["Uncle Tom's Children," "Native Son," and "Black Boy"] not only made it clear that Mr. Wright was the most eloquent spokesman for the Negro people in his generation; they suggested that his was one of the important literary talents of our time. How important it is, and how little limited to a particular group of people, is demonstrated by his fourth book and second novel "The Outsider."…
"The Outsider," [like "Native Son,"] is concerned with the quest for meaning: not, however, in terms of racial discrimination nor in any sociological terms whatever, but in purely philosophical terms. The leading character is, to be sure, a Negro, but his principal problems have nothing to do with his race. They are pre-eminently the problems of the human being as such, for this is, so far as I can recall, one of the first consciously existentialist novels to be written by an American….
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