Okay, I admit it: I haven't read him, except one essay. But I was recently watching a documentary on him, and he was fascinating.
The Essential James Baldwin
He wrote with the kind of clarity that was as comforting as it was chastising. Here’s where to start.
By Robert Jones Jr.
Where should I begin?
“Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1953) is Baldwin’s first novel. It is a semi-autobiographical account of a young man named John, his family, his friends, his neighborhood, his church and the Black American journey from the South to the North known as the Great Migration. Nearly biblical in its tenor, it is a kind of gospel. The novel is interspersed with the lyrics and music of Black Christian traditions and reaches a fever pitch during the final section of the book, “The Thrashing Floor.” That’s where Baldwin is describing what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like when someone catches the Holy Ghost.
I’d like a groundbreaking love story
Nearly 70 years ago, Baldwin wrote a novel about a romance between two men. That might not seem like such a big deal now, but then, it was practically unheard of.
“Giovanni’s Room” (1956) takes place in Paris during the 1950s and details the story of an American expatriate named David, who meets Giovanni, an Italian bartender, at a gay bar. The two become friends and, eventually, lovers. But there’s a problem: David has a girlfriend. In characteristically thought-provoking precision, Baldwin links misogyny and anti-queerness.
I want something that will rattle my soul
“The Fire Next Time” (1963) is probably Baldwin’s most popular book. It begins with a letter written to his nephew James, in which Baldwin implores his namesake not to believe any of the negative things white supremacists have to say about him; that what they say about him actually reveals what they really feel about themselves.
In the book’s more substantive essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter From a Region in My Mind,” he turns his critical eye on Christianity and sits down in conversation with Elijah Muhammad, then the leader of the Nation of Islam. He reflects on these encounters and concludes that ultimately, religion serves as a divisive force — that it invests human beings with false senses of superiority, that white people’s hostilities and Black people’s resentments of those hostilities will perhaps lead to race wars and possibly the destruction of the nation. “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, more loving,” he writes. “If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.”
Give me something short, but powerful
Along with “The Fire Next Time” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) is one of Baldwin’s best-known works. It is a short story that details the relationship between two brothers in Harlem: an unnamed teacher who narrates the story, and a jazz pianist named Sonny. Both are war veterans (Baldwin never says which conflict), and one brother struggles with addiction, while the other tries to figure out why. But the story isn’t merely a safari through the miseries and fleeting moments of reprieve in Black people’s lives. That may be the backdrop, but in the foreground Baldwin explains to us, in ways that are wholly astonishing, the nature of music itself.
I’d like a prescient work of fiction
“If Beale Street Could Talk” (1974) was the first novel by Baldwin to be adapted into a major motion picture. And it’s easy to see why. Though it was written and is set in the 1970s, its themes regarding the troubled relationship between Black people and the police are, unfortunately, timeless. Its plot could as easily be a headline in 2024 as 50 years ago.
This is the story of Tish and Fonny, two young Black people who fall in love, and who are violently separated when Fonny is falsely accused of rape. Even when describing the novel’s most harrowing aspects, Baldwin always puts love front and center. Baldwin navigates the havoc that a carceral system wreaks on families, how it steals time and touch, and how love is likely the only thing that can withstand such an assault.
What is his most underrated book?
In the essay collection “The Devil Finds Work” (1976), Baldwin recalls his lifelong love affair with movies, critically analyzing both contemporary films and those of his childhood. He discusses his first impressions of actors like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, his suspicion of a kind of gangster archetype (as played by actors like Humphrey Bogart), Hollywood’s propensity for white savior narratives and stereotypical depictions of Black people and his own run-in with the Hollywood machine. All the while, he weaves in comparisons to literary classics by Faulkner, Shakespeare and others.
The standout pieces include a biting analysis of “The Defiant Ones,” about two escaped prisoners, and a sympathetic evaluation of the Billie Holiday biopic “Lady Sings the Blues,” which he initially detested. But the pièce de résistance is his review of “The Exorcist.” Baldwin was one of the few critics at the time who was not wowed by the film. He outlines how he and a friend went to see it at his friend’s insistence, after hearing all the national hype about people vomiting, passing out and running from the screenings. None of this impresses Baldwin. He puts it bluntly: “The mindless and hysterical banality of the evil presented in ‘The Exorcist’ is the most terrifying thing about the film.”
“The Devil Finds Work” is an exhilarating and underrated exemplar of cultural criticism.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/james-baldwin-best-books.html