go tell it...

"Jimmy was a combination of coquette, preacher boy and arrant wit all in one -- in other words, a cunt."
Frank Corsaro

"Please don't mind or be embarassed by any of my more hysterical outbursts. I'm like that on the top sometimes, but I'm very sound at bottom."
James Baldin

i've been stuck on this james baldwin biography for a while, partly because i haven't been reading as regularly as i'd like, but also because it just ain't easy reading. it's quite thorough, which is good, and much attention is paid to the minutiae of his life. while this is illuminating, it does mean one can't simply run through the pages.

what i have appreciated most about the book, however, has been the dominance of baldwin's voice throughout. baldwin's ability to perceive the people and the times he lived in has always left me in awe, so i'm quite happy to stumble upon more of insights, particularly in regard to the tumult of the '60s.

moreover, what i've found especially interesting are how particular insights, specific to his times and his life, are so applicable to the present. a couple that i found particularly striking --

"Despair is a sin. I believe that. It is easy to be bleak about the human race, but there are people who have proved to me that we can be better than we are."

"For everything is changing, from our notion of politics to our notion of ourselves, and we are certain, as we being history's strangest metamorphosis, to undergo the torment of being forced to surrender more than we ever realized we had accepted."

"Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have."

from baldwin's own words, it's clear that "bearing witness" dominated his outlook on writing. there was a definite social consciousness to it -- strongest and best expressed in his essays, but also in his novels and plays. he understood, perhaps as much as anyone else would ever be capable of understanding, that intricate kinship between the personal and the political.

he once said that he wanted to be an honest man and a good writer -- in that order. humble as those goals may sound, his words stand as testament to the power of the two.