Talking at the Gates (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: James Campbell
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1924-1987
- Setting: New York City; Saint-Paul de Vence and Paris, France; Loeche-les-Bains and Geneva, Switzerland; Istanbul, Turkey
- Principal Characters: James Baldwin, Emma Berdis Baldwin, David Baldwin, David Baldwin, Lucien Happersberger, Richard Wright
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: African Americans, Civil rights, Traveling or travelers, Politics, Blacks, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Race, Paris, Poverty or poor people, Vietnam or Vietnamese people, Orators or orations
- Locales: New York, NY, Paris, France, Istanbul, Turkey, Geneva, Switzerland
No American writer became more famous in the decades after World War II than James Baldwin; by the time his picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine in May of 1963, his novels and books of essays had been read and reviewed everywhere, and he had been interviewed endlessly, both about his writing and about his country’s racial problems. No writer, however, shows more clearly the dangers of such fame to his art. James Campbell’s biography captures both the power of Baldwin’s writing and the tragedy of his literary life.
Campbell is rather disingenuous in the...
[The entire page is 1897 words long]
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