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).

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.

Must-Read Books, 2023, Part 2

Here are a few more books I hope to read from cover to cover this year:

1. Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson (Plexus Publishing, 2002). (The basis for the television series.)

2. Langston's Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem by Wallace D. Best (New York University Press, 2017).

3. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941-1967: I Dream a World by Arnold Rampersad (Oxford University Press, 1988).

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

5. The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle-Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care? by Ellis Cose (HarperCollins, 1993).

6. The Devil in a Blue Dress: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley (Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 2002, paperback; originally published by Norton, 1990).

7.The Woman in the Window: A Novel by A. J. Finn (Morrow, 2018).

8. The Cold Millions: A Novel by Jess Walter (HarperCollins, 2020).

Books That Are On My "Must-Read" List, 2023

These are the books I hope to read from cover to cover this year:

1. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (Morrow, 2016).

2. Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem by Kevin McGruder (Columbia University Press, 2021).

3. Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions by Francesca T. Royster (University of Texas Press, 2022).

4. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (Random House, 2022).

5. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Simon & Schuster, 2018).

6. The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women by Axel Madsen (Birch Lane Books, 1995).

7. The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by Carl T. Rowan (Little, Brown, 1996).

8. Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America by Kevin Cook (Norton, 2014).

9. Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann (HarperCollins, 2014).

10. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (Celadon Books, 2021).

11. Harlem Shuffle: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, 2021).

12. The Underground Railroad: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (Anchor Books/Penguin Random House, 2021, paperback; originally published by Doubleday, 2016).

Books On My Summer Reading List, 2022

The following are books I plan to read this summer:

1. Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by James Kirchick (Holt, 2022).

2. Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy V. Ferguson by Blair Murphy Kelley (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

3. One-Shot Harry by Gary Phillips (Soho Press, 2022). (Historical crime fiction.)

4. Last Call: True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (Celadon Books, 2021).

5. Greenland: A Novel by David Santos Donaldson (HarperCollins, 2022).

6. Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett (Princeton University Press, 2022).

7. Harlem Sunset by Nekesa Afia (Penguin, 2022). (Crime fiction set during the Harlem Renaissance.)

8. Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem by Kevin McGruder (Columbia University Press, 2021). (A biography of the early twentieth-century black real estate mogul.)

A Book On The Making of "Thelma & Louise"

I enjoy reading books that take the reader behind the scenes of classic Hollywood movies, especially movies I have seen and thoroughly enjoyed. So far I have read books on the making of Network, Rebel Without a Cause, Psycho, and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Now, according to Entertainment Weekly magazine (July 7, 2017), a book about the making of the 1991 classic Thelma & Louise has been published. The book, by Becky Aikman, is called Off the Cliff. Anyone who has seen the movie knows the significance of the title. Unfortunately, the title and the front cover photograph are spoilers.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading it.

William F. Buckley's Aboveground Bike Lane Proposal

Conservative pundit and National Review founder and editor William F. Buckley, Jr. unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York City in 1965. Kevin M. Schultz in his riveting book, Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties (W.W. Norton, 2015), writes that Buckley "proposed cutting down traffic by building a huge aerial bike lane twenty feet above the ground and twenty feet wide, above Second Avenue from First Street all the way to One Hundred Twenty-Fifth. All this biking would cut down traffic and get New Yorkers healthy."

Today there are bike lanes throughout the five boroughs as well as bike rentals made available via CitiBikes. So Buckley was about fifty years ahead of his time. The proposed aerial bike lane on Second Avenue, however, seems a bit preposterous.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin's Heir?

One writer on the Internet has called Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of the bestselling memoir Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), The New James Baldwin (TNJB). A lot of critics think he is, too. The trouble with this label is that it tends to pigeonhole a black writer, especially one who writes nonfiction. And since Baldwin wrote mainly about race and race relations in America, and was a firebrand on those issues, the TNJB label says to Coates, a gifted writer, that he should write about race and only race.

There are, however, some black writers like Stephen L. Carter, Malcolm Gladwell, and Hilton Als who have thankfully managed to sidestep this situation to a large extent. Black writers should not be discouraged from writing about race when it is necessary but no one should expect them to be One Note Johnnys.

 Global warming, nuclear proliferation, and other important issues affect black writers as well and these are subjects they should be invited to participate in discussing.

John Hope Franklin, for instance, wrote about black history but he also cultivated orchids in his spare time. How many journalists interviewed him in depth about this hobby? None, it's safe to bet.

 I wanted to interview Gordon Parks, the noted photojournalist, film director, and autobiographer. And to get away from the racial angle, I suggested to a USA Today editor an interview with Parks exploring his views on aging. The idea was shot down. I regret not pursuing it anyway.

 It's the 21st century and black people have other things on their minds besides racism, discrimination, and what white people think of them.

More Books Rescued

True book lover that I am, I rescued two more books a few days ago. I found them among several books discarded by a curbside book vendor near Union Square Park in Manhattan. The books I found were The Sisterhood:The True Story of the Women Who Changed the World by Marcia Cohen (Simon & Schuster, 1988), a group biography of feminists Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Kate Millett and Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York by Stephen Birmingham (Harper & Row, 1967). Later that evening,near Columbia University, I rescued another book that was lying on top of a city trash receptacle. It too was among other discarded books. The book I rescued was Webster's Concise World Atlas (Barnes and Noble, 1995), a very useful little book.

A Freelance Pay Rate Preference

During my years as a freelance writer, I've always preferred being paid a flat fee rather than by the word or the column inch. If I'm paid a flat fee, and the article has to undergo some cuts, I still get the same amount of money. But if I'm paid by the word or the column inch, and cuts have to be made, I'm losing money.

An African Immigrant's Story Found On The Street

I found among two boxes of discarded books on upper Broadway near 113th Street in the Columbia University area, a paperback copy of Strength in What Remains by journalist Tracy Kidder (Random House, 2009). The book, in excellent condition, was probably discarded by one of the book vendors seen at various locations up and down the street every day. Written on one of the inside pages, in pencil, is the number "5." No doubt the price that a vendor sought.

Reading the back jacket copy, I learned that this nonfiction book is about a young man from the tiny East African country of Burundi who "lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts." He ends up "in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing."

This is the kind of immigrant story that would appeal to President Barack Obama as an example of America's open-arm embrace of those seeking freedom and prosperity in a new land. I'm looking forward to settling down with this book called by one critic "a tour de force. Inspiring. Moving. Gripping."

After reading it, I will probably review it for this blog. So please stay tuned.

"John Bull's Nigger": One Black Man's View Of Other Blacks

One book I would like to read, although it will probably turn my stomach as I turn the pages, is John Bull's Nigger by Dillibe Onyeama, published in 1974. From the way the book is described in the August 1974 issue of the British publication CRC Journal, it contains the rantings of a self-hating black man.

"Mr. Onyeama's high principles and experience of living in Britain," reported the CRC Journal, "lead him to conclude that the black man is '...more of an animal--only marginally human.'"

Furthermore, Onyeama, who was born in the part of Nigeria then known as Biafra, saw black people as being "Dirty! Stupid! Inferior to the white man."

John Bull's Nigger was seen as so inflammatory and hateful that, according to the CRC Journal, it "has been referred to Sir Robert Mark, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, for investigation under Section 6 of the 1965 Race Relations Act, for allegedly inciting racial hatred."

I looked the book up on Amazon. There are four hardcover copies available for $22.57 each. I may check with the Strand, a used-books store in New York City, to see if they have any copies in stock.

If the author, forty years later, is still alive, it would be interesting to talk with him to see if his "very decided views on black people" has changed or remained the same.

A Writer's Dream

This unpublished interview fragment was found in a manila folder. It was written on August 12, 1980. It was intended for inclusion in a Q & A interview that I did with Professor Addison Gayle, Jr.:

Professor [Addison] Gayle's most recent book is the literary biography, Richard Wright: Ordeal of a Native Son (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980).

It seems as though the professor was destined to be a Wright biographer. In Wayward Child [his autobiography], he writes that of the many black writers his father encouraged him to read as a child growing up in the South "...Richard Wright was [his] favorite." He goes on to say, "...instead of imaging myself as one of Richard Wright's characters, I imagined myself as Richard Wright. I imagined people looking up to me as a famous writer, asking for my autograph, seeking me out."

Professor Gayle's early identification with Wright was probably due to similar experiences in their young Southern lives.

A Real-Life Hollywood Murder Mystery

 I received from HarperCollins a review copy of  William J. Mann's latest nonfiction book, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood. It's about the unsolved 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. I already own a copy of  A Cast of Killers, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's 1986 book about the same case. Unfortunately, I never got around to reading it. Mann's book will  be an incentive. After reading both books back to back to see how they compare and contrast, I will write a double review. Mann is an excellent writer whose previous books I have read.  So I am looking forward to reading Tinseltown.

AIDS Elegy Book Considered For Publication

Art Mugs the Reaper, an anthology of AIDS elegies, edited by Jeffrey Lilly, a San Francisco-based poet and writer, is currently being considered for publication by the University of Wisconsin Press. I have two elegies that are included in the book: one about poet Essex Hemphill, the other about poet/novelist Melvin Dixon.

A Few Words From Patricia Nell Warren

"I've learned that the idea of a line between fiction and nonfiction is--well, fiction. Trying to separate them is a little like trying to separate two twins who are conjoined at the brain. They're two sides of the same coin. Every novel has its genesis in the writer's real-life experience in some way. Likewise, there is very little nonfiction that hasn't been fictionalized to at least a small degree--if only to shape and organize the material."-- Novelist Patricia Nell Warren, from online Q & A interview, http://www.lambdaliterary.org/.