“Baldwin’s reputation as a novelist and essayist rests mainly on the work he did the decade before 1963, a decade in which he was passionately industrious.” (p. 97). Baldwin’s last original work was published in 1985. Baldwin died in 1987. Since then, Baldwin’s standing has risen and fallen. Novelist Colm Toibin analyzes James Baldwin’s work and its influences in On James Baldwin.
Although I’ve only read two of Baldwin’s books, I didn’t realize that Baldwin was profoundly influenced by Henry James. The book that most impacted Baldwin was James’s The Ambassadors. Baldwin spent time in Paris and James’s novel of love and deception in the City of Light coincides with many of Baldwin’s themes.
James Baldwin wrote about race and homosexuality which attracted controversy. “I don’t mean to compare myself to a couple of artists I unreservedly admire, Miles Davis and Ray Charles–but I would like to think that some of the people who liked my book responded to it in a way similar to the way they respond when Miles and Ray are blowing. These artists, in their very different ways, sing a kind of universal blues…they are telling us something of what it is like to be alive. I think I really helplessly model myself on jazz musicians and try to write the way they sound…I am aiming at what Henry James called ‘perception at the pitch of passion.'” (p. 4-5)
I enjoyed this survey of James Baldwin where Colm Toibin provides a guided tour of a writer who deserves a wider audience. Have you read James Baldwin? GRADE: B+
“One Way Ticket” by Langston Hughes (p. 29)
I pick up my life
And take it on the train
To Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake,
Any place that is
North and West —
And not South.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Pitch of Passion — 1
Crying Holy — 37
Paris, Harlem — 55
The Private Life — 95
The Terror and the Surrender — 119
Acknowledgments — 141
Selected Bibliography — 143
Pretty sure I read Giovanni’s Room but not much else.
Patti, I read a lot of James Baldwin’s essays in various magazines and journals over the years. Plus, Baldwin showed up on TV for interviews. He had a compelling presence.
Not a lot,, though I’ve always meant to read more of his stuff. I read IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK when the movie version came out in 2018.
By coincidence, this is the second review of a (different) Coim Toibin book I’ve read this morning.
Jeff, I like Colm Toibin’s work, both fiction and non-fiction.
Just GIOVANNI’S ROOM I think. Barbara Pym once read a James Baldwin book and, while admiring it, wrote to someone (Phillip Larkin, iirc), “One is grateful that one has not lived the sort of life that would enable one to write a book like that.” And that’s probably where I stand too.
Deb, James Baldwin took flak from the Black Community (chiefly because he was a homosexual) and the White Community because he was Black and very bright.