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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).
90 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
About the author
James Baldwin
395 books18.5k 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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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.
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."
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.
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 9, 2023
Powerful and deeply moving story of two brothers trying to come to terms with their relationship amidst crime, drug abuse and potential wasted. Baldwin is one of the most brutally honest writers I have ever encountered - he is also extremely prophetic in his ability to see past the failure of policies that have worsened the plight of African Americans. Highest recommended.
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.
October 22, 2016
This review probably contains spoilers.
It's the 1950's in Harlem, and times are hard for two young men , brothers, who have lost their parents and are now trying to find their own way in life, separately, with differing ideas about how to go about it, but still connected, as brothers are everywhere. The younger brother, Sonny, knows he has to escape Harlem to live the kind of life he wants. He loves music, Jazz and Blues, and he wants to earn his way in life doing what he loves. His older brother, the unnamed narrator, let's call him James, is a teacher, and he is more conservative. He thinks Sonny is making a bad choice, one that will lead to failure, or worse. Also, James feels guilty because he promised their mother he would look out for Sonny, but Sonny slips away, slips into the life he always dreamed of.
Baldwin's vision of life for these two brothers is not a pretty one, and I'm sure it reflects his own struggles about family and future. What he shows us in this story is that life's struggles can be overcome, and the bonds of family, of brotherhood, are never really lost, and that something like music can be the catalyst that brings us together, and heal the wounds of life.
It's the 1950's in Harlem, and times are hard for two young men , brothers, who have lost their parents and are now trying to find their own way in life, separately, with differing ideas about how to go about it, but still connected, as brothers are everywhere. The younger brother, Sonny, knows he has to escape Harlem to live the kind of life he wants. He loves music, Jazz and Blues, and he wants to earn his way in life doing what he loves. His older brother, the unnamed narrator, let's call him James, is a teacher, and he is more conservative. He thinks Sonny is making a bad choice, one that will lead to failure, or worse. Also, James feels guilty because he promised their mother he would look out for Sonny, but Sonny slips away, slips into the life he always dreamed of.
Baldwin's vision of life for these two brothers is not a pretty one, and I'm sure it reflects his own struggles about family and future. What he shows us in this story is that life's struggles can be overcome, and the bonds of family, of brotherhood, are never really lost, and that something like music can be the catalyst that brings us together, and heal the wounds of life.
March 11, 2023
"Sonny's Blues" is a deeply emotional short story about two African American brothers at several points in their lives. The narrator is the more traditional man who works as a high school algebra teacher in Harlem. The younger brother, Sonny, has done jail time for heroin sales. Sonny feels things very deeply and finds an escape from suffering in contemporary jazz. Sonny's brother is grieving after the death of a family member. When the narrator goes to Sonny's jazz club to hear Sonny play the blues, the brothers reach an emotional understanding. It's through the melancholy music that Sonny is able to transform his suffering into something beautiful and meaningful.
The 1957 short story incorporates music, religion, grief, addiction, and the pain of poverty in Harlem into its plot. James Baldwin's writing just blew me away with its memorable moments - when their mother revealed their tragic family history, when a revival choir sings "That Old Ship of Zion," and when Sonny and his friends play the blues.
The 1957 short story incorporates music, religion, grief, addiction, and the pain of poverty in Harlem into its plot. James Baldwin's writing just blew me away with its memorable moments - when their mother revealed their tragic family history, when a revival choir sings "That Old Ship of Zion," and when Sonny and his friends play the blues.
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..
March 13, 2023
“It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality.”
In Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin tells us about Harlem, and two brothers who have survived a number of tragedies, the older brother trying to help the younger one avoid mistakes that could lead to even more heartbreak. They struggle to understand each other, and in the end, connect in a way that takes your breath away.
There is no one like Baldwin. One of my favorite of his many talents is his skill with details. He uses precise dialogue and movement and sounds and thoughts to conjure life for us, life so true that we can’t help but see it, can’t help but feel it. And once we’ve seen it and felt it, we know something we didn’t know before.
Revealing, artistic, haunting.
“He don’t want to die. He wants to live. Don’t nobody want to die, ever.”
In Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin tells us about Harlem, and two brothers who have survived a number of tragedies, the older brother trying to help the younger one avoid mistakes that could lead to even more heartbreak. They struggle to understand each other, and in the end, connect in a way that takes your breath away.
There is no one like Baldwin. One of my favorite of his many talents is his skill with details. He uses precise dialogue and movement and sounds and thoughts to conjure life for us, life so true that we can’t help but see it, can’t help but feel it. And once we’ve seen it and felt it, we know something we didn’t know before.
Revealing, artistic, haunting.
“He don’t want to die. He wants to live. Don’t nobody want to die, ever.”
October 27, 2025
There's something indescribably unique about the way Baldwin writes especially when he writes about Black life, pain, love, and survival. He never dramatizes or softens it. He doesn't add unnecessary decoration, nor does he strip it down to make it easier to digest.
His writing is honest, raw in the most delicate way and because of that, it doesn't simply ask you to understand; it makes you feel. It holds your face gently but firmly in the truth and says: Be here. Don't look away.
There are books I love because I can debate, analyse, or logically agree with them and in those cases, I always have the words. But then there are stories like Sonny's Blues.
Stories that don't ask for logic first, but for the heart. They don't wait to be explained; they are felt. They sit quietly in your chest, in that place where words don't easily reach.
And even when I try to explain why it touched me, language fails a little because what Baldwin writes isn't meant to be simply understood. It's meant to be carried.
What stayed with me most was how Baldwin writes about suffering and addiction, not as moral failures, but as human responses to unbearable pain. He doesn't excuse them, but he understands them. Sonny isn't addicted because he is weak; he is addicted because, as he says, "there's no way not to suffer... but you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." That line destroyed me.
Because it's true, nobody chooses pain, they just choose their way of surviving it. Some choose silence. Some choose work. Some choose music. Some choose drugs. It doesn't make the pain smaller, it just makes it temporarily livable.
And that's why Sonny's music feels so important. It's not about talent, it's about survival. When he plays, it feels like he's taking all that darkness and turning it into something that can be heard, shared, maybe even understood. And for a moment, his suffering isn't just something that ruins him, it becomes something that connects him to others.
This story doesn't promise healing. It just says: we suffer, out we try anyway. And somehow, that's enough. Baldwin's writing leaves you a little quieter inside, not sad exactly, just aware. Aware that pain, love, addiction, and art all exist together, and that maybe that's what makes being alive
bearable.
Also this reminds me of specific lyrics on mirror by Kendrick ( of course I was going to compare the two of them)
🎵”Don't you point a finger just to point a
finger
'Cause critical thinkin' is a deal-breaker
Faith in one man is a ship sinking
Do yourself a favor and get a mirror
that mirror grievance
Then point it at me so the reflection
can mirror freedom…
I choose me, I'm sorry”🎵
I loved the other two stories but this one just hit different.
His writing is honest, raw in the most delicate way and because of that, it doesn't simply ask you to understand; it makes you feel. It holds your face gently but firmly in the truth and says: Be here. Don't look away.
There are books I love because I can debate, analyse, or logically agree with them and in those cases, I always have the words. But then there are stories like Sonny's Blues.
Stories that don't ask for logic first, but for the heart. They don't wait to be explained; they are felt. They sit quietly in your chest, in that place where words don't easily reach.
And even when I try to explain why it touched me, language fails a little because what Baldwin writes isn't meant to be simply understood. It's meant to be carried.
What stayed with me most was how Baldwin writes about suffering and addiction, not as moral failures, but as human responses to unbearable pain. He doesn't excuse them, but he understands them. Sonny isn't addicted because he is weak; he is addicted because, as he says, "there's no way not to suffer... but you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." That line destroyed me.
Because it's true, nobody chooses pain, they just choose their way of surviving it. Some choose silence. Some choose work. Some choose music. Some choose drugs. It doesn't make the pain smaller, it just makes it temporarily livable.
And that's why Sonny's music feels so important. It's not about talent, it's about survival. When he plays, it feels like he's taking all that darkness and turning it into something that can be heard, shared, maybe even understood. And for a moment, his suffering isn't just something that ruins him, it becomes something that connects him to others.
This story doesn't promise healing. It just says: we suffer, out we try anyway. And somehow, that's enough. Baldwin's writing leaves you a little quieter inside, not sad exactly, just aware. Aware that pain, love, addiction, and art all exist together, and that maybe that's what makes being alive
bearable.
Also this reminds me of specific lyrics on mirror by Kendrick ( of course I was going to compare the two of them)
🎵”Don't you point a finger just to point a
finger
'Cause critical thinkin' is a deal-breaker
Faith in one man is a ship sinking
Do yourself a favor and get a mirror
that mirror grievance
Then point it at me so the reflection
can mirror freedom…
I choose me, I'm sorry”🎵
I loved the other two stories but this one just hit different.
February 6, 2017
Three short stories about life in Harlem for young black children. Other reviewers have pointed to the 1950's which seems right with situations described - eg mention of horse and cart deliveries, motor cars, the evolved state of jazz ("Like Louis Armstrong?"... "No. I'm not talking about none of that old-time, down-home crap.")
These are not happy memory stories, they are hard times. Themes include disconnection (and reconnection) of family, drugs, jazz, parental relationship / control of children, societal disconnection.
Well written, realistic and atmospheric - great description in these short, easy to read stories.
Four stars.
These are not happy memory stories, they are hard times. Themes include disconnection (and reconnection) of family, drugs, jazz, parental relationship / control of children, societal disconnection.
Well written, realistic and atmospheric - great description in these short, easy to read stories.
Four stars.
January 6, 2026
“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.”
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.
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.
February 18, 2024
”Creole started into something else — it was almost sardonic. It was Am I Blue. And as though he commanded, Sonny began to play. Something began to happen, and Creole let out the reigns. The dry, low Black man said something awful on the drums, Creole answered, and the drums talked back. Then the horn insisted, sweetly detached, perhaps, and Creole listened, commenting now and then, dry and driving, beautiful and calm and old. Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part of the family again.”
”And I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us longer than the sky.”
Reading James Baldwin’s fiction is much like listening to a classical theme and variations. In a very real sense, all of his fiction represents one continuous composition, and all the individual novels and stories are beautiful variations on Baldwin’s momentous theme of Pain, Sorrow, and Love.
The doomed or broken brother was a theme Baldwin returned to again and again. It made its first appearance here, in Sonny’s Blues, (1957) as an older, more conventional brother tries to understand and care for his drug addicted, jazz musician brother. Baldwin returns to it in Another Country, (1962) where Ida, for all her efforts, cannot save her big brother, Rufus, a tragic and doomed musician. And Sonny’s Blues almost reads as a short dress rehearsal for Baldwin’s final, great novel Just Above My Head, (1979) where Hal, the more rooted older brother looks back on the life of his quicksilver younger brother Arthur, a gospel/soul singer not destined for the long game.
Obviously, the theme of broken brothers, with all the pain, love and sorrow they imply, was deeply felt by Baldwin. In Sonny’s Blues he captured it brilliantly in absolutely gorgeous prose. He also came as close to capturing the essence of jazz in prose as has ever been accomplished.
Sonny’s Blues is sad, insightful, and stunningly beautiful. It is a minor masterpiece.
”And I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us longer than the sky.”
Reading James Baldwin’s fiction is much like listening to a classical theme and variations. In a very real sense, all of his fiction represents one continuous composition, and all the individual novels and stories are beautiful variations on Baldwin’s momentous theme of Pain, Sorrow, and Love.
The doomed or broken brother was a theme Baldwin returned to again and again. It made its first appearance here, in Sonny’s Blues, (1957) as an older, more conventional brother tries to understand and care for his drug addicted, jazz musician brother. Baldwin returns to it in Another Country, (1962) where Ida, for all her efforts, cannot save her big brother, Rufus, a tragic and doomed musician. And Sonny’s Blues almost reads as a short dress rehearsal for Baldwin’s final, great novel Just Above My Head, (1979) where Hal, the more rooted older brother looks back on the life of his quicksilver younger brother Arthur, a gospel/soul singer not destined for the long game.
Obviously, the theme of broken brothers, with all the pain, love and sorrow they imply, was deeply felt by Baldwin. In Sonny’s Blues he captured it brilliantly in absolutely gorgeous prose. He also came as close to capturing the essence of jazz in prose as has ever been accomplished.
Sonny’s Blues is sad, insightful, and stunningly beautiful. It is a minor masterpiece.
Want to Read
April 28, 2010Because I've read this excerpt I want to read the whole book: "All I know about music is that not many people really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. 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.
I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.
He hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. [He:] 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 new, 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 seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. 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 had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.
He hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air. [He:] 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 new, 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 seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. 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."
June 24, 2019
I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn’t wanted to know.
*
Well, the word had never before sounded as heavy, as real, as it sounded that afternoon [...]
*
[...] it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn't any way to reach him.
*
And then there are some who just live, really, in hell, and they know it and they see what's happening and they go right on.
*
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.
*
"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."
*
[...] and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get away from it and yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it.
*
[...] as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind. It's always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches.
*
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
*
You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it.
*
Well, the word had never before sounded as heavy, as real, as it sounded that afternoon [...]
*
[...] it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn't any way to reach him.
*
And then there are some who just live, really, in hell, and they know it and they see what's happening and they go right on.
*
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.
*
"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."
*
[...] and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get away from it and yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it.
*
[...] as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind. It's always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches.
*
And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
*
You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it.
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."
July 18, 2018
Empathy through suffering and the blues. This short story is some of the best elements of Baldwin's fiction used to convey the central themes that he wrote about. Though I feel that his best writing is his non-fiction (something he always disagreed with), he is still one of the great fiction writers of his generation. This was a short story that would have made Anton Chekhov proud with its depth and feel for humanity as represented by the two brothers. James Baldwin's ability to re-create Harlem is second only to James Joyce's ability to re-create Dublin.
"He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
The nameless protagonist tells the story of his brother and really his whole family. It is non-linear (showing that the magical realists did not have a monopoly on that in the post-war) and it is a distinctly urban tale. Harlem lives in this story and it is a key character in this story, but the journey of the brothers away from each other and back to each other is the heart of this tale. One had to recognize the pain of the other ("My trouble made his real."), and the other had to be willing to be ready to forgive. The protagonist and Sonny's reconciliation does not complete itself until they are in the jazz club (one of the most brilliant passages in 20th century fiction), but when it happens it brings the story to a unified whole.
"Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling."
"He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
The nameless protagonist tells the story of his brother and really his whole family. It is non-linear (showing that the magical realists did not have a monopoly on that in the post-war) and it is a distinctly urban tale. Harlem lives in this story and it is a key character in this story, but the journey of the brothers away from each other and back to each other is the heart of this tale. One had to recognize the pain of the other ("My trouble made his real."), and the other had to be willing to be ready to forgive. The protagonist and Sonny's reconciliation does not complete itself until they are in the jazz club (one of the most brilliant passages in 20th century fiction), but when it happens it brings the story to a unified whole.
"Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling."
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.
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