On James Baldwin
Tóibín, Colm, 1955-2024
Book
"Colm Tóibín's personal account of encountering James Baldwin's work, published in Baldwin's centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, Tóibín found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar. From On James Baldwin, Baldwin was interested in the hidden and dramatic areas in his own being, and was prepared as a writer to explore difficult truths about his own private life. In his fiction, he had to battle for the right of his protagonists to choose or influence their destinies. He knew about guilt and rage and bitter privacies in a way that few of his White novelist contemporaries did. And this was not simply because he was Black and homosexual; the difference arose from the very nature of his talent, from the texture of his sensibility. "All art," he wrote, "is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up."On James Baldwin is a magnificent contemporary author's tribute to one of his most consequential literary progenitors"-- Provided by publisher.
Main title:
On James Baldwin / Colm Tóibín.
Author:
Tóibín, Colm, 1955-, author
Work:
Imprint:
Waltham, Massachusetts : Brandeis University Press, [2024]©2024
Collation:
147 pages ; 21 cm.
Series title:
Notes:
"The Mandel lectures in the humanities at Brandeis University"--Dust jacket.Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-147).
Contents:
The pitch of passionCrying holyParis, HarlemThe private lifeThe terror and the surrender.
ISBN:
9781684582471 (hardback)
Dewey class:
818.5409
LC class:
PS3552.A45
Language:
English
Subject:
Baldwin, James, 1924-1987Baldwin, James, 1924-1987 -- Criticism and interpretationAfrican American authors -- 20th century -- History and criticismAfrican American authors -- 20th century -- BiographyAuthors, American -- 20th century -- BiographyAfrican American civil rights workersLiterary criticismBiographies
BRN:
485983