Additional notes: How Borges’ The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim helps us understand Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Extra notes. May 15, 2022.

Have I discovered a source explaining Bynum’s Shiny Man in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone?

Wilson introduces the concept of Bynum’s shiny man early in Act 1 Scene 1. In short, Bynum, the roots man of the boarding house, has paid Selig a dollar to help him find his shiny man, a being he met walking down a road. In a dream/vision, Bynum’s father told him the shiny man was The One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way and that if he ever he were to see the shiny man again he would know that he had reached a heightened level of spiritual fulfillment. At the end of the play, Bynum declares that, in fact, Herald Loomis is the shiny man he had sought and his fulfillment is achieved.

Wilson said on many occasions that his primary influences were what he referred to as his 4 b’s, the blues, Bearden, Baraka, and Borges. A lot is said about the first two, the blues and Bearden, a bit less about Baraka, and even less about Borges. It is in Borges, however, that we find clues about and indications of the existence of a protypical shiny man.

Borges penned a series of short stories in 1941, The Garden of Forking Paths. I was reading The Garden of Forking Paths looking for examples of multiform narratives to apply to Wilson plays in a general sense when I came across The Approach to Al-Mu’Tasim, a story Borges reports second hand about a law student from Bombay. The plot involves the law student, who finds himself surrounded by a lower class of people, and assimilates with them. The law student finds some redeeming qualities in one of his new comrades and concludes that this man, perhaps a vile man, bears a reflection of a friend, or a friend of a friend, a reflection that gives him a different perspective on things. The law student arrives at a conclusion:

“Somewhere in the world there is a man from whom this clarity, this brightness, emanates; somewhere there is a man who is equal to this brightness.”

The law student devotes his life to finding this man. The man, called Al-Mu’tasim, is a type of divinity who influences all he comes across through mirrored reflections of his divine attributes. Al-Mu’tasim means “one who goes in quest of aid.” The novel ends with the law student never finding his shiny man.

Wilson provides a resolution to this search. Transplanting the quest to 1910 Pittsburgh, Bynum role plays the young Bombay law student. Herald Loomis, finally freed from seven years of peonage and forced servitude, seeks to unite his family. He has been subjected to untold horrible experiences during his period of enslavement on Joe Turner’s farm. Upon his release, he finds his daughter left behind with his wife’s mother, as his wife has joined a congregation that has fled north to the Pittsburgh area in the Great Migration.

Viewed through this lens, we see the reflection Loomis casts on everybody with whom he comes in contact, especially Bynum. We have a better understanding of his infrequent moodiness, his mutual attraction to Mattie Campbell, and his charismatic impact on all the residences of the boarding house. The Bombay law student never finds his shiny man. Bynum the roots man finds his, but most importantly, Herald Loomis, the shiny man himself, finds himself and finds redemption. Near the end of the story, Borges writes,

“….the idea that the Almighty is also in search of Someone, and that Someone, in search of a yet superior (or perhaps simply necessary, albeit equal) Someone, and so on, to the End – or better yet, the Endlessness – of Time.”