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Sonny's Blues
Part of the Penguin 60s series, issued to celebrate 60 years of Penguin books. This collects "Sonny's Blues", "The Rockpile" and "Previous Condition", all taken from Going to Meet the Man (Penguin, 1991).
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
80 people are currently reading
11725 people want to read
About the author
James Baldwin
385 books16.9k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 766 reviews
March 20, 2023
"But there's no way not to suffer- is there, Sonny?"
"I believe not," he said and smiled, "but that's never stopped anyone from trying."
He looked at me. ”Has it?" I realized, with this mocking look, that there stood between us, forever; beyond the power of time or forgiveness, the fact that I had held silence- so long- when he had needed human speech to help him. He turned back to the window. "No, there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem- well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. You know?" I said nothing. "Well you know," he said, impatiently, "Why do people suffer? Maybe it's better to do something to give it a reason, any reason. "But we just agreed," I said, "that there's no way not to suffer. Isn't it better; then, just to take it?"
"But nobody just takes it," Sonny cried, "that's what I'm telling you everybody tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people try-it's not your way."
It is hard not to be shaken to the core by Baldwin’s nearly perfect, soul-piercing writing. His poignant themes are a reflection of the collective psychology of the time and space in which they were written, exploring the ways in which our destinies are shaped by circumstance, identity, and geography. Yet, amidst this intricate exploration, Baldwin's words are speaking to the universal truths of human experience that remain as vital and relevant today as they were when first penned. His prose is a haunting meditation on the beauty and pain of existence.
A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.
Baldwin's writing, as Leonard aptly observed, evokes the beauty of Proust's prose. It transcends the confines of plot and structure, weaving a tapestry of memories and emotions that float seamlessly through time and space. It is in those specific moments that Baldwin's writing truly shines, painting vivid pictures with a precise clarity of detail that is nothing short of breathtaking. With each carefully crafted phrase, he gives linguistic shape and form to the intangible depths of the human experience, capturing the unknown profundity of the soul with a lyrical, rhythmic grace. Baldwin's prose is a tribute to the power of language, a reminder that with words, we can touch the very essence of what it means to be human.
"It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.”
Baldwin's prose is also an embodiment of paradoxical forces, weaving together desperation and hope, anger and peace. In this story, Baldwin gifts us with the most profound and evocative description of piano playing, a tribute to the human spirit, a testament to the transformative power of art and the infinite capacity of the human heart to both suffer and soar.
But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.
Music and art are often merely pain and suffering given concrete forms. Heroin, music, books, writing, art, each of us has our own drug to comfort us in our desolate inner parts where the agony is only ours.
Baldwin can be also be considered existential writer that masterfully captures the sense of the inevitability of suffering, and struggle to find meaning in it, connecting his writing to themes that run deep in Camus’ work, exploring the essential questions of human existence.
Baldwin's writing also contemplates the question of freedom, revealing the complexities and nuances that arise when we consider what it means to be truly free.
Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?
In a manner reminiscent of both Proust and Camus, Baldwin reveals the transcendence of pain through the sacredness of a particular moment, one that dwells deep in the senses and reminds us of the solace that can be found in the midst of struggle.
This is brought to life in the striking scenes of ocean swimming in both The Stranger and The Plague where the characters discover meaning in surrendering to the sensations of the water as finding solace in the unpredictable and often overwhelming tides of life. Such moments echo the profound and cathartic scene of piano playing, underscoring the power of finding meaning in the present and the potential for beauty in even the most trying of circumstances.
He hit something in all of them, he hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. Creole began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never knew, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
"I believe not," he said and smiled, "but that's never stopped anyone from trying."
He looked at me. ”Has it?" I realized, with this mocking look, that there stood between us, forever; beyond the power of time or forgiveness, the fact that I had held silence- so long- when he had needed human speech to help him. He turned back to the window. "No, there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem- well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it. You know?" I said nothing. "Well you know," he said, impatiently, "Why do people suffer? Maybe it's better to do something to give it a reason, any reason. "But we just agreed," I said, "that there's no way not to suffer. Isn't it better; then, just to take it?"
"But nobody just takes it," Sonny cried, "that's what I'm telling you everybody tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people try-it's not your way."
It is hard not to be shaken to the core by Baldwin’s nearly perfect, soul-piercing writing. His poignant themes are a reflection of the collective psychology of the time and space in which they were written, exploring the ways in which our destinies are shaped by circumstance, identity, and geography. Yet, amidst this intricate exploration, Baldwin's words are speaking to the universal truths of human experience that remain as vital and relevant today as they were when first penned. His prose is a haunting meditation on the beauty and pain of existence.
A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.
Baldwin's writing, as Leonard aptly observed, evokes the beauty of Proust's prose. It transcends the confines of plot and structure, weaving a tapestry of memories and emotions that float seamlessly through time and space. It is in those specific moments that Baldwin's writing truly shines, painting vivid pictures with a precise clarity of detail that is nothing short of breathtaking. With each carefully crafted phrase, he gives linguistic shape and form to the intangible depths of the human experience, capturing the unknown profundity of the soul with a lyrical, rhythmic grace. Baldwin's prose is a tribute to the power of language, a reminder that with words, we can touch the very essence of what it means to be human.
"It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.”
Baldwin's prose is also an embodiment of paradoxical forces, weaving together desperation and hope, anger and peace. In this story, Baldwin gifts us with the most profound and evocative description of piano playing, a tribute to the human spirit, a testament to the transformative power of art and the infinite capacity of the human heart to both suffer and soar.
But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.
Music and art are often merely pain and suffering given concrete forms. Heroin, music, books, writing, art, each of us has our own drug to comfort us in our desolate inner parts where the agony is only ours.
Baldwin can be also be considered existential writer that masterfully captures the sense of the inevitability of suffering, and struggle to find meaning in it, connecting his writing to themes that run deep in Camus’ work, exploring the essential questions of human existence.
Baldwin's writing also contemplates the question of freedom, revealing the complexities and nuances that arise when we consider what it means to be truly free.
Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?
In a manner reminiscent of both Proust and Camus, Baldwin reveals the transcendence of pain through the sacredness of a particular moment, one that dwells deep in the senses and reminds us of the solace that can be found in the midst of struggle.
This is brought to life in the striking scenes of ocean swimming in both The Stranger and The Plague where the characters discover meaning in surrendering to the sensations of the water as finding solace in the unpredictable and often overwhelming tides of life. Such moments echo the profound and cathartic scene of piano playing, underscoring the power of finding meaning in the present and the potential for beauty in even the most trying of circumstances.
He hit something in all of them, he hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. Creole began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never knew, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
October 13, 2023
Read with the Short Story Club some time ago
I loved Giovanni's Room but I was moved to tears by this short story. The story about two brothers. One is teacher dealing with loss, the other is a heroin addict coping with life with the help of Jazz. I am so sorry i did not review this story when i read it, 4 moths ago. I could have tried to do it justice but now all I can say is to read it.
I loved Giovanni's Room but I was moved to tears by this short story. The story about two brothers. One is teacher dealing with loss, the other is a heroin addict coping with life with the help of Jazz. I am so sorry i did not review this story when i read it, 4 moths ago. I could have tried to do it justice but now all I can say is to read it.
August 9, 2013
I guess Sonny's Blues is OK if you like that sort of thing. In this case, that sort of thing being nearly perfectly crafted fiction. That sort of thing being a story that's so universal and so timeless that it can be felt by any and everybody on the face of the earth. This sort of thing being the kind of story every writer should be aspiring to write before his or her days on this earth are through. Baldwin is simply the most amazing person I've never known, and if I don't read every single word he's ever put on paper before my life is over, my entire life will have been a supreme failure.
Again, as with Giovanni's Room, the story itself is completely secondary and deceptively simple. It's about two bothers and the manner in which they lose touch due to the younger brother's drug addiction and then reconnect and gain mutual understanding through Jazz. It's this last element that makes Sonny's Blues so wonderfully transcendent because Baldwin understands Jazz in a manner that I don't think anyone else in the world ever has. At the very least, he explains it in a manner that will leave no one confused as to the art form's meaning and purpose. Jazz is pain and suffering given rhythm and sound; Jazz is life given melody. And it is simply not possible to read the final passages of this story and not understand that; not feel it in the deepest reaches of your being. There is music in those final paragraphs. Baldwin writes of the experience of listening to his brother play in a manner that leaves you feeling like you could be in a Jazz bar yourself, or at a poetry slam, or sitting in the audience of the most passionate one man show in existence. His writing is poetic, moving, and magical. There's even a feeling of the preacher in the pulpit during those sections. If you read it and don't have tears in your eyes, I'm not sure I want to know you.
Of course there's more to the story than even just that; it wouldn't be Baldwin if there weren't. There's themes about how irrevocably we are changed by the places in which we've grown up and the places we've been (both physically and mentally). Themes about how things never really change in this world and in this country especially. Themes about how a parent's life long pain can be hidden from their children but still affect their lives in the long run. It's the question about whether or not things ever fully change that I find to be most interesting. Living in this 2013 world in which a young black man was recently murdered for wearing a hoodie and walking down the street and his white murderer gets away with it facing no punishment whatsoever leaves me wondering if we've actually changed at all from the 1957 world in which the story was published. A story that features a young black man being run down by a car driven by four white men who all get away with it. What Sonny said about himself applies to us as a nation: "nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just older."
Again, as with Giovanni's Room, the story itself is completely secondary and deceptively simple. It's about two bothers and the manner in which they lose touch due to the younger brother's drug addiction and then reconnect and gain mutual understanding through Jazz. It's this last element that makes Sonny's Blues so wonderfully transcendent because Baldwin understands Jazz in a manner that I don't think anyone else in the world ever has. At the very least, he explains it in a manner that will leave no one confused as to the art form's meaning and purpose. Jazz is pain and suffering given rhythm and sound; Jazz is life given melody. And it is simply not possible to read the final passages of this story and not understand that; not feel it in the deepest reaches of your being. There is music in those final paragraphs. Baldwin writes of the experience of listening to his brother play in a manner that leaves you feeling like you could be in a Jazz bar yourself, or at a poetry slam, or sitting in the audience of the most passionate one man show in existence. His writing is poetic, moving, and magical. There's even a feeling of the preacher in the pulpit during those sections. If you read it and don't have tears in your eyes, I'm not sure I want to know you.
Of course there's more to the story than even just that; it wouldn't be Baldwin if there weren't. There's themes about how irrevocably we are changed by the places in which we've grown up and the places we've been (both physically and mentally). Themes about how things never really change in this world and in this country especially. Themes about how a parent's life long pain can be hidden from their children but still affect their lives in the long run. It's the question about whether or not things ever fully change that I find to be most interesting. Living in this 2013 world in which a young black man was recently murdered for wearing a hoodie and walking down the street and his white murderer gets away with it facing no punishment whatsoever leaves me wondering if we've actually changed at all from the 1957 world in which the story was published. A story that features a young black man being run down by a car driven by four white men who all get away with it. What Sonny said about himself applies to us as a nation: "nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just older."
March 23, 2023
The nameless narrator gently led me through 1950s Harlem. He has an eye for beauty, scarred with memories of vicarious pain, dulled and lifted by a crescendo of jazz piano, played by a tortured soul, seeking release.
It opens with a teacher travelling to work, learning from the newspaper that his younger brother has been arrested for peddling and using heroin. He feels ice in his belly: he can't believe it, and yet he acknowledges his own denial of Sonny's problems over many years.
His musings swish back and forth, recalling Sonny as a child with “light in his face”, how he promised his mother to look out for Sonny but didn't, the likely futures of the boys he teaches, and his own escape from youthful indiscretions to professional respectability. But at what cost?
“Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap.”
Sonny's escape was piano - and drugs. Or drugs and piano. Can he have one without the other?
Image: Hands on a keyboard, in sepia (Source)
Suffering, beauty, and transcendence
Suffering is unavoidable. We can only strive to constrain and ameliorate it. But from the deepest pain can come the greatest beauty. It's only when the narrator suffers that he reaches out to his brother again:
“My trouble made his real.”
And Sonny opens up to his brother who finally wants to understand. It's raw.
“It was actually when I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or I didn't really have to play, it just came out of me, it was there.”...
“‘When she was singing before… her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes - when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And - and sure.’"
Music transcends and transports:
“And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there.”...
“Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others.”
What price freedom?
“Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.”
But free from what?
“For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling.”
So ends the story. The cup of trembling could be a nod to at least two Old Testament verses (Baldwin was raised by a preacher), each suggesting a slightly different interpretation:
• Zechariah 12:2
• Isaiah 51:22
Quotes
• “They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.” [Harlem boys]
• “Most of the houses in which we had grown up had vanished, as had the stores from which we had stolen, the basements in which we had first tried sex, the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks. But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.”
• “When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore.” [Barmaid]
• “It ain't a question of his being a good boy… nor of his having good sense. It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under.’...
• ‘You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you's there.’” [Opposite of victim blaming]
Short story club
I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story here.
You can join the group here.
It opens with a teacher travelling to work, learning from the newspaper that his younger brother has been arrested for peddling and using heroin. He feels ice in his belly: he can't believe it, and yet he acknowledges his own denial of Sonny's problems over many years.
His musings swish back and forth, recalling Sonny as a child with “light in his face”, how he promised his mother to look out for Sonny but didn't, the likely futures of the boys he teaches, and his own escape from youthful indiscretions to professional respectability. But at what cost?
“Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap.”
Sonny's escape was piano - and drugs. Or drugs and piano. Can he have one without the other?
Image: Hands on a keyboard, in sepia (Source)
Suffering, beauty, and transcendence
Suffering is unavoidable. We can only strive to constrain and ameliorate it. But from the deepest pain can come the greatest beauty. It's only when the narrator suffers that he reaches out to his brother again:
“My trouble made his real.”
And Sonny opens up to his brother who finally wants to understand. It's raw.
“It was actually when I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or I didn't really have to play, it just came out of me, it was there.”...
“‘When she was singing before… her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes - when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And - and sure.’"
Music transcends and transports:
“And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there.”...
“Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others.”
What price freedom?
“Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.”
But free from what?
“For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling.”
So ends the story. The cup of trembling could be a nod to at least two Old Testament verses (Baldwin was raised by a preacher), each suggesting a slightly different interpretation:
• Zechariah 12:2
• Isaiah 51:22
Quotes
• “They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.” [Harlem boys]
• “Most of the houses in which we had grown up had vanished, as had the stores from which we had stolen, the basements in which we had first tried sex, the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks. But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.”
• “When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore.” [Barmaid]
• “It ain't a question of his being a good boy… nor of his having good sense. It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under.’...
• ‘You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you's there.’” [Opposite of victim blaming]
Short story club
I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story here.
You can join the group here.
July 15, 2024
I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?I have never read James Baldwin's fiction before. How lucky am I? How much more fortunate am I that this is my first interaction.
If you ask many people who is the greatest author who ever lived, there are names you won't miss. Tolstoy, Dickens, Morrison, Baldwin. After reading this short story, I can see why. Sonny's Blues follows the journey of two brothers. Our narrator and his brother, Sonny.
Every theme you'd want explored in a novel is touched on in these pages. There's an unavoidable philosophizing about the cyclic nature of life. About how some people are sealed to certain fates simply because of their identity and their geography. Our narrator is a math teacher. He hears news about Sonny getting caught with heroin. This means Sonny will end up in rehab. It gives our narrator great anxiety.
A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.When our narrator contemplates the fact that Sonny's fate could easily become his students' he almost accepts the inevitability of it.
...it happened and here I was, talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might, everyone of them for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could.Sonny started using when he was just slightly older than these boys. These kids were getting meaner, surlier, as though the upcoming exposure to adulthood and vulnerability made them feel like they needed chemical crutches to help them escape it. Hell, they were probably knee-deep in problems them. Our narrator's mother tells him to look out for Sonny. Not because Sonny was showing the tell-tale signs of a problem child but because ...you got a brother. And the world ain't changed.
Suffering is inevitable and I wish people wouldn't glorify strife and even look forward to it. But, there's no way not to suffer. Sonny hates this key ingredient of the human condition. It's repulsive to think you have to suffer than much.
There's something to be said for going away and thinking you'll come back a changed man. For Sonny, When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn't changed, I was just--older. Eventually, what saves Sonny or seems to give him a lifeline, is his music, his blues. All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. The narrator explains Sonny's conversations with his instruments, his story with the notes and the keys until eventually they harmonize and those listening bear witness to two old friends uniting. The relationship between our narrator and his brother can be saved if only he can learn to sit and listen to Sonny's soul. And perhaps the world would be a much peaceful place if our elders would just listen.
December 5, 2024
What a powerful story! Baldwin hits the essence and the mood, creating the explosion of feelings and emotions that you hoped would happen.
March 30, 2023
5★
“The moment Sonny and I started into the house I had the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had-almost died trying to escape.”
Sonny is the narrator’s younger brother who has just been released from prison. Sonny asks if they can go the long way home so he can see what’s changed in New York since he’s been gone. Conversation is awkward.
The narrator is a high school teacher and remembers how shocked he was when he found out Sonny was arrested for using and selling heroin. He always thought Sonny was a bit wild but not crazy. He pretty much put him out of his mind and got on with his own life.
“I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice, It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.”
While Sonny was in prison, his brother concentrated on his own life with his wife and kids and teaching. But when there was a family tragedy, he felt compelled to write to Sonny, not only to tell him what happened but to reconnect as brothers.
Sonny is a bit shy and private, by nature. Growing up in Harlem, he wanted only to escape. Being high was one way. Now that he’s back, he’s serious about being a jazz musician, but he knows the temptations and pain are still there, waiting for him.
“He turned back to the window, looking out. ‘All that hatred down there,’ he said, ‘all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.’ ”
Great story that Baldwin understood well from his own life – the growing up in Harlem, the need to escape. I wonder if much has changed since it was published in 1957.
This is another read from the Goodreads Short Story Club group. You can download a PDF of the story here: https://sfponline.org/Uploads/372/son...
“The moment Sonny and I started into the house I had the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had-almost died trying to escape.”
Sonny is the narrator’s younger brother who has just been released from prison. Sonny asks if they can go the long way home so he can see what’s changed in New York since he’s been gone. Conversation is awkward.
The narrator is a high school teacher and remembers how shocked he was when he found out Sonny was arrested for using and selling heroin. He always thought Sonny was a bit wild but not crazy. He pretty much put him out of his mind and got on with his own life.
“I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice, It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream.”
While Sonny was in prison, his brother concentrated on his own life with his wife and kids and teaching. But when there was a family tragedy, he felt compelled to write to Sonny, not only to tell him what happened but to reconnect as brothers.
Sonny is a bit shy and private, by nature. Growing up in Harlem, he wanted only to escape. Being high was one way. Now that he’s back, he’s serious about being a jazz musician, but he knows the temptations and pain are still there, waiting for him.
“He turned back to the window, looking out. ‘All that hatred down there,’ he said, ‘all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.’ ”
Great story that Baldwin understood well from his own life – the growing up in Harlem, the need to escape. I wonder if much has changed since it was published in 1957.
This is another read from the Goodreads Short Story Club group. You can download a PDF of the story here: https://sfponline.org/Uploads/372/son...
January 4, 2019
I finished reading last night... the story goes straight to your heart, well written..
September 6, 2024
Intensely moving, and although there are some rays of light it feels as though the brothers are destined to never escape the cycle of poverty and injustice they've known their whole lives, nor the perils and friction that mark their relationship.
December 8, 2015
James Baldwin reminds us that childhood isn't rife with happiness like everyone else paints it, that--for most--life isn't a fairy-tale, but far from it. Sonny's Blues is so real it should come with a warning label.
August 19, 2020
“Let’s play catch”, I said.
But she held the ball and made a face at me.
“My mother don’t let me play with niggers”, she told me.
I did not know what the word meant. But my skin grew warm. I stuck my tongue out at her.
Em três contos a raiar a perfeição, James Baldwin prova que se pode falar de tensão racial e de conflitos familiares num sussurro, que as mensagens nem sempre precisam de ser berradas para surtirem efeito. A verdadeira literatura é subtil.
Sonny’s Blues – 4*
The Rockpile – 5*
Previous Condition – 5*
“You the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters – and you supposed to let them run off and get half killed. But I expect, “she added, rising from the chair, dropping the cardboard fan, “your Daddy’ll make you tell the truth.”
But she held the ball and made a face at me.
“My mother don’t let me play with niggers”, she told me.
I did not know what the word meant. But my skin grew warm. I stuck my tongue out at her.
Em três contos a raiar a perfeição, James Baldwin prova que se pode falar de tensão racial e de conflitos familiares num sussurro, que as mensagens nem sempre precisam de ser berradas para surtirem efeito. A verdadeira literatura é subtil.
Sonny’s Blues – 4*
The Rockpile – 5*
Previous Condition – 5*
“You the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters – and you supposed to let them run off and get half killed. But I expect, “she added, rising from the chair, dropping the cardboard fan, “your Daddy’ll make you tell the truth.”
March 9, 2023
مویه های سانی، دومین داستان از داستان های کوتاه جهان (۱۴) محافظ دوشیزگان
مترجم محمد علی مهمان نوازان
سانی
یکی از پسرهای محله هارلم
یکی از آنهای که با شتاب داشتند بزرگ میشدند و سرهاشان یک مرتبه به سقف کوتاه امکانات حقیقی شان اصابت میکرد.
روایتی تاثیرگذار و زیبا با قلمی گیرا، من هم مانند برادر سانی احساس کردم اگر شرایط بگونه دیگری بود مثل بچه ها زیر گریه میزدم.
مترجم محمد علی مهمان نوازان
سانی
یکی از پسرهای محله هارلم
یکی از آنهای که با شتاب داشتند بزرگ میشدند و سرهاشان یک مرتبه به سقف کوتاه امکانات حقیقی شان اصابت میکرد.
روایتی تاثیرگذار و زیبا با قلمی گیرا، من هم مانند برادر سانی احساس کردم اگر شرایط بگونه دیگری بود مثل بچه ها زیر گریه میزدم.
March 10, 2018
I can't believe I'm giving four 🌟 for a book I had to read for school. But wonders can happen!
This story is about two brothers, a wannabe musician and a maths teacher, the first is a heroin addict, the second is in good shape. What I liked about this book is the message it transmits, and that one should not feel guilty upon thinking that one didn't protect his loved ones well enough, because honestly? No matter how you try you cannot completely protect them, but you can let them know you're there for them though.
Such a beautiful writing style also.
This story is about two brothers, a wannabe musician and a maths teacher, the first is a heroin addict, the second is in good shape. What I liked about this book is the message it transmits, and that one should not feel guilty upon thinking that one didn't protect his loved ones well enough, because honestly? No matter how you try you cannot completely protect them, but you can let them know you're there for them though.
Such a beautiful writing style also.
April 3, 2023
I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me.
Beautiful moments, crystallized and trenchant, pepper this short story from James Baldwin. There is a confusing honesty in this tale of brothers; by that I mean the honesty of wrestling with confusion and never quite understanding all the struggles and contradictions of the world.
Some stories are too big to tell. But Baldwin was a writer who did a fine job reaching for the truth.
Beautiful moments, crystallized and trenchant, pepper this short story from James Baldwin. There is a confusing honesty in this tale of brothers; by that I mean the honesty of wrestling with confusion and never quite understanding all the struggles and contradictions of the world.
Some stories are too big to tell. But Baldwin was a writer who did a fine job reaching for the truth.
March 20, 2023
Two brothers deal with their suffering in very different ways. Will they be there for each other despite their differences? What do we owe our family?
You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you’s there.
”Well, Sonny,” I said gently, you know people can’t always do exactly what they want to do—“
“No, I don’t know that,” said Sonny, surprising me. “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?”
You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you’s there.
”Well, Sonny,” I said gently, you know people can’t always do exactly what they want to do—“
“No, I don’t know that,” said Sonny, surprising me. “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?”
Read
March 12, 202310/10
May 6, 2024
Watch as we go down, together into a familiar old darkness, a crude storm within....we will never be okay but we may be okay with not being okay, with our blues and our art and our words. It all starts with the understanding part. Sonny screams out "how low, hello." Can you lend an ear? Can you save a life?
December 6, 2018
An incredibly touching piece of writing, beautifully executed
October 6, 2024
3.5 rounded up to 4 stars. This is my first book by James Baldwin, but definitely won't be my last. I loved his beautiful, clear and elegant writing style. Although I enjoyed all three the short stories Sonny's Blues was definitely my favourite. These stories with their themes of violence, suffering and discrimination allows you to walk in someone else's shoes for a while.
"These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities."
February 24, 2009
Achingly beautiful and fantastically written. What I love most about this short story is how well this can be adapted into so many lives and how painful any kind of addiction can be and how tragic and life-changing it is to overcome it. It caught me off guard, how much I felt for Sonny, and how much I truly enjoyed it.
February 3, 2016
No one writes about music and solitude as Baldwin does.
June 6, 2025
Never have I found myself tearing up so often at a story whilst reading it as much I have with this one. It explores many themes of suffering and disconnect that all souls can harmonize with; it draws many vivid pictures of not only the abuse of substance as a coping mechanism and relief, but the very things that lead people there. It shows us briefly how we can be quick to judge and forget that we all cope with suffering differently, and it's very few of us who can really make it out of that cycle; never escaping the cycle of suffering as it reminds us that, maybe, suffering is permanent, however how little of us manage to learn how to deal with our suffering.
The older/younger brother dynamic is also very striking, and adds a whole layer or relatability to the main characters of this story, making it all the more realer. And no man could've written it as well as James Baldwin with his incredible insight and wisdom on the Harlem landscape in which he was brought up in.
The older/younger brother dynamic is also very striking, and adds a whole layer or relatability to the main characters of this story, making it all the more realer. And no man could've written it as well as James Baldwin with his incredible insight and wisdom on the Harlem landscape in which he was brought up in.
December 27, 2022
My Dad has a small collection of Penguin 60’s short story books which I will work my way through. This was my introduction to James Baldwin. A simple story of two brothers who drift apart because of one’s drug problem - Sonny. The other brother is simply the narrator of the story. They are reconciled when Sonny’s daughter Grace dies and the narrator seeks him out to make amends. Finishing in a nightclub where Sonny’s jazz piano playing shows how he can turn his suffering into something good. Wonderful writing depicting its time and how we probably haven’t moved that much forward.
October 11, 2019
One of the best stories I've ever read this year. If you haven't cried while reading it, there must be something wrong with you.
Want to read
June 8, 2024The Greatest 25 Short Stories of All Time According to Forbes - #19: https://www.forbes.com/sites/entertai...
January 21, 2020
Sonny's Blues begins with the unnamed narrator discovering that his brother has been picked up for using and selling heroin.
This question about responsibility is a common one when it comes to family and friends' struggles. We often attribute blame solely to the addict, but Baldwin asks us to think more broadly, both in terms of individual and community trauma that leads to maladaptive coping ("It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under", p. 56), but also the ways that we can save each other without being enabling or codependent. Baldwin suggests that we can't be separated from our larger context, even when we attempt to leave it: Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap (p. 54). That context can save us.
Although this story is ostensibly about Sonny, I was most curious about the narrator and his courage in coming to trust Sonny, listen to him, and let him be himself. I liked his reflective voice, that he himself was open to change, and that this was a process, one not one that was much easier than that which Sonny was going through.
This is the second piece of Baldwin's that I've read this month. What impressed me about both this and Go Tell It On the Mountain was Baldwin's skill with dialogue, but also his ability to describe wordless experiences – like his descriptions of spiritual conversions in Mountain and jazz and relationships here:
I read this story as part of GR's Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) short story challenge.
I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.The narrator talked about Sonny's arrest with a childhood friend, also someone who has abused drugs. The friend said: "Ain't nothing you can do. Can't much help old Sonny no more, I guess" – then immediately turned this around, "Funny thing... when I saw the papers this morning, the first thing I asked myself was if I had anything to do with it. I felt sort of responsible" (p. 51).
It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn't doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done. (p. 49)
This question about responsibility is a common one when it comes to family and friends' struggles. We often attribute blame solely to the addict, but Baldwin asks us to think more broadly, both in terms of individual and community trauma that leads to maladaptive coping ("It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under", p. 56), but also the ways that we can save each other without being enabling or codependent. Baldwin suggests that we can't be separated from our larger context, even when we attempt to leave it: Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap (p. 54). That context can save us.
Although this story is ostensibly about Sonny, I was most curious about the narrator and his courage in coming to trust Sonny, listen to him, and let him be himself. I liked his reflective voice, that he himself was open to change, and that this was a process, one not one that was much easier than that which Sonny was going through.
This is the second piece of Baldwin's that I've read this month. What impressed me about both this and Go Tell It On the Mountain was Baldwin's skill with dialogue, but also his ability to describe wordless experiences – like his descriptions of spiritual conversions in Mountain and jazz and relationships here:
Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing–he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water. (p. 67-68)Baldwin's use of language is beautiful and leaves me feeling awkward, tongue-tied, struggling to describe his writings.
I read this story as part of GR's Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) short story challenge.
April 25, 2023
I love the eloquence of Baldwin’s writing. Powerful and stripped back expressing the anger and despair felt by so many black people in 1920s Harlem. Sonny’s Blues is a classic and timeless, it could be anyone’s blues. You relate, the stories resonate. You can feel the tension expressed by each character as they work through, the rage, contempt and disadvantage. These short clips are a small window into their lives and makes you want to read more.
August 26, 2016
4.5/5 Stars.
I really like the writing style of James Baldwin and I enjoyed the emotional journey I was transported on through this story.
I really like the writing style of James Baldwin and I enjoyed the emotional journey I was transported on through this story.
March 12, 2024
"The seven years' difference in our ages lay between us like a chasm: I wondered if these years would ever operate between us as a bridge. I was remembering, and it made it hard to catch my breath, that I had been there when he was born; and I had heard the first words he had ever spoken. When he started to walk, he walked from our mother straight to me. I caught him just before he fell when he took the first steps he ever took in this world."
James Baldwin is almost tooo good at prose, what a beautiful homage to brotherhood, race, life and music💙
James Baldwin is almost tooo good at prose, what a beautiful homage to brotherhood, race, life and music💙
July 21, 2024
"I wanted to say more, but I couldn't. I wanted to talk about will power and how life could be - well, beautiful. I wanted to say that it was all within; but was it? or, rather, wasn't that exactly the trouble? And I wanted to promise that I would never fail him again. But it would all have sounded - empty words and lies."
the intersection of math and music is so beautiful. sonny living to play music, the narrator teaching math in order to live and have a future despite knowing that math alone isn't emotionally enough to help a boy escape "the trap". the narrator not understanding how sonny could possibly live through music, although music is math and math is music, but being willing to communicate and meet in the middle through it. thank you for helping me see how stunning the blues are.
"He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing - he had been there, and he knew."
the intersection of math and music is so beautiful. sonny living to play music, the narrator teaching math in order to live and have a future despite knowing that math alone isn't emotionally enough to help a boy escape "the trap". the narrator not understanding how sonny could possibly live through music, although music is math and math is music, but being willing to communicate and meet in the middle through it. thank you for helping me see how stunning the blues are.
"He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing - he had been there, and he knew."
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