Rhett Butler’s People

Midway through Donald McCaig’s unexpectedly diverting novel, “Rhett Butler’s People,” a black man about to be lynched in the post-bellum South asks Rhett to please shoot him dead before the mob breaks into the jail and does worse. Rhett obliges. Thus does McCaig correct the record. In Margaret Mitchell’s telling — that is, in “Gone With the Wind” — we learn that Rhett has been arrested for killing “this darky who had insulted a white woman.” A few chapters later, Rhett confesses his guilt to Scarlett O’Hara, the other half of Mitchell’s famous romantic pair. [...]

di Stephen L. Carter, articolo completo (9844 caratteri spazi inclusi) su The New York Times 4 Novembre 2007