The stories in [Going to Meet the Man] add nothing to Mr. Baldwin's stature, nor do they diminish it by much. Five have appeared in print before; the other three are new and, for the most part, disappointing. Taken as a whole, the book traces the author's progress from "The Rockpile" and "The Outing," halting first steps toward the first novel, to his most recent work, which suffers from its journalistic conception. With the possible exception of the first two, all the stories tend to tear themselves apart. At best, they are composed in a prose oddly balanced between sheer banality and rhetoric as thick as jam. (p. 137)

While his writing labors under a burden of irrelevant subtlety, his perceptions lack bite. Too often in these stories Mr. Baldwin is held spellbound by his sensitivity; it is like a wall between him and his characters. If he fails to make the verbal incisions necessary to expose his subjects, it is often because he takes for granted precisely those things which should be in question, e.g., the dimensions of his characters, the implications of their actions. (pp. 137-38)

Most of the stories are too long and at the same time too schematic. Given the author's procedure, this effect seems inescapable: Mr. Baldwin frequently restricts himself to a preconceived scenario which he tediously fills out, discovering nothing unexpected in the process. The characters, much of the time, are only there to prove a point….

The stories which ring truest are "Come Out The Wilderness" and "Sonny's Blues."… Both stories deal with people forced to look at what they do not want to see; in both the dialogue is clean and accurate, conveying a wide range of instinctive and studied feelings. Here the author permits himself that freedom of response too often lacking in his work; in searching out his characters, he shares in their equivocations of identity, ambivalence, and fear, convincing the reader at last that he is saved, when he is saved, from his own rhetoric by an unkillable awareness of the cost of vision. (p. 138)