James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Allen Warren: James Baldwin (1969)

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time!

- "Mary Don't You Weep" (traditional)

There's an interesting passage in Charlton Heston's autobiography where he discusses working with James Baldwin on the wording of a statement on civil rights to be read out before Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington in August, 1963.

Some of us in the film community decided to organize a group from the arts ... Burt Lancaster, Jim Garner, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and several others. Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte signed on, but we had no other prominent black performers. You can figure out for yourself who should have been there and wasn't ...

Our job was to get as much ink and TV time as possible. Each of the better known actors had a different media statement. ... They asked me if it was OK for James Baldwin to write my statement; he was a famous black writer, he'd flown over from Paris to join us, and he wanted to make a contribution.

I wasn't crazy about the idea, as a matter of fact. Anything that goes out with my name on it, I write. I always have. Besides, Jimmy Baldwin was on the left fringe of the civil rights movement. The Fire Next Time was the title of his best-known book. I don't know how Dr. King felt about him being there. But the point is, he was there. When an awful lot of good parlor liberals didn't show in case things turned nasty, Jimmy did.

What's more, as a good writer, the speech he wrote for me wasn't what he would've written, but instead very close to what I wanted to say. My only encounter with Jimmy Baldwin was that one meeting, which lasted those few hours. We'd both travelled some little distance to come together, though, as so many hundreds of thousands of people did that day. He died years later in self-imposed exile in Paris. God rest him.

- Charlton Heston, In the Arena: The Autobiography (1995): 315-16.

I guess, on the fact of it, it's hard to imagine an odder pairing. On the right we have the five-term president of the NRA and unrepentant apologist for second amendment rights, whose gun - as he often specified - could only be taken from "his cold, dead hand"; on the left, the "fringe" civil rights activist (with a Jamesian prose style) pictured above, James Baldwin.

Charlton Heston: In the Arena (1995)

Truth be told, it's probably too odd a juxtaposition to make much sense. One doubts that Heston had actually read The Fire Next Time, as he clearly interprets its actually rather equivocal title as some kind of incitement along the lines of "Burn, Baby, Burn". He seems to have been left with kindly feelings for Baldwin, though, despite their obvious differences. Heston's shift to the extreme right was, in any case, mostly in the future at this stage.

Jay Presson Allen / James William Ijames: Capote / Baldwin (2010)

A more fruitful comparison could perhaps be made with Truman Capote, whom I wrote about in a previous post.

Toni Morrison, ed.: James Baldwin (1998)

Capote and Baldwin were born in the same year, 1924. They were both gay. One was a white Southerner, the other a black Northerner. Both were probably more celebrated for their non-fictional prose than for their fiction: Capote for In Cold Blood (1965), Baldwin for The Fire Next Time (1963) and other hard-hitting essays about race in America. Both died in their sixties, comparatively young: Capote in 1984, Baldwin in 1987.

James Baldwin Postage Stamp (2004)

Michael Ondaatje once claimed: “If Van Gogh was our nineteenth century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our twentieth century one.” Such statements can be more intimidating than they are enlightening. They seem to put Baldwin beyond any purely literary judgement, as if his status as a prophet or "artist-saint" were more important than his innate talent and gift for language.

I'm sure that Ondaatje had no such intention, but just as the otherworldly mantle which has descended upon Holocaust poet Paul Celan makes it increasingly difficult to judge him purely as a poet, so Baldwin has somehow escaped the realm of criticism - which would be fine if it didn't also entail an escape from being considered readable.

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time (1963)

Like Chuck Heston, I too must confess to having been put off when I was younger by the title and packaging of Baldwin's most famous book-length essay, The Fire Next Time. Now it looks to me like a striking piece of sixties book-design, with a charming cover photograph and a bold choice of font. When I looked at it as a teenager, though, it looked dauntingly political. I had no idea, back then, of the wonderful interweaving of the personal and the philosophical which distinguishes almost all of Baldwin's non-fictional writings.

Alex Haley: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

It wasn't, in fact, until some years later, when an angry (and - let's face it - somewhat stoned) friend informed me that anyone who hadn't read The Autobiography of Malcolm X could not consider themselves educated that I tried to redress this bias. And it is a wonderfully gripping read. Whether this can be attributed primarily to Alex Haley or to Malcolm himself is an interesting question, but the answer is largely immaterial. The vividness and narrative drive of the book itself never flags.

James Baldwin: One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1972)

Given the prejudices of the time, it's perhaps no surprise that the 'Malcolm X' feature film script James Baldwin was commissioned to write in the late 1960s never actually reached the screen. It would not be till 1992, when Spike Lee undertook the task, that a Malcolm X bio-pic would actually seem possible.

Baldwin's script is a fine piece of writing in itself, but by the time I finally got round to reading it I'd already begun to get acquainted with Toni Morrison's edition of his Collected Essays, published in the canonical Library of America series in the late 1990s. The Auckland public library had a copy, which I took out repeatedly before ordering one of my own so I could read it from cover to cover, chronologically, rather than coninuing to dip into it piecemeal.

Library of America: James Baldwin Edition (1998 & 2015)

There's never been much doubt cast on the merits of his work as an essayist (except possibly by the victims of some of his earlier critical pieces). The Devil Finds Work, his intensely autobiographical meditation on Hollywood movies, is perhaps the most accessible and revealing of the separate book-length essays, but really you could start with any one of them. Even Truman Capote was forced to acknowledge the power and drive of his non-fiction.

Bennett Miller, dir.: Capote (2005)

When it comes to his fiction, however, the response is more mixed. Here's a quote from the movie Capote, inspired by Gerald Clarke's 1988 biography:

Truman Capote:
I had lunch with Jimmy Baldwin the other day.

Party date:
How is he?

Truman Capote:
He's lovely, he's a lovely man. And he told me the plot of his new book. And he said, "I just wanted to make sure it's not one of those problem novels," you know. And I said, "Jimmy. Your book is about a Negro homosexual who's in love with a Jew. Wouldn't you call that a problem?"

Barry Jenkins, dir.: If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

On the other hand, the 2018 movie If Beale Street Could Talk, based on his penultimate novel, got rave reviews. One critic described it as "a terrific film, as sinewy as it is sensuous, interweaving stark social-realist themes of prejudice, oppression and imprisonment with a poetic evocation of love, loss and, ultimately, transcendence."

“Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street,” states the opening quotation from Baldwin, citing “the impossibility and the possibility, the absolute necessity, to give expression to this legacy”.

The point is, perhaps, that there will always be another Baldwin to discover alongside the activist. The enduring value of his work will depend on the subtlety and emotional truth of his fiction just as much as it does on the continuing cogency of his political message.

There's no denying his status as one of the finest prose stylists in American literature. The point is that this doubling of the self means that his work remains alive and relevant in a way that cannot honestly be claimed for Capote, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal or indeed most of his more media-friendly contemporaries.

Raoul Peck, dir.: I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

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Ulf Andersen: James Baldwin (2016)

James Arthur Baldwin
(1924-1987)

1. Fiction:
   
   
2. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
3. Giovanni's Room (1956)
4. Another Country (1962)
5. Going to Meet the Man (1965)
6. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968)
7. If Beale Street Could Talk (1974)
8. Just Above My Head (1979)
9. Early Novels & Stories. Ed. Toni Morrison (1998)
   • Early Novels & Stories. Ed. Toni Morrison. The Library of America, 97. [‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’, 1953; ‘Giovanni's Room’, 1956; ‘Another Country’, 1962; ‘Going to Meet the Man’, 1965]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1998.
10. Later Novels. Ed. Darryl Pinckney (2015)
    • Later Novels. Ed. Darrell Pinckney. The Library of America, 98. [‘Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone’, 1968; ‘If Beale Street Could Talk', 1974; ‘Just Above My Head’, 1979]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2015.

Non-fiction:


11. Notes of a Native Son (1955)
12. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
13. The Fire Next Time (1963)
14. No Name in the Street (1972)
15. The Devil Finds Work (1976)
16. The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985)
17. The Price of the Ticket (1985)
18. Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison (1998)
    • Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. The Library of America, 98. [‘Notes of a Native Son’, 1955; ‘Nobody Knows My Name,’ 1961; ‘The Fire Next Time’, 1963; ‘No Name in the Street’, 1972; ‘The Devil Finds Work’, 1976]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1998.
19. The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (2010)
20. Baldwin for Our Times: Writings from James Baldwin for an Age of Sorrow and Struggle. Ed. Rich Blint (2016)

Plays / Screenplays / Audio:


21. The Amen Corner (1954)
22. Blues for Mister Charlie (1964)
23. [with Alex Haley] One Day, When I Was Lost (1972)
    • One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1972. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
24. A Lover's Question. Les Disques Du Crépuscule, TWI 928–2 (1990)

Poetry:


25. Jimmy's Blues (1983)
26. Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems (2014)

For Children:


27. Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood. Illustrations by Yoran Cazac (1976)

Collaborations:


28. Nothing Personal. Photographs by Richard Avedon (1964)
29. [with Margaret Mead] A Rap on Race (1971)
30. [with Nabile Farès] A Passenger from the West (1971)
31. [with Nikki Giovanni] A Dialogue (1973)
32. [with Sol Stein] Native Sons (2004)

Secondary:


33. David Adams Leeming. James Baldwin: A Biography (1994)
34. James Campbell. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (2021)

James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

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Capote in Kansas

Ande Parks & Chris Samnee: Capote in Kansas: A Drawn Novel (2005)

Ande Parks. Capote in Kansas: A Drawn Novel. Illustrated by Chris Samnee. Portland, OR: Oni Press, Inc., 2005.

Just as 2004 was (according to David Lodge, at any rate) the year of Henry James, so 2005 was, indisputably, the year of Truman Capote.

Two new feature films were released, both of them based on his sojourn in Kansas researching his non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, as well as the graphic novel above, which takes a distinctly different line on the whole schemozzle.

Not only that, Capote's long-lost early novel Summer Crossing was first published in 2005 (his so-called Complete Stories had appeared the year before: 'complete' until another fourteen early stories were located in the the archives of the New York Public Library, that is; along with a comprehensive selection of letters edited by his biographer Gerald Clarke). It was, to adapt a well-known phrase, a complete and total Capote-a-rama.

Bennett Miller, dir.: Capote (2005)

Capote, dir. Bennett Miller, writ. Dan Futterman (based on the biography by Gerald Clarke) - with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener - (USA, 2005)

As so often in these cases, the winner takes it all. Capote was first off the blocks, and earned most of the plaudits going before the rival movie was ready to screen. They are, admittedly, very different films - Capote austere, haunting, nuanced; Infamous more garish, gregarious, extroverted. But even the pickiest critics found it difficult to choose between Philip Seymour Hoffman's and Toby Jones's interpretations of the leading role.

Douglas McGrath, dir.: Infamous (2006)

Infamous, dir. & writ. Douglas McGrath (based on the book by George Plimpton) - with Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sandra Bullock - (USA, 2006)

Toby Jones does, admittedly, look the part. He's very small, and manages almost to incarnate the waspish Capote - in outward appearance, at least. Philip Seymour Hoffman is, by contrast, large and hulking and bears little or no physical resemblance to Capote at all. And yet he, too, succeeded in embodying him for the purposes of the drama in a most mysterious way.

Catherine Keener probably made a slightly better Harper Lee than Sandra Bullock did, but that's largely because we're so used to seeing the latter in so many diverse comic and dramatic roles. There's not a lot in it otherwise. Daniel Craig added some necessary energy to the part of the artistic but murderous Perry Smith, but one could argue that what Infamous gained there was lost by its less-than-involving coverage of Capote's jet-setting lifestyle.

Again, plotwise, it's hard to award a clear victory to either film. Actually, it's nice to have both of them: for everyone except studio accountants, that is.

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Stephen Frears, dir.: Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Dangerous Liaisons, dir. Stephen Frears, writ. Christopher Hampton (based on the 1782 novel by Choderlos de Laclos) - with John Malkovitch, Glenn Close, Keanu Reeves, Michelle Pfeiffer - (USA, 1988)

The last time I can remember so clear-cut a juxtaposition as this was in the late 1980s, when the immense, Oscar-winning success of Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons succeeding in pipping at the post the painstaking, no-expense-spared shoot of Valmont, Miloš Forman's carefully meditated attempt at a successor to his Amadeus (1984).

Which was the better film in that case? Without a doubt, Dangerous Liaisons. It benefited from a razor-sharp script, based on his own stage-play, by one of my favourite writers, the hugely talented Christopher Hampton. What's more, with the possible exception of Keanu Reeves, still to come into his own as the shaggy action-hero of the John Wick series, all the actors were superb: Uma Thurman, Michelle Pfeiffer, John Malkovitch, not to mention that celebrated bunny-boiler Glenn Close.

Valmont, by contrast, which probably most of you have never heard of, let alone seen, though it does include a truly wonderful performance by Annette Bening, is crippled by a soggy, over-long script - Meg Tilly and Colin Firth, too, fail to shine. It's not that Jean-Claude Carrière - scenarist for Peter Brooks' Mahabharata (1989), amongst innumerable other film and dramatic projects - is a bad writer: on the contrary, in fact. It's just that he isn't quite wicked enough to succeed in conveying the tone of the original novel. Unless, in this case, it was the director who held him back. As one critic put it:

It's a naughty costume dramedy in which the erotic conquests of bored libertines are transformed into children's kissing games.

- Rita Kempley, The Washington Post (12/1/90)

Ouch! I suppose that the lesson to be learned here is that it's properly focussed dramatic writing that carries a film: not the sumptous nature of the production. In Amadeus Forman had an award-winning play by Peter Shaffer to guide his way. Christopher Hampton played the same role for Stephen Frears. Valmont is all over the place from start to finish - as the strangely unbalanced poster below bears witness:

Miloš Forman, dir.: Valmont (1989)

Valmont, dir. Miloš Forman, writ. Jean-Claude Carrière & Miloš Forman (based on the 1782 novel by Choderlos de Laclos) - with Colin Firth, Annette Bening, Meg Tilly - (USA, 1989)

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Richard Brooks, dir.: In Cold Blood (1967)

In Cold Blood, dir. & writ. Richard Brooks (based on the book by Truman Capote) - with Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe - (USA, 1967)

There is, of course, another film of the events surrounding In Cold Blood. Richard Brooks' 1967 film noir is an austere police procedural, which pays no attention to the bizarre saga of the book's genesis. It's cold, brutal, and yet - still - very, very watchable: in some ways the best film of the three, as witnessed by the four Oscar nominations it received at the time.

Robert Weine, dir.: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The 'drawn novel' Capote in Kansas seems more German Expressionist in inspiration. It looks, at times, like a set of outtakes from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, complete with crooked lines, strange perspectives, and constant doubling up of the action.

Parks & Samnee: Capote in Kansas (I)

Here, for example, we see Capote reenacting the murderer's walk up the stairs to kill the remaining members of the Clutter family.

Parks & Samnee: Capote in Kansas (II)

Much, too, is made of the relationship between Truman and his childhood friend Harper Lee, sooon to be the world-famous author of To Kill a Mockingbird. There are lots of ghosts there to rattle their respective cages.

Parks & Samnee: Capote in Kansas (III)

And finally, of course, there's the long drawn-out, Gothic endgame of the imprisonment of the two murderers - and Capote's consequent inability to put a full-stop to his book.

Parks & Samnee: Capote in Kansas (IV)

Ande Parks, understandably, pairs Capote as an unloved child with Capote as a brittle, loveless adult. More controversially, in his version of the story the rather difficult relationship between Capote and his old friend (now rival for literary fame) Harper ('Nell') Lee is doubled with his conversations with the ghost of Nancy Clutter, the muse who enables his whole project.

Interestingly enough, there appears to be another book called Capote in Kansas, published two years after Ande Parks' graphic novel by a certain Kim Powers, and described thus by a disgruntled reviewer:

Capote in Kansas’s thin plot centers on two literary myths, neither of particularly earth-shaking importance to anyone: first, that Capote ghostwrote one-hit-wonder Lee’s iconic novel and second, that Capote became so obsessed with the Kansas murders and its two psychopathic perpetrators that he was unable to write anything of significance after In Cold Blood.

- Pop Matters (16/9/2007)

Kim Powers: Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story (2007)

Is the somewhat tepid response to Powers' ghost story a sign that it might be time, at last, to put the whole matter to bed? It's increasingly obvious that Truman Capote is not simply going to shrivel up and go away, however much his numerous detractors, then and now, may have wished him to do. And anyone who, like me, has recently read through the 700-odd tightly packed pages of the Capote Reader can testify to the immense variety and durability of the author's gifts.

Whether you approve of him as a person or not - and it's hard, at times, to do so - his sheer charisma and charm, particularly apparent in his collected letters, remains undeniable. People are going to keep on reading him for some time to come, I suspect - and not just In Cold Blood, either.

"We're going to hear from that boy: and I don't mean a postcard," as John Turturro puts it so succinctly in Barton Fink. Time to open the doors and let some light in.

Joel & Ethan Coen, dir. & writ.: Barton Fink (1991)

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Getty Images: Truman & Marilyn

Truman Capote
(1924-1984)

Fiction:


1. Other Voices, Other Rooms. 1948. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
2. The Grass Harp. 1951. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 1958. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962.
4. Music for Chameleons: New Writing. 1980. Penguin Classics. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1981.
5. Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel. 1986. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
6. The Complete Stories. Introduction by Reynolds Price. 2004. Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.
7. Summer Crossing. Afterword by Alan U. Schwartz. 2005. Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006.
8. The Early Stories. Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2015

Miscellaneous Prose:


9. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences. 1965. Penguin 2682. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
10. The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places. 1973. A Plume Book. New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1977.
11. A Capote Reader. 1987. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., [1991].

Letters:


12. Clarke, Gerald, ed. Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote. 2004. Vintage International. New York: Random House, Inc., 2005.

Secondary:


13. Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. 1988. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2010.
14. Plimpton, George. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. 1998. Picador. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1999.
15. Parks, Ande. Capote in Kansas: A Drawn Novel. Illustrated by Chris Samnee. Portland, OR: Oni Press, Inc., 2005.
16. Long, Robert Emmet. Truman Capote – Enfant Terrible. Continuum. New York & London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. / Ltd., 2008.

Nasrullah Mambrol: Truman Capote’s Books (2018)

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