It’s admittedly no easy task to provide a unique lens on James Baldwin’s life and work. Born in 1924 in Harlem, New York, the author’s rise to fame and active role in the civil rights movement have been meticulously documented by critics, the FBI, and even Baldwin himself. Providing a unique lens on Baldwin’s work is especially difficult today, as the reintroduction of critical race theory in public discourse sparked a Baldwin renaissance, with the author once again inundating the literary world.
James Baldwin crafted a literary career that spanned 30 years, and his popularity can largely be attributed to his style. Trained as a preacher, his words were devoid of lukewarm prose. His speeches came off as sermons, yet their subject matters always captured diverse audiences, whether they agreed with his views or not. His essays bled passion, accompanied by wit and a sharp analytical eye that solidified him as a master in his craft. Still, there has historically been less appreciation for Baldwin’s strength as a novelist, with Louis Menand’s recent profile on Baldwin articulating that the writer’s novels are “not books you are eager to get back to” and “less formally adventurous and far less entertaining…” than other texts of the time.
As I slowly work through his fiction backlist, I’ve grown more in disagreement with the negligence of Baldwin’s contributions to the literary world, with Menand’s opinion in particular being one of my least favourites. I’ve always found that the cultural fascination with the subversive style and content in Baldwin’s non-fiction is equally present in his novels. Similar to his essays and speeches, Baldwin’s fiction is deeply personal, political, and philosophical, acting as an extension of himself and his surroundings. His semi-autobiographical fiction debut, Go Tell It to the Mountain, utilizes religious themes to narrate his family’s complicated history. Other novels, such as Giovanni’s Room, and, in my humble opinion, his magnum opus, Another Country, also reflect elements of Baldwin’s life through their brutal examinations of queerness, masculinity, and race in Paris and New York, cities Baldwin spent significant portions of his life in. The author’s characters are often manifestations of hyper-masculine societies that have forced queer men to suppress desire, and while deeply harrowing and sometimes difficult to read, his fiction demands that we directly confront the darkest parts of humanity and observe how systems of power can aggravate individual pain and suffering.
One subtle, but nevertheless present, aspect of Baldwin’s personal life that permeates his novels is his distaste for naming. Like Menand discusses in his piece, Baldwin was not enthusiastic about labeling himself as gay. His discomfort with labels was not just limited to his sexuality. The police in If Beale Street Could Talk are not overtly called racist in the same way that Rufus in Another Country is never called a rapist. James Baldwin was not as interested in constative language as he was in experiences and their associated feelings, as he told Jordan Elgraby in a stellar 1984 Paris Review interview, “I don’t know what technique is. All I know is that you have to make the reader see it.” Baldwin understood that the strange prickling feeling all over your body, warning you that something is wrong, that you’re in some kind of danger, or that you’ve committed a social transgression, would tell you more about racism or homophobia in 1960s America than any textbook could. His fiction provides a balanced and thorough lens on the micro and macro structures that produce systems of violence, and his lack of descriptive language when examining such brutality forces his readers to do their own work in determining where to place the blame.
Critics have sometimes described Baldwin as bitter, seemingly harbouring immense hate for white America and its future. Yet, Baldwin’s anger bred action. His rage was not unique or isolated but instead stemmed from his desire for a more loving society as he wrote in his essay “Autobiographical Notes,” “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Love was always one of Baldwin’s main concerns — a fact that shines clear as day in his novels.