Starred review from May 31, 2010
Baldwin's published essays have been already twice collected (The Price of the Ticket and the posthumous Library of America Collected Essays), but there are gems in this collection compiled by Kenan (Let the Dead Bury the Dead): "The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston" is as impeccably crafted as a short story; "Blacks and Jews" captures the speaking Baldwin and echoes the call-and-response tradition. The 54 pieces, none previously appearing in book form, range from Baldwin's first published book review in 1947 to a 1984 colloquy with college students. Baldwin's topic can often be subsumed under race, but he most consistently wrestles with questions of moral integrity—in the language ("The Uses of the Blues"), in the artist's work ("Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare"), in the assessment of history ("On Being White... and Other Lies"), and in one's personal life ("To Crush a Serpent"). Kenan's introduction and headnotes are models of critical good sense; his awareness of both "Baldwin's achievements that beggar the imagination," and of the "grab bag" quality of some pieces makes him the perfect shepherd for these "lost" works.
June 1, 2010
A grab bag of pieces from novelist and firebrand Baldwin (1924–1987), varying in quality but marked by his trademark ferocity.
The author's best-known and most powerful nonfiction pieces have long been available in book form (The Price of the Ticket, 1985, etc.), so inevitably this book has a B-list feel to it. Most disposable are the book reviews he wrote in the late '40s, which reveal a writer struggling to find his voice, and in which he takes swipes at Maxim Gorky, Erskine Caldwell and James M. Cain with little subtlety or insight. But by the late '50s and early '60s, Baldwin's thinking about American racism matured, balancing reason and outrage, and many of the pieces are worthy companions to his provocative essay collection The Fire Next Time (1963). In "As Much Truth as One Can Bear," published in 1962, he pleads for an American literature that abandons lost-innocence themes embraced by Hemingway and Faulkner, and throughout his '60s essays he critiques an American society that had failed to face its hypocrisy head-on. The book is perhaps best read as a showcase for Baldwin's versatility—he was comfortable covering theater, music and sports through the filter of race. In a long-form reported piece on the Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston prizefight in 1962, the author displays an admirable eye for detail of the boxers as well as the reporters and hangers-on. Similarly, a series of letters from Turkey, Israel and France expose his private concerns about his work as he was finishing his controversial novel Another Country (1962), while the transcript of a 1984 panel on blacks and Jews provides evidence of how well Baldwin could think on the fly.
There are too many ephemeral or weakly written pieces to appeal beyond Baldwin's devoted admirers, but the best of the '60s essays underscore the reasons his work endures.
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August 1, 2010
"An omnigatherum" of the ideas Baldwin "revisited most often," this compilation edited by Kenan (English, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; The Fire This Time) is intended to serve as a companion to the Library of America's James Baldwin: Collected Essays. The essays and speeches included range widely over literature, politics, and the arts, covering such diverse topics as "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity," "The Uses of the Blues," and "Blacks and Jews." There are profiles of actor Sidney Poitier and of boxers Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston, followed by a selection of letters, some forewords and afterwords, and reviews. Among these pieces are a foreword to Black Panther leader Bobby Seale's A Lonely Rage (1978) and a letter to Angela Davis in prison, signs perhaps of Baldwin's increasing radicalization. Underlying all of these writings is Baldwin's indictment of America for its hypocritical attitude on race. VERDICT These previously published writings, gleaned for the most part from a variety of periodical sources, have a more powerful resonance when read together in book form. A useful addition for African American scholars.--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2010
Growing up poor, black, and gay in a household dominated by an abusive preacher stepfather, Baldwin gained perspective on every prejudice indulged by America in his lifetimean epic saga from poverty and obscurity to comfort and world renown. This collection offers Baldwins previously uncollected essays, profiles, reviews, and letters, fully displaying the breadth of his struggle to come to terms with the injustice and, worse, the immorality of life in a nation that prided itself on equality. Baldwin is biting and insightful in his critique of religious fundamentalism, the prospects of a black president, the hypocrisy of the American art and cultural scene, the challenges of black nationalism, and the complexities of race and identity. In the long passages of his essays and the short, acerbic comments in his interviews, Baldwin shows a masterful sweep of language and ideas and feelings that continues to resonate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)