I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBoiss learning and Baldwins love and Langstons humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt arts redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama