NEWS - GEOFF’S BOOK RECOMMENDATION FOR NOVEMBER
(Image: ‘The Last Interview’ published by Melville House, 2014)
My book recommendation for the month of November is ‘James Baldwin: The Last Interview’, a collection of interviews with writer and poet, James Baldwin. Baldwin died of cancer in 1987 and I’ve viewed a number of interviews with him on YouTube and also watched the film ‘I am Not Your Negro’. I love his piercing delivery; calm and considered and never one who seems to respond in a reactionary, knee-jerk fashion. He is always thoughtful and insightful, along with sharing the wisdom of a writer who has travelled the miles needed, to finetune his artistry. I have much to learn from him.
He is passionate about writing and a writer’s ability to connect with political, social, sexual, racial and spiritual themes. Baldwin, however does not fall into the trap of ideology. This is perhaps what has drawn me to him and if you have the same aspirations, then you should read this book . In his essay, ‘The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity’ he stated,
“Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. In this sense, all artists are divorced from and necessarily opposed to, any system whatsoever.” Source: James Baldwin
It is here that we begin to unpick the thread, that to be an ideologue, is to be a propagandist; not a writer for the people, but for the system.
The book covers interviews with Studs Terkel, Julius Lester, Richard Goldstein and finally in his last interview with Quincy Troupe. I include here part of an interview with Julius Lester, entitled “Reflections of a Maverick”, from May 27th, 1984.
Lester: You have been politically engaged, but you have never succumbed to ideology, which has devoured some of the best black writers of my generation.
Baldwin: Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology, as you put it, because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised, you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is.
Lester: What’s the difference between a spokesman and a witness?
Baldwin: A spokesman assumes that he is speaking for others. I never assumed that - I never assumed that I could. Fannie Lou Hamer [the Mississippi civil rights organiser], for example could speak very eloquently for herself. What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear, was…what the Republic was doing to that woman, it was doing to itself. No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society.
Lester: There’s a confidence in your use of the word “witness” - a confidence about the way the world is and the way it should be. I wonder if it’s possible now, black or white, to have that confidence…
Baldwin: …In one way or another, one is very much a prisoner of his time. But I know what I’ve seen and what I’ve seen makes me know that we can be better than we are. That’s the sum total of my wisdom in all these years. We can also be infinitely worse, but I know that the world we live in now is not necessarily the best world we can make. I can’t be entirely wrong. There’s two things we have to do - love each other and raise our children. We have to do that! The alternative, for me, would be suicide.”
Baldwin see that there is room for improvement, but he doesn’t see they way forward as being chained to an ideology. He sees a future world, where we no longer think in terms of black and white, or gay and straight; that there’ll just be ‘us’.
This is one of the themes of the World of 0w1 and I hope we can, like James Baldwin, live in a world without race, gender or status; and be just us.
Geoff Hall
