Box of delight

When James Baldwin took the stage to debate William F. Buckley at Cambridge in 1965, it was to have “a debate we shouldn’t need,” writes Gabrielle Bellot at Literary Hub, and yet it’s one that is still “as important as ever.” The proposition before the two men—famed prophetic novelist of the black experience in America and the conservative founder of the National Review—was this: “The American Dream is at the Expense of the America Negro.””

There are many reasons, some quite literal, that it can be painful to talk about racism in the U.S. For one thing, it often seems that writers like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, or James Baldwin, have already confronted questions of racial violence without hedging or equivocation. Yet each time racist violence happens, there seems to be a decorous need in politics and media to pretend to be surprised by what's right in front of us, to pretend to have discovered the place for the first time, and yet to already have a supply of readymade platitudes and denunciations at hand.

Every writer hopes to be survived by his work. In the case of James Baldwin, the 32 years since his death seem only to have increased the relevance of the writing he left behind. Consisting of novels, essays, and even a children's book, Baldwin's body of work offers different points of entry to different readers. Many begin with with Go Tell it on the Mountain, the semi-autobiographical debut novel in which he mounts a critique of the Pentecostal Church. Others may find their gateway in Baldwin's fictional treatment of desire and love under adverse circumstances: among men in Paris in Giovanni's Room, for example, or teenagers in Memphis in If Beale Street Could Talk. But unlike most novelists, Baldwin's name continues to draw just as many accolades — if not more of them — for his nonfiction.