NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin
"About my interests: I don’t think I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink … and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything … I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one alright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer."
Baldwin's eloquence isn't hollow: his searing search for self and country is as relevant today than it was in the mid-20th century. The book contains ten pieces, previously printed in various publications in the years ranging 1949-1965. There are three sections: his thoughts on literature, Harlem and his roots, and his experience in Europe. I haven't read Native Son but his nuanced ideas on the problems of writing as a black American on the black experience are fascinating to read. Taking notes too, as the idea of writing as a Muslim woman brings up all the stereotypes, plus the pitfalls of avoiding abstractions or sentimentality. I was particularly touched by his descriptions of his father, "In my mind's eye I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him."
Most powerful was the piece "Stranger in the Village", and the very frank discussion of the roots of American racism, which "came out of Europe". "The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilisation..." Baldwin describes the lunacy created upon this foundation, and that white Americans were forced to uphold through various terrible methods or it would "jeopardize their status as white men." "The time has come to realise that the inter-racial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too." But Baldwin, always hopeful: "It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again."
5 stars.
"About my interests: I don’t think I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink … and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything … I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one alright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer."
Baldwin's eloquence isn't hollow: his searing search for self and country is as relevant today than it was in the mid-20th century. The book contains ten pieces, previously printed in various publications in the years ranging 1949-1965. There are three sections: his thoughts on literature, Harlem and his roots, and his experience in Europe. I haven't read Native Son but his nuanced ideas on the problems of writing as a black American on the black experience are fascinating to read. Taking notes too, as the idea of writing as a Muslim woman brings up all the stereotypes, plus the pitfalls of avoiding abstractions or sentimentality. I was particularly touched by his descriptions of his father, "In my mind's eye I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world which had despised him."
Most powerful was the piece "Stranger in the Village", and the very frank discussion of the roots of American racism, which "came out of Europe". "The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilisation..." Baldwin describes the lunacy created upon this foundation, and that white Americans were forced to uphold through various terrible methods or it would "jeopardize their status as white men." "The time has come to realise that the inter-racial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too." But Baldwin, always hopeful: "It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again."
5 stars.
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