Vintage Baldwin

by James Baldwin

The best of the best from a powerful voice in the American literary landscape who fearlessly tackled race, sex, politics, and art in his internationally acclaimed novels, short stories, plays, and essays. 

“[Baldwin] uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing...the thought becomes poetry and the poetry illuminates thought.” —Langston Hughes

James Baldwin was and remains a powerfully prophetic voice in the American literary landscape. His literary achievement is a lasting legacy about what it means to be American.

Vintage Baldwin includes the short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the galvanizing civil rights examination “My Dungeon Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”; the essays “Fifth Avenue, A Letter from Harlem,” “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” and “Nobody Knows My A Letter from the South”; and excerpts from the novel Another Country and the play The Amen Corner.

“If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one.” —Michael Ondaatje

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Classics, Race, Politics, Classic Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.

James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.

He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.

In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.

Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.

From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.

Reviews

[Karyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of America’s most commanding and articulate writers, James Baldwin does not disappoint with this collection. That said, “Sonny’s Blues” is a very fine piece of work that really sits at the top of Baldwin’s powerful storytelling, capturing the rhythm like a piece of music.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved James' style of writing! I wasn't a fan, however, of the excerpt From Another Country, which features some provocative and unsavory language and scenes.

[Shrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

i should really update my goodreads more frequently. fantastic read.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intellectual giant. Pioneer.

My dungeon shook:
9 that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, pleasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and build railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity.
9 "You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off."
7 - Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. . . . There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them."

24 - The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes.
25- one cannot deny the humanity of one another without diminishing one's own

47 - I'm telling you this because you got a brother. And the world ain't changed. ... 47 - You got to hold onto your brother . . . and don't let him fall
67-There is no way of getting it out--that storm inside.
Blues: (75) 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."

77 "the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger,"
--Love as a kingdom. Love as the answer to human connection.

85 The general level is low because, as I have said, Americans have so little respect for genuine intellectual effort.

96 - the black men were stronger than the white
? - It is a struggle unworthy of this nation.

152 I arrived in Paris with forty dollars and no French. I slid downhill with impressive speed . . . ended up successively in one French hospital and one French jail, and then took stock.

What it Means to Be an American (Writer) - Why James Baldwin had to leave American in order to see America/write about it clearly:
"I left American because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.)
193 - "The American writer, in Europe, is released, first of all, from the necessity of apologizing for himself. It is not until he is released from the habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a "regular guy"that he realizes how crippling this habit has been. It is not necessary for him, there, to pretend to be something he is not, for the artist does not encounter in Europe the same suspicion he encounters here. Whatever the Europeans may actually think of artists, they have killed enough of them off by now to know that they are as real--and as persistent--as rain, snow, taxes, or businessmen."
198 - Every society is governed by hidden laws... It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter."
199 - "Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world."

[Geoff from · Rating 3 out of 5]

The, what may appear, low rating in no way reflects on the quality of Baldwin's writing or his ability to, apparently, effortlessly convey an emotion or portray a moment in time that says so much about the characters and us as a people.

No, the three-star rating reflects the fact that this really only serves as an introduction to Baldwin. If you enjoy some of the works, you'll be left feeling teased rather than satisfied by this offering. But, as that is how it is sold on the jacket, one shouldn't complain too much.

As a comment on the writing, the passion the writer feels for his subjects is felt in every word - humanity shining through - allowing you to empathize, sympathize or understand the lives that are being portrayed. Anyone who has been disenfranchised or disillusioned at some point in their lives will relate to the feelings so eloquently put. Anyone riding high horses should maybe have a read before they start passing their judgements.

So, excellent writing, but not enough for me in this edition. I'd go straight for one his complete works or collections, as I will be doing next. For example, 'Another Country', whose inclusion as an excerpt, has served to tempt me with the promise of an absorbing read.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Baldwin. What a genius. He surprises me every time with his insight and intelligence.

I hadn't read any of his essays, and they did not disappoint. In his discussions of race in America I find as important and insightful a perspective as any we're getting from the news today - and, somehow, unfortunately, his perspectives are still as relevant.

The fiction in this collection - Sonny's Blues and an excerpt from Another Country - is beautiful and consuming and layered and rich, as I have come to expect Baldwin's prose to be. And his essays on writing and on being an American in Europe resonated with me on multiple levels.

I can't wait to get my hands on more Baldwin.

[Jonathan Sprung · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up knowing it was a sample of Baldwin's writing, and having never read his work I didn't know what to expect. At once I was drawn into his very personal and compelling characters, all tortured by some sort of longing, and held back by, and nourished by, their relationship with the Harlem of his youth, complete with its virtues and its vices. I recommend this for anyone looking to get an overview of his work, because it shows Baldwin at his best. I especially liked the stories 'Sonny's Blues' and the excerpt from 'Another Country'. There's a novel that's going on my reading list for the near future.

[Ren Tabilon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love you so much James! My dungeon shook brought tears to my eyes. And there was a line from Notes from the Amen Corner that broke me. "I did not even have the rather deadly temptations of being good looking , for I knew that I was not good looking." Words can not articulate how I feel about this line.

[Cortland Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baldwin as of late had became my favorite writer. His intellect along with his subtle rage is a great blend. A great example of playing multiple sides of an argument. He gives options throughout his work and I admire that.

[Causey · Rating 4 out of 5]

My introduction to Baldwin - loved it. Very interested to read more of his full works and have access to the essays and letters again. A very important American writer I think everyone should give a chance, and this was a very good sampler!

[Marilyn Sue Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good selection of Baldwin's writings, including "Sonny's Blues" and parts of "The Amen Corner."

[daniel]

“… a certain pride of bitterness without which… they could scarcely remain alive at all.” literally
also
“‘It’s a awful thing to think about, the way love never dies!’”
k bye read it

[suuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

baldwin never fails to articulate what so many of us are feeling. found several of his works within this extremely relevant

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Sonny’s Blues” was one of Baldwin’s earliest short stories. Originally published in the Partisan Review in 1957, “Sonny’s Blues” follows the narrator as he comes to discover who his drug-addicted, piano-playing younger brother, Sonny, truly is. Set in Harlem, like many of Baldwin’s other work, “Sonny’s Blues” is a constant struggle between light and darkness, failure and redemption. The story was included in the short-story collectionGoing to Meet the Man (1965). The collection, which spans more than a decade’s worth of Baldwin’s stories, is notable for the insight it gives into Baldwin’s development as a writer. Like much of Baldwin’s later fiction, the collection was met with mixed reviews by critics, who noted that in many of these stories Baldwin was revisiting the same themes he had covered in his previous work. Nonetheless, the stories in the collection, “Sonny’s Blues” in particular, demonstrate Baldwin’s ability to transform his social and political concerns into art. In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin takes on Harlem’s deterioration, religion, drug addiction, and post–World War II America all at the same time. The story, like the characters in it, literally struggles under the weight of so much pressure.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful and great American author, self-exiled to Paris for many years, where by his own account he discovered what it meant for him to be an American writer. This is a excellent collection, the only flaw in which is its brevity, which is intentional, so consider this an appetizer volume, or a nice travel companion for those already familiar with Baldwin's work. The extended excerpt from "Another Country" is especially moving, and as a dean of humanities, I was also deeply grateful for the concluding sentence of the volume, from the essay, "What it means to be an American": "though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world."

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I could write the same review for any of James Baldwin's works. You do not simply read his text, you commune with it.

I purchased this book long before I read it (a common enough occurrence for me), but I regret not opening it earlier. Baldwin is an absolute master. You feel everything that he writes. When you read Baldwin, you arrive on social descriptions and analyses so perfect, so concise, and so apt that you want to mark the spot immediately and find something with whom to share it.

This collection is a good start if you have never read any Baldwin.

[Aruna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introduction to James Baldwin for the unfamiliar. I loved "Sonny's Blues" and "Fifth Avenue, Uptown." Baldwin's writing is beautiful, his stories and essays penetrating, insightful and heart-wrenching. At his best, the guy was mind-blowing.

Here's a great piece on Baldwin from The New Yorker http://bit.ly/AKWFr.

[Shannongibney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this text for anyone new to Baldwin, and also for educators looking for a text to engage students on issues of social justice, race/racism in the U.S., playwriting, fiction writing, essay writing, general critique, and composition.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasnt captivated by all parts of this book, but some of the pieces I read coerced me to go out and buy the complete book. Specifically the excerpt from Another Country hooked me and I will be reading the entire novel shortly. A good introduction to someone unfamiliar with Baldwin.

[Ryan Pollock · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? The man's a genius and one of my favorite writers of all time. Few people can not only capture what it means to be a black man in America, but also what it means to be any kind of American the way that James Baldwin can.

[The Nike Nabokov · Rating 3 out of 5]

"sonny's blues" is unbelievable. great writer and great writings on what it is to be black and/or american.

[Threaded · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still so moving.

[Not Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paperback.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two words - Sonny's Blues.

[Michael McCluskey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best writers I've ever read.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love James Baldwin's writing. Passionate. Articulate. Principled. This collection is great for the letters and essays, but excerpts from plays and novels just leaving you wanting more.