Product Description
James Baldwin At The Movies...Provocative, timeless, brilliant.

Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man...These are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin...and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies.

Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist, offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions.Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness.And here, too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.

From The Birth of a Nation to The Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns his critical eye to American film.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Mandatory Reading
Baldwin's keen dissection of racial myth and other forms of dangerous fantasy pedaled by film in its century-plus existence is logical, concise and jaw-dropping. His eerie parallel of "The Birth of a Nation" with "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and discussion of the "superhuman black man" is especially timely in the wake of the election of the first African-American president, a man sometimes compared to Portier. Truly we have a long way to go before divesting ourselves of such imagery, and this often overlooked book of essays is a fine start.

What "the devil's work" says about America
In this short work, Baldwin tries his hand at film criticism--and his unique and perceptive observations will change the way any filmgoer will watch movies. While Baldwin's focus is on racial representation (and misrepresentation) in the cinema, he expands his comments to various national obsessions that are reflected on the screen. As with most of Baldwin's work, there is power and precision in every sentence--and he nearly always quotable.

The essay is divided into three chapters. In the first, Baldwin discusses his adolescent love of movies and how it conflicted with his brief career as an adolescent minister in a church where the cinema (and the theater) were both regarded as "the devil's work" (thus, one of the implications of the title). The movies he dissects range from "A Tale of Two Cities" to Fritz Lang's "You Only Live Once," and he contrast the experience of film-watching with that of live theater, recalling Orson Welles's production of "Macbeth," which featured an all-black cast.

In the second chapter, Baldwin hits his stride, tearing into the patronizing portrayal of non-white roles in such films as "In the Heat of the Night," "In This, Our Life," "The Defiant Ones," and "Lawrence of Arabia." Baldwin observes about a type that reappears in many movies of the first seventy years of cinema: "It so happens that I saw 'The Birth of the Nation' and 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' on the same day . . . [Yet] in two films divided from each other by something like half a century, [there was] the same loyal [black] maid, playing the same role, and speaking the same lines." Noting how this stereotypical woman never seems to have her own family and how her only concerns are those of her white masters or employers, Baldwin exclaims: "How many times have we seen her!She is Dilsey, she is Mammy, in 'Gone with the Wind,' and in 'Imitation of Life,' and 'The Member of the Wedding.'"

Baldwin's final chapter finds him perplexed by the popular films of the 1970s. He is disappointed by the watering down of Billie Holiday's autobiography in "Lady Sings the Blues," although he admits that Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor "are, clearly, ready, willing, and able to stretch out and go a distance not permitted by the film." And he is disturbed by "The Exorcist" and what it seems to suggest about American dogma: "The mindless and hysterical banality of evil presented in 'Exorcist' is the most terrifying thing about the film."

Or, as Baldwin responds elsewhere to such otherworldly screen depictions of virtue and immorality: "I have seen the devil, by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me.... He does not levitate beds, or fool around with little girls, we do." ... Read more

Product Description
This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works.  In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Who's Afraid of James Baldwin
In this book Baldwin attempts to bear witness to the tumultuous and decadent era of the Civil Rights movement. Baldwin discusses his whereabouts during the murders of 3 of the movement's most influential titanic figures - Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin. He discusses his involvement, philosophizes the meaning of the movement, it's key players, what impact as a whole it had on all Americans, and ultimately how it changed his (already cynical, detached and disenchanted) attitude on the possibility of America ever achieving racial harmony.

Baldwin anchors his story (a historical glance at an era of systemic deep racism, hatred, and oppression) in the dubious innocence of an old Harlem buddy who has fled to Germany to escape a murder rap (which is essentially and interestingly a gay-hate crime that Baldwin leaves unchecked and unexplored). Eventually, the suspect is caught, extradited back to New York, and is convicted for the crime of which Baldwin is never really certain he is innocent. Or, for Baldwin, it doesn't really matter as much as does the symbolism of the (possible) acquittal. Baldwin is much more concerned with the American judicial system, (and its evil and wicked relation to the McCarthy phenomenon), and more specifically, the infamously and criminally corrupt New York court system under which his buddy is to be tried.

For Baldwin, who has come to know firsthand just how crooked the white American cop can be - when no one is looking - he seems more interested in getting his buddy off the hook just for the purpose of sticking it to the (il)legal system - one that has victimized, murdered and destroyed more black men than anything else - whether his buddy is innocent or not. So, for Baldwin, his buddy's innocence is predicated on the thought that, guilty or not, he deserves to be set free because he will never get a fair trail in a system which is designed to disbelieve thus imprison him by virtue of his skin color. For Baldwin, his buddy becomes a symbol of protest and rebellion against the American legal system for its unending history of injustice to the black sojourn in America.

"No Name In The Street" is certainly not one of Baldwin's good books. It is incomplete ("This book has been much delayed by trails, assassinations, funerals, and despair") and reads as though it were the kind of book that was thrown together to satisfy publisher demands, rather than a good critical and viable read. At times, the book lacks direction and focus, it themelessly jumps from story to story (with no links), and it doesn't have an ending. Baldwin began writing the book at the last end of the 60s and finished it at the beginning of the 70s. Not a good point to decide to shelf an unfinished book...at the end of one of the most important eras in American history, and certainly the 20th century.

And none of Baldwin's ideas are fresh, but mostly rehashed and reinvented issues that we have already heard from him. He generalizes important dates and trivializes facts. "Now, exactly like the Germans at the time of the Third Reich...the citizens [north of the Mason-Dixon line] know nothing, and wish to know nothing of what is happening around them." Although he understandably compares white American citizens (of the civil rights era) to Nazi Germany citizens (during the Hitler era), yet, not all of white Americans can be described in such an uncritical and general way. Too many have acted, protested and died in defense if black rights.
Then he suggested that, if not for the Rosa Park's incident, "we would never have heard of Martin Luther King." The anxious fires of protest and rebellion had already been stirring in King well before the Parks issue. And to suggest that King - a man who had been born and bred to fight injustice and lead the path of struggle, had only been sparked by the Rosa Parks issue (one which he at first refused to lend attention to because of other issues he considered more relevant and pressing at the time) was the impetus to one of the greatest movements of the 20th century is ludicrous and silly.

Another glaring defect in Baldwin's reflection of the Civil Rights era (and the 2oth century in general) is his refusal to mention the importance of black women in the movement! Besides his gratuitous mention of Parks (to which he placed the greater significance of such on King's acknowledgement, presence and involvement - not realizing that Park's sit-in had been well organized, rehearsed, and planned without any participation, direction, or even acknowledgement of a man named King), Baldwin makes no mention of Ella Baker, Hamer (and other poor, sharecropping women involved at the grassroots level), nor his buddies Hansberry and Simone, nor does he mention any of the women involved in the Panther movement, SNCC, nor does he mention any of the good things that Eleanor Roosevelt did to better black life.

By now, at this (lazy and desperate) juncture in Baldwin's career as a witness bearer and truth-teller, he is journalistically tired, and topically repetitive (which is also why he could not do with "Evidence..." what Capote did with "In Cold Blood"), and is now presiding at his own "masturbatory delusion" while both fixed on and sustained by the tumult and decadence of a bygone era. And he knows that his time as a once brilliant and critical examiner of American culture and society has come to a dreadful end, himself desperately hanging on to weak and broken vines that once yielded sweet and succulent fruit: "An old world is dying, and a new one, kicking the belly of its mother, time, announces that it is ready to be born. This birth will not be easy, and many of us are doomed to discover that we are exceedingly clumsy midwives." With a new world come new ideas and perspectives that are borne from new beginnings and bright experiences. Baldwin's ideas and perspectives are doomed because they are not necessarily new or fresh. Perhaps that is why "this book is not finished--can never be finished, by me."

No Name in the Street

Trials, assassinations, and funerals
His father arrived on the scene when James was two.His mother stood between the children and the father.When King died, Baldwin was working on a screen version of the Malcolm X story.James Baldwin appeared with Martin Luther King at Carnegie Hall in a newly purchased black suit, and wore the black suit to the funeral two weeks later.Then he gave the barely worn suit to a friend.

Baldwin observes that the French did not dare to think that the Algerian situation could be existentialist.When he went to France he went there to escape racism.He could live with Africans in Paris in comparative peace.Baldwin went to Paris with no money.He frequented Arab cafes.Baldwin could not undertand why Camus produced William Faulkner's REQUIEM FOR A NUN.James Baldwin claims that Faulkner is attempting to exorcise a history which is also a curse in his work.He argues that the cultural pretensions of history are nothing more than a mask for power.

He knew by 1956 when he saw a picture of a school child being jeered by a crowd while seeking to integrate her school that he would be leaving Europe to return to America to take up the cause.Returning in 19576 he saw New York in a different way and went to the South.James Baldwin relates that he has always been struck in America by an emotional poverty.He says he really didn't know much about terror until he went to the South.In large ways and small Baldwin found the people in the Civil Rights Movement, facing Southern terror, heroic. Before his trip to the South the author had never seen the horror or the poverty.

Malcolm X, unlike Frantz Fanon, operated in the Afro-American idiom.In 1968 James Baldwin was sharing a flat with is sister Paula and his brother David in London.He learned there of Malcolm's death.A former resident of Harlem, he distrusted the legend of Malcolm X until he had the opportunity to meet him.

Uncomfortably, Baldwin came to realize later that in those years, in the fifties and sixties, he was a sort of great black hope of the great white father.Malcolm X considered himself to be the spiritual property of those who produced him.He was dangerous because he apprehended the horror of the black condition.Writing an epilogue in 1971 Baldwin noted that the book had been delayed by trials, assassinations, and funerals.

A brutally honest and searingly raw memoir
It seems strange that this crisp and concise essay is less known and less read than Baldwin's earlier collections. True, he is angrier, rawer, less forgiving here, and his earlier diplomatic hopefulness has given way to a deeply cynical and contemptuous view of American society. Yet, given the atrocities Baldwin, along with his friends and colleagues, personally witnessed and underwent during the years immediately preceding this book, his fury is, at the very least, understandable.

Baldwin's recollections of the 1950s and 60s are not presented as linear narrative. Instead, he intertwines, among other topics: the cowardice of liberals during the McCarthy era; the French-Algerian conflict; his investigations and travels in the South; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (and his own reminiscences of them); his experiences in Hollywood with commercial filmmakers; his encounters with Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and the Black Panthers; his bemused reaction to the flower children in San Francisco; and his four-year battle to rescue his former assistant, Tony Maynard, from an arrest and conviction for a murder he didn't commit. (Maynard's conviction was overturned after this book was published.) The supporting cast of his friends and adversaries in these personal and societal struggles is a veritable who's who: Elia Kazan, William Styron, Fred Shuttlewsorth, Andrew Young, Harry Belafonte, Billy Dee Williams, Marlon Brando, Robert Kennedy.

Baldwin's self-effacing willingness to reopen old wounds and expose the evidence of his own folly is still on hand here. He opens with an anecdote about a visit with a childhood friend in the south Bronx: his humorous and humiliating arrival in a limousine, the all-too-apparent difference between his own prosperity and his friend's meager (but contented) subsistence and his shameful condescension toward his friend's "job at the post office," and their explosive argument over the war in Vietnam. He also recounts his own naivety in a chronicle of his first traumatic exposure to Jim Crow laws in Montgomery: "It is not difficult to be a marked man in the South--all you have to do, in fact, is to go there."

Baldwin admits to the impossibility of objectivity in his writing, comparing his task to Shaw's writing "Saint Joan": "he had the immense advantage of having never known her." And his account of two decades of struggle is by no means impartial. But I prefer this version of Baldwin, who no longer seems to care about kowtowing to the mostly white New Yorker readers who made up his audience for his earlier work. "No Name in the Street" is uncomfortably honest--and that bluntness lends the work a faithfulness to the spirit of the times. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the best things to be said of the stories in this volume is that, although they are not biographical, they are about real persons who actually lived and performed their parts in the great drama of the world's history. Some of these persons were more famous than others, yet all have left enduring footprints on the sands of time and their names will not cease to be remembered. In each of the stories there is a basis of truth and an ethical lesson which cannot fail to have a wholesome influence; and each possesses elements of interest which, it is believed, will go far towards proving the fallibility of the doctrine that children find delight only in tales of the imaginative and unreal. The fact that there are a few more than fifty famous people mentioned in the volume may be credited to the author's wish to give good measure.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Entertaining and Educational, But Hard to Use
The stories in this book are great.They remind me of the Paul Harvey "and now for the rest of the story".But my gripes.The stories are not chronilogical, which would be fine if there were an index, which there isn't.The Table of Contents lists the title of story, which in no way gives you a clue as to who the story is about.There is at the back of the book a list titled "Who they were, what they were, where they lived", but not a "where to find them in this book".

In order to use this book in our homeschooling I had to read the entire thing and make my own index.Which was a pleasure, but seems kindof odd that I had to.

Stories for Young and Old
Educational and entertaining short stories about famous people of the world history:

"One of the best things to be said of the stories in this volume is that, although they are not biographical, they are about real persons who actually lived and performed their parts in the great drama of the world's history. Some of these persons were more famous than others, yet all have left enduring "footprints on the sands of time" and their names will not cease to be remembered. In each of the stories there is a basis of truth and an ethical lesson which cannot fail to have a wholesome influence..." (James Baldwin) ... Read more

Product Description

One of the most prolific and influential African American writers, James Baldwin was for many a harbinger of hope, a man who traversed the genres of art-writing novels, essays, and poetry.

Product Description
At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable.



For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. Overpowering in its vitality, extravagant in the intensity of its feeling, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a major work of American literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Get On The Train
Recently I started a review of a film documentary, "Lenny Bruce: Without Tears", using the following lines that I found appropriate to use to set the same kind of tone in reviewing James Baldwin's his 1974 novel, "If Beale Street Could Talk". I also find it useful to do so here as well in reviewing "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone":

"Okay, the average black male kid on the average ghetto city block today knows, and knows without blinking, and knows from some seemingly unspoken source deep within his genetic structure that the cards are stacked against him. That the cops, the courts, or some other part of the "justice" system will, eventually, come knocking at the door or grab him off the street for something, usually dope. The average Latino male kid on the average barrio city block pretty much knows that same thing, again usually on some bogus drug charge. And nowadays young black and Latina women are getting that same message coded into their psyches."

And that sums up the message behind almost all of Baldwin's' best work, at least the message that will last and that should be etched in the memory of every fighter for social justice.

Now I have been, as is my wont when I get "hooked" on some writer, on something of a James Baldwin tear of late, reading or re-reading everything I can get my hands on. At the time of this review I have already looked at "Go Tell It On The Mountain", the play "Blues For Mr. Charlie", and "If Beale Street Could Talk. Frankly, those works, caught my attention more so that this work of "black uplift". Although it is well-written and powerful in spots it did not remind me why I was crazy to read everything that Baldwin wrote when I was a kid.

Why? Well, while I could definitely relate to the main character, Leo's, struggle to make a career for himself in the very white theater of his day and I could also sympathize with his struggle against the ingrained racism that he faced in daily life, even when he was successful, there was just a little too much self-satisfaction to move me into his direction. I will say that Baldwin's use, as on previous occasions, of the two-tier past and present interspersed literary format to tell Leo's early story (and his brother Caleb's and his white paramour Barbara's as well) and his current ill-health induced dilemma makes the novel move better than expected when I started reading the book.

That said, Baldwin is at his best when he creates situations where his characters have to confront the hard, hard reality of up-front racism in American. Little scenes like "being black" while in small town New Jersey, being black while in big time Broadway, and being black while dealing with a white (female) lover bring home the point nicely. And of those racial nodal points the strongest is when Baldwin has the bi-sexual Leo's male paramour, Black Christopher, who represents the "new" post- civil rights movement young black draws just the right historical parallel to the Jewish experience in World War II when he states, in effect- we will not go sheepishly into the concentration camps that the whites have ready for us when things get too hot. Powerful stuff. To bad it got buried in a story line that in the end has Leo traipsing off to Europe and not worthy of such insights.

"Only someone who no longer had any sense of what constituted happiness...
... could ever have confounded happiness with this rage. Yet, the scene we entered had been tirelessly reproduced, in stale and meticulous, absolutely libelous detail, in countless musical comedies and innumerable pork-chop-in-the-sky films: the nigger, moving in uncanny time to the music, hips, hands, and feet working, all flashing teeth and eyes, without a care in the world."

Yes, the rage is still there, captured so authentically by Baldwin, the spokesman for those marginalized by the larger white, heterosexual society. The stereotype that was promoted, as indicated in the above paragraph, for so many years, of the "happy darkie," has disappeared from mainstream American society, in the course of some 50 years. I first read Baldwin over 40 years ago, starting with "Another Country," then going on to "Go Tell It on The Mountain" and "The Fire Next Time." Some of the other reviewers did not believe this book was of the same caliber as the others. I demur. The anger and anguish of the dispossessed leaps out, as in the other novels, but with each there are different facets, which make Baldwin so much more than a "one novel" author.

The book starts with the heart attack of a (very!) youthful and successful black American actor, Leo Proudhammer, at the age of 39. In short order, it is apparent that his lover is a white woman, Barbara, in an age when this was still somewhat "edgy." Through flashbacks Baldwin describes an upbringing in Harlem, with the poverty, and the "emasculation" of a father who cannot provide for his family, and the loss of his older brother Caleb to jail as he associated with "the wrong crowd."The white police make more than just a cameo appearance, always a looming and threatening presence. And there is the detailing of another "edgy" crowd, the theater people, where "mixed" liaisons are largely acceptable, even the homosexual ones with "Black Christopher."

Baldwin also transcends the issues related to "America's dilemma," to use Gunner Myrdal's phrase, and addresses those of the human condition. Consider insights into the medical profession with: "Hi, there, sleepy-head!" she cried cheerfully--with that really unnerving cheerfulness of nurses; one dare not speculate on what awful knowledge the cheerfulness hides-- (p66) or of fame: "People who achieve any eminence whatever are driven to do so; and there is always something terribly vulnerable about such people. They very soon discover that their eminence makes of them an incitement and a target--it does not cause them to be loved. They are trapped on their hill. They cannot come down." (p 444) And then there is the possibly extremely prophetic: "We were the only colored people there. I had worked in the kitchen, not a hundred years ago; outside were the millions of starving--Chinese"....." This groaning board was a heavy weight on the backs of many millions, whose groaning was not heard. Beneath this table, deep in the bowels of the earth, as far away as China... an energy moved and gathered and it would , one day, overturn this table..."(p 477). And stop buying our T-bills, for example?

Baldwin eventually gave up on America, and sought solace in France. His final resting place is high on the hills overlooking the Mediterranean, in St. Paul de Vence. He did not live long enough to hear the new President of the United States speak in his inaugural address of one who might have been refused a seat at a lunch counter now taking the oath of office for the highest position in the land. For those who did not live through the period of these 50 years, and for those who did, Baldwin remains as vital a read as ever. And although the stereotypes about Blacks have largely disappeared from polite discourse, they certainly have been replaced by those concerning Muslims, much to the same end, of distancing "us" from "them." I suspect Baldwin would have been equally appalled at this transformation.

James Baldwin's overlooked masterpiece about a man's juggling identities
If Giovanni's Room is an unresolved love story between two men, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone puts its protagonist in the center of social spotlight where ideals of ethnics, politics, and sex force him to put on a mask. Leo Proudhammer, a 39-years-old black man, suffers from a heart attack at the height of his theatrical career, forcing him to abort all ongoing performance and rehearsal. As he hovers between life and death, James Baldwin delineates a tapestry of human life that is terrifyingly vulnerable - through the meticulous choices that have rendered him enviously famous in theater, through the racial and gay covering that have split him into multiple identities.

There exists something edgy and cruel about a childhood riddled with braving the Harlem streets. Proudhammer often found him in the spotlight of eyes: eyes of children who outjocked him, eyes of the white cops toward whom he felt a rush of murderous hatred, and the tell-tale eyes of the older folks who suspected of his sexuality. The prose sustains a tincture of anguish, a tinge of paranoid, of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of unstoppable racial war owing the ludicrous demands to cover stereotype associated with both race and sexuality.

The theatrical industry which Proudhammer desires throws him further in disguises. Ironically it is through the many disguises he wears that he comes to term with his means. Instead of fleeing from the truth, he is approaching the reality. Disguises in a sense help make the truth a quantity with which he can live. In the juggling selves, Proudhammer retains loyalty to a white woman and a young black man. At first he might be most intimidated by his color for he does not appear to know that he is colored. He is met with people's baleful exasperation as if he is possessed by some evil spirit. Then he begins to be intimidated (and confronted), far more grievously, by the fact of his sexuality. He is gripped with the realization that he has never, in the sexual context, arrived at an understanding of being bisexual or gay.

Written during a time in which racism and assimilation to white norms are horrifyingly rife, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone brings to vivid view a man struggling to become himself through identities of a black man, a bisexual man, and an artist. Various occasions demand him to cover one of more of these identities in order to fit in. The novel pieces together moments of a man's life that teach one the price of human connection. Trapped in the wrong time, at the wrong place, and with the wrong ambitions trapped in the wrong skin, Proudhammer's perseverance earns him a reward that redeems and justifies all that pain, stigma, and bewilderment he once experienced.

Excellent but not his best.
I bought Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone still swooning over Baldwin's Another Country.To my disappointment, this book did not have the same complexity, depth, nor energy that Another Country had.I found myself sticking to the book in some hopes that I would reach the same feeling of satisfaction and rapture that I found with Another Country, or Giovanni's Room.Not a complete waste of time, but not Baldwin's best.

Another masterpiece!
This is another of James Baldwin's literary triumphs. Here he weaves the deepest hopes, sorrows, fears and desires of the human condition into an unforgettable tapestry. The story centers around an actor named Leo Proudhammer and the choices he made in his life, the results that followed and the people he shared his life with. Here we read about Leo as a youngster growing up in Harlem, his struggles as a young man trying to break into showbiz amidst a multitude of obstacles and his successful rise to stardom. This is a very poignant and tender but, powerful and gripping story that will hold your attention. Also recommended: "Giovanni's Room", "Another Country" and "Going to Meet the Man". ... Read more

Product Description
Only a boy preacher who had grown up to become one of America's most eminent writers could have produced a play like The Amen Corner. For to his first work for the theater James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers.

For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety.But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.

The Amen Corner is a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons. It is a scalding, uplifting, sorrowful and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

For Nina, Ray, Miles, Bird and Billie
What begins as a family drama about a determined pastor and single mother, whose church, congregation and son are her whole life evolves into an amazing and painful story of love, reconciliation and hypocrisy.
Margaret Alexander is the without-a-doubt leader of her parish, her colleagues, the elders of the church are her agreeable assistants, with the truth of Christ her driving force. But a past that proves more human and relevent than the elders can recognize exposes her as less than pure, and the hypocrisy of spiritual judgement rears its ugly head.
I found the beginning of the play slow, dry and ordinary. Though after reading the notes from Baldwin which open the edition I had I was awoken to the depth of the story, and ultimately was captivated by the honesty and beauty of the play. I pulled this from the library shelf having known about Baldwin but never read him. I now return it to the library with some understanding of the quality of writer and person he was, and look forward to reading his other work.

Amen! Hallelujah!
James Baldwin does an amazing job with the Amen Corner. This and the plays of August Wilson are by far some of the greatest plays I've read in Black Theater. I felt like I was sitting right there in the congregation watching this play unfold. This play delivers a strong message with unforgetable and dimensional characters, and an intriguing plot that will keep you wanting more. There's nothing like reading a good piece of literature with a lifetime and lasting effect. Thumbs up for James Baldwin and the Amen Corner! Amen! Hallelujah...say it again for Baldwin!!!

Man of God
THIS BOOK WAS VERY TRUE TO THE ACTIONS, AND FEELINGS OF A RELIGIOUS LEADER. TO SHOW THAT JUST LIKE US THEY HAVE PROBLEMS AND ARE HUMAN ALSO. VERY BLUNT, AND STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. IT SPEAKS TO THE SOUL!

A Play by James Baldwin
I think The Amen Corner is a good play, because it's about everyday people.I think every family can relate to the family in Balwin's 1964 Broadway Hit--The Amen Corner. Many people have drinking problems of some sort. Additionally, many people can relate to the hardships of losing someone you love. Reading thisplay may help you focus on a relationship with God.

Celebrating Black History with The Amen Corner
The best play I have ever read was The Amen Corner.James Baldwin's first drama would speak to anyone who can read and understand what was happening in the late 50s.If I lived back then and was black, I would have thought things were very unfair.For example, can you imagine the protagonist, Margaret Alexander, not being able to call an ambulance when she is bleeding to death and about to lose her baby, because she is black? Baldwin does an excellent job of portraying the issues black people faced in and out the church in Harlem.I recommend this play to anyone of any color. ... Read more

Product Description
James Baldwin was beginning to be recognized as the most brilliant black writer of his generation when his first book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, established his reputation in 1955. No one was more pleased by the book’s reception than Baldwin’s high school friend Sol Stein. A rising New York editor, novelist, and playwright, Stein had suggested that Baldwin do the book and coaxed his old friend through the long and sometimes agonizing process of putting the volume together and seeing it into print. Now, in this fascinating new book, Sol Stein documents the story of his intense creative partnership with Baldwin through newly uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions, and an illuminating memoir of the friendship that resulted in one of the classics of American literature. Included in this book are the two works they created together–the story “Dark Runner” and the play Equal in Paris, both published here for the first time.

Though a world of difference separated them–Baldwin was black and gay, living in self-imposed exile in Europe; Stein was Jewish and married, with a growing family to support–the two men shared the same fundamental passion. Nothing mattered more to either of them than telling and writing the truth, which was not always welcome. As Stein wrote Baldwin in a long, heartfelt letter, “You are the only friend with whom I feel comfortable about all three: heart, head, and writing.” In this extraordinary book, Stein unfolds how that shared passion played out in the months surrounding the creation and publication of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, in which Baldwin’s main themes are illuminated.

A literary event published to honor the eightieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, Native Sons is a celebration of one of the most fruitful and influential friendships in American letters.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

authoritative and deeply moving
Sol Stein and James Baldwin were brothers in every way but birth; they shared their vision as teenagers and beyond. The confuence of their friendship and art has enriched our culture. Native Sons adds luster to the glow. ... Read more

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Photographs by Richard Avedon. Text by James Baldwin. Measures 7x9+ inches. ... Read more

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James Baldwin was one of America's finest and most influential writers. By the time he died, his books, such as The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room, had become modern classics.James Campbell knew Baldwin for ten years before Baldwin's death in 1987. Based on interviews with his friends and his extensive correspondences, Talking at the Gates gives a full life of Baldwin, including his sometimes turbulent relationships with Norman Mailer, Richard Wright and Marlon Brando, as well as his friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. Elegantly written, candid and original, it is a comprehensive account of the life and work of a writer who believed that 'the unexamined life is not worth living.'Baldwin's best biographer.' New York Times Book Review'Approaching Baldwin without reverence, though not quite irreverently, Campbell brings a mixture of intellectual integrity and something like truculence to the biographer's task. ... [He] plays along effectively with Baldwin's great zest for life, his love of the comic, his self-deprecating, balancing knowledge of himself as both poseur and prophet.' Times Literary Supplement ... Read more

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Not definitive by any means, but still the best biography of Baldwin available
"Talking at the Gates" is a rough-hewn but valuable biography of James Baldwin written by someone who knew him during the last decade of his life. Author James Campbell is honest about both his aim and the result; his book "is offered not as a definitive picture but as a host of sketches and perceptions aiming towards a definition." Eminently readable and discerning, these "sketches and perceptions" offer a great introduction to the life of one of America's greatest twentieth-century writers.

The strength of this biography is Campbell's gathering of the oral history of Baldwin's life through interviews with those who knew him, and he is best when describing his pivotal friendships with Lucien Happersberger and Engin Cezzar, his feuds with Richard Wright and Norman Mailer, and his associations with those in the civil rights movement. (Inexplicably, Baldwin's lifelong friend Sol Stein is never mentioned in the book.) Also fascinating are the documents found in Baldwin's FBI dossier; Campbell has added an afterword to the 2002 edition describing his battle to unseal the file. Although these documents serve to validate Baldwin's ceaseless paranoia, they are so filled with rumors, fabrications, and outright nonsense that they prove to be incidental to his life; inevitably, they tell us more about the FBI (and its insidious role in the civil rights movement) than about James Baldwin, and Campbell places undue emphasis on their importance.

The book's value as a literary biography is tempered by the author's own tastes, and since this was written only four years after Baldwin's death, Campbell forgoes assessments of Baldwin's evolving legacy among writers and critics. He clearly feels that Baldwin was at his best as an essayist and, with the exception of "Go Tell It on a Mountain," he is often severe in his criticism of the novels and stories. In particular, he damns Baldwin's later work with faint praise--sometimes rightfully, but sometimes too hastily. For example, the splendid "Just Above My Head" (which, I think, has greatly improved with age) is praised for "magnificence in the conception" but summarized with a laundry list of supposed faults ("too many bloodless characters, too neatly divided into goodies and baddies; too strong a dependence on colour as an indicator of virtue; too many rambling conversations and descriptions") and for having "no plot," which seems a peculiar thing to say about a novel that follows the life of a world-famous gospel singer from birth to death. During the two decades since Campbell's biography was written, Baldwin's novels and stories have become, I would argue, more highly regarded. But his non-fiction, while still uniquely powerful and elegant, carry the unfortunate burden of Sixties-era fervor and have increasingly assumed the guise of historical documents--groundbreaking and essential, yes, but not always timeless ("The Fire Next Time," "Notes of a Native Son," and "Stranger in the Village" being, of course, among the absolute exceptions).

James Baldwin deserves a thorough and scholarly treatment along the lines of the recent biographies of his contemporaries John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and Flannery O'Connor. Campbell may well prove to be Baldwin's Boswell, but we await his definitive and impartial biographer. ... Read more

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This collection of interviews with James Baldwin covers the period 1961-1987, from the year of the publication of Nobody Knows My Names, his fourth book, to just a few weeks before his death. It includes the last formal conversation with him.

Twenty-seven interviews reprinted here come from a variety of sources--newspapers, radio, journals, and review--and show this celebrated author in all his eloquence, anger, and perception of racial, social, and literary situations in America.

Over the years Baldwin proved to be an easily accessible and cooperative subject for interviews, both in the United States and abroad. He frequently referred to himself as "a kind of trans-Atlantic commuter." Whether candidly discussing his own ghetto origins, his literary mission and achievements, his role in the civil rights movement, or his views on world affairs, black and white relations, Vietnam, Christianity, and fellow writers, Baldwin was always both popular and controversial.

This important collection contributes significantly to the clarification and expansion of the ideas in Baldwin's fiction, drama, essays, and poetry. It gives additional life to a stunning orator and major literary figure who considered himself a sojourner even in his own country. Yet early in his career Baldwin told Studs Terkel: "I am an American writer. This country is my subject." ... Read more

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The Power of a Classic Author's Voice

Since his death December 1, 1987, James Baldwin's reputation as a quintessential twentieth century American author has continued to increase in power and influence. The author of such diverse seminal works as the essay "The Fire Next Time," and the novels "Another Country" and "Just Above My Head," his literary voice has been described as one of those indispensable to American literature. A number of biographies about him, collections of his work, and serious studies of the same all but guarantees that voice will never be lost. CONVERSATIONS WITH JAMES BALDWIN adds to that certainty but, thankfully, also does quite a bit more:

Delving into these conversations provides readers with a genuine experience of the literary and spiritual intelligence that Baldwin employed so capably both to illuminate his writings and to debate--in the flesh--issues of civil rights, gender, race relations, cultural politics, and the overall human condition. Through these pages we join him in a Chicago radio station with historian Studs Terkel as they discuss the impact of blues singer Bessie Smith's music upon Baldwin's writing style. In another chat, we sit in Paris with him, celebrated scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the late international diva Josephine Baker discussing the advantages and disadvantages of African Americans living and working in France.

In all, more than two dozen "Conversations with James Baldwin," courtesy of just as many interviewers, take us inside the brilliant mind and world of the great writer. The sense of intimate intellectual sharing that this book provides is one to be savored. So too are the priceless insights they contain along with Baldwin's still indispensable voice.

By Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of The Harlem Renaissance Way Down South
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
... Read more

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Based on Alex Haley’s bestselling classic The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a rare, lucidly composed screenplay from one of America’s great masters of letters.

Son of a Baptist minister; New York City hustler; honor student; convicted criminal;powerful minister in the Nation of Islam; father and husband:Malcolm X transformed himself, time and again, in order to become one of the most feared, loved, and undeniably charismatic leaders of twentieth-century America. No one better represents the tumultuous times of his generation, and there is no one better to capture him and his milieu than James Baldwin. With spare, elegant, yet forceful dialogue and fresh, precise camera directions, Baldwin breathes cinematic life into this controversial and important figure, offering a new look at a man who changed himself in order to change the country. ... Read more

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interesting
This is a decent read, though not too learn anything about Malcolm x.It was written while Elijah Muhammad was still alive, so some of the seedier details of the story of their split are left out, probably out of a fear ofvillifying the NOI.The script that was eventually used for Spike Lee'sfilm is an improvement, both dramatically and historically.Clearly,though, Baldwin deserved some credit in the film, as there were passages ofdialogue and story elements that remain.He actually has credit in thefilm, but not on the promo work on the tape cover.All things told, I'donly recommend it to Baldwin and Malcolm X completists.

intellectually stimulating and left 36 footprints in my soul
the beginning was powerful when he reveiwed his childhood. his speeches were a bit biased, but they told a good story about life. What is life? Is life, life? Are we life? Does the cookbook give the proper recipe for twicebaked potatoes? Loving is Life. Malcolm X had trouble finding thisrealization, but his message was bold, powerful, and worth reading about.Cheese is good. Beef, it's what's for dinner. ... Read more

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Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions.

“One of the few genuinely indispensable writers.” —The Saturday Review

In his internationally acclaimed novels, short stories, plays and essays, James Baldwin was and remains a powerfully prophetic voice in the American literary landscape, fearlessly brooding upon issues such as race, sex, politics, and art. His literary achievement is a lasting legacy about what it means to be American.

Vintage Baldwin includes the short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the galvanizing civil rights examination “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”; the essays “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,” “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” and “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South”; and excerpts from the novel Another Country and the play The Amen Corner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Great Essays.
These essays are fantastic, and the book is worth owning for the first couple alone, especially "My Dungeon Shook". I am giving this book to a friend to help him understand 'the black experience'.

Forever Baldwin
Baldwin saved my life. In my mid thrities I began to read Baldwin. I started with Tell Me How Long the Train Been's Gone. I have read everything he has ever written-plays, critical essays, novels. I buy multiple copies to be sure I have them to give to people who visit me and pay attention to my library. I have a first edition of The Fire Next Time. He should be mandatory reading in America in High Schools and Colleges. He obviously writes about race in America, but beyond that he speaks to the actualization of the individual, the moral imperative of our times. His voice sings and resonates truth in a way that often stops you dead and you must re-read a phrase or a passage again and again to absorb the brilliance of his ability to articulate what we know deeply, without our own poetry to express deep longing, pain and passion. He is an author's author. For the simplist of stories I recommend, If Beale Street Could Talk. For social expose I suggest Nobody Knows my Name. If you have never read Baldwin, I must say, if not not know then when? Until America comes to terms with the reality of the identity of the black man in our culture we will never be free, or be able to know ourselves.

2 fantastic pieces!
Of the 8 selections featured in this reader, I found 2 to be beyond comparison. "Sonny's Blues" and "Another Country."

Sonny's Blues had simply an *amazing* opening--one of those opening paragraphs that fully pulls you right in. The story itself was very simplistic and...well, just good.

Also, I really enjoyed Another Country for the pure progression of events. It took place as a larger story (which it is), yet was self-contained within its own right.

As far as the other selections go, I found it rather hit and miss. The first few were rather short and enjoyable. Others seemed redundant in their message. ... Read more

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Adaptation of the story of Robinson Crusoe for children. Relates how the shipwrecked sailor makes a new life for himself on the island, crafting shelter, food, and clothing for himself from the few tools he rescued from the ship and what he is able to find on the island. Living on the island for over twenty years before he is finally rescued, he reinvents almost everything necessary for daily sustenance. Suitable for ages 7 and up. ... Read more

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Excellent book for a young reader - our 5 year old loved it
I am a big fan of Yesterday's Classics and have found that they publish some excellent reprints of classic books.This edition of Robinson Crusoe is no exception.My 5 year old was able to read this chapter book, and it was sufficiently challenging to improve his reading skills while simple enough to not be discouraging.James Baldwin did a nice job of simplifying the original text without losing the tone or language of DeFoe.I definitely recommend this book to those with young readers who enjoy adventure, and those who do not want to dumb their kids down with modern fiction. ... Read more

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Identity in America
This remarkable piece by James Baldwin is about the love of two brothers in a black society. He depicts this in the following excerpt, "Safe, hell! Ain't no place safe for kids, nor nobody," which depicts the streets in which Sonny and his brother grew up. Identity is a big theme in this literary work. Two black men are trying to find themselves and each other in an unforgiving American society.
Sonny and his brother grow up in a home whose uncle was killed as a young man. However, Sonny's father did not want them to know about the brutal world outside on the streets that they walked upon everyday. He wanted them to feel safe and not afraid. Prior to their mother's death she revealed this to Sonny, who by this time had a rocky relationship with his younger brother, uses this information to make amends with his younger brother. He actually starts listening to what his brother has to say and what his desires are for himself. Instead of pushing ideas that Sonny thought would make for a good future for his brother he learned to appreciate his brother's talent. He loosens his control over his younger brother and allows him to be himself. He lets love take the upper hand.
This is a inspirational story about a few African Americans who are each striving to find their own identities-one wants so desperately to be heard while the other is desperately smothering him until finally they realize who they are and the long road that awaits each of them.

Sonny comes home to his brother after his dope addiction
Sonny's Blues is a well written book by James Baldwin that captures the feelingof a recovering dope addicted young black man, Sonny, who is seeking a new life with his brother in Harlem with his jazz music as a wayof telling his life story.It begins by Sonny's brother finding out in anewspaper that Sonny had been serving a jail sentence for his use ofheroin.After a few years of not talking to one another, Sonny sends hisbrother a letter telling him how much he needed to hear from him while hewas away in jail and that when he gets out he wants to meet him in NewYork.When they meet, they talk and his brother finds himself gettingupset after everything Sonny says whether it is about his addiction orabout him wanting to be a jazz musician.Sonny's brother is a teacher andhe is worried about what Sonny is going to do with his life, so he sendsSonny to live with his in-laws to go to school, but Sonny never goes and hestays in the house the whole time playing music on their piano.Since thebrothers are parentless, Sonny's brother is taking on the role of hisparents to get Sonny' s life headed in the right direction.Before theirmother died she told Sonny's brother a story of how her husband's brotherdied.Him and his brother were coming home from a club one night, feelingreally good after drinking, when a car full of white people sped towardshis brother and ran over him, killing him instantly.Since his mother toldhim that story, Sonny's brother has been worried about his younger brotherand where he is going in life.The book concludes with Sonny bringing hisbrother to a club where he was going to perform with two other black guyson his piano.After listening to him play, Sonny's brother soon heardSonny's life told and explained in his music, and then that is when hisbrother understood what Sonny has been going through and what direction heis headed. ... Read more

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Describes the life of the writer James Baldwin, focusing on his experiences as an African-American civil rights worker and as a gay man. ... Read more

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Exiled in Paris provides a compelling look at the personalities who fueled the literary and philosophical dramas of postwar Paris: James Baldwin, Alexander Trocchi, Boris Vian, Maurice Girodias, and many others. James Campbell provides a fresh look at Samuel Beckett's early career; reveals the facts behind the publication of the scandalous best-seller The Story of O; and tells the poignant story of Richard Wright's years in exile. He captures the sense of deliverance that Wright, so accustomed to daily humiliations in his own country, experienced during his sojourn on the Left Bank, where, for the first time in his life, he was treated as a great man of letters. Here, too, are all the circumstances surrounding Wright's mysterious death, which many close to him regarded as suspicious. ... Read more

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Porn in Paris
I purchased this book expecting to learn more about famous ex-pat authors living in post WW2 Paris. Indeed, the first part of the book, which concentrated on Richard Wright and James Baldwin, fully met my expectations. However after that the book details in minute detail the development of pornographic literature (heterosexual and homosexual)in Paris - authors and publishers. At some point I had enough and abandoned ship. It was just too boring.

Fascinating reading
After the end of the Second World War, a number of African Americans,including many of our most talented intellectuals, decided that America wasjust not a sufficiently hospitable home.Those who could left for Europe. Many, landed in Paris, which provided a far more civilizedsociety.

Literary giants like James Baldwin, Richard Wright and otherintellectuals found a place where their worth was determined by things moresignificant than skin color.This is the story of theirexperiences.

Another book worth searching for. ... Read more