James Baldwin Literature
Another country
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
Eight people become entangled in a web of interpersonal relationships, doomed
to become as savage and destructive as the society which oppresses them
Dial, 1962, 436p.
Kirkus Reviews This novel about love, by a well-known Negro author, has received
a good deal of advance publicity and will probably be widely read. Its subject
is tormented love: love between men and women, homosexuals, whites and Negroes,
shown through various shifting relationships in a group of friends. Rufus, a
Negro boy, has a tragic affair with a Southern white girl; she ends in the madhouse,
he becomes homosexual and kills himself. Vivaldo, an Irish-Italian, unsuccessful
writer, who was fond of Rufus, begins a stormy affair with Rufus' sister, Ida.
A white couple, Cass and Richard, start to break up when Richard becomes a successful
writer and Cass has an affair with a homosexual, Eric, who loved Rufus, and
is now in love with a French boy, Yves. All these people are hopelessly involved
in each other, and with themselves, and search for love in each other generally
in physical ways: at one point Vivaldo even has an affair with Eric. The ending
is a tragic and inconclusive general dissolution in which truth destroys love.
It is a curiously juvenile book for a man who has done so much writing. Neither
the style nor the thought is particularly brilliant. Yet it has a certain emotional
power. As the characters talk endlessly about their passion and the pain, they
reveal a staggering collection of the less commonplace griefs of our time. And
this relentless insistence, despite a certain banality and naivete, ends by
conveying a honest and despairing conviction of reality.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1962)
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0679744711 : Paperback
0886462150 : Cassette - Audio
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 013982
Giovanni's room
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
This tale of conflicted sexual identity in the 1950s centers around the experiences
of the American expatriate David, living in Paris and struggling with his feelings
of attraction to other men. Unable to face the truth about himself, David proposes
to Hella Lincoln. While she is in Spain mulling over his proposal, David falls
in love Giovanni, an Italian bartender and must choose between a conventional
life or being true to his own feelings. -- Description by: Nancy Pearl
Dial, copyright 1956
Library Journal Review: Baldwin's 1956 novel, his second, was daring for its
time, depicting a young man deep into Paris's second expatriate movement following
World War II as he grapples with his sexual identity. He is drawn both to his
fianc e and to a male Italian bartender with whom he begins an affair. Copyright
2001 Cahners Business Information.
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0440328810 : Paperback - Mass Market
0385334583 : Paperback
0679642196 : Hardcover
0803728794 : Hardcover
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 013983
Go tell it on the mountain
James Baldwin
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
This novel of Black life in America is written with an impartial attitude
New York: Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, 2005, 226 p.
In order to accept his heritage in the religious terms he understands, he must come to terms with his father, the prophet and preacher. To John, it appears that Gabriel loves neither John nor his mother. John both loves and hates Gabriel; he wants to kneel before God but not before his father.
Gabriel is a hard and passionate man who sees himself as chosen by God to found a long line of preachers of the true gospel. Gabriel has made himself hard in order to control his strong desires for worldly pleasure. If Gabriel does love his wife and stepson, it is with the stern love of a judging God rather than the forgiving love of Jesus. Gabriel seems to reserve tenderness for his wayward, natural son, Roy. Gabriel prefers that Roy continue the line of preachers and resents the fact that John is more likely to be a preacher.
In the third of the novel's three parts, John experiences a religious conversion. Though this conversion does not make his father love him as John hopes it may, it allows John to feel compassion for Gabriel and for all suffering people whose hearts' desires conflict with their souls' aspirations.
Baldwin has drawn on his childhood in Harlem to give authenticity to his story.
Because John, Gabriel, and other family members are so fully and deeply portrayed,
this is a powerful first novel. Though the religious experiences of these characters
may seem sectarian, they are really universal. All of the major characters are
trying to build and sustain community in the face of dehumanizing oppression.
Their particular version of Christianity is an effective response to being captives
in a racist culture.
Features about this author or title:
1. Book Discussion Guide - Go Tell it on the Mountain
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - The Roots of Modern African American Fiction
2. Book Discussion Guide - Song of Solomon
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0385334575
0440330076 : Paperback - Mass Market
0679601546 : Hardcover
0606015841 : DEMCO Turtleback
0808514164 : Glued Binding
1569560609 : Paperback
081241909X : Glued Binding
Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Magill Book Reviews, published by Salem Press
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 013984
Going to meet the man
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
Dial, copyright 1965
Kirkus Reviews With the exception of "The Man Child," a macabre, faintly
Lawrentian study of repressed love between two white men in the rural South,
all of Baldwin's tales here deal in one form or another with the Negro problem.
Technically, a good portion of the work is crude and unconvincing. "Come
Out the Wilderness" and "Previous Condition," for example, rest
on slight themes: the first concerning a Negro girl's hapless involvement with
an opportunistic white Village artist, and the second presenting the frustrations
of a Negro actor when he is denied lodgings in a white neighborhood. "This
Morning, This Evening, So Soon" is an ironic mood piece, a chronicle of
a Negro expatriate in Paris: on the verge of fame and fearful of returning to
the states, the singer discovers that his friend, a Tunisian outcast, is not
above stealing from people of his own race. "Sonny's Blues" is an
over-long, over-loud lament of a doomed jazz musician who becomes a junkie,
ending on a muted moment of recognition between himself and his square brother.
"The Rockpile" is a brief , bitter account of children blighted by
Harlem family life. The title story is reminiscent of Baldwin's recent play
Blues for Mr. Charlie; the white protaganist, a deputy sheriff, is momentarily
impotent until aroused by a terrible memory: as a boy, he witnessed, along with
his gloating parents and other adults, the brutal castration and burning of
an uppity Negro. All of these tales have an undeniable urgency, power and anger,
yet only "The Outing" achieves true artistry, probably because it
is the most personal and not melodramatic at all. Symphonic in structure, mixing
religious and sexual motifs, encompassing various shades of characters and situations
against the background of a boat trip up the Hudson, "The Outing"
is memorable in every sense; funny, sad, colorful, it is a triumphant performance.
(Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1965)
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
Other titles associated with this book:
Meeting the man
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0679761799 : Paperback
0440329310 : Paperback - Mass Market
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 013985
If Beale Street could talk
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
When Tish's boyfriend is jailed for rape their families unite to prove the charge
false
Dial Press, 1974, 197p.
Kirkus Reviews This new Baldwin novel is told by a 19-year-old black girl named
Tish in a New York City ghetto about how she fell in love with a young black
man, Fonny. He got framed on a rape charge and she got pregnant before they
could marry and move into their loft; but Tish and her family Finance a trip
to Puerto Rico to track down the rape victim and rescue Fonny, a sculptor with
slanted eyes and treasured independence. The book is anomalous for the 1970's
with its Raisin in the Sun wholesomeness. It is sometimes saccharine, but it
possesses a genuinely sweet and free spirit too. Along with the reflex sprinkles
of hate-whitey, there are powerful showdowns between the two black families,
and a Frieze of people who -- unlike Fonny's father -- gave up and "congregated
on the garbage heaps of their lives." The style wobbles as Tish mixes street
talk with lyricism and polemic and a bogus kind of Young Adult hesitancy. Baldwin
slips past the conflict between fighting the garbage heap and settling into
a long-gone private chianti-chisel-and-garret idyll, as do Fonny and Tish and
the baby. But Baldwin makes the affirmation of the humanity of black people
which is all too missing in various kinds of Superfly and sub-fly novels.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1974)
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0440340608 : Paperback - Mass Market
0385334591 : Paperback
0833505793 : Glued Binding
0307275930 : Paperback
0783818173 : Hardcover - Large Print
0606015981 : DEMCO Turtleback
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 013986
Just above my head
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
Love and courage bind three extraordinary people--a former child evangelist,
a famous gospel singer, and the latter's manager-brother--as they shape and
are shaped by the events of the past three decades
Dial Press, 1979, 597p.
Dial Press, copyright 1976, 96p.
Kirkus Reviews This is billed as "a children's story for adults, an adult
story for children"; it comes through at about an eight-year-old level;
and it's told from the viewpoint, and in the idiom, of a four-year-old who seems
a bit older. We're introduced to TJ's Harlem block via his fantasy, illustrated
in columns of TV-boxed frames, of the cop chase that might occur there. We meet
Mr. Man the janitor--"a real, real, real nice man"--and, later, his
wife Miss Lee who has a beautiful smile but sometimes doesn't even see you.
(The message is, she drinks a lot.) We meet TJ's friends WT, seven, and Blinky,
a girl of eight with shining eyeglasses. And with TJ we enter the dark, "real
weird" apartment of old Miss Beanpole who sends him to the store. If all
of this is a bit plotless for the most likely young audience, youngsters will
snap to attention when, toward the end, TJ tosses his ball into the air and
something else comes smashing down on him. It's a bottle. He's not hurt, but
WT comes running onto the broken glass with a hole in his sneaker. . . and there's
blood all over. Mr. Man and Miss Lee fix him up and you infer that it was her
gin bottle that came off the roof. There are unspoken tensions between the two
adults, but the episode ends with laughter and the children dancing to Mr. Man's
radio. Without the promised open-ended appeal or the punch you might expect,
it's an empathic, resonantly muted glimpse of TJ's world. Cazac's water-colored
drawings are childlike as well, which suits the viewpoint, though here some
discreet adult tempering might have strengthened the package.
(Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1977)
Other related features:
1. Annotated Book List - African-American Children's Authors
Author Web Sites:
1. Books and Writers--James Arthur Baldwin : Features biographical information
on the author.
Other Contributors:
Cazac, Yoran: illus
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0385273053 : Library binding - Juvenile
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 085689
Tell me how long the train's been gone: a novel
Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
Leo Proudhammer, an African American actor, reminisces about his past life and
loves, while lying in the hospital, recovering from a heart attack
Dial, copyright 1968