Baldwin, James (Vol. 127) - Wilfrid Sheed (essay date 1977)
Wilfrid Sheed (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: "The Twin Urges of James Baldwin," in The Good Word & Other Words, 1978, pp. 194-200.
[In the following essay, which was published in 1977 in Commonweal, Sheed complains that the tone of Baldwin's The Devil Finds Work sounds false and that the subject of movies does not support the book's religious undertone.]
When James Baldwin goes wrong (as he has taken to doing lately), it usually seems less a failure of talent than of policy. Of all our writers he is one of the most calculating. Living his life on several borderlines, he has learned to watch his step: driven at the same time by an urge to please and a mission to scold.
In his early days, the twin urges came together to make very good policy indeed. White liberals craved a spanking and they got a good one. But then too many amateurs joined in the fun, all the Raps and Stokelys and Seales, until even liberal guilt gave out. And...
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