Three Must-Read Books About James Baldwin

There are three books about James Baldwin that are still on my Must-Read -Cover-To-Cover list. Two of them I never got a chance to finish.

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Baldwin's birth, a perfect time to begin reading them as a way to commemorate that significant event.

1. Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin by Herb Boyd (Atria Books, 2008).

2. Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr. (Crown, 2020).

3. The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola (Princeton University Press, 2019).

The Divine Sarah

Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017) is a true page-turner. One memorable scene is the one in which Sarah Vaughan and her bandmates were touring the South in the band's bus in, I think, the 1950s. A vehicle rode alongside the bus and one of its occupants started shooting at it. Everyone quickly ducked for cover. Miraculously no one was hit. One of the perils of being black Down South at that time.

James Baldwin Was A Lefty

I have read several biographies of the black novelist/essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987) and seen many photos and documentaries about him. None, as far as I can remember, indicated which hand he favored when he set pen to paper.

Just when I thought I knew all there was to know about Baldwin, it turns out that not only did he lean leftward in his socio-political views, he also wrote with his left hand. (I wonder if any of his teachers ever tried to dissuade him from left-handed writing, since most people are right-handed.)

In the book, The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola (Princeton University Press, 2019), which is about the famous 1965 war of ideas between the two men at Cambridge University in Britain, there is a photo of Baldwin at his writing table. The photographer beautifully captured Baldwin as he sat, shirt collar open, necktie untied around his neck, deeply concentrating on what he was writing. Between the fingers of his right hand was the ever-present cigarette, in his left hand a pencil. Near at hand was a Dixie cup either of water or his favorite booze. It was probably the latter.

I acquired the book more than a week ago when it was among several hardcover books my local public library was offering for free. When I begin reading it, I am sure I will discover other details of Baldwin's life previously missing from other books.

After seeing that photo, I began wondering if the two James Baldwin biopics that are soon to be released noted his left-handedness. I will be paying close attention to their accuracy.

Ralph Ellison And The Yiddish Language

Sometimes the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q & A feature will ask interviewees to name "the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently."

For me, it was learning that the African-American author Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) spoke fluent Yiddish. That was a total surprise!

In Arnold Rampersad's 2007 Ellison biography, Harriet Davidson, an Ellison friend, related to Rampersad that Ellison told her "he had picked up a lot of it when he was young, in Oklahoma City and," she continued, "his mother had worked for Jews." During visits "he and my husband would sit on the porch and converse very easily in Yiddish. Ralph had no trouble speaking or understanding it. It brought him even closer to us."

On The Road With Langston Hughes And Friend

I enjoy a good road-trip movie like The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Thelma & Louise (1991). And for a long time I've seen the movie potential of a road trip by car that Langston Hughes and his traveling companion, Zell Ingram, a young artist, took in 1931. (Ingram is described by the biographer Arnold Rampersad in his The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America (Oxford University Press, 1986) as "a big, handsome, young black man, about twenty-one years old, who lived with his mother over a popular Cleveland hot-dog shop.")

The trip took them from Cleveland to Florida. And from there to Cuba and Haiti; then back to Florida, where they picked up the black civil rights activist and college president Mary McLeod Bethune in Daytona Beach. She became Hughes's second traveling companion all the way to New York City.

While Hughes and Ingram were in Cuba and Haiti, they encountered enough adventures and misadventures to make a feature-length movie a riveting cinematic experience.

Sometimes I think I should become a movie producer.

How About A James Baldwin Biopic?

Earlier today I re-read the chapter on James Baldwin in Christopher Bram's wonderful book, Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America (Twelve/Hachette Book Group), published in 2012. The chapter is an excellent summation of Baldwin's life and literary career.

What prompted me to re-read the chapter was the idea that came to me that Baldwin's life, especially his early life, would make a riveting biopic. Drawing on previous biographies and his essays, the film would trace his evolution as a writer from his impoverished childhood in Harlem to his first few years in Paris where he, as an American expatriate, struggled to survive while completing his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

I think this would be the sort of cinematic project that would interest directors like Barry Jenkins, Ryan Coogler, and Ava DuVernay.

Concerning who would portray Baldwin, a good choice would have been the late Chadwick Boseman, who somewhat resembled Baldwin. Unfortunately, since Boseman is no longer available, Don Cheadle, who did a brilliant job of portraying Miles Davis in Miles Ahead (2015), would be another possible choice.

Canadian Racism

Malcolm X once said that anything below the Canadian  border was the South, referring to the existence of white racism throughout the United States. That led other blacks to label the so-called "liberal" North as "Up South."

The "Up South" label could just as easily apply to Canada, a destination many fugitive slaves  headed for to gain freedom.

In Norman Jewison: A Director's Life by Ira Wells (Sutherland House Books, 2021), I learned that the Canadian-born film director (born in 1926),whose many films include In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Hurricane, grew up in a Toronto neighborhood that was a five-minute walk from a Lake Ontario beach. At the beach, there was a sign Jewison would see that said, "NO JEWS, N******[NIGGERS], OR DOGS." The sign, writes Wells, a Canadian academic and journalist, was there to ensure that "the sight of a Black person or Jew" would not hinder the enjoyment of the beach by families seeking relief on a hot summer day. 

So despite being seen as a refuge for runaway slaves and a land that promotes racial tolerance and multiculturalism, Canada had its own struggles with racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.

Note: Despite his surname, Norman Jewison is not Jewish. He is a white Protestant of British ancestry.

On Being A Biographer

Nancy Milford (1938-2022), the biographer of Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's widow and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, was quoted in a Washington Post obituary (April 1, 2022) as telling the Chicago Tribune in 2001 that being "a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse." 

Composer Billy Strayhorn Was Never In The Closet

A biopic about composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's friend and musical collaborator, is long overdue.

In the 1990s, director Irwin Winkler was set to turn David Hajdu's biography of Strayhorn, Lush Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), into a movie. It never happened. I remember Winkler being quoted in a newspaper interview as saying that Strayhorn was not open about his homosexuality. Clearly Winkler hadn't read the book. I, who read a significant portion of the book, learned early on that Strayhorn was very much open about his sexuality.

"...Strayhorn," writes Hajdu (pronounced Hay-doo) on page 79, "made himself a triple minority: he was black, he was gay, and he was a minority among gay people in that he was open about his homosexuality in an era when social bias forced many men and women to keep their sexual identities secret."

Maybe it was a good thing that the movie was never made. Who knows what other inaccuracies would have crept into the script.

In the right hands a Strayhorn biopic could become a powerful and memorable cinematic experience. Someone like director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk) might be that someone who could accurately bring Strayhorn's life and musical achievements to the big screen.

The big question then becomes this--who would be a good candidate to play Billy Strayhorn?

Hubert Delany, Science Fiction Writer Samuel Delany's Uncle, Needs A Biography Written About Him

Stephen L. Carter's fascinating biography of his grandmother Eunice Hunton Carter (1899-1970), Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster (Henry Holt, 2018), mentions another fascinating figure, Hubert Delany.

I'm hoping someone will write a book or make a documentary film about Delany (1901-1990) who, writes Carter, "was the Negro lawyer who was the GOP candidate in the November 1929 special election for Harlem's seat in the House of Representatives." He lost that election due to the unscrupulous, racist antics of Tammany Hall Democrats.

A graduate of the New York University Law School, Delany went on to become an assistant U.S. Attorney specializing in white-collar crime.

His sisters were Sadie and Bessie Delany, who wrote the famous memoir, Having Our Say. His nephew is the science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany.

Until a book about Hubert Delany is written, I'll have to be content with whatever information can be had about him in his sisters's memoir.

Note: The mobster referred to in the subtitle of Carter's book is Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

I sent Samuel Delany a message on Facebook stating that his uncle deserved a full-length biography. He agreed with me. I asked him if he had any information about his uncle not mentioned in the Carter book. Here is what he wrote on June 20, 2021:

"Characters based on both my dad and Uncle Hubert are the focus of much of the first short novel in 'Atlantis:Three Tales.' Certainly he was the biggest influence-for-good on my father. Probably on me, too. At least one scholar was pretty convinced he was gay.

"From another older cousin, dead a few years ago, I had confirmation of a long-term-close friendship (and possibly affair) with a famous black singer who was also his client. There's a bit of not-talked-about stuff in my report of his funeral in 'Letters from Amherst.' But I'd be curious to know more myself...

"He was the paternal uncle closest to me and my father, followed by Uncle Hap."

Rupert Murdoch's New York Compost

People today know the New York Post as a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul.

But in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s, the Post, under the ownership of Dorothy Schiff, was very liberal and published liberal names such as Pete Hamill, Harriet Van Horne, Max Lerner, Murray Kempton, and James A. Wechsler, the editorial page editor. (Ms. Schiff sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch sometime in the mid-1970s.)

According to Winchell (Doubleday), Bob Thomas's 1971 biography of Walter Winchell, the once powerful and controversial columnist and broadcaster (as well as the narrator for the TV crime drama The Untouchables), referred to the Post as "the New York Compost."

Today that label might be considered by the paper's left-wing detractors as a more suitable description of its current content and political views.

Mary Trump's Book About Her Uncle, POTUS Donald Trump

About two weeks ago, Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece and the author of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020), appeared on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross in an hour-long interview.

Whereas Michael Wolff in his book on Trump, Fire and Fury, briefly mentioned that Trump's older brother Freddy (and Mary's father) drank himself to death, Mary Trump revealed why that happened. He had not met the high expectations of his real estate mogul father and became an outcast and a family embarrassment. "His father's approval," wrote Mary Trump, "...mattered more than anything."

Mary Trump is a psychologist with a Ph.D so her insights into her uncle's psyche should help readers--and voters--understand why he behaves as he does.

I just started reading the book which I am thoroughly enjoying. Too Much and Never Enough is sure to remain on the bestseller list for a very long time. (Unfortunately, the book contains no family photos.)

In the radio interview, Mary Trump revealed she is a lesbian. That's probably near the end of the book. If it is, I hope she will provide readers with more details about her experience coming out.

Note: This blog post has been slightly altered and originally appeared on my Facebook page on July 26, 2020.

A Glaring Historical Error

There's a glaring historical error that I found in James McGrath Morris's otherwise interesting biography of journalist Ethel Payne, Eyes on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2015).

Morris, on the Acknowledgments page, praised Nancy Inglis for her "diligent copyediting and fact checking." Unfortunately, she neglected to fact check when the Watts riots in Los Angeles happened. The riots occurred in August 1965, not August 1964.

At the time, I was living in the nearby suburb of Compton, which experienced some of the looting and burning.

Rose Marie McCoy, An Unheralded African American Songwriter

Rose Marie McCoy, an African American songwriter, who wrote 850 songs, is a hidden figure in the music business and deserves to have her life story told in a motion picture. She wrote these songs in a career that spanned seven decades. Her songs were recorded by such musical luminaries as Elvis Presley, Nat "King" Cole, and Sarah Vaughan, to name a few.

I recently learned about her after hearing Leonard Lopate interview Arlene Corsano on his daily show on New York's WBAI. Ms. Corsano  is the author of Thought We Were Writing the Blues, But They Called It Rock 'n' Roll: The Life & Music of Rose Marie McCoy.
                                                               
McCoy died on January 20, 2015 at the age of 92 .
                      
Her music can be heard on YouTube as well as in a short video clip of her playing the guitar and singing.

For more information, go to www.rosemariemccoymusic.com.

                                                   
                        

One Hundred Women Hidden From History

I recently started reading She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolution, & Massively Crushed It by Hannah Jewell, a Washington, D.C.-based writer (Sourcebooks,2018).*

The book is intriguing although the author's use of profanities, anachronistic comments, and levity got under my skin a bit. I'm old-fashioned when it comes to books of biography and history. I prefer a serious, scholarly approach. I suppose in order to grab and hold the attention of millennials (the intended audience, I suspect), you have to be as entertaining and irreverent as possible.

The thing that drew me to the book, other than the provocative and attention-getting title, was the subject matter. This was the opportunity to learn the names and the life stories of women heretofore unknown. (I should point out that a few of these women are not as unknown as the book's subtitle would have us believe, such as actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.)

The book spans continents, time periods, races, and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the black female mathematicians featured in the hit movie Hidden Figures are missing from the table of contents. Despite that oversight She Caused a Riot is a useful introduction to the accomplishments and concerns of one hundred women hidden from history. They are potential role models for young women and maybe young men as well.


*The book was published in 2017, in the United Kingdom, with the title 100 Nasty Women of History. Obviously a reference to Donald Trump's characterization of Hillary Clinton at one of the 2016 presidential debates.

James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" Had An All-White Cast

In Rosalind Rosenberg's otherwise fascinating biography of black writer, lawyer, and women's rights activist Pauli Murray*, Jane Crow (Oxford University Press, 2017), there is one bit of information I disagree with. Ms. Rosenberg describes James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room as "an explicitly bi-sexual, bi-racial novel." The bisexual aspect is correct since David, the novel's protagonist, had a romantic relationship with a female and Giovanni,who was, if I recall correctly, a bartender in Paris. But the book is not biracial because all the characters in it are white, the only such book that Baldwin wrote.

Christopher Bram, in his equally fascinating book, Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed  America (Twelve, 2012), writes that "Baldwin had several reasons for writing a novel with all-white characters. He wanted to escape the label of 'Negro novelist,' which was not only artistically limiting, it was commercially restrictive."  "Changing the race," continues Bram, "also enabled Baldwin to put distance between himself and his story: he wasn't writing about his life, he was writing about other lives. It gave his imagination more breathing room. In addition, there must have been bitter pleasure in putting himself inside a privileged white skin."

*Pauli Murray (1910-1985) believed herself to be a man trapped inside a female body, a belief others thought was a sign of some form of mental illness.

"Jane Crow" was the term Murray coined for gender discrimination. She saw it as a partner to "Jim Crow," the label for race discrimination. Black women were the victims of both forms of discrimination.





Note: Once again, Happy New Year, everyone! Let's hope 2018 will be a healthy, happy, productive, and prosperous year for all of us!

The Demon In Men's Minds

"We might say that we have far more to be afraid of today than the people of Salem [,Massachusetts, in the 1600s] ever dreamed of, but that would not really be true. We have exactly the same thing to be afraid of--the demon in men's minds which prompts hatred and anger and fear, an irrational demon which shows a different face to every generation, but never gives up in his fight to win over the world."--Shirley Jackson, American author (1916-1965), from Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016).

Note: I love this quotation. It is so applicable to current events.

Humphrey Bogart's F.Y. Fund

In 1934, Humphrey Bogart starred on Broadway as a gangster in Robert Sherwood's The Petrified Forest. The play (later to become a movie also starring Bogart) was so successful, it allowed Bogart to put aside some money in what he called the F.Y. fund. (The F.Y. no doubt stood for Fuck You.) The F.Y. fund, writes Stefan Kanfer in Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart (Vintage Books/Random House, 2011), was "money that would give him the freedom to spurn trivial roles from now on."

We should all follow Bogart's example and establish a F.Y. fund. It would be the perfect safety net.

Queen Latifah As Bessie Smith In A Made-For-TV Biopic

The multi-talented Queen Latifah stars as blues singer Bessie Smith in the biopic Bessie. It premieres tonight  on HBO. (Mo'Nique co-stars as Smith's fellow blues singer Ma Rainey.) I learned of the film several weeks ago when I saw an ad for it on the side of a city bus.

Bessie Smith, who was called "The Empress of the Blues," died in a car accident in 1937 at the age of  43.

Unfortunately I won't be able to watch the film because I don't subscribe to cable TV. But I look forward to seeing it when it comes out on DVD.

A Hollywood Romance Story

On the table in front of the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College on Seventh Avenue were several books, all offered for free. A sign in the window cautioned passersby to limit themselves to one book.
I chose Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden by Edward Z. Epstein, a celebrity biographer. To my surprise it was an "Advance Uncorrected Proof" for a book published last month (April). I seldom come upon free books published that recently.

Hepburn and Holden's short-lived romance, which began when they co-starred in Billy Wilder's Sabrina, should be fascinating reading.