James Baldwin: America and Beyond

267 Pages·2011·0.81 MB·English

by  Bill Schwarz

James Baldwin

James Baldwin
America and Beyond
Edited by
cora kaplan bill schwarz
and
The University of Michigan Press (cid:2) Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2011
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2014 2013 2012 2011 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
James Baldwin : America and beyond / edited by Cora Kaplan and Bill
Schwarz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-472-07152-4 (cloth : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-
05152-6 (pbk. : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-02761-3 (e-book)
1. Baldwin, James, 1924–1987—Criticism and interpretation.
2. African Americans in literature. I. Kaplan, Cora. II. Schwarz,
Bill, 1951–
PS3552.A45Z72358 2011
818.5409—dc22 2011014831
Acknowledgments
In June 2007, twenty years after James Baldwin’s death, we organized at
the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London,
the ‹rst major conference to be held on Baldwin in the UK. This formed
the basis for the collection that appears here, its European provenance
suggesting the “Beyond” of our title, though many transformations have
occurred in the original papers between then and now. The formal con-
ference was preceded by a daylong workshop—“Sonny’s Blues. Identity/
Writing/Politics”—open to the public, free of charge, held at the Rich
Mix arts complex in London’s East End: we thought it appropriate that
our engagement with Baldwin should occur outside, as well as inside, the
academy.
None of this could have happened without the commitment of the
School of English and Drama at Queen Mary and of our head of school,
Julia Boffey. We wish to thank as well, for their generosity and support, the
then-vice-principal of arts, laws and social sciences at Queen Mary, Philip
Ogden; the West‹eld Trust; the Ford Foundation; the British Academy;
the Arts Council of England, especially David Cross; James Dunkerley and
the Institute for the Study of the Americas; and the European Collegium
for African-American Research. Caryl Phillips and Magdalena
Zaborowska were early enthusiasts for the project and guided us in our bid
to secure funding. Departmental administrative staff, particularly Alistair
Daniel and Beverley Stewart, and many students worked tirelessly on our
behalf. Ruth Borthwick and Nicole King did much to help us think
through the dynamics of the “Sonny’s Blues” event, and we are grateful as
well to Michael Keith and the Rich Mix team.
vi Acknowledgments
We are delighted that Eileen Ahearn, representing the Baldwin estate,
was able to join us in London for the duration of the conference and to
contribute to our discussions.
Duncan Barrett provided quality help in the last-minute preparation of
the manuscript. Pauline Hubner prepared the index quickly and ef‹ciently.
Tom Dwyer, Alexa Ducsay, and Christina Milton at the University of Michi-
gan Press demonstrated a wonderful commitment to the volume from the
start. In these times when publishers of all stripes face serious dif‹culties, we
thank them. Stephen Long’s photograph of James Baldwin appears on the
cover with kind permission of the University of Massachusetts.
Colm Tóibín’s chapter, based on the plenary he gave at the London
conference, ‹rst appeared in print in the Dublin Review; it appears here
with permission.
Our deep thanks, ‹nally, to Sarah Chapman and David Glover.
cora kaplan
bill schwarz
Contents
Introduction
America and Beyond 1
cora kaplan and bill schwarz
(cid:2) part one.
What It Means to Be an American
1. Stranger at Home
James Baldwin on What It Means to Be an American 35
cheryl a. wall
2. Baldwin and “the American Confusion” 53
colm tóibín
3. “Over and Over and Over Again”
James Baldwin, Uncle Tom’s Cabin,and the Afterlife
of an American Story 69
briallen hopper
4. “Now Describing You”
James Baldwin and Cold War Liberalism 84
vaughn rasberry
5. Baldwin, Prophecy, and Politics 106
george shulman
6. Rendezvous with Life
Reading Early and Late Baldwin 126
robert reid-pharr
viii Contents
(cid:2) part two.
Stranger in the Village
7. “History’s Ass Pocket”
The Sources of Baldwinian Diaspora 141
kevin birmingham
8. Separate and Unequal in Paris
Notes of a Native Son and the Law 159
d. quentin miller
9. Exile and the Private Life
James Baldwin, George Lamming, and the First
World Congress of Negro Writers and Artists 173
kevin gaines
10. From Istanbul to St. Paul-de-Vence
Around James Baldwin’s The Welcome Table 188
magdalena j. zaborowska
11. What Is Africa to Baldwin?
Cultural Illegitimacy and the Step-fatherland 209
douglas field
12. James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe
Transgressing Of‹cial Vocabularies 229
eleanor w. traylor
Afterword 241
hortense spillers
Contributors 247
Index 251
Introduction
America and Beyond
cora kaplan and bill schwarz
James Baldwin was one of the boldest and most important writers in En-
glish of the twentieth century. His radical humanism was eclectic, undog-
matic, and interrogative, aiming always to illuminate the psychic elements
in the discourses of power. This was a way of thought that—in our view—
is of immediate relevance to the international climate of fear and uncer-
tainty in which we now live. Who else in public life has been so eloquent in
insisting upon the necessary relations between affect, ethics, and politics?1
Since his death Baldwin’s public reputation, though, has been compli-
cated (as indeed it was during his lifetime). The great historian Marc
Bloch—re›ecting on the connections between past, present, and future—
once observed that “the traces left by past events never move in a straight
line, but in a curve that can be extended into the future.”2The “past” that
concerns us in this volume is Baldwin. Whether we can imagine a human
life, or a literary oeuvre, to have been a historical “event” may be open to
question. But Bloch’s emphasis on what we might call indirectionis useful.
In no department of his life was Baldwin ever won by the concept of “a
straight line.” We can see evidence of this in his prose, for example, which
often works by stealth, in the manner of Henry James, adding subclause to
subclause and detour to detour. Even so, when Baldwin was alive many
critics were keen to describe the trajectory of his writing life as if it had
traveled along a straight line, from A to B. A consensus grew that his liter-