(no subject)
I have to admit that I've been putting off talking about James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, because I don't quite know how to do it. I mean, they are ridiculously brilliant - the man can write, he's got that deceptively straightforward humanistic eloquence that makes you feel sort of ashamed of yourself whenever you find yourself disagreeing with him. (I am sorry, James Baldwin, but I do believe there is a place for sentiment and escapism in fiction. Judge me for this if you must!)
But of course most of the time it's nearly impossible to disagree with him for other reasons than his eloquence, because his vision is very clear, and surprisingly kind. The essays in these two collections are often very autobiographical, growing out of his family experiences and his history and his time as an expatriate in Paris, but of course, when you are a black man from Harlem - in the 1950's or today - the personal cannot help but be political. (I would say a queer black man, which is even more true, but he doesn't really engage much in that aspect of his identity in these particular books.) There are also a few essays that grow out of book and movie reviews, which of course I find fascinating because I have an addiction to reading other people's reviews, especially reviews in which the reviewer feels free to range to personal and political subjects. But no more fascinating than the rest of the book.
(The reviews are clearly written for a white audience; in one of them at least, James Baldwin writes as if he were white, and I really wish I knew the circumstances under which that was first published, and whether the readers would have been in on the joke. The personal essays, I think, are written to speak to both white and black audiences.)
The other thing I want to note is that the introduction I had of Notes of a Native Son had an introduction written just before James Baldwin's death, in which he would like to make it clear that most of the things he was talking about in the 1950's regarding racism and identity have not, in fact, magically gone away. If he were alive to write another introduction note now, I suspect it would say the same thing.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/240786.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
But of course most of the time it's nearly impossible to disagree with him for other reasons than his eloquence, because his vision is very clear, and surprisingly kind. The essays in these two collections are often very autobiographical, growing out of his family experiences and his history and his time as an expatriate in Paris, but of course, when you are a black man from Harlem - in the 1950's or today - the personal cannot help but be political. (I would say a queer black man, which is even more true, but he doesn't really engage much in that aspect of his identity in these particular books.) There are also a few essays that grow out of book and movie reviews, which of course I find fascinating because I have an addiction to reading other people's reviews, especially reviews in which the reviewer feels free to range to personal and political subjects. But no more fascinating than the rest of the book.
(The reviews are clearly written for a white audience; in one of them at least, James Baldwin writes as if he were white, and I really wish I knew the circumstances under which that was first published, and whether the readers would have been in on the joke. The personal essays, I think, are written to speak to both white and black audiences.)
The other thing I want to note is that the introduction I had of Notes of a Native Son had an introduction written just before James Baldwin's death, in which he would like to make it clear that most of the things he was talking about in the 1950's regarding racism and identity have not, in fact, magically gone away. If he were alive to write another introduction note now, I suspect it would say the same thing.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/240786.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.