Books: “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin

I haven’t read much James Baldwin, but “Notes of a Native Son” has prompted me to dig deeper into his fiction. Because in this collection of non-fiction essays, first published in 1955, he comes off as a cranky young man—one who sprinkles his pieces with so many ten-dollar words, I often didn’t know what he was talking about.

What I did gather, among other things, was 1) he hated “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for being too sentimental, 2) disliked the film “Carmen Jones” (the black version of the opera) because the actors were light-skinned, and 3) disliked Richard Wright’s “Native Son” because the protagonist is too Uncle Tom.

OTOH, Baldwin’s most interesting essays reflect his reaction to events he experienced first hand: the Harlem race riot of 1943; his contrarian views of ex-pat life in Paris; and his brief imprisonment in Paris, where he was accused of stealing a bedsheet from a hotel. Pretty scary stuff if you’re American and can’t speak French; must be even worse if you’re also Black.

Baldwin can also be pretty arch. He tells the story of what happened to The Melodeers, a group of jazz singers (including two of Baldwin's brothers) employed in 1948 by the Progressive Party to sing in Southern churches.

Once in Atlanta, however, the Melodeers didn’t sing. Instead, they were used to canvas for presidential candidate Henry Wallace, at which point they refused to sing and were returned to NYC. Baldwin concludes the essay by writing the Melodeers were “not particularly bitter toward the Progressive Party, though they can scarcely be numbered among its supporters.”

Next on the to-do list: read “Go Tell It On The Mountain” and “The Fire Next Time” and make up my own mind about this talented, but embittered New Yorker.

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