that’s the danger of googling- you come across a lot of “ROOTS WAS ALL LIES” sites that are Aryan connected- cause as we all know those Aryan Nations types take factual documentation and literary integrity seriously- that’s why you’ll never see James Frey as their keynote speaker.) Plus, all memoirists embellish- and all have been called on it: David Sedaris (some anal critic wrote an essay for Salon “exposing” Sedaris’s works as embroidered and embellished and fictionalized and then became absolutely furious and wrote a follow up when 99.999999% of the mail he received was ‘of course he does you numbskull!’- the other .0000001% was misaddressed), Augusten Burroughs (sued- settled out of court), Dave Eggers (his sister was livid over the book- with reason it seems- also committed suicide, not that there’s necessarily a connection), etc., so it’s hardly surprising Haley, who wasn’t exactly a memoirist but was self-referential and who wrote the bestselling book anybody ever wrote on their family, gets more criticism than the others. As for the the research and plagiarism- well, somehow the white supremacists found Haley’s flaws and MLK’s yet overlooked Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Godwin, Joseph Ellis and other “biggies” in the field of history who are far more trained than Haley was as historical researchers yet were sued successfully for plagiarism (which I’m certainly not exonerating, just saying that it’s not like ‘white’ respected authors haven’t been just as guilty.) I don’t recall having heard any scandals associated with David McCullough- probably means one day we’ll learn he was an al-Quaeda operative
And as a novel- divorcing any claims of factuality, it works. Up until 1860 anyway- after that, like you said, waaaay too rushed. (Also, a lot of the stuff from the miniseries wasn’t in the book- it was padded to add drama [the extramarital affair of the Reynolds family, Kizzy’s return to her father’s grave, Tom’s problems with the KKK, etc.]).
I do hope that another black author would come along and write a really REALLY great successor to it that’s free of scandal, though, fact or fiction or blend so long as its properly labeled. Til then, ROOTS is way too important to ever let it go out of print again imo (it was out of print for several years, though largely due to estate squabbles by Haley’s heirs).
I’m sorry what was the question? I seem to have digressed…
