 Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our program, a Juneteenth tribute to James Baldwin with authors James Campbell, Clifford Thompson, and host and author Jules Gomez. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events at the Mechanical Institute in San Francisco, and we're very proud to cosponsor this event with the American Library in Paris, with a special thank you to Audrey Shapui, Director, and Alice McCrum, Program Manager. We are also thrilled that today we have heard that Congress has passed a bill so that Juneteenth will be a national holiday. So this is, it's a great day to commemorate. If you're new to Mechanical Institute, we were founded in 1854, and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers on the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, an international chess club, and ongoing author and literary programs, and our Friday night cinema film series. Our library is now open, so please come down and see us, enjoy the library, come to our programs, and also continue watching us on Zoom. But first, I'd like to introduce our CEO, Kimberly Scrofano. Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of our esteemed guests, and I've had the opportunity to read some of all of your works, which I really appreciate. And in fact, this is a great honor for me. James Baldwin was a very sort of important part of my academic as well as sort of literary journey from reading Giovanni's Room for the first time in high school. So it's been, you know, it's a real honor to have everyone here. And thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Kimberly. James Baldwin's personal life and literary legacy are explored through his diverse lifelong relationships, friendships and muses, his frontline political activism and his cross cultural connections and influences while living in Paris will be talked about today. It just seems like a perfect time to be talking about him and his work and his life back to the forefront. I'd like to introduce our panelists today. We have James Campbell, who is author of This is a Beat Generation New York, San Francisco, Paris, and Exiled in Paris, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and others on the left bank, and also Invisible Country, a journey from Scotland. And also James has been the editor for many years and a columnist with the Times Literary Supplements in London. Welcome from London, James. Thank you. Also, we have Clifford Thompson, whose work has been published in Best American Essays 2018, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Street Penny Review and The Village Voice. He is recipient of the Whiting Award for Nonfiction and teaches at New York University, Sarah Lawrence College and also the Bennington Writers Seminars. He is the author of Twin of Blackness, A Memoir, Love for Sale and Other Essays, and Signifying Nothing, a Novel. And most recently, what it is, Rays Family and One Thinking Black Man's Blues. And he's joining us from Brooklyn, New York. Welcome, Clifford. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. And our host today is Joel Gomez, playwright, novelist, poet and cultural worker, is the author of eight books, including the Black Lesbian Vampire Novel, The Guild of Stories, and her trilogy of plays about African-American artists in the first half of the 20th century, include Waiting for Giovanni, which was produced in 2011 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco and then later produced in New York at the Flea Theater. The other plays include Leaving the Blues and Unpacking in P-Town, also commissioned by the New Conservatory Theatre Center. And she was also the artist and playwright and resident there. So please welcome our guests. Joel, take it away. Thank you. Thank you so much to Mechanics Institute for offering us a forum to talk about James Baldwin on this most auspicious day. And it's a very, it's always exciting to be to get to talk about James Baldwin out loud and particularly with these two writers. So I think what we'll do is start by thinking out loud about the personal elements that maybe drew you to Baldwin. I know Clifford, you talk in your book about Joan Didion and her quote, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. And I would say that is quite an apt quote for Baldwin. What about him drew you personally? Well, I have to say I came to Baldwin comparatively late when I was twenty four. I was twenty four when Baldwin died in the fall of 1987. And at that point, I, you know, I can't remember a time when I didn't know who he was, but it took me it took me a while to get to his work. I'd read very little by the time he died. But as it happened, I worked for I was an editorial assistant at what was then called Bantam Double Day Dell. And the the editor I worked for, Marshall de Brule was pretty well connected. And one of the friends he had was Gloria Jones. Gloria Jones was then working as a kind of a consultant for, you know, a freelance consultant for for Bantam Double Day Dell. She was also, of course, the widow of James Jones, the writer, one of one of Baldwin's friends in in Paris. And so when Baldwin died, I was sitting in my desk at work. And one day, my boss, Marshall, came in and said, James Baldwin died. His funeral is going to be at the Cathedral of Saint John of the Divine. You and I are going. So I said, OK, and and, you know, I put on my one suit and, you know, we got picked up by limousine and taken to this taken to the memorial service, which, you know, by all rights, I had no right to be at because I just there were so many luminaries there. But I mean, it was it was such a grand event that I'll never forget it. Embarrassingly, that did not start me on on this kind of Baldwin reading, you know, tear, but an editor who was a friend of mine at Bantam Double Day Dell one day brought to my desk. I think nine or 10 paperback copies of Baldwin's books. And I spent the following summer just consuming those things. And I've read most of them, you know, repeatedly since. And and to answer your question, Baldwin struck me as the he was like the first literary writer I had encountered who just opposed prejudice with every with everything he had, but also emphasized the, you know, the need to not be prejudiced oneself to, you know, as he put it, to keep one's heart free of bitterness. And and I just I fell in love with that message and I fell in love with his his writing style and and just the rhythm and the music of the sentences. And so that that was that that that gift of those books changed my life, I have to say. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. James Campbell, would you give us a sense of what personally drew you to Baldwin? Well, excuse me. Um, I encountered Baldwin when I was a student at Edinburgh University. I was a student of American literature. And there was a very farsighted course, which included not only black literature, Jewish American writing and Native American writing, as well as lots of other things you can imagine. This was in the mid 70s. And we were expected to read a tremendous amount at the time, which is very good. And I opened up the fire next time on a train, as it happens, from my parents' house back to Edinburgh, where I was studying. And I can still remember. I can still remember the impact of the opening sentences on that train. It was a voice that spoke to me and these things are mysterious, I must say. And then I went on, of course, to read him at university, but I also read a huge amount outside of university. And I read everything by the way. I went in search of articles by Hems, of course, well before the days of the internet. I went into the National Library of Scotland and Doug Arkel magazines. And found interviews and everything that wasn't included in books. And it was thrilling to me. That's really the one. He thrilled me. And when I, only a year or so later, I am kind of, am I still there? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here we are. I just didn't see you for a moment. A year or so later, I was still at university and I was an older student than most of the others. I was doing the Easter holidays at Edinburgh, I think a year with 1978. And I felt rather lonely and I decided I had to make some new friends. And so I decided to make a friend, James Baldwin. And I wrote him a letter. And I told him what his writing meant to me. And I invited him to Edinburgh University to speak to the students. Now, I was a student myself. And of course, in those days, there was no fund or anything. There was no way of doing this. You know, there was no department of creative writing or anything like that in Edinburgh. So it was a ridiculous proposition. I had no money myself. You know, I didn't know how, how would you get somebody from the south of France to Edinburgh? How would you put him up somewhere decent? How would you pay him a fee? But anyway, I wrote and to my surprise and despair, he accepted and he wrote back or actually his assistant, Bernard himself, whom I came to know well later on, wrote back and said, Mr. Baldwin would like to come and speak to the students at the University of Edinburgh between certain days. Well, you know, that really gave me a big problem because we had nowhere to put him, nowhere to get him there. I know where to get him back and I know nothing to feed him with and so on. But I decided just to let it happen. Whatever happens, Baldwin was going to come to Edinburgh. I wasn't going to stop him. So, but in some ways, luckily, it's kind of disappointing, but fortunately, at the same time, he cancelled at the last minute. But he asked me to telephone him in San Paul de Valls in the south of France, right beside Nice, right on the Mediterranean. And I called him from a telephone box in Edinburgh with a pile of coins, you know, making a making an international phone call in those days was a big event, especially for someone like me, totally poverty stricken. And we are called him. And he was very, very kind, very, very nice. And we had a lovely conversation. I came out of the telephone box. I went into the telephone box at 10 o'clock and I came out as Superman. It was the greatest telephone call in my life. A few months later, I graduated from university and I became the editor of a magazine called The New Edinburgh Review, which is quite a well established magazine in Edinburgh. And I wasn't there long before a book arrived in the authors called The Making of Jazz by James Lincoln Collier, a big book. So I packed it into an envelope and I sent it off to the south of France. And I said to Baldwin. And I think this was very important. I said, you have written made many illusions to jazz in your writings, but you've never written a separate scene on the subject. And maybe you would welcome the opportunity to do so. It took a long time. Maybe three months or something. But then I got a reply from him. We was actually scribbled on the bottom of my own letter. We said, we'd love to do a long piece. Can't meet the deadline. Well, of course, there was no deadline. I hadn't said to James Baldwin, look, if you can, give us this piece by the end of June, we're not publishing it. But anyway, he said, call me in St. Paul de Balz. And his telephone number was before and I did. And I rang him up and that began the first of many phone calls. And they went, I won't rehearse them all, of course. But they went basically like this. I would ring up and of course it took a huge amount of courage to ring James Baldwin's number from Edinburgh. And then it's in the end. And I would ring up and somebody would answer the phone and say, hello. I say, oh, may I speak to Mr. Baldwin, please? I say, who's calling? I say, oh, my name is James Campbell. I'm calling from Edinburgh. And then a minute later, Baldwin would come on the line and say, hey, baby, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. And how are you? He said, I'm working on the piece, baby. I'm working on the piece. Well, that's fantastic to call me Tuesday. OK, I'll call him Tuesday. And we go through the same thing and say, come on, I'm working on it, baby. Call me, Frank. And I would do so each time, by the way, taking a huge emotional effort. He said, I'm working on it, baby. I'm working on it. Call me, man. And I kept doing this and we the magazine came was a quarterly magazine. It came out every three months. So there were plenty of time for a pair of things. And we got the cover printed. And by the way, I'll show it right here. If you can see it. We got the cover printed just as a cover. It said James Baldwin on jazz, nice, nice picture. And so I called him as usual. You say, I'm working on it, baby, I'm working on it. I said, well, that's fantastic because, you know, we got the cover printed and we got your photograph on the cover. I'm on the cover, man. Well, of course, you're on the cover. He said, oh, baby, can I get the work? So he wrote the piece. He wrote the piece and he sent it in. And I think he was happy and we were happy and we printed it. And thereafter, we became friends after that was my initial relationship with James Baldwin and Howard Scholl. Yeah, that was that was really a lovely story. Both of those are lovely stories. And I, too, was at the funeral, but I was outside because I wasn't invited, obviously. But there were hundreds of us outside. And that, to me, was the most moving thing. All of these friends of mine who lived in the surrounding area, many of them were in theater. Just we just stood there crying. And I knew something by the surrounding people of the value of Baldwin more so than listening to any of the speeches. Sure. Sure. What I wanted to go on to the thing about language and both of you have talked about the significance of his language. And can you tell me about what you think the difference is in how he was received initially, because I see his reception in three phases, the initial excitement, enthusiasm, and then some kind of like pulling back a little bit and a recurrence in our contemporary times of an interest in his work. And I think it has some of it has to do with his political positions, but also to do with the complexity of his language. What do you think are the different perceptions and receptions to Baldwin's work over the years? Either either person who wants to jump in. Levin, if you would like to. Well, let's see. I mean, I tell me if you agree with this, James, I think it's probably not separate from the changes in in tone of of Baldwin's work over the years. You know, so, you know, his first book was Go Tell it on the Mountain and and the novel Go Tell it on the Mountain. And then he published, I think three years later, the essay collection Notes of the Native Son and that, you know, the title essay, which is one of my favorite pieces of writing, possibly my favorite piece of writing in the world, struck this tone that was it was it was very head on and honest about about about racism and the effects of racism in America and the effects of racism on the black community, while also, you know, I used that phrase of Baldwin's a few minutes ago. Keeping, you know, keeping my heart free of bitterness, which is how he he ends the essay. And I think he was embraced for for that for that book, I think because if, you know, I think white people certainly those who read Baldwin certainly embraced this idea of, well, you know, here's somebody who's shedding light on on on racism, but but, you know, he he he doesn't seem to hate me. You know, and I think this was an attractive idea for a lot of people. And as you know, as as as the decades went on and I think I think he found it very difficult to keep his heart entirely free of bitterness. I think the 1960s was a was a brutal decade in terms of in terms of what was happening recently. I mean, you know, we think of it as a decade of great progress, which it was, but it also saw, you know, the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and you know, you know, Nixon was elected with a southern strategy in sixty eight. And I think all of this, you know, there's definitely a change in tone in in his writing. So, you know, he published The Fire Next Time, which is possibly his most celebrated work in in 1963. And in it, he called for, you know, it was it was a searing indictment of racism. But but he also called on on black people to to love white people, not for the sake of loving white people, but for the sake of of, you know, opening of white people's eyes to what was happening in the country and and and thereby helping to change it. And and then, you know, nine years later, he published No Name in the Street, which and and the the shift in tone is is is just so distinct. You know, you know, the The Fire Next Time kind of ends with basically the message, look, you know, if you don't if we don't change the way we're going, you know, there's going to be hell to pay, you know, the you know, no more water of the fire next time. I feel like I feel like the message in No Name in the Street was basically too late. You blew it, you know, and and and I think some of the people who who embraced this is just a theory, but I think some of the people who embraced the message in No Name in the Sun and The Fire Next Time were not so quick to embrace, you know, this this later this later Baldwin, who just, you know, was was just starting to wash his hands of the whole thing, you know, so I think. But, you know, and but I think in recent years, as as as more people have, you know, there's there's the term woke, which you can't escape from. But as more people have sort of become woke, you know, they are, you know, Baldwin is being has been rediscovered by a lot of people and and and and seen as a kind of a prophetic prophetic voice. So that's my that's my take on it. James, what are your what are your thoughts on on his perception through the ages, I guess we can say? Well, it's difficult to improve on that very thoughtful reply. And Cliff, I would I would say that a Baldwin's early style is much commented on. References are made to Henry James to the Hammingway to the King James Bible even. I think it came out of Baldwin's character. It came out of a natural eloquence and a natural sophistication is strange, is mysterious. But he was, in a way, the chosen one, he was born to it. And, of course, he worked hard, old, old great writers, old geniuses have to work as hard as the common journeyman to make their writing as good as they as good as it deserved to be in respect to the gift. Baldwin's gift was enormous. And all through the fifties into the sixties into the as Cliff mentioned the far next time into the mid sixties. This is if sustained Baldwin magnificently. He really was the biggest thing. He was the biggest thing in American writing. And we're talking about mainstream writing and the colleagues with whom he associated Norman Mailer and James Jones and Robert Allen, true to these people. Baldwin was a mainstream writer. And for a little while, he was the biggest thing. Fashion changes, of course, very, very quickly, especially in America. And as Cliff mentioned, the events of the 1960s bore down on his head with a tremendous weight. And it affected his writing. There's no question about it. Now, there's an essay he wrote. I think it was about 1963. It was first published in an English newspaper called Why I Stopped Hitting Shakespeare. It's a little bit of a controversial title. But in that essay, he says, I've always been attracted to it. It's not well known. It's not in any of the books except later, Library of the American Elections, but I've always been attracted to it. And he says something along the lines. I can't quote it straight. But he says, I started to distrust the language because I suspected that the language could not bear the brunt of my experience. Now, here was a here was a great master of English prose style saying that English prose could not bear the brunt of my experience. This is a very challenging moment. This could have been one of the great moments of American literature, of literature in English, really, because Baldwin was setting out to forward the new style. And Cliff made reference to that in terms of in respect of No Name in the Street, which is a book I loved when I read it at first. I honestly, I read it on a train. It's another book I read on a train. I read the fire in a summer train. But I read that book on the train from Edinburgh, London. And I remember I was coming to the last page and the train came into London to five hour journey. I didn't want to get off the train because I still had a few pages left to read. You know, that was the way of these things. But then there were there were other books, but there were other with with the passing years. It's it's sad to relate it. But with the passing years, there were further traumas. And I think that these traumas took a heavy toll on Baldwin's style. I think they took a heavy toll on his character, not on his character, but on his on his daily life, on his personality, on his on his life as a human being. He was the greatest human being I've ever met. It took a heavy toll. The assassinations that were mentioned and the despair in the realisation that things were not getting better as the young man had. Now, if only this new style had come into being. I think it would have been a great event, but I I know that there's a kind of new orthodoxy, critical orthodoxy, if you like, but Baldwin's later style has been misunderstood. And I'm afraid I can't quite go along with that. I don't think that the later books are as good as some people say they are. But I do think that the intention to forge a new style was there. And it's a it's that that it didn't take place. That's my feeling. Can I I want to ask a question? I do want to get back to that later period, because I think there is some real significance there. But I want to ask if either of you feel like his Baldwin's being in Paris. I don't know anyone who could be in Paris and not be affected. But do you see how it may have affected his either writing style, his perspective? And he certainly in his younger years, it gave him a sense of belonging. Belonging some way or how do you see Baldwin in Paris as an effect on his writing and his life? I am. I was just going to say, I go back often to his essay, Equal in Paris, which was published in. In Notice of the Native Son. And that essay is it's just a wonderful, gorgeous essay. And he talked. So the story that he that he tells in the essay is of the time that he he was arrested. He spent eight nights in a Paris jail because a friend of his had had moved to the hotel where Baldwin was staying. He had come from another hotel and he brought from the other hotel a sheet of a bed sheet, which he which he lent to Baldwin because he Baldwin was having trouble getting his linen changed. So so one day Baldwin went up to this this guy's room. You know, to see if he wanted to have a drink or dinner. And there were two policemen there and they were searching for something. And they said to Baldwin, oh, do you mind if we search your room? And Baldwin said, sure, you know, suit yourself. So he didn't know why, but they went down to his room and and they found the sheet, which is what they had been looking for. And and as a result of that, Baldwin spent eight nights in a Paris jail and he tells the story of how he had come from New York in the late 1940s. And at that time, you know, he was a young man in New York and it was late 1940s. And there was a there was a certain way that he knew to behave to get along. You know, under under racist conditions in in New York. But he was now in Paris and he and he didn't know what rules to follow. You know, so as he so, you know, it was like he realized he had been playing this role a lot of the time in his in his younger life, according to, you know, that was sort of dictated by by racist forces in the land of his birth. But now he was in this place where he didn't know the rules. And and he as he put it, he, you know, it's possible to get by or as he put it, I knew how to be a what, but I didn't know how to be a who. In other words, he knew how to play this role. But when he was placed in a situation where he didn't know what was happening, suddenly he had to figure out not what he was, but who he was. And and this this seemed to be a great this seemed to have a profound effect on him, you know. And I think it I think it, you know, I'm theorizing now, but I think it led him a certain a certain distance from his own past that that kind of allowed him to see maybe see see it in a new light and and possibly a little more clearly. So, you know, he had to leave the land of his birth in order to really see what he had been through. So that that's that would be my my take. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. It is indeed a wonderful essay. It's part of a group of fantastic essays in that collection. And I like very much your account of it to think to think of the police forces of Paris descending on a hotel to investigate the theft of a bedsheet in Paris. I mean, really, it's like we're scratching our heads, you know. Was that was there was a so little crime in Paris? Apparently. Anyway. Well, Baldwin's retreat to Paris in 1948. It surely was an escape from racism in New York. There is a letter that he wrote to William Phillips, the editor of Partisan Review, which I quoted a little bit of I wrote, which is it states it explicitly, you know, the situation with with housing and everything else had just become too much. And he won an award. Partly thanks to Richard Wright and he set off. And by the way, he took the plane, which was very unusual in 1948 47, in fact, I think it was, he took the plane. Which cost a fortune. And arrived there and fell into the company of Richard Wright and other kind of Bohemian people on the left bank of Paris, those in that way, it was a tremendous stroke of luck. And it was liberating would be the simple word. Here he was with these young American people, young British people, many of whom I met in the course of writing book, a young Swiss, German, Lucien Hapersberger, who is a very lively presence and a great friend and and writerly types. I don't mean that in any denigrating way. I mean, there were lots of lots of writers who later published books, not to mention Richard Wright, but leaving him aside. Lots of young Americans at the time. Porto Friedrich was one published many, many books later and wrote by the way, a tremendous diary account under all in Paris. Very, very amusing. But they were hopping around the cafes with a great life, a great life. And Parisians, they didn't really care. They they ignored him in the way that at times they ignore everybody. You know, even when you want to attract their attention, they ignore you. And he didn't want to attract their attention when he wanted another drink. So so I think he had a great time. I think he had a great time and I think he was a very serious artist. And it nothing could have been better than his sojourn in Paris. But of course, it was double sided. It was double sided because on the other side of the coin, he being politically aware young man. There was great events unfolding in America. And what am I doing here? Swarming in and out of cafes, you know, ordering another something or other. Stealing bedsheets, except he didn't, of course. So there was so there was another side to it. But what what it strikes me as now, when I look at it and when I look at it, I am originally. It was it's part of the great drama of Alden's life. Alden's life was full of drama, enviable. Boy, you know, at some times it was a torment to him. But boy, there was drama, you know. There he was in Paris, practically penniless. His first novel was published in New York. Now he was writing a second one with all white characters. A love affair at the center of it. He'd just written a play, The Amen Corner, which has been put on. Now he had to get back to America to to take a look at this of the unfolding events of the civil rights movement. It was an existential drama, and he was there at the forefront. So but but but but Paris, it just seemed like inevitable. When you look back at it now, it seems inevitable. How could he not have had this chapter in his life? And I think he always looked at it that way. Yeah, I agree. Much more so, so I'll just add the final quote script. Much more so than Richard Wright, yes, who didn't. Who didn't live a life, live a life of like engagement in the way that Baldwin did. He led another sort of. Thoroughly interesting life from our point of view, historically. But it wasn't engaged with current events. I mean, Richard Wright was not really engaged with the civil rights movement. Yeah, any in the late fifties, the different generation. If we want to use the bed sheet as a metaphor. Yeah, the eight day in. Paris, it was eight days in jail. Yeah, if he'd been caught with that bed sheet in the US, he would have been lynched with. That's right, you know, I wonder as there's a question about. French writers, were there any that you think influenced him or inspired him? Um, not really. No, in no name in the street. The group that Cliff mentioned earlier, which was published in 1972 and has some Paris memoirs. He mentions Camus, he mentions Jean Paul Sartre. He mentions my own particular favorite, Boris Vian, a novelist and singer and trumpet player. But no, I don't think he was taking them on. He wasn't he wasn't involved in French literary life in that way. You know, he he liked the old boys, Balzac and Stundal and that kind of thing. Jimmy had a kind of classical tendency when it came to literature. You know, he was old fashioned and Dickens and Balzac and Stundal and and Harriet Beecher Stowe. You know, it was it was the 19th century. That's what literature really was. Right. Otherwise, it was just me and my pals writing this and that. We were the future. And I know I think the answer is not really. I think also for him, Paris was a larger ethos. I mean, there was a whole thing about Paris as a whole that he was absorbing and living the music that the culture in a larger way. I agree with you that that was what was really infusing him and that he was a classicist in so many ways in terms of literature. Yeah, yeah. Could I just insert there? I you know, the first question you asked, you know, what drew us to to Baldwin? And I think part of the answer is it has to do with his style. And I mean, I found Baldwin. Yeah, he was very much rooted in sort of a classic classic literature. And but he was raised in the church. And I think his his style is, to me, a really just fascinating blend of those two things. You know, he has the the the sort of, you know, these sort of Henry James in long sentences with with with so many commas and semicolons and the whole thing. But also that sort of preacherly cadence, you know, a part of which is repetition. You know, there's he just affects this this music with with this with these this repetition of phrases. And, you know, that that is certainly evident. And I think in Go Tell It On The Mountain and and knows and knows of a Native Son, this sort of this this just American hybrid, you know, that I think he just represents. So just wanted to toss. Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, I don't know if you recently know that ABC Television in New York recently released a video interview with Baldwin that happened, I think in 79 that was never aired and getting back to the change we were talking about earlier in his later life. What what was he saying? How was he saying it? And the the producers who were releasing it postulate that ABC was for the show 2020 in 1979 and they didn't release it. And it was postulated that they didn't release it because he's Baldwin seemed too angry and that his presentation was much more confrontational than they felt their viewers were interested in it. And there's clips on on Vimeo so you can actually see it. But one of the things Baldwin says in this interview is white people go around. It seems to me very carefully suppressed terror of black people, a tremendous uneasiness, they don't know what the black face hides. They're sure it hides something. What it's hiding is American history. And I think that is some of the things that infuses writing later. And I think it's some of the things that the current black lives movement as is touching on, you know, it's not about healing from slavery, racism. It's about revealing that past and having the institutions acknowledge it. Thoughts. It's such a wonderful quotation from that interview. And I can easily imagine Baldwin being very angry. It should be said that he would be angry on Wednesday and not on Thursday or even angry on Wednesday morning and not on Wednesday afternoon. That was certainly he could be angry. And that's a marvelous quotation you gave us, Joel. It leads me to something else that I would like to bring up, which is very little talked about. And it emerges from what you've just said. Something that Baldwin believed in and stated late in his life was his regret, but white American writers, novelists in particular, had neglected the black things in American life. And he said it was in an interview in the New York Times with Julius Lester in, I think, 1984. And if you don't mind, I'll just read his words rather than try to paraphrase them. I caught them in the introduction to the new edition of my book, but it's much better that I if you allow me to read. What he actually said. Yeah, it and it emerges from his defense of William Styron in writing Nat Turner, and he made this. In court remark, he has begun the common history, ours. That's Baldwin's firing Nat Turner. There's this. This is what I say and it leads into Baldwin's actual words. It was in the same spirit that Baldwin tried to bring to the attention of his contemporaries. The fact that as he wrote in 1984, the conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American. And of course, by that stage, he was willing to admit that his effort to arouse their awareness of this inheritance had failed. In an interview, Julius Lester published in the New York Times Book Review, I think it's 1984, he stated his belief that the effort on the part of the republic to avoid the presence of black people reflects itself in American literature fatally to the decrement of that literature. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. That is an invitation to white writers to write about black people, to include black people in their books. And if they're not doing it, they're neglecting their duties. Tell me if I'm wrong. I don't think you're wrong. I think you're absolutely right. And one of the other things that Baldwin says in this newly released interview is that slavery put a curse on us. And it's a curse not just on black people, but a curse on this country. That, you know, the current demonstrations and attention are insisting we break through that curse. If we hope to have the democracy that we were originally promised, as Baldwin also said, someone in the questions wanted to know if Baldwin ever took any position on some of the thorny French political issues like Algerian war and immigration, colonialism, also asked if he had thoughts about France. But no, do either of you have something to say on those topics? I can't speak to the Fanon question, but I do recall that I remember there's a wonderful documentary, which is I don't know why it's not more widely available, called The Price of the Ticket. And my, you know, Maya Angelou, who spent time with Baldwin, said that Baldwin's comment on the Algerian situation in France was that Algerians are the niggers of France, you know. So, you know, if the police didn't, you know, treat Baldwin, particularly badly because he was a black American, it's because they had their own, they had their own version of him. They had kind of a homegrown version. Yeah. So anyway. Did he ever talk about Fanon? I can't recall in all of my meetings. There's a mention in no name in the street. But I, you know, it wasn't it wasn't elaborated or not very much, really. It would be interesting to go back and read Fanon sort of in tandem with some of the essays because the philosophical groundings are certainly there in both of the writers. And the intellectual rigor is certainly similar. Do either of you feel as if I'm waiting for more questions. So if anyone has them, please post them. Does any either of you feel that scholarship, and in many ways a sort of educational systems in the US, failed Baldwin, failed to keep him in the canon? Or is that just a nature as we talked about earlier, sort of times changing, taste changing? I don't know about that because I don't live in the United States. Of course, I wasn't educated in the United States. That shouldn't stop you from having an opinion. No, no, no, of course. Give me all the more reason to have it. But I do occasionally reflect that in 1974, 75, 76, I was at a university in Scotland and we were studying Ralph Ellison and Mamiri Baraka and William Melvin Kelly. I mean, black writers are not that well known now. Not to mention, of course, James Baldwin and Richard Wright and Native American writers. So it was. It comes as a surprise to me, really, to discover or to hold. That Baldwin wasn't part of a course in in any American university at the same time. And we're talking about the mid 1970s. It was tremendously exciting to us as young people at the time to be confronted with all this stuff and to be expected to take it in. And and to to be asked to appreciate the wonders of language, not to mention ideas in the works of Ellison and Baraka and Baldwin and others. Strangely enough, we didn't study Toni Morrison. She hadn't yet arrived on the scene in big time. It's odd, but we didn't. So if Baldwin is left off of American courses. In the 1980s and the 1990s. There's one way of looking at it, which is the kind of obvious one. But I think there's another way of looking at it is that he had fallen out of fashion. Fashion, fashion is a very, very cruel arbiter in literature as in anything else. And reputations go up and they go down. And some of them come back up and his has appellate, but not all do. There are many, many. Very good writers that we could all be reading now tomorrow. You know, we could we could pick out books, open books of really terrific writers that we probably won't and we probably will never hear of. Right. So it's a it's a cruel, cruel business. And I wouldn't necessarily rush. To the explanation of racism or the exclusion of Baldwin. There may well be something in that. But I wouldn't necessarily rush it. I do think that fashion is cruel as in anything else. Yeah, you know, he is he's back in fashion. So let's let's sing about it. All right. You know, any clouds book begin again. I thought had such an apt title because it brings us back to Baldwin. And in many ways, I think the the sort of slippage of Baldwin's reputation had as much to do with his intellectualism and the intellectual approach he had to in all of his writing and his that brilliant language that we love the taste of. I think sometimes didn't suit the kind of activist writing that some professors wanted to use as a way to describe what was going on in racism in this country. So I would say that's as much a part of it as anything. I, you know, I don't. I think I think James is right that that, you know, fashion does play a part and and it's and it's cruel and it's. I do think. I think I think Baldwin's work belongs in that sort of permanently. Established canon, you know, of of of literature. And I well, I'll just tell you a story and you can sort of extrapolate from there where. You know, how how universal. Baldwin has how universally Baldwin has been embraced by the Academy. I was teaching several years ago at a pretty a pretty prominent college, a pretty prestigious college. And I was teaching writing and I assigned an essay of Baldwin's and I also mentioned a documentary that had just come out at the time about Baldwin. I am natural Negro and somebody in the class said, oh, you know, I I saw that documentary, but I didn't realize it was the same guy. So. Mm hmm. So, you know, if this is at all representative of of of of you know, a lot of young people's understanding of where he where he fits in American literature, then I then I think. Well, let me just say that it's good that he's having a moment now. And I hope I hope that it I hope that it permanently takes this time. I have to just say because it is June and it is Pride Month. Despite Baldwin's uneasy relationship with any kind of gay activism, we in the queer community, of course, embraced him and his ability to live openly as a gay man, which would cause no no end of trauma for him, certainly. And so that he has been embraced as an icon by our movement for self-realization as queer people. And one of the things about Giovanni's room that's so amazing to be is it's it's about that relationship between the two men, the two white characters. But it's also about so much more. It's about I think it's about colonialism. I think it's about class. And that to me is the brilliance of the book to bring together so many social issues in a tight, small, sad story. Tragic story, really. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that speaks to to his genius. Somebody asked about Mark Twain, that there are that the non black writers who have spoken and written about black Americans and Mark Twain as one. And I think there's there's something different that I think Baldwin is was calling for, as we talked about earlier. He is calling not just for them to write about black characters, but to write about the social world that was created by the introduction of oppression and slavery. And that's more, I think, what Baldwin was asking. Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to refer to James's comment about Baldwin calling for or seeming to seem to call for white writers to write about black characters. And I was just thinking, you know, you also mentioned Tony Morrison. And I was just thinking that his comments sort of anticipates Tony Morrison's book, Playing in the Dark. You know, the the thesis of which is that if you really if you look closely at American literature, you can the the impact of having of the presence of black people is detectable even when there aren't black characters. And and and it may not. I mean, it may be as much the fault of critics as of as of writers that, you know, that we don't perceive of, you know, so much of American literature as addressing. As addressing race and and and the presence of black people. I think that's as a subtle comment. Yeah. Cliff and it's derives also from the work of, excuse me, your hero, Albert Murray and another one of mine, Ralph Ellison. Yeah. And Ellison says something somewhere along the lines of white kids should be asking themselves how black they are. You know, yeah. Well, the music you listen to, the way they dress, their gesture, their cool, yeah, you know, all this kind of stuff. It's all introduced from the black world. Yes, even though people don't necessarily realize it. Yes. I think that would be an amazing investigation of how black they are and the world from which their culture has emerged. And James Baldwin was certainly the witness that we needed as this world has been coming of age and will continue to resonate. I think his work will continue to resonate for forever, really. I'm happy you're going to have another Mechanics Institute is going to have another discussion of Baldwin with Eddie Glaude in July, late in July. That should be very exciting. I think there's as we see now, there's so many things we could be talking about with James Baldwin, his ability to engender discussion and conversation is monumental. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us here. And thank you. Jule and and panels, we do have a few more questions. So Pam can read out a few more questions that come up. Do we have any in the chat or in the Q&A? Oh, yes, we have. We have some in both. One from you is how did his work in theater give voice to his work? Ah, good. Yes. Very good question. Well, he was, you know, when you think about it, he was a novelist and essayist and dramatist and laterally a poet. And of course, a polemicist. You know, come on, modern writers. Kind of live up to this. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, I think he loved the stage. He loved the idea of the stage. He was very theatrical in his in his in his being in his everyday life. He loved the idea and he loved the idea of working with other people, which, of course, the theater is all about. So the notion of drama was very, very close to his center. The amen corner, I think, was actually the second major piece that he set out to write. And it was go tell it on the mountain was an old black world. And so is the amen corner. So that's rather interesting. You've got these first two works, exclusively black and then a third work, give any room exclusively white. And it's a sign of great versatility in my view. This is the way people should be going about things. But he loved that idea. And of being there on the stage. And he even loved the idea of the name of the lights, you know, let's not leave that out. He, oh boy, he liked that. There's a story that when Lutz Mr. Charlie was being produced on Broadway in 1964, he approached the theater to the anti-theater with a young man called Jerome Smith, who was one of the freedom riders in Mississippi and who was badly beaten for heroic actions. And there's a story which a friend of Baldwin's and mine, Robert Cordier, told me that Robert Cordier was involved in. But as they approached the theater, Baldwin was nervous, of course, the first night. And there was the name of the play and the name of the playwright. And as they approached from, you know, walk away or something, Baldwin said to Jerome Smith, can you, can you those lights from here? And Jerome Smith said, you can see those lights all the way. Mississippi. Yeah, that's great. Jules, I think that Jules, since you've had the experience of writing a play and producing plays, plays, can you respond to his to the same question about the impact of being in the theater or directing and having it on the stage? I think one of the things that came to mind for me with that question was his relationship to Lorraine Hansberry, I mean, they were very close. And I can see how her ventures into drama affected him. And I think he used theater as a way to express the musical, lyrical nature of the black community. It was, of course, a way to introduce the ideas and the politics. But having the voices out loud on the stage, which I found, you know, I decided to write a play about a moment in James Baldwin's life because that was the only way I felt I could do justice to the lyrical quality of his speaking voice and to the culture in which he had grown up. And I think I would venture to feel that that's true of him and his approach to drama, his using drama to bring to life the voices that were in his head in many ways. I just wanted to add that one of the first Baldwin novels I read was Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, whose central character, Leo Proudhammer, is an actor. So yeah, that so it also influenced him that way. You know, he yeah. And Leo Proudhammer was kind of an alter ego of Baldwin. So, you know, I think it's significant that he made that character an actor. Yes. Yeah. And the name alone is just there's a piece of pieces in the library. And he was a Leo. He was a Leo. There we go. There we go. Oh, boy. And of course, he said about the church. He left the church and wanted to go into the theater. But he said, I didn't realize I'd been brought up in a theater. Yes. Right. Right. Absolutely. We have a few more questions here that we can just. So do you have any in the last few minutes? Well, we have a question from Genevieve. Where should white readers who want to read more contemporary black writers again, might you each name three writers about whose work you thought, wow, people need to know this writer. Well, that's the spot. Wow. About one. I got to put in a plug for Albert Murray. Yeah. Yeah. Albert Murray. I mean, it's so strange to think about contemporary. I'm sorry, contemporary writers. I think there's some lovely, lovely poets, contemporary poets out there. The young woman Natalie Diaz, who just won the Pulitzer, is a lovely poet. Cheryl Clark is a fabulous poet, contemporary poet who just has a new book out. You know, I don't I'm not averse to going back a bit like to Albert Murray, like to Toni Morrison, to get a real honest understanding of where the culture has been at its best. Or even someone like, you know, the novel Passing by Nella Larson, which was just recently made into an amazing film. Nella Larson was someone who wrote a really important book about color in this country that kind of almost drifted out of vision. And that was written in the 1920s. I would say go back to Nella Larson, too. James, please. Yeah, there are so many. Black American literature is such an integral part of American literature. And that it should be stated that way. And it shouldn't be forgotten. And it shouldn't be set apart. The the obvious principles for people of my generation are Baldwin, Ellison. Right. And you can't you really you can't go wrong with those three. But I'm a great believer in exploring. And I'm I'm actually a believer in reading writers that you don't really like very much, you know. And and and finding out why you don't like them. And they tell you why you like the ones you do. And so there's all sorts of people. And there are things to like in the writers you don't really like all that. I mean, American literature of the 20th century is just a great modernist, cacophonist symphony of fabulous experiment pages and an exploration. And and there's nothing better than exploring. Exploring one writer to another. So to go from Baldwin to Baraka is great. Well, to go from one writer to another writer. There's a wonderful fiction writer, contemporary named Rena Clark, who just has a new novel out and she writes about primarily life in Washington, DC, from an African American perspective. And I think she has both the language and the perspective that we we long for when we miss fiction writers. So I'd say look for Bruno Clark. I just get one in there real quick. It's kind of random. But I think an underappreciated novel called The Cheneesville Incident by David Bradley. Yes. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant novel, The Cheneesville Incident. Quite brilliant. Right. And so much. And we're so lucky today. We can get anything we like. It was different in the 1970s. Like you had to cross the Atlantic to get some of these books. Across the ocean. That's not the case now. So there's no excuse for not exploring. That's why the Internet is like Alice's restaurant. You can get anything. I wouldn't mention Octavia Butler. Yeah, Octavia Butler. Great. I want to put in a plug that Cal Shakes is also also doing a program on Octavia Butler. It was also one of the things we were considering. But we this time around, we chose James Baldwin because our last tribute was about Toni Morrison. But before we close our program, I want to, first of all, bring attention to our author's books talking at the gates. A life of James Baldwin by James Campbell to see us get a little visual. You can see a lot of post-it notes on that one. And also Clifford Thompson's book, What It Is? Race, Family and One Thinking Black Man's Blues. Really beautiful. Are these your drawings? That is that is my painting on the cover. Yes, there's some beautiful paintings and illustrations in the book. And of course, Jewel's work can be found at bookstores with Giovanni's Waiting for Giovanni and also her other novels, The Guild of Stories, etc. So on this auspicious day, as we've said, Juneteenth will be a national holiday. And we've had this fabulous conversation to commemorate and celebrate this time and this era. And we hope that everyone will go out and continue your reading and researching and opening up to all of the ideas and inspirations of and prophetic words, as we've said, of James Baldwin and also of everyone here. So thank you, everyone, and come back to our Zoom programs. Remember, we've got another another program with Eddie Glaude on July 29th, 5.30 and we hope to see you then. Thank you.