James Baldwin is one of the most straightforward but complex American writers I have ever encountered. Best known for his groundbreaking works like "Giovanni's Room" and "I Don't Know How Long the Train's Been Gone," these essays - fascinating ruminations on race, gender, sexuality, cinema, and sometimes just the nature of fame itself - are artfully assembled. In this book, cover to cover, you see the work of a true intellectual - someone who evolves in his thinking as the years go by, someone whose even most casual observation is fraught with meaning because of an almost tragic refusal to "see" things for what anything other than what they are. Baldwin himself was a controversial figure - African American man of letters, gay, steeped in the culture of both the Haarlem Renaissance, the ecstatic church, and post-war Paris, a civil rights lion who was still unafraid to discuss the contradictions of a movement he feared would tear itself apart. But his writing is almost like reading the work of a magician, remarkable in its "passionate dispassion" and unflinching willingness to deal with subjects from his own unique point(s) of view, subjects others would eschew or refuse to touch. He is not a "comfortable" writer. His was an intellect and achievement that does the near impossible - deals with themes most "human" and yet seemingly transcends those very limitations, limitations that would have felled a lesser artist. At his best, he even achieves an eerie prescience, and not in some generalized fashion. His prose is not compromising.
I also note that some of Mr. Baldwin's lectures and interviews are now on YouTube. And those make great companions to any reading of his works.
I recommend this book without reservation. The work of a unique American "master" performing at his absolute best.
