To consider the latest novel by James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk …, is to re-evaluate more than a decade of Baldwin-watching. My response to his work has shifted from admiration of the arrogance of the early essays to rejection of the Old Testament predictability of the later fiction. Admittedly, the rejection of Baldwin's logic as a spokesman reflected a growing disenchantment with specific strategies of the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin's early work neatly fit that time, in terms of the assault on the so-called liberal conscience. Yet the history of the Sixties will be charted as a maze through which all of us were propelled, its horrors and beauties blurring thought, leaving us to sit in this apparent fall-out period to finger scars and wonder at the dazzle behind the eyes. (p. 51)

Because of expectations, because of change, If Beale Street Could Talk demands the look behind. In this novel we have a synthesis of so many of Baldwin's literary concerns. Familiar is the brooding sensitive cat reared in Harlem, his struggle toward some sense of clarity and achievement in his art and life and the forces which compel him toward some form of destruction…. Familiar, too, is the attack on the use of religion to shut out the horror of the streets, that horror a reflection of the horror and mystery within one's experience. The presence of the fathers, driven before the sons to destruction, has also been typical. But there are some new riffs played out in this novel, riffs which are significant when measured against Baldwin's earlier novels. (p. 52)

In this novel of love and pain and truth, the sense of family and of hope survives the ordeals. (p. 88)

Usually the catalysts of family violence in Baldwin's fiction, the fathers have been portrayed as terrifying and broken men. Joseph Rivers is refreshing in this regard, encouraging and inspiring Tish when despair is so seductive. Joseph is also encouraging to Fonny's father, Frank, when all seems an uphill climb to the bottom….

Oddly, Frank commits suicide when Fonny's bail is just about raised. This is one of the least convincing acts of the entire novel…. The despair unto death runs against the current of the story, which is optimistic. The suicide seems a forced and tired change on the character. (p. 89)

In addition to the generally balanced characterizations of the parents, the voice and perspective emerge as the primary achievements of the novel. We view events through the eyes of Tish (or, in the case of her mother's visit to Puerto Rico, through Tish's reflection on an event's possibility). In this area perhaps Baldwin has taken his biggest risk in the construction of this story, a risk that is generally rewarding for this reader. If the story had been told with Fonny's voice, we might have witnessed the traditional demise of the apprentice-artist in the hostile labyrinth of the city…. Might that voice have grown shrill and predictable at this telling? It is Tish's sensibility which lifts the accounts of the dilemmas of the characters. Though it cracks on occasion, it is Tish's voice still ringing when we close the book. (pp. 89-90)

It seems a freer novel, more tender and often tougher. The point here is that within the framework of the blues which Baldwin so often alludes to, this book works as his most convincing novel. (p. 91)