This is, of course, a quibble, and no fault of Leeming's. Leeming, who was friends with Baldwin for 25 years and his live-in personal assistant for four years, and who had Baldwin's authorization to write a biography, has written a sincere and comprehensive look at a brilliant writer and troubled man. Baldwin is probably my favorite writer, and certainly my favorite to teach, and one of the overwhelming feelings I had after listening to the nearly 18 hour-long audiobook is regret: regret that Baldwin couldn't find more tranquility than he did, and some regret that he was stretched so thin and lived so unhealthily during his 63 years of life, a lifetime that was almost certainly shorted by the alcohol and tobacco that fueled many nights or weeks or even years. Baldwin's output in his 34-year career feels sparse: 6 novels, 2 plays, 5 collections of essays. And he was constantly partying and fending off hanger-ons, and spent much time on his obsessions of film and theater, which drew minimal results (for example, he devoted years to a a script for a Malcolm X movie which was rejected by the studio, and never filmed until Spike Lee rewrote it in 1992). He wrote and rewrote his plays for years, and completed only two, although he was working on a third, The Welcome Table, at the time of his death, but it remains unpublished, though it has survived.
Beyond the regret at Baldwin's largely unhappy life, though, I also felt gratitude, a thankfulness he was able to produce as much work as he did: Leeming's biography reports, with great detail, about the numerous times Baldwin attempted suicide; I got the feeling that he was such a damaged soul that we were so lucky to get what we did from him; he was born the same year as Truman Capote, for example, and he also had problems with his demons, but we got much more important work from Baldwin than we did Capote.
Leeming focuses on several themes that he argues Baldwin is exploring throughout his work, and the one I found most powerful was the choice between safety and love. Unlike David in Giovanni's Room, Baldwin wanted us to choose love over safety, and this idea appears in several other works throughout his career: No Name on the Street, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Just Above My Head. Lemming's summaries of the work were too lengthy, but I enjoyed the connections Leeming makes between the works and with the larger Baldwin ideas. Others included the idea of imprisonment, both physical and emotional, whether it be imprisoned by homosexuality, race, or circumstance.
This is an extensive biography, filled with details that readers will find different items to be fascinated by. I'm a huge Baldwin fan and have read most of his non-fiction, but only about half of his fiction, and none of his poetry or plays (though I've seen The Amen Corner). For me, I was fascinated by his process and his relationships. I had no idea, for example, that his high school French teacher was the great Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen; Lemming makes the argument that this was probably one of the first professional gay men that Baldwin had encountered (this prompted me down a rabbit hole of research about Cullen himself; I hope someday someone writes a biography of him! Seems like a fascinating man.)
I loved reading about a meeting that Robert Kennedy asked Baldwin for in 1963 (the year he was on the cover of Time magazine and the year The Fire Next Time came out) to help his brother's administration answer the question "What do Negroes want?". The meeting was composed of Baldwin, Kennedy, DOJ lawyer Burke Marshall, Baldwin's brother David, friend Thais Aubrey, Baldwin's agent Bob Mills, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry, Kenneth Clark, Rip Torn (the actor, who Lemming reported that Baldwin was in love with after he starred in Baldwin's play Blues for Mr. Charlie), and freedom rider Jerome Smith met in New York.
The meeting was largely unsuccessful. For example, Kennedy tried to argue that his family's experience as Irish immigrants was akin to the Black experience (this was the time he made the point that a Black man could be President in 40 years, a fact that he almost got right). Baldwin and the other Black participants came to the conclusion that the conflict between "Negro urgency" and a "need to protect the image of liberal concern within the context of political realism" was not gulfed.
The meeting didn't change policy, Lemming's details about it made me feel like I was part of history. I have always been fascinated by Lorraine Hansberry, the great Black lesbian playwright who Raisin in the Sun in 1959, wrote some other great plays, but was dead, of cancer at age 34, in January 1965. Lemming writes about her in this meeting: "Baldwin was fascinated by Lorraine's face as it changed, reflecting her longing that the attorney general might understand and her gradual realization that he would not. In his mind Baldwin compared that face to Sojourner Truth's; it was 'still,' 'beautiful,' and 'terrifying'... the Kennedy meeting ended with Hansberry's comment that she was deeply concerned about the state of a civilization which could produce the now famous photograph of a white policeman standing on the neck of a black woman in Birmingham. She had smiled then in a way that had made Baldwin glad she was not smiling at him, and she had shaken Kennedy's hand and said, 'Good-bye, Mr. Attorney General,' and left the room. Everyone else had followed her, feeling 'devastated.'" Later, Baldwin saw her walking down the street after the meeting from his car; she did not see him: "Baldwin took note of what appeared to be her emotional pain -- her 'twisted' face, her eyes 'darker' than any he had 'ever seen'" (224-225). Just a fascinating look into a great writer at a moment in a conflict between white supremacy and structural racism vs. dismantling of the system that feels just as relevant now.
Lest you think that the biography was only fascinating to me because of what I learned about other people besides Baldwin (and, to be sure, we learn a great many details about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Kennedy, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Medgar Evers, and more in this book, as all had many dealings with Baldwin), learning about Baldwin himself also helped me gain insight into his works. Lemming meets Baldwin at almost the exact moment that he finishes Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (one of the Baldwin novels I haven't read yet), and he remains close to him until the end of Baldwin's life; details about Baldwin on his death bed, listening to Lemming read him Pride and Prejudice while Bessie Smith music has been playing that evening help support the dichotomy of Baldwin. It made me happy to learn that the same sort of points he makes in "Autobiographical Notes" about different cultural icons meaning different things to him but that it all created him manifested itself even at the end of his life.
From reading Baldwin's essays, which sort of serve as a long autobiography, I know a lot about Baldwin's life, but Lemming's biography offers a different perspective of it. Lemming, clearly, knows Baldwin's works well, and he does some retelling and delving into some details about, for example, Baldwin's father that we didn't hear about previously. We also learn about Baldwin's loves and his views on his homosexuality, which we rarely hear about in his essays; I now know, for example, that the beautiful passage about love in "Take Me to the Water" was likely about Lucien Happersberger, with whom Baldwin has an on-again, off-again relationship for years; Lucien is also married with child at some points. I liked hearing insight like this into how Baldwin's life worked itself into his fiction, such as this tidbit about Giovanni's Room: "In terms of physical reality, Lucien was Giovanni. Dark-haired and somehow alien, he talked like Giovanni and liked win and food and love the way Giovanni did. But the soul of Giovanni was Baldwin himself--the man who longed for a lasting relationship... ironically, it was lucien who married and who, several times over the years, rejected the room to which Jimmy called him and who, in Jimmy's eyes, became David to his Giovanni" (227).
Baldwin's closest sibling is to his brother David, and brother relationships are something Baldwin explores a lot in his fiction: most notably probably in "Sonny's Blues" (probably my favorite short story of all time). I also enjoyed hearing about Baldwin's sister Paula, who is mentioned as being born at the beginning of "Notes of a Native Son," and who lives in Baltimore, and who I have tried for years to get to come meet my students who study her brother's work so fervently.
I was glad to listen to this biography and learn much more about James Baldwin. It made me feel a bit guilty that I haven't read all of Baldwin's books, and finishing out his works seems a good goal for 2016 after making my way through Lemming's text.
from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/1WhtRzJ Reviewing "James Baldwin: a Biography" - Entrepreneur Generations
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