James Baldwin: American Author Challenge

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James Baldwin: American Author Challenge

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1msf59
Modificato: Ago 27, 2014, 8:45 pm



"Born on August 2, 1924, in New York City, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality and humanity. Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. Having lived in France, he died on December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul de Vence."

**This is part of our American Author Challenge 2014. This author will be read in September. The general discussion thread can be found right here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/162960

2msf59
Modificato: Set 28, 2014, 8:43 am

3laytonwoman3rd
Modificato: Ago 27, 2014, 9:29 pm

Yay! I will be reading Go Tell it on the Mountain, from the Library of America volume of James Baldwin's Early Novels and Stories.

4LoisB
Ago 27, 2014, 9:16 pm

I'll be reading Go Tell It On The Mountain. I ordered it from the library today.

5katiekrug
Ago 27, 2014, 9:35 pm

I have Giovanni's Room on my TBR shelves already, so I'll be reading that.

6msf59
Modificato: Ago 27, 2014, 9:52 pm

Sadly, Baldwin, is another American author I have not read enough of. I did read Go Tell It On The Mountain, a number of years ago and was very impressed. This time I will give Giovanni's Room a try. Kerri made the recommendation for me and she seems to know her Baldwin Business, very well.

Come on, you Purists! Only 4 more left!!

>3 laytonwoman3rd: I have the same volume of early novels. I also have the essay collection too! Have you ever read any of those?

>5 katiekrug: Are you following me around again, Booktopia Buddy? Which Wharton are you reading?

7laytonwoman3rd
Ago 27, 2014, 9:54 pm

The only Baldwin I have read previously is Giovanni's Room, Mark. Keep your hanky handy.

8streamsong
Ago 27, 2014, 10:23 pm

I have Giovanni's Room sitting here. Uh oh on the hanky alert.

9katiekrug
Ago 27, 2014, 10:27 pm

>6 msf59: - don't ditch me now, Mark! I haven't decided which Wharton, but it may be a shorter and/or less well known one....

10msf59
Ago 27, 2014, 10:34 pm

Uh oh on the hanky alert Part Deux!!

>9 katiekrug: I would not ditch my pal. I am going to read The Custom of the Country, which I was not familiar with. It's not real short though. About 360. I NEED to still find a copy.

11DorsVenabili
Ago 27, 2014, 10:39 pm

Yay!

I'll either read The Devil Finds Work or No Name in the Street, both non-fiction. It's also tempting to reread one of the famous essay collections, so we'll see.

I will add that I love Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone too. I hope someone reads it. It's probably my third favorite fiction after Go Tell it on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room.

12kidzdoc
Modificato: Ago 27, 2014, 10:52 pm

I loved Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room. I think I'll re-read Giovanni's Room and possibly read some of his nonfiction. Baldwin is one of the greatest essayists in American history, and most of his nonfiction can be found in the Library of America edition James Baldwin: Collected Essays.

13Deern
Ago 28, 2014, 4:38 am

I loved Giovanni's Room and already started Go Tell It On The Mountain. It reads so fast that I put it on hold now until September.

14laytonwoman3rd
Ago 28, 2014, 8:13 am

>12 kidzdoc: I'm excited about Baldwin, and I may read some of his essays as well, since I have that LOA edition too.

15laytonwoman3rd
Set 4, 2014, 4:48 pm

I picked up the LOA essay volume, and am reading the selections from The Fire Next Time. What a sane, articulate and righteously indignant voice.

16msf59
Set 4, 2014, 8:10 pm

>15 laytonwoman3rd: I'll be watching for your further thoughts on the Baldwin essay collection, Linda. sounds great.

I won't be able to start Giovanni's Room until I return from vacation, but I will get to it.

Has anyone else started a Baldwin??

17LoisB
Modificato: Set 4, 2014, 10:49 pm

>16 msf59: Your post made me check on my library hold, only to discover that it didn't exist! I can see that I posted above that I had placed the hold, but apparently I didn't! Hopefully, the new hold will be fulfilled before I leave on vacation on the 13th.

18Deern
Set 5, 2014, 5:35 am

I am almost finished with Go Tell It On The Mountain. Up to 80% I really enjoyed it, but that third part now goes way over my head. I might reread Giovanni's Room later this month.

19aulsmith
Set 5, 2014, 9:02 am

>18 Deern: Over your head in what way? Frankly, Giovanni's Room is a much more difficult book than Go Tell It on the Mountain, so if you're having trouble with Baldwin's sometimes oblique discussions of cultural mores, that's not the book I'd go to next. You might want to try If Beale Street Could Talk, which I remember being more straight-forward, or his essays where he's usually crystal clear.

20southernbooklady
Set 5, 2014, 9:26 am

>15 laytonwoman3rd: What a sane, articulate and righteously indignant voice.

I just discovered this thread, and what a delight. Baldwin is one of my "touchstone" authors...one of those writers who reminds me what it means to be American. I'll chime in later this month after I get back from a business trip, but I did want to suggest folks take a few minutes to listen to the interview he did with Studs Terkel for Terkel's long-running radio program back in 1961:

https://www.popuparchive.org/collections/938/items/6901

It's a remarkable piece. (I think a transcript of it has been reprinted in Conversations with James Baldwin

21klobrien2
Set 5, 2014, 10:00 am

I just picked up Giovanni's Room from the library, and already took a look at the first few pages. It's got me intrigued!

Karen O.

22laytonwoman3rd
Modificato: Set 5, 2014, 10:48 am

>20 southernbooklady: His Paris Review interview is quite remarkable too. Baldwin is currently at the top of my list of people I'd like to be able to sit down and talk to.

23Deern
Set 5, 2014, 11:47 am

>19 aulsmith: I read and absolutely loved Giovanni's Room some years ago. I agree this one hasn't been difficult - up to part three, but then I was overwhelmed with the biblical references. I should add that my bible knowledge is very, very limited. The ending was easier again (I finished it in the meantime).

24aulsmith
Set 6, 2014, 10:16 am

>23 Deern: Ah. Yes, Giovanni's Room dropped all that.

25laytonwoman3rd
Set 6, 2014, 2:49 pm

Finished The Fire Next Time. The link goes to my notes on my own thread. Highly recommended for its eloquence alone, never mind its social significance.

26southernbooklady
Set 6, 2014, 4:01 pm

>25 laytonwoman3rd: One of my favorite quotes from Baldwin is his observation that it is "perilous" for black people in America to hate white people, because no matter what anyone says, we are all related...cousins, and "kissing cousins" because we've grown up in the same place, among each other. Our realities involve each other. He calls it "a terrible depth of involvement."

That phrase, "the terrible depth of involvement" comes back to me as a caution and a reminder every time I'm presented with an us-vs-them situation. Gay vs. Straight. Religious vs. Secular. Red vs. Blue. Feminst vs. Partriarchy. It's this constant warning in my mind that nothing will ever be resolved if we persist on seeing the world in these split factions and interests. That regardless of what you feel, you can't pretend that other side does not exist, or that acting like it does not exist will ever be a resolution. Engagement works. Disengagement does not.

27banjo123
Set 8, 2014, 10:47 pm

I am reading Going to Meet the Man. I read a lot of Baldwin in my youth, and it's nice to find out that he lives up to my memory.

28katiekrug
Set 8, 2014, 10:48 pm

I just finished Giovanni's Room - very powerful. This was my first Baldwin.

29laytonwoman3rd
Set 9, 2014, 8:09 am

>26 southernbooklady: You're pretty wise yourself, I'd say! That is a potent phrase, isn't it? I have a lot of trouble understanding how people can be purposely unkind to one another and justify it based on fundamental differences. Lots more Baldwin reading is on my list.

30banjo123
Set 9, 2014, 7:03 pm

I finished Going to Meet the Man, which was an awesome read.

31LoisB
Set 11, 2014, 11:04 pm

Go Tell It On The Mountain **

I was disappointed in this book - it was a little too "preaching" for me! Are all of Baldwin's books like that?

32EBT1002
Set 16, 2014, 12:21 am

I now have both Going to Meet the Man and The Fire Next Time on hold at the library. I hope to get at least one of them read this month.

33aulsmith
Set 18, 2014, 6:10 pm

31: Preaching as in the politics of racism or preaching as in having lots of references to African American religious practices?

Politics of racism: Mostly yes. I don't remember Just Above My Head having too much of that, but it's been decades since I read it.

African American religion: Avoid Amen Corner and you should be okay.

34LoisB
Modificato: Set 18, 2014, 7:10 pm

>33 aulsmith: yes, I meant 'preaching" in terms of religious practices. Thanks for the advice about Amen Corner.

35msf59
Set 23, 2014, 8:30 pm

"I am the man, I suffered, I was there."

- Whitman

^Giovanni's Room grabbed me immediately. The writing is wonderful. Sighs...

Big THANK YOU to Kerri for making this pick for me. It is perfect.

36Donna828
Set 24, 2014, 3:57 pm

>35 msf59:: I read Giovanni's Room earlier this month, Mark. I felt the same way. Baldwin is quickly becoming a favorite author!

37msf59
Set 24, 2014, 7:57 pm

"I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.”

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”

- Giovanni's Room

Just 30 more pages left. I am impressed how smooth and easy the narrative is, despite the dark undertones.

>36 Donna828: We picked a good one, Donna!

38lkernagh
Set 25, 2014, 8:44 pm

Stopping by to report that I also read Giovanni's Room earlier this month and was very impressed with Baldwin's writing style and the story.

39msf59
Set 25, 2014, 9:56 pm

>338 This looks like a winner, Lori! Yah!

40EBT1002
Set 27, 2014, 3:10 pm

I'm reading The Fire Next Time and it is WONDERFUL. I keep thinking "oh my, I must come back and reread that passage." My copy is from the library but I think I'm going to want a copy for my personal library.

41laytonwoman3rd
Set 27, 2014, 5:06 pm

Just finished Go Tell It On the Mountain. Powerful and brilliant. I need some time to process it before talking about it.

42countrylife
Set 30, 2014, 3:38 pm

I was the opposite, EBT1002; I read The Fire Next Time, too, but didn't enjoy it. He came across so racist, it was hard to read.

43laytonwoman3rd
Set 30, 2014, 3:46 pm

>42 countrylife: I'm very surprised at that reaction to The Fire Next Time. Could you quote some passages that struck you as racist?

44countrylife
Ott 1, 2014, 11:26 am

I also found it rambling and even incendiary, which, I suppose was his intention since he used that title. Here’s a few excerpts:

God is black. All black men belong to Islam; they have been chosen. And Islam shall rule the world. The dream, the sentiment is old; only the color is new. P.142

Allah allowed the Devil, through his scientists, to carry on infernal experiments, which resulted, finally, in the creation of the devil known as the white man, and later, even more disastrously, in the creation of the white woman. P.167

There is thus, by definition, no virtue in white people, and since they are another creation entirely and can no more, by breeding, become black than a cat, by breeding, can become a horse, there is no hope for them. P.168

There is nothing new in this merciless formulation except the explicitness of its symbols and the candor of its hatred. P.169

Why, then, is it not possible that all things began with the black man and that he was perfect – especially since this is precisely the claim that white people have put forward for themselves all these years? Furthermore, it is now absolutely clear that white people are a minority in the world – so severe a minority that they now look rather more like an invention – and that they cannot possibly hope to rule it any longer. If this is so, why is it not also possible that they achieved their original dominance by stealth and cunning and bloodshed and in opposition to the will of Heaven and not as they claim, by Heaven’s will? And if this is so then the sword they have used so long against others can now, without mercy, be used against them. P.174

And a couple of reviews:

The Washington Post article entitled James Baldwin Strikes a Spark 2/16/04.
” …his long, angry 1962 New Yorker essay -- issued the next year as a book called "The Fire Next Time" -- had even more. In it he took as his text "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!" and warned of apocalyptic violence unless America dealt honestly and aggressively with the terrible conditions in which its black citizens lived.”

The New York Review of Books article entitled James Baldwin and the “Man” 2/1/63.
His latest book, The Fire Next Time, differs in important ways from his earlier work in the essay. Its subjects are less concrete, less clearly defined; to a considerable extent he has exchanged prophecy for criticism, exhortation for analysis, and the results for his mind and style are in part disturbing. The Fire Next Time gets its title from a slave song: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign,/No more water the fire next time.” But this small book with the incendiary title consists of two independent essays, both in the form of letters. One is a brief affair entitled “My Dungeon Shook” and addressed to “My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.” The ominous promise of this title is fulfilled in the text. . . .

The other, much longer, much more significant essay appeared first in a pre-Christmas number of The New Yorker, where it made, understandably, a sensation. It is called “Down At the Cross; Letter From a Region of My Mind.” The subtitle should be noted. Evidently the essay is to be taken as only a partial or provisional declaration on Baldwin’s part, a single piece of his mind. . . . he might at least have provided a solid base for the speculative fireworks the book abounds in. To cope thoroughly with the fireworks in short space, or perhaps any space, seems impossible. Ideas shoot from the book’s pages as the sparks fly upward, in bewildering quantity and at random. . . . He writes: “The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream.” . . . The Fire Next Time, in its madder moments, can do nothing except inflame…

45southernbooklady
Modificato: Ott 1, 2014, 2:19 pm

>44 countrylife:

I think you are conflating racism with Baldwin's explanation of racial attitudes and the appeal of the Black Muslim movement. Those excerpts are Baldwin's account of the rise of that movement, and why it drew desperate and angry men into it, mostly through his experience with the speaker Elijah Muhammad, who seems to have been attempting to convert him:

I began to see that Elijah's power came from his single-mindedness. There is nothing calculated about him; he means every word he says. The real reason, according to Elijah, that I failed to realize that the white man was a devil was that I had been too long exposed to white teaching and had never received true instruction.


The statement "Allah allowed the Devil, and his scientists, ...." is Baldwin telling us what Elijah Muhammed was teaching.

And consider this other quote you gave:

There is nothing new in this merciless formulation except the explicitness of its symbols and the candor of its hatred.

In context it is a comment on the scenario of creation Elijah Muhammed has presented, and Baldwin is saying that it is familiar, because he has heard the same sentiment, with a different cast of characters:

Its emotional tone is as familiar to me as my own skin; it is but another way of saying that sinners shall be bound in Hell a thousand years
.

He gives a good (if that is the word) account of how brutal repression has forced black people "having learned long ago to expect the worst" become people who easily believe the worst:

In the beginning--and neither can this be overstated--a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that the treatment accorded him has nothing to do with anything he has done, that the attempt of white people to destroy him--for that is what it is--is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard for him to think of white people as devils.


In other words, if you dehumanize someone, they may dehumanize you back.

But Baldwin is no Black Muslim. And he rejects the "Black Nation" that Elijah Muhammed was envisioning. I think this goes back to his idea of the "terrible depth of involvement" between black people and white people in America:

In short, we, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation--if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, as men and women.
.

46laytonwoman3rd
Modificato: Ott 1, 2014, 2:44 pm

>45 southernbooklady: Oh, very well put, Nicki. Thank you. As I was trying to compose a similar response, you were knocking it out.

>44 countrylife: I think it's important to read the rest of that Washington Post piece, as well. This bit, for instance:

"What Baldwin wanted above all else was acceptance, by blacks and whites alike. He was a member of the black community and yearned for a high place within it, which indeed he soon achieved. Among whites he wanted acceptance not because they were white -- quite to the contrary -- but because they were Americans and so was he. He believed that America could never be a true nation, could never achieve anything close to its potential, until black Americans were allowed to contribute as freely and fully as whites. That argument is central to "The Fire Next Time," and is the note on which this book closes:

"The black American is not a visitor to the West, but a citizen there, an American; as American as the Americans who despise him, the Americans who fear him, the Americans who love him -- the Americans who became less than themselves, or rose to be greater than themselves by virtue of the fact that the challenge he presented was inescapable. . . . The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. . . . It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today."

It's essential to remember that when Baldwin was writing The Fire next Time, the climate in this country was blatantly racist. The tone of his work, in that context, was amazingly rational and even-handed. That is not to say that his anger, fear and moral outrage were not clearly evident. But men of his intelligence and fortitude brought us forward a long way.

47countrylife
Ott 2, 2014, 9:10 am

You're right, Linda.

48jnwelch
Ott 2, 2014, 11:10 am

I just finished Notes of a Native Son, the collection of his essays published in 1954.

They are all well-written. The ones I connected with most strongly were the first person "I" ones, as opposed to the ones where he takes a more distanced, professorial tone. It is disturbing to read about his and others' experiences with "We don't serve Negroes" and the like. I grew up beyond that particular time, but the schools in my town weren't desegregated until the mid-60s. Our struggles today with more subtle racism (e.g. in hiring and advancement to leadership, or even less overt hostility in restaurants) are frustrating, but the America he describes is an outright nightmare. The rage he and others felt was justified and inevitable.

I've been the only white guy in any number of situations - wonderful, friendly, neutral, uncomfortable, dangerous - but I cannot truly and fully imagine a role reversal where I had to deal with such racism on a daily basis. His book certainly brings a lot of that home, especially in the more personal essays.

49mhmr
Ott 2, 2014, 3:33 pm

Read Another Country and finished it the last three days of September.

50klobrien2
Ott 14, 2014, 6:37 pm

I'm a little behind, but I'm just about to finish Giovanni's Room. I'm quite impressed by Baldwin and his power of description!

Karen O.

51southernbooklady
Nov 15, 2016, 8:30 am

I thought I'd resurrect this thread to let people know about the new movie based on Baldwin's last, unfinished book that is coming out in February:

I Am Not Your Negro

52laytonwoman3rd
Nov 19, 2016, 5:15 pm

>51 southernbooklady: Wow. Will keep my eyes open for that one. I wonder how widely it will be distributed.

53luvamystery65
Nov 20, 2016, 4:17 pm

>51 southernbooklady: I will be reading The Fire Next Time next year. I'm glad you bumped this thread. Thanks