Ly's question of whether or not letters can be used to create a public persona seems to point in two directions. On the one hand, there is the aspect of Baldwin writing to Cole in such a way that he is curating his image as a writer to his friend-- but a friend that is very much invested in the publishing world of New York. So the question is: How does Baldwin seem to want to be seen by Cole and by the public? On the other hand, in this letter, Baldwin writes a lot about private and public persona / private and societal persona in the way he understands himself as a writer and as an African American male who grew up in the United States. The question here seems to be a different one: How did society or history influence the way in which Baldwin arrived at his understanding of himself as a writer? Ly's question along with Baldwin's letters touch on a number of dimensions to the public versus private persona theme: Baldwin and his relationship with society or the world; Baldwin and how said relationship affects his art; Baldwin's art and its reception in the world. I don't have any definite answers, though I would like to point to a few passages that might provide some illumination.
Baldwin expresses his understanding of history and cultural inheritance as being central to the kind of writer he became.
Baldwin's public persona seems especially complicated, considering his relationship with his audience as well as the society in which he wrote.
Perhaps Baldwin did not write to Cole about his homosexuality, or at least the homosexual themes that he was planning on including in his next book, because as a writer he found it more immediate to write about his identity has African American: "Nor have I written about being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else."
As a final note, I'd like to share a clip from a talk Baldwin gave almost two decades after he wrote these letters. He continued to be very much invested in the question of origin (especially in the talk's opening anecdote) and how that shaped his view of the world.
Baldwin expresses his understanding of history and cultural inheritance as being central to the kind of writer he became.
…But I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and, further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly. I know, in any case, that the most crucial time in my own development came when I was forced to recognize that I was a kind of bastard of the West: when I followed the line of my past I did not find myself in Europe but in Africa. And this meant that in some subtle way, in a really profound way, I brought to Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to the stones of Paris, to the cathedral at Chartres, and to the Empire State Building -- a special attitude. These were not really my creations, they did not contain my history, I might search in them in vain forever for any reflection of myself. I was an interloper, this was not my heritage. At the same time I had no other heritage which I could possibly hope to use -- I had certainly been unfitted for the jungle or the tribe. Donc, as the French say, I would have to appropriate these white centuries, I would have to make them mine -- I would have to accept my special attitude, my special place in this scheme -- I would have, otherwise, no place in any scheme. (6)I found this to be a powerful passage-- his understanding of himself as a "bastard of the West" greatly influenced his vision of himself as a writer, not only on the level of what he wrote, but in the kinds of literary traditions could be part or not part of.
Baldwin's public persona seems especially complicated, considering his relationship with his audience as well as the society in which he wrote.
What was most difficult was the fact that I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress: that I hated and feared white people. This did not mean that I loved black people; on the contrary I despised them, possibly because they had failed to produce Rembrandt. In effect, I hated and feared the world. And this meant, not only that I thus gave the world an altogether murderous power over me, but also that in such a self-destroying limbo I could never hope to write. One writes out of one thing only -- one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to re-create out of the disorder of life, and his own life, that order which is art. The difficulty, then, for me, of being a Negro writer was the fact that I was, in effect, prohibited from examining my own experience too closely by the tremendous demands and the very real dangers of my social situation. (7)Baldwin seems to counter his hatred and fear toward the world (because of his sense of alienation from cultural heritage) by casting away the need to belong to any artistic tradition.
Perhaps Baldwin did not write to Cole about his homosexuality, or at least the homosexual themes that he was planning on including in his next book, because as a writer he found it more immediate to write about his identity has African American: "Nor have I written about being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else."
As a final note, I'd like to share a clip from a talk Baldwin gave almost two decades after he wrote these letters. He continued to be very much invested in the question of origin (especially in the talk's opening anecdote) and how that shaped his view of the world.
Thanks for this video, Bernadette!
ReplyDeleteBernadette, this is a very thoughtful post and I particularly hooked onto your approach of looking at Baldwin's public image as a reflection of how he came to understand himself as something derived from a confusing and in some ways absent cultural history. As you've covered this better than I could, I wanted to think a little about Ly's question regarding the intersection of Baldwin's public image, identity, and homosexuality. There are a couple approaches we could use to speculate-- one being the basic wish for privacy. Race is exigently public, sexuality can be safeguarded. Baldwin gives us a lot of biographical in the 9-page letter, but to an extent, these details have to do with what is already, in part, out there-- son of a preacher, an early writer, and a black man. Using a different approach, we can also speculate from a psychological point of view and struggles with homosexuality that, while accepted in the Village, could not have been in his family any more than the broader prejudices of 1950s America. It is interesting to think about the autobiographical nature of his books, particularly in Go Tell It on the Mountain and Sonny's Blues-- but the narrator is distinctly not Baldwin. At the end of Go Tell It, if I remember correctly, the narrator (a preacher's son) experiences the radical moment of "being saved" in church, though it isn't entirely clear if it was authentic or just simply willed. This doesn't jive with Baldwin himself. In Sonny's Blues, the narrator is married and struggles, somewhere beneath or peripheral to the actual plot, with the loss of his young daughter. Sonny, the speaker's brother, is a struggling artist who lives in the Village. Naturally, Baldwin writes fiction and each character is unique and divorced from reality, but it's at least interesting to consider how the imperative of including clearly autobiographical information exists and how this allows for some thoughts on personal deflection. Lastly, Baldwin is clearly invested in the betterment of African Americans and insists that "being informed" falls short of genuine caring. That said, and this would be the most sound argument for me, is that Baldwin probably didn't want to give any reason to isolate himself from the community vis a vis, his sexuality.
ReplyDeleteBah sorry for the typos and awkward phrasing everyone.
DeleteI think Michelle is right-- If Baldwin were to go in depth about his homosexuality, I think he would be running the risk of isolating himself from the African-American community.
ReplyDeleteI think the term "double jeopardy" can be applied here. Usually, outside of a legal context, it is used to refer to Black women's position in American society, both as African American and women, and the effect this has on their social standing. Black women were seen by white people first as black, and by black men first as women. So not only were they discriminated against based on their race, they were also discriminated against because of their gender.
I think it can be applied to James Baldwin as well. If he were to emphasize his homosexuality (it was known, yes, but not emphasized as the basis of his identity), he would be in many ways under the same type of "double jeopardy" that black women were. He would be stigmatized to a greater extent than he already was--not only because he was black, but also because of his sexuality. His homosexuality could also be a cause for a divide within the African American community. He was probably trying to prevent that.
On certain points, I agree with you Megan, about how Baldwin was aware of how his sexuality would be construed in the Black community, but at the same time, I think in certain ways, Baldwin was trying to address the discomfort he felt about how society spoke about homosexuality by writing Giovanni's Room. I believe he choose to write this particular book as his second novel because he felt he needed to write it in order to open a dialogue about homosexuality. He choose not to explicitly bring race into this book, for the protagonist is a white man, because he wanted to emphasize sexuality.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I don't believe that Baldwin did not mention sexuality to Cole because he felt that race was the more relevant or "hot" topic at the time, but because he knew that people like Cole were not the audience for his novel. True, Cole would have read the book, but not because Cole would have related to it, but because it was Cole's job to know the contents of Baldwin's novels.
I guess my point is that Baldwin knew Giovanni's Room was going to be controversial and that is one of the purposes of his writing it. Obviously his other work is controversial as well, but at the time the nation was already discussing race in important ways. Sexuality on the other hand was still something taboo and thought of as shameful, at least for the majority of Americans, and Baldwin worked against this by publishing Giovanni's Room.