James Campbell - Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin

James Baldwin frequently changed or modified the title of a book while he was writing it. Go Tell It on the Mountain, for example, was previously Crying Holy and, before that, In My Fathers House; Giovannis Room was One for My Baby, then Backwater, and then something different; Another Country began life as that, changed to being The Only Pretty Ring Time, and changed back to Another Country again. Sometimes the title came to him first and the book would grow to fit it, and sometimes a title existed in his mind for a decade or more without a book being written for it. For a novel that he planned to set on Emancipation Day in 1863 on a Southern slave-holding plantation, Baldwin conjured the title Talking at the Gates. For almost twenty years, on and off, he talked about the book, but never wrote it.

Many people have shared their views and reminiscences with me in the writing of this account of Baldwins life and work. In the text, the statements of an interviewee are signified by use of the present tense, or by the introductory phrase According to ..., but seldom otherwise. Thus, John Brown says (etc.) or According to John Brown indicates that his remarks were made in an interview with me; but John Brown said (recalled, complained, etc.) means that the statement is taken from a book or an article, which the reader will find referenced in the notes.

As regards the sensitive issue of the words Negro, black, Afro-American, etc., I ought to say that I have in general followed Baldwin himself. After about 1972, the term Negro passed out of common usage, and it does so at roughly the same stage in this book.

This portrait of James Baldwin is offered not as a definitive picture but as a host of sketches and perceptions aiming toward a definition, yet finally backing down from one. No one, Baldwin used to say, can be described. In my view, it is more true of him than anyone.