Black America
I picked up a few of James Baldwin’s novels about a year ago, and after reading Go Tell It On The Mountain, decided now to pick up Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone, and last night, in going to bed and having a rare moment to really read, I became so mesmerized by the narration that I couldn’t put the book down even though my hands were turning to ice outside of the covers.
It was a passage where Leo the boy has just come home and has to tell his father what has just happened. He and his older brother have been stopped and harassed by two white cops and they were scared for their life. (The hairs on my neck stood up at this scene as the mother of a black son in New Orleans where the cops are fossils.)
Before you take my word for it, read Mario Puzo’s critique of this novel in the NYT where he denounces Baldwin as a novelist. And I would advise you to then pick up the novel.
This is an excerpt, not from what I read last night, but from later in the novel:
And she’s right, I thought. There is nothing more to be said. All we can do now is just hold on. That was why she held my hand. I recognized this as love — recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began for a moment to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet–one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.