| Title | : | Going to Meet the Man |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0679761799 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780679761792 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 249 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1965 |
By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.
Going to Meet the Man Reviews
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No Surrender
Whenever I’m in danger of feeling smugly self-satisfied or, on alternate days, resentfully dissatisfied about my place in the world, James Baldwin is always on hand as a corrective. His prose is hypnotic as it allows entry into the lives of people one does not know. His minimalist descriptions are perfect in their evocation of a timeless space. The relationships he characterizes are simply true; one can feel oneself part of them. And the real condition of being alive in the world is revealed for what it is: suffering, of which I have experienced slightly more than some but vastly less than most of the world.
In Baldwin, everyone suffers. They suffer because the are poor, because they are displaced, because of young mistakes, because of ambitions denied, but mostly because there is no hope. The world never gets any better from the moment his stories commence. Life is like the Manhattan schist boulder in the lot across the street from his starting location - eternally the same, immovable, dangerous for children and for the people who literally as well as figuratively work beneath it. A mountainous rock of despair.
The best possible outcome for everyone is a sort of tedious, grinding equilibrium that avoids imminent disaster or death. But the life that remains is one of constant fear, conflict, injustice and uncertainty. Only the will to survive sustains it - not family, not the community, not the ‘authorities’, certainly not the larger society that barely recognizes such a life. One lives in the midst of an undefined threat, an incessant hum of racial hatred ready to turn into a thunder-clap of annihilation at the slightest misstep. Yet those who suffer do not despair.
What is the secret? How do they persist? How much inherent strength does it take to reject both suicide and murder in response to the mountain of despair? One strategy seems to be a sort of immanent metaphysics expressed in the pentecostalist church and its customs. Pentecostalism is Christian in vocabulary, but it is gnostic in belief. It is a refuge for the thinking oppressed. The world is evil and must be resisted. Home is elsewhere and can be glimpsed only in ecstatic transport. While waiting for its indefinite arrival, preservation of the spark of special wisdom must be encouraged. The world must be destroyed entirely in order for it to be saved.
Gnosticism provides a solid explanation for the world and the suffering one experiences and sees in others. But it also fosters a fundamental suspicion of oneself - not just of one’s motives, but of one’s entire being. If all which is visible is evil, then the self, the most personally visible thing of all, is untrustworthy. Gnosticism demands the surrender of one’s body to the malicious, malignant Demi-god who created this world of exile; and the surrender of one’s intellect to the corruption of the original sin, committed so long ago no one remembers what it was, but which is passed on genetically and stops us from thinking right thoughts ever since.
Gnostic expression is stilted: ‘Praise the Lord’, ‘Shout Amen’, ‘Feel the arms of Jesus’. It is formulaic in order to purify speech from its inherent flaws. It clears the mind of thought and reason which have no means to realize themselves even if they weren’t already part of the evil that surrounds us. To be able to transport oneself into gnostic bliss is enough rational comfort. It is resistance without appearing to resist; it is escape while still behind the bars; it is the promised land without leaving home; it is intoxication without the hangover.
But Gnosticism is not good enough for Baldwin. He won’t have it. And he won’t take the other available ways to dull the pain of reality: booze, drugs, violence, sexual domination. Instead he writes. And what he writes shares the pain. It doesn’t rationalize or reduce the pain, but it spreads it so we all can know about it. In order that, perhaps, something different may grow out of it. -
James Baldwin. James fucking Baldwin.
Love of my life. Master of prose. Destroyer of my heart.
Perfectly incredible selection of short stories that ripped me to pieces. Devastating and wonderful.
Goddammit, my love for Baldwin has only increased. What a perfect way to start 2015's reading. -
As a whole, this collection of eight stories is well-crafted and insightful. Some of the stories are too wordy in parts; the one with a female protagonist (‘Come Out the Wilderness’) rather unmemorable.
Anyone who has read
Go Tell It on the Mountain will recognize the characters in the first two stories. ‘The Rockpile’ is tense in its conciseness as the family waits for the father to arrive home; ‘The Outing’ felt a bit lengthy with its church service aboard a ferryboat, but was intriguing with the teenage character of David who isn’t in Go Tell it on the Mountain.
‘The Man Child’ illustrates to great effect how entitlement is bred and I didn’t foresee at all its surprising ending. The 1948 ‘Previous Condition’, which in many ways is a story that could be of today, reminded me of
Another Country. In ‘This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,’ Baldwin has a character speak these prescient lines: "I cannot help saying that I think it is a scandal--and we may all pay very dearly for it--that a civilized nation should elect to represent it a man who is so simple that he thinks the world is simple.”
The title story is chilling in its historical accuracy, bringing to mind the events I read of in John Lewis’
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, as well as my visit to The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, with its documentation of a certain lynching. It’s a story that wasn’t previously published, so either it was too graphic for any of the magazines or Baldwin wrote it specifically for this collection (or, as my friend Howard said, both are probably true).
‘Sonny’s Blues’ is the masterpiece of the bunch with its great writing and illuminating insights into how insidiously racism acts upon the individual (also see ‘Previous Condition’ in particular for the latter). Its final section is pure brilliance.
*
Entering this title on Goodreads, I see that
William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a short piece called
Going to see a man hanged. That can’t be a coincidence. -
I ended 2020 with this book, a glass of Uncle Nearest, jazz and reggae music. Like the midnight sky, the darkness and absurdity of this world filled the air around me, but with Baldwin in conversation, I had good distraction. During that appalling first week in January, I revisited scenes and sentences from this collection and from
Nobody Knows My Name. I realized something: there is so much depth to Baldwin's fiction writing, such nuance and subtlety, that some think they only find in his pointed nonfiction those things they simply don't grasp in his fiction. But it's all there. In fact I'll venture to say his fiction says more.
The emotional intensity is a waltz I admire and enjoy. Before this book, it had been a while since I was able to truly disappear into a book, truly interact with characters. This collection was the bedtime tuck I needed, the emotional validation expressed in words so black, white, and true they cut to the core. And then there is style, character development, practiced pace, and these pronounced themes of displacement and loneliness and resilience so aptly explicated. "Sonny's Blues" (omg!) has a song of its own, but so does "Come out the Wilderness" and "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon." After having read
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone and
Another Country, I soon realized I'd seen these characters before and I could relax and enjoy familiar encounters.
What I've read from Baldwin so far:
The Fire Next Time
Giovanni's Room
Go Tell It on the Mountain
If Beale Street Could Talk
Another Country
Notes of a Native Son
Going to Meet The Man
Nobody Knows My Name
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Just Above My Head -
The stories in this collection are roughly in order of when Baldwin wrote them. This makes sense to me as the first three stories feel raw and not fully formed - almost like practice for the stunning This Morning, This Evening, Soon about the trepidation a black musician feels about returning to the US after living in Paris. And Sonny's Blues about the relationship between two brothers and power of the blues. All of the stories explore the devastating effects of racism.
"The tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness." -
"Perhaps this was what the singing had meant all along. They had not been singing black folks into heaven, they had been singing white folks into hell."
The fingers of historical racial injustice spread wide and touch the downtrodden in every aspect of their lives. This was evident in these stories written over a fifteen year span and published in 1965. Each story gave me a jolt of repulsion with an aftershock of heartbreak. How little things have changed. The racial hierarchy may be more concealed, but it is simmering below the surface.
Baldwin had a troubled relationship with his stepfather, a rigid and unhappy revivalist pastor. This and his evangelical upbringing are prevalent themes in many stories. "The Outing", one of the less gut-wrenching, describes a church group's boat ride up the Hudson River; a picnic and revival meeting so well described I could hear and feel the exuberance of the participants "bringing their souls to safety". The souls of the teenage David and Johnnie may not have been saved, but their homosexual feelings were awakened. "The Rockpile" is another story depicting a domineering religious stepfather who unfairly treats the eldest son. "Sonny's Blues" examines the misunderstandings between two black brothers and the devastation caused by addiction. Even with the affluent as in "This Morning, This Evening So Soon", there is fear of discrimination as the main character prepares to return to the U.S. after living for 12 years in Paris. Will he still be discriminated against? What about his mixed-race son? His white wife? (Baldwin also found Paris to be a refuge from racial bias.) "Going to Meet The Man" is the most disturbing and haunting . Written in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement a lynching becomes a pageantry and picnic for the depraved white citizens of the town.
I have read widely about racism both in fiction and nonfiction. Never have I felt to my core the anxiety and trepidation Blacks must feel. Sometimes fiction can do what nonfiction can't.
""For, while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all the darkness." -
I was slightly disappointed with the first novel I read by the late great James Baldwin,
Giovanni's Room. Although I found it difficult to empathize with the main character (who I found to be a little whiny and spoiled), I was really taken by how beautiful Baldwin's writing was. It was enough to keep me interested in reading more of his work and I'm glad I chose this book as the next one. This solid collection of 8 short stories is a great primer to his writing style and the themes that permeate most of his work, such as race, identity, sex, life in Harlem, and the influence of art, religion, and family.
Baldwin's writing is consistently sincere, although some stories kept my attention more than others. There are two stories that are the big standouts in this collection. The soulful "Sonny's Blues" is about a man struggling to understand and reconnect with his estranged, heroin-addicted, musician brother, and also happens to be a look at the liberating power of the blues. The following quote is one the best descriptions of what great music, especially "the blues" is supposed to do, and what it means to be a musician:"He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
The title story, "Going to Meet the Man", floored me and haunted me, and might be one of my favorite short stories. It actually kept me up at night thinking about it afterward. It's a story written with pitch-perfect confidence by Baldwin, about a middle-aged, racist, deputy sheriff of a Southern town in the U.S. recalling the event in his childhood that might have made him the bigot he is. The story challenges you to see how an innocent 8-year-old boy, who's best friend is black, can somehow turn into something else. It also explores the uncomfortable relationship between prejudice and sexuality, and how one can profoundly affect the other. A great piece. -
The American Dream
“A big, sandy-haired man held his daughter on his shoulders, showing her the Statue of Liberty. I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me. And the American flag was flying from the top of the ship, above my head. I had seen the French flag drive the French into the most unspeakable frenzies, I had seen the flag which was nominally mine used to dignify the vilest purposes: now I would never, as long as I lived, know what others saw when they saw a flag.”
Faith, Country, and the color of your skin
“…everyone’s life begins on a level where races, armies, and churches stop. And yet everyone’s life is always shaped by races, churches and armies; races, churches, armies menace, and have taken many lives.”
In reading Baldwin, I am reminded of an old photo I once saw. A snapshot of a small crowd posing on an old bridge. There are men and women. There are summer frocks and straw hats and a few smiles. Beneath the bridge there are two people, a man and a woman, suspended by ropes. The people standing on the bridge are all white, the people hanging beneath the bridge are not.
This, my introduction to the works of James Baldwin, has left me somewhat speechless. His prose is minimal and simple and yet so powerful that you can almost smell the sweat and taste the blood. There is no trace of sensationalism in his words, just a stark, matter-of-fact narrative that hollows out your insides. -
From my Litsy post: There‘s a long path of Baldwin‘s life in this short story collection, capped, easily, by the magnificent Sonny‘s Blues. Baldwin does some lovely, beautiful gently-created characters and tears them up. The last story, the title story on going to see a lynching, hovers over everything else. These stories are about racism even when they‘re not.
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40. Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
published: 1965
format: 193 pages inside
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man
acquired: December
read: Aug 16-28
time reading: 7 hr 15 min, 2.3 min/page
rating: 4½ -
If you look through my notes below, you might decide that it is better to stay safe and not read this scary, sad piece of life. Well the choice is yours of course, whether to choose to see, to taste a bit, to let the stories touch you and make you feel, to think, or you can stay safely away.
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers." — James A. Baldwin
The Rockpile The contrast between staying safe, innocent upstairs and living, hurting, laughing, sinning on the street and then upstairs is no longer so safe. So what to choose safety or life?
The Outing The conflict between accepting what is and wishing for different, for more. The result – anger, violence, despondency, despair.
The Man Child Chilling, the results of living a lie are scary - fullstop
Previous Condition Sad, tired, lost, angry and scared. Turing like a hurt dog and biting the hands that try to console.
Sonny's Blues Duty versus Self, who do we owe allegiance to? We all seek different methods to ease our suffering, to be able to continue, to take the next breath, next step. Sonny communicates beautifully with his blues. God let me see not only the words people say but all the other ways they communicate.
This Morning, This Evening, So Soon This was so this:The City
You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, a better one than this.
Every effort of mine is a condemnation of fate;
and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.
How long will my mind remain in this wasteland.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years destroying and wasting."
You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighbourhoods;
and you will grow gray in these same houses.
Always you will arrive in this city. Do not hope for any other --
There is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have destroyed your life here
in this little corner, you have ruined it in the entire world.
Constantine P. Cavafy
Come Out of the Wilderness No choice – Unrequited loves leaves you despairing, life without love leaves you despairing also. Oh why can’t we choose whom to love?
Going to Meet the Man Tough, ugly, chilling to read. How can people live through that and not be marked by it and reap it's effect through generations? And through all that hate, blood, violence, they are still linked, intertwined as if they can't live without each other.
Read with Maya - my steadfast companion in the Baldwin Journey -
All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.
from 'Sonny's Blues'
I've been having that feeling of "I wish this guy was seeing what I see and we could compare notes" about James Baldwin. I'd read The Fire Next Time and Giovanni's Room already but it was an excerpt (until just now I thought it was a short story. Damn your eyes, Edmund White!) from "Just Above My Head" in "The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction" (I haven't finished it still because White's own story bored me out of interest in reading for months) that did it to me. I would see something and it was James Baldwin I thought of. Maybe it is because of the kinds of things that get me going to the wondering about other people places. I saw this rough looking woman anxious to please this older lady with her (probably her mother or grandmother). She was doing it by laughing too hard when nothing funny had happened. I had this feeling like she felt that if the older lady laughed then she wouldn't be in trouble anymore. She was probably dependent on the woman and that is what that was all about. Maybe it was just buttering her up. Still, I had the thought that if Baldwin were there he'd know more about it than I did. Something elusive about safety in other people, the danger in past present butterfly effect of doing it all wrong. This has happened a few times, my "What would James Baldwin think". It's a weird place that bothers me all the damned time. When people want other people to have "private pain". If it always depends on someone else to invest all of the quiet there can be in the world then you would have to all be at the mercy of what the mirror ordained you. That makes me feel more hopelessly lonely than just about anything.
Sonny's brother reads about his incarceration in the papers. He was dyslexic in the walls writing sense a long time. Heroin shuffles to him now, again. His brother's friend from the old days, another corner zombie. When they need from you and then back into the turtle shell where the genie roommate takes everything. Not before he tells him that prison will dry him out for a time. It happens to enough of everyone else, so why not Sonny too? He hears his brother's laugh in the high school students he teaches. This was when Baldwin would be with me knowing what could be. It was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself. The windows of the soul come out then. When his brother is who he used to be in a grin. He writes to his brother, finally, when his little girl dies. Sonny gets out of prison. All the while it is still happening, the past. I guess he'll always be in prison too, the little girl will not stop dying either. That it is impossible to know if he is right about Sonny is perfect to me. Sonny is a musician, a pianist. His brother suspects the instrument as a lack to be bent. He watches him playing for the first time since prison and was he truly leaving the shores, this time (it can only be momentary), for not just taking the pain. Sonny said no one just takes the pain, they find any way out. Living death (or the people who were born the right time and place who don't have to. I think these lucky people trick others into thinking the other kind, like them, don't exist). It is my favorite when it is back then, again, and a (the?) little boy is listening to the adults talking about the darkness outside. It is my favorite kind of mirror giving. What they have gone through, what there is to go through. The child hopes they will always be there to talk like this. And maybe there's a kid in someone's lap, and maybe a hand to stroke his forehead. In 'The Man Child' it happens just like that. The child pretends to be asleep and he hopes without belief that it will go on with the comforting mother's hand.
I'm not sure about 'The Man Child'. A little boy (eight years old) is investigating his land. His always been there is the color, when there was a time he could remember a not always been there suspicious shapes. His mother didn't always look dead inside. There had been a little sister who died. There had been a time when another baby was on the way and it might be okay again. His father, an old man at thirty-two and his always been there friend, Jamie, who is thirty-four. The kid returns to this thirty-fourth birthday party a lot. Dad and Jamie were always getting drunk and Jamie always had that dog of his. There had been a moment when he had looked into Jamie's old eyes, bloated with age or premature drink age. He was kicking his constant companion and the Dad is nailing him to the ground with I have won and you have lost. The kid doesn't see it this way but if I had been there that was what I would see. I guess it is like kids in my middle school class who changed who they "sided" with during various history courses. Whomever was "closest" to them every time. So the dad wins this fight. Jamie lost his farm to his friend. They had been in the war together, war buddies and drinking buddies. That's supposed to mean something in superficial terms but doesn't here, thankfully. I don't know what made him lay into him that day, smugness about his wife pregnant when Jamie lost his wife and never had a kid? There is something that bugs the shit out of me about James Baldwin, though. This women are things to lose, or things to protect. Jamie couldn't "keep" a woman. A man in another story feels protecting a wife is his right. It was like that in Giovanni's Room, too. The female lover was an obstacle, an expectation demanding and taking. I wish I could see the mother in 'The Man Child' without a husband or kids (dead or alive). It is narratively said that she didn't know when he captured her. I still don't think it is true that you have to be without a human relationship to be unchained. I have this idea that Baldwin at least kind of thought they did. The boy Johnnie in 'The Rockpile' and 'The Outing' is ensnared in those I'm in love headlights that obliterate everything else. He waits for his friend, his lover David. His mother married the father of his siblings, a tyrant in the name of religion. Private pain ruins everything in his path. People seem to know everything when they demonstrate being saved. The young men pit sexual awakening to the tirade of the path. David is moving away to where Johnnie will likely wait for him forever. Another lover, the girl Sylvia. Her worldly be good gnats watch her. I can imagine her wanting David to feel sexy time excitement, but beseeching his "better nature" to please the "be good" pulpits of their community when they succeed in wearing her down. I know it works that way but I don't know that it has to be that way. I didn't like 'The Man Child' as much as the other stories because the violence of Jamie to the son of his smug friend with so much (for now) wasn't inevitable. I think Baldwin is better than the little kid who thinks people in their thirties are old. Child blindness doesn't have to work that way, can hit other than the general. What Jamie does to take away, when he drunkenly cries that he loves his friend.... I don't know about this one. The kid was following his father's footsteps. He showed him his land. The kid's dying words are to Jamie that he will give him his land. One of Jamie's crimes was wandering the forests alone. I wonder what he looked like by himself. Better than the kid looking into his eyes, what would he see if he looked into is own eyes. The kid was doing this himself, this forest wandering. He wasn't thinking about it like looking into his own eyes but the thoughtless version of it was there, in moving away from what memory says had always been there. Without anything to connect to Jamie's old look other than his own now death it didn't mean much to me.
I like it less connected to the story 'Going to Meet the Man'. The racist sheriff will take his son to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. They will tenderize their vicious traditions over the bloody corpse. I know it happens that this shit is passed down to progeny who share the dull thinking of well, I've been lucky to be born what I am in this time and place so I must deserve it. I can't connect the racist sheriff's fetish for coercing the colored girls he loathes into what gets his dick hard to anything but that there are people like this.
In the drinking hour people wait for the better nature of other's to win the war. Albatross bar stools, coyote devouring ugly on starved stomachs. Bedrooms in bottles littering the s.o.s shores beginning where horizons end. Empty arms are 'Come out of the Wilderness' Ruth's push, her pull not anywhere. It's low down before you fall anyway. Behind her a brother and father possessed her body with dirty judgement. Filthy whore, muddying tears. They still have their say in New York City. A white man lives off her clickety clack cha ching. She types in an office, he drinks and he sleeps. After work she drinks and sleeps to wait. Where is Paul, tears, waiting. He's almost out the door in the band aid or needle that takes all of the skin with it fast or slow. Maybe he will stay a little longer now she's making a little bit more than her little. Ruth lives in a doom cloud. Can't live with or without him skies. Maybe a lot of people live under this but I was wondering if there were any women in any of Baldwin's stories who ever breathed outside of it (if not crying over men then their children). Passing bar-stool orbits look like her old lover, another white boy. Everyone passes although no one really moves. This one wasn't like Paul because she has hopes that this time in Paul's arms it will be different. I don't know why it would be different in Paul's arms and not the other white boy. "The sons of the masters were roaming the world, looking for arms to hold them. And the arms that might have held them- could not forgive." Was it too late if it was too late before any of you ever got drunk every day and waited for the other one to come home? Whatever Ruth felt was the point I don't feel it was the point when she raged at the not-hope white boy that she wasn't the plantation girl the son of the master could do as he pleased. Turtle shell inhabitants meaning you aren't alone has to be it. Bringing back your own ghosts to kill you. Men remind her of her brother, men remind her of Paul. The band aid pulling won't do anything if it is like that.
I had this feeling a lot in many of these stories that it was too late for them because it had ever happened to another colored person. Streets where they would have been slaves. Famous in France, married in France to a Swedish woman. 'This Morning, This Evening, So Soon' he is afraid to return to New York City. He has reason to dread it. It is enough that the racist bullies will not be stopped. When it isn't socially acceptable they hide behind police brutality, statistical cheats. It feels closer to the truth to me that some people are just rotten and will do it because they can. Police will shoot dogs just because they can. It can't be true that all people in France accept him and all in America expect to be condescended to. It isn't important the acknowledgement that his French director lost his family in the holocaust, or the Algerian friend the American tourists have it better than. It annoyed the shit out of me, really, because if Europe was peaceful then it was because the people they would hate had already been killed or forced out during world war II. They weren't accepting of those different than them, not at all. It fit with something I felt about another story, 'Previous Condition'. This man is in too late purgatory. His father was broken and humiliated. He hates Harlem, it is his dirt. His doom cloud is related to Ruth's shame. It will always be too late if EVERYONE has to not be or ever have been a soul sucking dick. Anyway, his white girlfriend tells him some speech about the world, the kind that doesn't help. They say just go back to Harlem, go back to your kind. I don't believe that every white person is taken over by a pod life-form, guilt puppeting the checked out flesh. No fucking way was that true about everyone. But the ones that are are enough, and the rest won't always do anything when it is someone else, and how do you know which it is this time. That would go for people, though. I loved it when it wasn't the point when that girlfriend makes her I don't want to hear this speech about other people suffering too.I was aware of my body under the bathrobe; and it was as though I had done something wrong, something monstrous, years ago, which no one had forgotten and for which I would be killed.
from 'Previous Condition' -
Reading Baldwin's Stories
I read Baldwin's 1965 collection of short stories, "Going to Meet the Man" after reading his first novel, "Go Tell it on the Mountain". Baldwin (1924 -- 1987) wrote in searing terms about the African American experience and about racial injustice. These stories and the early novel have a feel of individuality, passion and personal experience that to me are more basic than their depictions of American racism.
The book includes eight early stories which explore and attempt to surmount suffering and anger. Baldwin's stories find sexuality, art and religion as sources of suffering and redemption. The writing is dense and detailed in its description of places and people. The stories are set in Harlem, France, and the rural South.
Baldwin's story, "Sonny's Blues" tells the story of a blues pianist who has become addicted to heroin and of his relationship to his brother who has led a more conventional life as a teacher. The story develops slowly and carefully as it illustrates the necessity of living with purpose and of how music may bring meaning to life, both for the performers and for those listeners able to hear. I thought it the best story in the collection, and it has become deservedly famous.
The title story focuses on the life of a racist white sheriff in the rural South. Baldwin explores the racial and sexual attitudes of his protagonist and their relationship to a brutal lynching and burning the sheriff witnessed with his parents as a boy. Another story in the collection, "The Man Child". also is set in the rural South and is the only work in the volume without an explicit racial theme. It offers instead a portrayal of smoldering sexual and domestic tension, loneliness, and violence.
The life of creative performers and artists is a theme of several stories in addition to "Sonny's Blues" . "This morning, this evening, so soon" deals with an African American expatriate in Paris who has married a Swedish woman. He is about to return to the United States after a lengthy absence and fears for his young son and for the racial hostility he knows he will encounter in America. The primary character of "Come Out of the Wilderness" is a young African American woman involved in a failing relationship with a white artist. She is about to become involved in a relationship with her boss, an African American man at a large insurance company, and feels a sense of purposelessness and uncertainty. In the story, "Previous Condition" the main character also shows a sense of drift. The young African American actor at the center of the story struggles in his relationship with a Jewish friend and with a white lady friend in his failing efforts to find meaning in his life.
The first two stories in the collection, "The Rockpile" and "The Outing" explore characters and some materials that Baldwin used in "Go Tell it on the Mountain." The second of these stories, which examines a summer boating excursion along the Hudson River by the congregants of the Temple of Fire Baptized is effective in its own right and adds to the characterization of the church and its parishioners presented in the novel.
This collection offers insight into American racial tensions and into Baldwin's understanding of racial injustice. I loved the stories more for their focus on lonely troubled individuals seeking for self-understanding and for Baldwin's understanding of ambiguity, sexuality, and the power of art.
Robin Friedman -
“Non aveva importanza quel che facevo o dicevo o sentivo: un occhio lo tenevo sempre rivolto al mondo… quel mondo di cui avevo imparato a diffidare quasi ancor prima di imparare come mi chiamassi, quel mondo a cui, sapevo bene, non era possibile volgere le spalle, il mondo dei bianchi.”
Otto superlativi racconti di James Baldwin:
1. Il macigno
Il macigno si ergeva dall' altro lato della strada, davanti alla loro casa. Era il posto dove i ragazzini facevano la lotta, imparavano a misurarsi con le future aggressioni della vita. Quando Roy, lo scapestrato, sfugge al controllo di mamma per gettarsi - e ferirsi - nella mischia, il fratello John si sentirà responsabile. Sarà forse l' occasione per saggiare la tenuta della sua famiglia .
2. La scampagnata
La tradizionale scampagnata del 4 luglio è organizzata dalla chiesa locale e precisamente dalla comunità dei "santi". Fra i ragazzini che vi partecipano ci sono i "salvati", come Roy, e quelli non ancora salvati, come Johnny. Il culmine della gita è la cerimonia in cui si cantano le lodi a Dio, suonando ballando pregando e piangendo ardentemente . Tutto è centrato sul dono di sé a Dio per fuggire le tentazioni della carne. Ma altre passioni, altri sentimenti si agitano nel cuore di Johnny.
3. L’uomo bambino
Eric, otto anni, vive in fattoria con suo padre, virile proprietario di molte terre, e con la madre, una donna precocemente invecchiata, ormai incapace di avere altri figli. Jamie è l'amico d'infanzia di suo padre: ha perso le sue terre, non ha una famiglia, soltanto un cane che spesso maltratta. Un giorno Eric intercetta un suo sguardo strano. Una sorta di minacciosa aria di follia che sarà destinato a incontrare faccia a faccia.
4. «Previous condition»
Il 15° emendamento della Costituzione degli Stati Uniti prevede che nessun cittadino sia discriminato per il colore della pelle, ma il giovane Peter continuerà a esserlo come a ricordargli in ogni momento quella "precedente condizione di schiavitù" abolita dalla legge ma non dalla vita quotidiana in USA.
5. Blues per Sonny
Il narratore è il fratello maggiore di Sonny, giovane irrequieto con il daimon della musica. Esprimersi attraverso il jazz, fuggire da Harlem, emanciparsi…desideri ardenti che fatalmente incontrano l’abbrivio delle droghe e dell'autodistruzione. Quando Sonny esce di galera suo fratello non ha il coraggio di vederlo subito. Ma poi lo farà, Sonny riuscirà a parlargli, e lui ad ascoltarlo, e infine a sentirlo suonare… finché la sua musica gli accarezzerà l'anima.
6. Stamattina stasera troppo presto
Il narratore, cantante e attore nero statunitense, ha trovato fama fortuna e famiglia a Parigi. Ora sta per affrontare un viaggio negli Stati Uniti con il figlioletto Paul, e molte paure lo assalgono. I fantasmi delle umiliazioni passate si ergono a ostacolarne la serenità. La moglie Harriet e il regista Vidal raccolgono le sue confidenze e cercano di placare le sue ansie.
7. Come out the wilderness
Ruth è una giovane donna nera tormentata dal suo amore per Paul, un artista bianco, con il quale convive. Lei sa che con lui non ha speranza di realizzare i suoi sogni, che la sua è una relazione precaria nella quale lei è sempre subalterna. Tutto il passato storico grava nella vita presente dei neri e dei bianchi, nonostante l'emancipazione del XX secolo e New York non è altro che il vivace teatro di questa insensata rappresentazione.
8. Uomo bianco
La ferocia, l’insensatezza, la bieca ignoranza, l’orrore. L’essere umano (qui bianco e perciò paradigmatico) nel suo aspetto più incomprensibilmente, banalmente disumano. E dunque imperdonabile. -
"Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after a while I saw the girl put a scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head, like the very cup of trembling."
--from "Sonny's Blues"
The brother can WRITE! -
Oh man, that titular story is stomach-churning, blood-boilingly tough to read. Going to Meet the Man is a short story collection mostly about mid-century race relations in America. As an erudite gay Black preacher's son, Baldwin brings a different perspective to the topic. These mostly brilliantly rendered stories provide a bevy of POVs and angles from which to look at such issues.
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This week one of my African-American students, 19 years old, told the class he is a racist. When I asked him to explain he only said, "Well, everyone's racist." I first started reading James Baldwin many years ago, before I understood and acknowledged the truth of what my student said. I loved his writing but didn't know what to do with his rage. Today, with my consciousness somewhat raised, I find Baldwin just as compelling and even more troubling. All of these stories were painful to read and I could almost not get through the final, title story. But Baldwin's artistry and, more importantly, his humanity, makes it possible for people like me to confront the myriad awful truths of American racism.
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Completed September 2014, my first book by James Baldwin, but not my last!
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Basterebbe da solo l'ultimo racconto della raccolta, Uomo bianco, a giustificare la lettura di questo libro, per potenza, intensità, durezza.
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quick thoughts: story collections are typically tough to rate. some stories move you more than others; and a couple stay with you long after the last page is turned. in this collection, all the stories have a tone that is somber and reflective. I found some of them to be more fleshed out than others, and a few stories came to an abrupt and mystifying conclusion. My favorite, though, was Sonny's Blues, a story of a man's fragile relationship with his younger brother who is a musician and a recovering addict. Even though it's couched in the middle of the collection, I am still thinking about it (3.5)
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I know everybody's in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don't understand it and don't want to and spend all my time trying to forget it?
Οι πρωταγωνιστές κι οι πρωταγωνίστριες των 8 μικρών ιστοριών προσπαθούν με πολυμήχανους κι απελπισμένους τρόπους να κρατηθούν στην επιφάνεια, αποτυγχάνουν κι όμως αγωνίζονται. -
This was my first introduction to Baldwin's shorter fiction, and it makes me wonder why it's not better-known. These are brief, powerful things that stand alongside his best novels and essays, and as in all of his writing, Baldwin manages to write very universal stories while never forgetting his own viewpoint. Even when he writes a character whose experience is fairly remote from his own, there's still the man's indelible stamp. As an added note, he can sure as hell write white characters a lot better than the average white American author can write black characters. In an era of "woke" neoliberalism offering itself as the alternative to reaction, we need James Baldwin, now more than ever. We need fiction that actually requires us to look in the mirror.
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Potente, lucido, moderno.
Non so cosa altro dire.
Quanto cavolo è bravo James Baldwin.
Un maestro.
Ha tutto quello che amo in uno scrittore.
Bello, bello, bello.
E cattivo, violento, crudo.
Quello che non scrive è sempre più tremendo di quello che descrive, e quello che descrive è sempre abbastanza tremendo, perché tira fuori il lato razzista della società.
Tira fuori il peggio di tutti.
Per questo bisogna leggerlo: perché si fanno i conti con cose che molto spesso vorremmo ignorare, anche di noi stessi. -
I took quite a bit of time out on this one. The first two stories really didn't do a lot for me and I almost dropped it. I'm glad I didn't! Reading the remaining stories there was one that didn't work for me. However the remainder were at worst hauntingly powerful - the best were possibly horrifyingly powerful. The writing is outstanding. The scenes/themes were stunningly portrayed. Going to Meet the Man itself was a very tough read - don't think I've read anything quite like that before and certainly not that felt that authentic. I'll read more Baldwin when I can.
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"But I can’t forget--where I’ve been. I don’t mean just the physical place I’ve been, I mean where I’ve been. And what I’ve been.”
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I’ve decided to focus on 2 stories from this startling short story collection.
Realness: “Sonny’s Blues” is my favorite short story of all time. It’s his best writing (Accept it, and don’t fight me on this). Maybe because the story uses the heady love of music as the arc of the story, I was destined to be starstruck. The final section, alone, is just as thrillingly seductive as any jazz record the characters listen to. But the soul of the story harks back to the heart-rending love of two brothers, who struggle to relate and find themselves hurting each other all while fervently clinging to one another. Additionally, I have never read any text that managed to convey the act of playing music in such a cinematic way (it’s truly quite astonishing how Baldwin did that). Read this for the beguiling depictions of music, struggle, addiction, protectiveness, and unflinching brotherly love. I shed a tear or five. Who’s counting?
The title and final story “Going to Meet the Man” is an entirely different BEAST. I’m surprised this TRULY FRIGHTENING story hasn’t gained traction on people’s radar. Lemme tell you a secret: Baldwin was a master of the horrifying. Here, he gets into the mind of a raging racist white man living in the lynching-era south. Reading it during our current climate of rampant white supremacy made this almost too real. You get a full-on psychological profile on this man, and it is truly an uncomfortable place to be in. There is commentary on the sexualizing and fetishizing of black men being explored in a tormenting manner, unlike anything you’ve ever read before (shudder). There is also the examination on how the seedlings of racism can bloom (again, shudder). Here’s an interesting element to ponder: I believe that both black and white people will feel unnerved while reading (no doubt) and both will walk away consciously changed; but what happens in the text will get under your skin and have you grappling with the darkness in fundamentally different ways. Read it to believe it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvNf5xNHV... -
I first encountered Baldwin’s works at a seminar where someone read an extract of the eponymous story from this collection. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
This collection explores notions of identity, home, belonging, and what it means to be black and American in a beautiful and devastating way. Baldwin’s prose is a neat but complex embroidery. He transcribes the black experience through a variety of different prisms — from black women to white men and children — in a very intelligent way. -
These eight short stories will leave you hungry for more writing my Baldwin. They are all powerful and each one a different perspective on the issue of race in America. Not beating a dead horse by any means they allow the reader to view first hand through the eyes of man, woman, child, black and white, what racial apartheid / hatred / apathy does to the doer, the recipient and the indifferent. Each story leaves an impression upon the psyche. Some more than others. Worth reading more than once.
• THE ROCKPILE: family dynamics abound when the eldest son lets his younger brother do what he wants. • THE OUTING: a church outing in Bear Mountain and the relationships that surround it. • THE MAN CHILD: the chilling life story of an eight year old white boy...
• PREVIOUS CONDITION: the dynamics involved with being a down and out black actor in apartheid America. • SONNY’S BLUES: a musician returns from rehab to play the blues for his brother. • THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, TOO SOON: a black man plans to return to the US from France with a Swedish wife and their son to … • COME OUT THE WILDERNESS: a black woman comes to terms with life in Greenwich Village and her ghosts from the south. • GOING TO MEET THE MAN: a white sheriff remembers a childhood event that made him become the sadistic and hypocritical bigot that he now is.
The ones that linger for me the most are: THE MAN CHILD, THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, TOO SOON and GOING TO MEET THE MAN. -
In my third Baldwin, I was privileged with the opportunity to see what a literary master could do with the short story form. From the first page, Going to Meet the Man is buoyant with succinct prose that packs a ton of personality and perspective. By the last, I was overwhelmed with the scope of his mind and the acuteness of his voice. Taking the reader from communal churches to the streets of Harlem and the lights of Paris, this collection is brilliantly diverse while maintaining a clarity and cohesiveness in its singular style. As always, the short form causes the overall experience to be somewhat uneven in impact but the cumulative effect is unforgettable.
The first few stories were immediately gripping and I was sure that this would be a five star favorite. Unfortunately, around the second half, the stories became longer and a bit less compelling which dulled the shine of the stronger pieces. However, even the slower stories felt well-crafted and urgent in their own way. The last story was an unflinching look at racism that burned indelible images into my head and exposed prejudice and hatred in an uncommonly authentic and realistic way. "Sonny's Blues" is, quite simply, the best short story I have ever read.
Though it is not always a pleasant experience, reading these eight stories is still one that I will carry with me forever as a necessary and formative expression of what living in the face of systemic racism looks like. Baldwin uses all the depth and breadth of his lived experience to fill these stories with detail and nuance that knocks you out before waking you up. His ability to create stark imagery with biting transparency is a breathtaking blow that lands right in the gut. Every word feels truthful as it breaks your heart with its casual frankness. Going to Meet the Man is a book I will return to whenever I need to be reminded of the potency of the short form and the immensity of this man's skill with the written word. Most of all, it is an artistic document of the failings of humanity and its capacity to heal. -
“There’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.”
It’s not often that I give a short story collection 5 stars - usually there are hits and misses, but Baldwin delivers in every one of these. Whether it is the story of two young brothers sitting watching their friends play without them, the story of a musician struggling with addiction, or the way being taken to a lynching as a family outing affected a man throughout his entire life - Baldwin explores suffering, racism, and the things we do to move on with nuance and subtlety - and within that nuance and subtlety, he stops the reader with such perfection in his prose and word choice. I would be hard pressed to come up with a favorite here - but a couple of standouts for me were the title story, Sonny’s Blues, and This Morning, This Evening, So soon.
Ending this review with another quote that speaks to me to the power of what Baldwin does in these short stories. “There are so many ways to tell the truth.” -
A haunting lyrical collection of short stories, each one a testament to the Black experience in the United States.
