Conversations with James Baldwin / Edition 1

by Fred R. Standley, Louis H. Pratt

Overview

This collection of interviews with James Baldwin covers the period 1961-1987, from the year of the publication of Nobody Knows My Names, his fourth book, to just a few weeks before his death. It includes the last formal conversation with him.

Twenty-seven interviews reprinted here come from a variety of sources--newspapers, radio, journals, and review--and show this celebrated author in all his eloquence, anger, and perception of racial, social, and literary situations in America.

Over the years Baldwin proved to be an easily accessible and cooperative subject for interviews, both in the United States and abroad. He frequently referred to himself as "a kind of trans-Atlantic commuter." Whether candidly discussing his own ghetto origins, his literary mission and achievements, his role in the civil rights movement, or his views on world affairs, black and white relations, Vietnam, Christianity, and fellow writers, Baldwin was always both popular and controversial.

This importa

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878053896
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	05/01/1989
Series:	Literary Conversations Series
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	829,815
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Fred R. Standley is coeditor (with Louis H. Pratt) of Conversations with James Baldwin, published by University Press of Mississippi. Louis H. Pratt is coeditor (with Fred R. Standley) of Conversations with James Baldwin, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Read an Excerpt

Interviewer: Was there an instant you knew you were going to be a writer...?

Baldwin: Yes. The death of my father. Until my father died, I thought I could do something else. I had wanted to be a musician, thought of being a painter, thought of being an actor. This was all before I was nineteen.

Editorial Reviews

A collection of Baldwin interviews by Studs Terkel, Ben Shahn, Nat Hentoff, David Frost and others. Lively and revealing. Cloth edition ($27.95) not seen. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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