What do you think?
Rate this book
Nothing Personal: An Essay
James Baldwin's 1964 critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.
Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, 'NOTHING PERSONAL' is Baldwin's deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 - which were met with tear gas and rubber bullets the same year white supremacists entered the U.S. Capitol with little resistance, openly toting flags of the Confederacy - Baldwin's documentation of his own troubled times cuts to the core of where we find ourselves today.
Baldwin's thoughts move through an interconnected range of questions, from America's fixation on eternal youth, to its refusal to recognize the past, its addiction to consumerism, and the lovelessness that fuels it in its cities and popular culture. He recounts his own encounter with the police in a scene disturbingly similar to those we see today documented with ever increasing immediacy.
This edition also includes a new foreword from interdisciplinary scholar Imani Perry and an afterword from noted James Baldwin scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Both explore and situate the essay within the broader context of Baldwin's work, the Movement for Black Lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the presidency of Donald Trump.
'NOTHING PERSONAL' is both a eulogy and a declaration of will. In bringing this work into the 21st century, audiences new and old will take away fundamental and recurring truths about life in the US. It is both a call to action and an appeal to love and to life.
Running Time => 5hrs. and 50mins.
©2021 James Baldwin (P)2021 Random House Audio
Available for the first time in a stand-alone edition, 'NOTHING PERSONAL' is Baldwin's deep probe into the American condition. Considering the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 - which were met with tear gas and rubber bullets the same year white supremacists entered the U.S. Capitol with little resistance, openly toting flags of the Confederacy - Baldwin's documentation of his own troubled times cuts to the core of where we find ourselves today.
Baldwin's thoughts move through an interconnected range of questions, from America's fixation on eternal youth, to its refusal to recognize the past, its addiction to consumerism, and the lovelessness that fuels it in its cities and popular culture. He recounts his own encounter with the police in a scene disturbingly similar to those we see today documented with ever increasing immediacy.
This edition also includes a new foreword from interdisciplinary scholar Imani Perry and an afterword from noted James Baldwin scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Both explore and situate the essay within the broader context of Baldwin's work, the Movement for Black Lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the presidency of Donald Trump.
'NOTHING PERSONAL' is both a eulogy and a declaration of will. In bringing this work into the 21st century, audiences new and old will take away fundamental and recurring truths about life in the US. It is both a call to action and an appeal to love and to life.
Running Time => 5hrs. and 50mins.
©2021 James Baldwin (P)2021 Random House Audio
6 pages, Audible Audio
First published January 1, 1964
105 people are currently reading
6994 people want to read
About the author
James Baldwin
385 books16.8k 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews
August 22, 2021
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: It is hard for me to believe that this essay was, for a long time, relegated to text around Richard Avedon's amazing photos. The fact that Avedon and Baldwin knew each other, and since high school, hadn't made my radar screens either. This is the first time I've ever seen the essay, and how I wish it wasn't.
Author Baldwin was a man whose vision was clearer than most people's sight.
Possibly the best proof you can have that Baldwin, a skinny gay Black kid, was a man out of time is this:
He already foresaw the gigantic changes in humor that our generation is undergoing; they were underway even then. The Smothers Brothers on their three-season comedy show sparked a revolution in what could and should be grounds for humor. It makes my eyes water to remember how much guff the "comedy" of my parents' generation desensitized them to. They were both alive before the last vestiges of vaudeville were destroyed by radio. Blackface and minstrel songs were things they heard and saw. Racism was in the air, was utterly pervasive...it was the time of Jim Crow laws, it was the time when lynchings were happening with regularity, and a flag was hung out in front of the NAACP Building in New York:
Baldwin, Harlem native that he was, would've seen that flag time and time again, would've associated it with his own Black body, his own maleness.
This is something I understand viscerally. The police do not, as a rule, like faggots; if one is found in any place or at any time being faggoty in pubic, they will harass you and intimidate you to the maximum extent they can get away with; if reported, their defense is "that's a lie" and I promise you your word against their words amounts to less than nothing. This is my lived experience, so arguments are not welcome.
Imani Perry, author of the Foreword to this edition of Nothing Personal, says this of our deeply American inability to believe others' experiences are real:
It is functionally impossible to believe, believe in, trust another when you don't believe in your own value to the point that you feel compelled to ask your body to endure surgeries, toxic chemicals, and endless damaging stress in order to feel you're even acceptable to look at.
James Baldwin is a writer of great and unendingly valuable insight and moral authority. He was clear-sighted, his vision of what could be was articulated from a high moral base as a former believer in Christianity, and he never once backed down from his conviction that we could reach the City upon a Hill. He was a realist, however, schooled in the rejections of his gayness and effeminacy and Blackness by even those whose job it was to love him. He didn't believe we would reach that paradisiacal state; he never let go of the unshakeable assurance that we should never, ever cease to strive after it.
Happen I agree. Happy Memorial Day long weekend.
My Review: It is hard for me to believe that this essay was, for a long time, relegated to text around Richard Avedon's amazing photos. The fact that Avedon and Baldwin knew each other, and since high school, hadn't made my radar screens either. This is the first time I've ever seen the essay, and how I wish it wasn't.
Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
Author Baldwin was a man whose vision was clearer than most people's sight.
Possibly the best proof you can have that Baldwin, a skinny gay Black kid, was a man out of time is this:
We have all heard the bit about what a pity it was that Plymouth Rock didn't land on the Pilgrims instead of the other way around. I have never found this remark very funny. It seems wistful and vindictive to me, containing, furthermore, a very bitter truth. The inertness of that rock meant death for the Indians, enslavement for the {B}lacks, and spiritual disaster for those homeless Europeans who now call themselves Americans...
He already foresaw the gigantic changes in humor that our generation is undergoing; they were underway even then. The Smothers Brothers on their three-season comedy show sparked a revolution in what could and should be grounds for humor. It makes my eyes water to remember how much guff the "comedy" of my parents' generation desensitized them to. They were both alive before the last vestiges of vaudeville were destroyed by radio. Blackface and minstrel songs were things they heard and saw. Racism was in the air, was utterly pervasive...it was the time of Jim Crow laws, it was the time when lynchings were happening with regularity, and a flag was hung out in front of the NAACP Building in New York:
Baldwin, Harlem native that he was, would've seen that flag time and time again, would've associated it with his own Black body, his own maleness.
The violence was being perpetrated mainly against {B}lack men...the strangers; and so it didn't count. But, if a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, no one in that society is safe.
This is something I understand viscerally. The police do not, as a rule, like faggots; if one is found in any place or at any time being faggoty in pubic, they will harass you and intimidate you to the maximum extent they can get away with; if reported, their defense is "that's a lie" and I promise you your word against their words amounts to less than nothing. This is my lived experience, so arguments are not welcome.
Imani Perry, author of the Foreword to this edition of Nothing Personal, says this of our deeply American inability to believe others' experiences are real:
Then, and now: we have acquired an endless habit of the most superficial forms of self-correction, makeup to make up for our perceived inadequacy as it were, nipping, tucking, coloring, all as a displacement for the possibilities of deeper self-reflection and self-creation.
It is functionally impossible to believe, believe in, trust another when you don't believe in your own value to the point that you feel compelled to ask your body to endure surgeries, toxic chemicals, and endless damaging stress in order to feel you're even acceptable to look at.
James Baldwin is a writer of great and unendingly valuable insight and moral authority. He was clear-sighted, his vision of what could be was articulated from a high moral base as a former believer in Christianity, and he never once backed down from his conviction that we could reach the City upon a Hill. He was a realist, however, schooled in the rejections of his gayness and effeminacy and Blackness by even those whose job it was to love him. He didn't believe we would reach that paradisiacal state; he never let go of the unshakeable assurance that we should never, ever cease to strive after it.
Happen I agree. Happy Memorial Day long weekend.
April 16, 2021
This essay written by James Baldwin was originally published in 1964, in collaboration with photographer Richard Avedon, using Avedon’s photographs, and Baldwin’s words. It is scheduled to be reissued, using Baldwin’s words alone, which offer more than sufficient reason to read this. This is the first time this will be published as Baldwin’s work on it’s own, along with a Foreword by Imani Perry and the Afterword by Eddie Glaude, Jr., both of which are also well worth reading.
There isn’t much about that has changed, there certainly hasn’t been enough that has changed in the years since he wrote these inspired words. Too much seems eerily relevant to our current days, even though nearly sixty years have passed by. Dangerously emboldened by recent events, encouraged by someone with their own agenda, and willing to throw his followers to the wolves, it certainly doesn’t appear to be better.
Despite all the pleas for change, the inches instead of miles of progress, too much remains the same, and many of the changes we’ve seen of late have gone in the opposite direction of what is needed.
'Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.'
Pub Date: 04 May 2021
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House / Beacon Press
February 17, 2021
“The America of my experience has worshiped and nourished violence for as long as I have been on earth. The violence was being perpetrated mainly against black men, though – the strangers; and so it didn’t count. But, if society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagine they would save.”
“I have been, as the song says, ‘buked and scorned’ and I know that I always will be. But, my God, in the darkness, which was the lot of my ancestors and my own state, what a mighty fire burned! In the darkness of rape and degradation, that fine flying froth and mist of blood, through all that terror and all that helplessness, a living soul moved and refused to die.”
James Baldwin was a national treasure. This essay, a critique on social isolation, race and police brutality, was published in 1964 in a book of photos by Richard Avedon (they went to high school together) and it has appeared in 2 anthologies. It is now being published for the first time as a standalone, with a new foreword by Imani Perry and an afterword by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. As Gaude wrote the essay encompasses “history, identity, death and loneliness”. Parts of it are extremely prescient, not surprising given Baldwin’s powers of observation, and parts are very moving.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
“I have been, as the song says, ‘buked and scorned’ and I know that I always will be. But, my God, in the darkness, which was the lot of my ancestors and my own state, what a mighty fire burned! In the darkness of rape and degradation, that fine flying froth and mist of blood, through all that terror and all that helplessness, a living soul moved and refused to die.”
James Baldwin was a national treasure. This essay, a critique on social isolation, race and police brutality, was published in 1964 in a book of photos by Richard Avedon (they went to high school together) and it has appeared in 2 anthologies. It is now being published for the first time as a standalone, with a new foreword by Imani Perry and an afterword by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. As Gaude wrote the essay encompasses “history, identity, death and loneliness”. Parts of it are extremely prescient, not surprising given Baldwin’s powers of observation, and parts are very moving.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
February 2, 2022
Baldwin is passionate with every word in this essay. The sadness in my soul exists that the words are all describing such great pain and frustration when dealing with white supremacy, racism, and murder. He speaks deeply and eloquently about the torment in your soul at 4:00 am when you’re wondering if life is worth living, especially after all that one has been forced to experience.
There’s a minuscule sliver of hope clung to like a life raft in Nothing Personal. The glimmer described has to do with love. Even when the picture is bleak, and there’s nothing to hope for, there is power in being loved by another and loving another. Baldwin shares that love allows us to endure the world and imagine a new one.
Writers Imani Perry and Eddie S. Glaude Jr. give the reader a whole lot with their forward and afterward.
There’s a minuscule sliver of hope clung to like a life raft in Nothing Personal. The glimmer described has to do with love. Even when the picture is bleak, and there’s nothing to hope for, there is power in being loved by another and loving another. Baldwin shares that love allows us to endure the world and imagine a new one.
Writers Imani Perry and Eddie S. Glaude Jr. give the reader a whole lot with their forward and afterward.
March 13, 2022
A powerful read, the book was ahead of its time when it comes to societal issues and racial justice.
Actual rating: 4.4/5 ☆
Actual rating: 4.4/5 ☆
March 7, 2024
5 stars~
Everything Baldwin touches is literary brilliance.
Everything Baldwin touches is literary brilliance.
Read
April 12, 2022a collaboration of two great artists, with essays by Baldwin and photographs by Avedon. Beautiful.
December 3, 2025
”Moreover, a day is coming which one will not recall, that last day of one’s life. And on that day one will one’s self become as irrecoverable as all the days that have past. It is a fearful speculation, or rather a fearful knowledge, that one day one’s eyes will no longer look out on the world. One will no longer be present at the universal morning roll call. The light will rise for others, but not for you. Sometimes at 4:00 AM, this knowledge is almost enough to force a reconciliation between oneself and all one’s pain and error. Since, anyway, it will end one day, why not try it — life — one more time?
* * * * *
Alienation. Loneliness. Despair. Hope. Love.
Baldwin’s words take us on a rollercoaster ride through all these states, stripping our souls down to 4:00 AM naked honesty as he contemplates White Supremacy, greed, injustice shallowness, pain, perseverance, annihilation, and hope in this brief but brilliant essay.
Published here as a stand alone essay for the first time, complete with a forward by Imani Perry, and an afterwards by Eddie S. Gaude, Nothing Personal reminds us once again that Baldwin was the most insightful, the most elegant, the most brilliant essayist America has produced.
* * * * *
”For nothing is fixed — forever and forever and forever — it is not fixed. The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them, because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises. The light fails. Lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out.”
* * * * *
Alienation. Loneliness. Despair. Hope. Love.
Baldwin’s words take us on a rollercoaster ride through all these states, stripping our souls down to 4:00 AM naked honesty as he contemplates White Supremacy, greed, injustice shallowness, pain, perseverance, annihilation, and hope in this brief but brilliant essay.
Published here as a stand alone essay for the first time, complete with a forward by Imani Perry, and an afterwards by Eddie S. Gaude, Nothing Personal reminds us once again that Baldwin was the most insightful, the most elegant, the most brilliant essayist America has produced.
* * * * *
”For nothing is fixed — forever and forever and forever — it is not fixed. The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them, because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises. The light fails. Lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out.”
February 26, 2021
"To be locked in the past means, in effect, that one has no past, since one can never assess it, or use it: and if one cannot use the past, one cannot function in the present, and so one can never be free."
I had never heard of this work, also hadn't heard of Baldwin's collaboration with photographer Richard Avedon that led to a book combining this essay with Avedon's photography.
This is the first time the essay is being published on its own, not part of an essay collection and without Avedon's photos.
And it's fantastic. I'm only a novice reader of James Baldwin, but he is an incredible writer, with perfect command of the craft. That would be fantastic enough, but he also has so much to say, and it is still as relevant today as it was in the 60s. In fact, it's almost unnervingly so.
There is still a large part of the white US population who believe in the myth of white supremacy, in the myth of "heroes" just "looking for freedom" in the new world. Baldwin expertly shows how these myths are rotten to their very core, ending on a hope that love for yourself and the "other" (whether they be a "stranger" or not) might be the answer.
"It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found , there is a light."
Included in this edition are an introduction by professor Imani Perry, and a concluding essay by professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Glaude's essay especially is a great addition, further pondering the points Baldwin addresses, coming to observations like:
"If I am reading Nothing Personal correctly, the country needs its “strangers” to resolve the sense of alienation that threatens to suffocate this place. The enemy and evil without, and the violence we exact upon the threat they present or directly upon them, keeps us whole while the rot within corrupts everything."
An essential read.
(Picked up an ARC through Edelweiss)
I had never heard of this work, also hadn't heard of Baldwin's collaboration with photographer Richard Avedon that led to a book combining this essay with Avedon's photography.
This is the first time the essay is being published on its own, not part of an essay collection and without Avedon's photos.
And it's fantastic. I'm only a novice reader of James Baldwin, but he is an incredible writer, with perfect command of the craft. That would be fantastic enough, but he also has so much to say, and it is still as relevant today as it was in the 60s. In fact, it's almost unnervingly so.
There is still a large part of the white US population who believe in the myth of white supremacy, in the myth of "heroes" just "looking for freedom" in the new world. Baldwin expertly shows how these myths are rotten to their very core, ending on a hope that love for yourself and the "other" (whether they be a "stranger" or not) might be the answer.
"It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found , there is a light."
Included in this edition are an introduction by professor Imani Perry, and a concluding essay by professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Glaude's essay especially is a great addition, further pondering the points Baldwin addresses, coming to observations like:
"If I am reading Nothing Personal correctly, the country needs its “strangers” to resolve the sense of alienation that threatens to suffocate this place. The enemy and evil without, and the violence we exact upon the threat they present or directly upon them, keeps us whole while the rot within corrupts everything."
An essential read.
(Picked up an ARC through Edelweiss)
Read
March 10, 2022A powerful, compelling match-up of photographs and text by two great artists.
February 22, 2021
Wow, Baldwin covered a lot of territory in this short essay. It’s certainly a tribute to his writing mastery that he can seemingly say so much but use very few words in doing so. An essay that is taking America to task for its hypocrisy while also dealing with his own personal challenges in staving off despair and trying to remain hopeful. The addition of Imani Perry penning the foreword and Eddie Glaude Jr., the afterword helps add to the understanding of not only the essay but Baldwin’s brilliance as a writer. I hope everyone takes a moment to digest this. And I’m thankful to Beacon Press and NetGalley for an ARC.
September 29, 2022
So many gems in this book.
My favorite: “in my professional and quasi-professional contacts, whose only real trouble is inertia, who work at the most disgraceful jobs in order to pay, for the luxury of someone else’s attention”
Why do we constantly live for other people? Trying to impress people we don’t even know. In modern times with social media…we care more about likes, followers, views, than actually living and enjoying moments. Comparing ourselves to strangers we will never meet. We need less bombast, but these attitudes have pervaded our culture in a country that is obsessed with money, status, etc.
My favorite: “in my professional and quasi-professional contacts, whose only real trouble is inertia, who work at the most disgraceful jobs in order to pay, for the luxury of someone else’s attention”
Why do we constantly live for other people? Trying to impress people we don’t even know. In modern times with social media…we care more about likes, followers, views, than actually living and enjoying moments. Comparing ourselves to strangers we will never meet. We need less bombast, but these attitudes have pervaded our culture in a country that is obsessed with money, status, etc.
January 23, 2025
Oh my god… I have never felt so awed in my entire life. It made me feel existential, small, and nihilistic but empowered and hopeful and grateful? I’m in despair and wonder. Modernity has certainly failed us.
I fear I won’t be able to help myself from reading every single thing he ever wrote over the next two months. I swear.
I fear I won’t be able to help myself from reading every single thing he ever wrote over the next two months. I swear.
October 2, 2022
4.5 stars
Baldwin’s writing is so important! Honestly, I feel like it didn’t really need the foreword and afterword, which is why I took the half a star away.
Baldwin’s writing is so important! Honestly, I feel like it didn’t really need the foreword and afterword, which is why I took the half a star away.
January 23, 2025
"I think all of our voyages drive us there; for I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time."
ma olen veendunud, et james baldwini lugemine on ainus ravi seisundile, kus uudiste lugemine ähvardab ahastusest hinge kinni tõmmata.
ma olen veendunud, et james baldwini lugemine on ainus ravi seisundile, kus uudiste lugemine ähvardab ahastusest hinge kinni tõmmata.
June 6, 2025
I really don't have too much to say about this that isn't said by James Baldwin himself in this. I listened to the audiobook and I really need to get a physical copy so I can read this again with the images, but listening to just Baldwin's words was so powerful. He perfectly describes America and our society in the world as a whole and it is only becoming more and more truthful as the days, weeks, and years go by. Everyone should read or listen to this (the audiobook is only 1 hour of your time) because it's eye opening and very powerful. I feel Baldwin's despair very strongly within this, a must read.
August 27, 2024
An absolutely searing 48 pages. I know I will be returning to this --- sermon? this clarion call? --- over and over and over again.
----------------------------------------------
SOME (who am I kidding - MANY) QUOTES (because i couldnt help myself):
"And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents--the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however and by definition, a provisional self--and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.
It is perfectly possible--indeed, it is far from uncommon--to go to bed one night, or wake up one morning, or simply walk through a door one has known all one's life, and discover, between inhaling and exhaling, that the self one has sewn together with such effort is all dirty rags, is unusable, is gone: and out of what raw material will one build a self again?
The lives of men--and,therefore, of nations--to an extent literally unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in the mind... If the question does not live in the mind, then one is simply condemned to eternal youth, which is a synonym for corruption."
---------------------
"Still, she was driven to find that long-lost friend, to grasp again, with fearful hope, the unwilling, unloving, human hand.
I think all of our voyages drive us there; for I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time...
It is the miracle of love, love strong enough to guide or drive one into estate of maturity, or, to put it another way, into the apprehension and acceptance of one's own identity...
Nevetheless, sometimes, at four AM, when one feels that one has probably become incapable of supporting this miracle... -- the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self -- death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one's way. And many of us perish then.
But if one can reach back, reach down--into oneself, into one's life--and find there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one's reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day."
-------------------------
"One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.
Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed...
And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win...
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
-----------------------
----------------------------------------------
SOME (who am I kidding - MANY) QUOTES (because i couldnt help myself):
"And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents--the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however and by definition, a provisional self--and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.
It is perfectly possible--indeed, it is far from uncommon--to go to bed one night, or wake up one morning, or simply walk through a door one has known all one's life, and discover, between inhaling and exhaling, that the self one has sewn together with such effort is all dirty rags, is unusable, is gone: and out of what raw material will one build a self again?
The lives of men--and,therefore, of nations--to an extent literally unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in the mind... If the question does not live in the mind, then one is simply condemned to eternal youth, which is a synonym for corruption."
---------------------
"Still, she was driven to find that long-lost friend, to grasp again, with fearful hope, the unwilling, unloving, human hand.
I think all of our voyages drive us there; for I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time...
It is the miracle of love, love strong enough to guide or drive one into estate of maturity, or, to put it another way, into the apprehension and acceptance of one's own identity...
Nevetheless, sometimes, at four AM, when one feels that one has probably become incapable of supporting this miracle... -- the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self -- death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one's way. And many of us perish then.
But if one can reach back, reach down--into oneself, into one's life--and find there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one's reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day."
-------------------------
"One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.
Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed...
And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win...
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
-----------------------
May 2, 2025
Pretend, for example, that you were born in Chicago and have never had the remotest desire to visit Hong Kong, which is only a name on a map for you; pretend that some convulsion, sometimes called accident, throws you into connection with a man or a woman who lives in Hong Kong; and that you fall in love. Hong Kong will immediately cease to be a name and become the center of your life. And you may never know how many people live in Hong Kong. But you will know that one man or one woman lives there without whom you cannot live. And this is how our lives are changed, and this is how we are redeemed.
What a journey this life is! Dependent, entirely, on things unseen. If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earth quake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.
In a few spare paragraphs, Baldwin collapses continents, indicts history, and makes the private pulse with political urgency. There is something about the way he just knows—not just people, but the cost of being human. He said so much in so little. I'm gasping for breath!
Or maybe I’m in love—the kind that shifts your centre of gravity, that teaches you the shape of another place by heart. And Baldwin just makes sense. It is the most honest war we fight, not an escape from history but our deepest entanglement with it. And sometimes, miraculously, we win.
May 26, 2021
Nothing Personal is what I needed at this point in 2021 to push on. Baldwin's writing never fails to touch where others have tried to go, but fell short. He says the things you've been thinking, but haven't been able to find the right words for. To think that an essay from 1964 could describe the greed, brutality, and lovelessness of today's world better than the presents most acclaimed scholar's, speaks to the power of Baldwin's mind and pen. His keen observance of the world, and the movements of people.
"Everyone is rushing, god knows where, and everyone is looking for God knows what— but it is clear that no one is happy here, and that something has been lost".
Baldwin highlights the power of human connection, and valuing people not material. Baldwin challenges us to acknowledge and reckon with the path and also think beyond the present —and work in hopes of building a better future, because "generations never cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have". Baldwin calls on us to love humans.
"One day, perhaps, unimaginable generations hence, will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate and will permit this knowledge to be the ruling principles of our lives."
"Everyone is rushing, god knows where, and everyone is looking for God knows what— but it is clear that no one is happy here, and that something has been lost".
Baldwin highlights the power of human connection, and valuing people not material. Baldwin challenges us to acknowledge and reckon with the path and also think beyond the present —and work in hopes of building a better future, because "generations never cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have". Baldwin calls on us to love humans.
"One day, perhaps, unimaginable generations hence, will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate and will permit this knowledge to be the ruling principles of our lives."
January 15, 2025
Baldwin has been my best friend this week. I truly believe this is one of the most beautiful dedications to love I have ever read...
“I have slept on rooftops and in basements and subways, have been cold and hungry all my life; have felt that no fire would ever warm me, and no arms would ever hold me. I have been, as the song says, ’buked and scorned and I know that I always will be. But, my God, in that darkness, which was the lot of my ancestors and my own state, what a mighty fire burned! In that darkness of rape and degradation, that fine flying froth and mist of blood, through all that terror and in all that helplessness, a living soul moved and refused to die. We really emptied oceans with a home-made spoon and tore down mountains with our hands. And if love was in Hong Kong, we learned how to swim. “It is a mighty heritage, it is the human heritage, and it is all there is to trust. And I learned this through descending, as it were, into the eyes of my father and my mother. I wondered, when I was little, how they bore it—for I knew that they had much to bear. It had not yet occurred to me that I also would have much to bear; but they knew it, and the unimaginable rigors of their journey helped them to prepare me for mine. This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found—and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is; and if the father can say, Yes, Lord, the child can learn that most difficult of words, Amen.”
“I have slept on rooftops and in basements and subways, have been cold and hungry all my life; have felt that no fire would ever warm me, and no arms would ever hold me. I have been, as the song says, ’buked and scorned and I know that I always will be. But, my God, in that darkness, which was the lot of my ancestors and my own state, what a mighty fire burned! In that darkness of rape and degradation, that fine flying froth and mist of blood, through all that terror and in all that helplessness, a living soul moved and refused to die. We really emptied oceans with a home-made spoon and tore down mountains with our hands. And if love was in Hong Kong, we learned how to swim. “It is a mighty heritage, it is the human heritage, and it is all there is to trust. And I learned this through descending, as it were, into the eyes of my father and my mother. I wondered, when I was little, how they bore it—for I knew that they had much to bear. It had not yet occurred to me that I also would have much to bear; but they knew it, and the unimaginable rigors of their journey helped them to prepare me for mine. This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found—and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is; and if the father can say, Yes, Lord, the child can learn that most difficult of words, Amen.”
March 11, 2025
Like many other works written by Black Americans during the civil rights movement, it almost feels prophetic how current and relevant everything remains to modern culture and politics.
“To be locked in the past means, in effect that one has no past, since one can never recess it or use it, and if one cannot use the past, one cannot function in the present, and so one can never be free. I take this to be— the American situation in relief.”
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love--whether we call it friendship or family or romance--is the work of mirroring each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work.”
“To be locked in the past means, in effect that one has no past, since one can never recess it or use it, and if one cannot use the past, one cannot function in the present, and so one can never be free. I take this to be— the American situation in relief.”
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love--whether we call it friendship or family or romance--is the work of mirroring each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work.”
January 10, 2022
"In the end, the power of love, of loving someone and of being loved, equips us to endure the world as it is and to imagine the world as it could be."
"And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win."
"And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win."
May 30, 2021
Classic James Baldwin. This book touches on so many societal issues we see today.
August 20, 2023
my first Baldwin piece and unsurprisingly one of my most treasured reading experiences. I see myself coming back to this a lot throughout life
September 22, 2024
This is the best essay I've ever read. I don't want to kill it with other than expectations, that's why this is such a short review.
April 30, 2025
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.”
“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.”
“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out”
“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.”
“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out”
April 29, 2024
Baldwin's essay is perfection and full of thoughts about America and life worthy of prolonged meditation.
September 2, 2021
Highly recommend the audiobook.
July 25, 2024
Feels like cheating to count this on goodreads as a book, considering it’s mostly just Avedon’s photos lmao but I really enjoyed the essay portion of this book, written by James Baldwin. The juxtaposition between the text and images is very jarring and frankly makes little sense to me outside of vague political associations, but I am intrigued by it nonetheless. As you will soon see, I apparently have a lot to note lolll so consider yourself warned. More than anything, I’d like to capture my emotional impressions here, while they’re fresh, because I think this book could be the jumping off point for meaningful further reflection if only I’m able to record my thoughts now so as to be able to return to them. There were certain lines in Baldwin’s essays which resonated with me so specifically, and also felt so timeless, that it was almost shocking. And this is why he’s my favorite !!!!
It’s interesting to me that Baldwin and Avedon went to high school together in the Bronx and were co-editors of their lit mag. I’ve never before thought of them as existing in overlapping worlds, although now after reading the book that makes a lot of sense. My general perception of Avedon’s photography has been that it tends to be more classically editorial, and obviously stunning, than radically experimental or overtly political. Reading “nothing personal” actually expanded my perspective of his political conscience within his artistic practice and I think I come away from the book with a more social view of his photos. Somehow, he has photographed like…everyone ever?! From Malcolm X, to racist Southern politicians, Allen Ginsberg and then the Commander of the American Nazi Party, to random white people getting married, to philosophers like Bertrand Russell, and many mental institution patients. Having such diverse imagery jammed together, interspersed between Baldwin’s essays, made me curious about the ethical/moral code of a photographer with so much fame and reach. I wonder if he’s ever turned down the opportunity to photograph someone because of any personal reservations, or if the job is simply just a job to him? Or is the artistry of the image itself larger than the person? Or perhaps photography just offers a chance to encounter them candidly and humanly, bringing people down to equal footing? Must a photographer be like a vulture? Or are they more like mirrors that choose to cling to the impressions that pass over their surfaces?
Baldwin’s writing here is as sharp as ever. When I started reading, I thought it might be Avedon’s voice. It was strange and a bit jumpy, but then he quickly settles into a rhythm and you realize you’ve been let into this great big jumble of words that really means something — it’s bigger than the overconsumption and housewife’s playthings and the Tabasco and the MIDDLE AGE BULGE (lol this is a direct quote) that he toys around with at first. The writing becomes very solid after just a page or two of confusion (probably just the natural adjustment period after the weird string of photos of anonymous married couples). Through the essays, Baldwin reflects on the state of American politics, of the microcosm of life that is New York, and the love that people are constantly seeking in spite of their constant despair and the inevitability of death. He also provides an anecdote about a time he and a friend were arrested by two cops on the street, and closes out with a playful sort of creative take on home in a global context and how that is so entwined with the love we bring to our relationships. Going to include some of my favorite excerpts below:
“We have all heard the bit about what a pity it was that Plymouth Rock didn’t land on the Pilgrims instead of the other way around. I have never found this remark very funny. It seems wistful and vindictive to me, containing, furthermore, a very bitter truth. The inertness of that rock meant death….”
I’d never heard this “bit” Baldwin mentions before and I wonder if it was more common to hear when he wrote it? Baldwin goes on to chronicle, in brief, the many consequences of European contact with the Americas, zeroing in on the way that poor whites have been brainwashed into psychologically identifying with the white bourgeoisie masters who oppress them in manners much more similar to the ways they oppress racial minorities. Because of my recent personal fixation with stone, this quote really stuck out to me. We often think of natural materials like stone as passive, a sort of given in our world, yet at the same time they are touched by and also have the power to shape the course of our lives through their very persistence. When thinking about the origins of any sort of national character (whatever that means), and the reasons for this being, I feel like ecology/environment is always at the root of what we perceive as man-made. We don’t just end up different by circumstance, but are necessarily shaped by the worlds that touch us. There are more obvious things like dress, but even certain characteristics of language are shaped by climate. We truly cannot be separated from the Earth, as our bodies spring from it and are at once a part of it (#WendellBerry-pilled af).
“It is perfectly possible—indeed, it is far from uncommon—to go to bed one night, or wake up one morning, or simply walk through a door one has known all one’s life, and discover, between inhaling and exhaling, that the self one has sewn together with such effort is all dirty rags, is unusable, is gone: and out of what raw material will one build a self again? The lives of men—and, therefore, of nations—to an extent literally unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in the mind.”
This is devastating and sooo the kind of writing I emotionally expect from him after reading Giovanni’s Room. So much to say about this but maybe I should just cry instead ???
“Some rare days, often in the winter, when New York is cheerfully immobilized in snow—cheerfully, because the snow gives people an excuse to talk to each other, and they need, God help us, an excuse…”
“They do not relate to the buildings, certainly—no human being could; I suspect, in fact, that many of us live with the carefully suppressed terror that these buildings are about to crash down on us.”
“But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country—to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world—and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God. Help the innocent here, the man or woman who simply want to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love.”
“If one can reach back, reach down—into oneself, into one’s life—and fine there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one’s reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day.”
“How is it possible, one cannot but ask, to raise a child without loving the child? How is it possible to love the child if one does not know who one is? How is it possible for the child to grow up if the child is not loved?…if the child is not told where the limits are, he will spend the rest of his life trying to discover them. For the child who is not told where the limits are knows, though he may not know he knows it, that no one cares enough about him to prepare him for his journey.”
“And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, air lanes, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there…We really emptied oceans with a home-made spoon and tore down mountains with our hands. And if love was in Hong Kong, we learned how to swim.”
“It is a nightly heritage, it is the human heritage, and it is all there is so trust. And I learned this through descending, as it were, into the eyes of my father and mother. I wondered, when I was little, how they bore it—for I knew that they had much to bear. It had not yet occurred to me that I also would have much to bear; but they knew it, and the unimaginable rigors of their journey helped them to prepare me for mine. This is why one just say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found.”
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.”
It’s interesting to me that Baldwin and Avedon went to high school together in the Bronx and were co-editors of their lit mag. I’ve never before thought of them as existing in overlapping worlds, although now after reading the book that makes a lot of sense. My general perception of Avedon’s photography has been that it tends to be more classically editorial, and obviously stunning, than radically experimental or overtly political. Reading “nothing personal” actually expanded my perspective of his political conscience within his artistic practice and I think I come away from the book with a more social view of his photos. Somehow, he has photographed like…everyone ever?! From Malcolm X, to racist Southern politicians, Allen Ginsberg and then the Commander of the American Nazi Party, to random white people getting married, to philosophers like Bertrand Russell, and many mental institution patients. Having such diverse imagery jammed together, interspersed between Baldwin’s essays, made me curious about the ethical/moral code of a photographer with so much fame and reach. I wonder if he’s ever turned down the opportunity to photograph someone because of any personal reservations, or if the job is simply just a job to him? Or is the artistry of the image itself larger than the person? Or perhaps photography just offers a chance to encounter them candidly and humanly, bringing people down to equal footing? Must a photographer be like a vulture? Or are they more like mirrors that choose to cling to the impressions that pass over their surfaces?
Baldwin’s writing here is as sharp as ever. When I started reading, I thought it might be Avedon’s voice. It was strange and a bit jumpy, but then he quickly settles into a rhythm and you realize you’ve been let into this great big jumble of words that really means something — it’s bigger than the overconsumption and housewife’s playthings and the Tabasco and the MIDDLE AGE BULGE (lol this is a direct quote) that he toys around with at first. The writing becomes very solid after just a page or two of confusion (probably just the natural adjustment period after the weird string of photos of anonymous married couples). Through the essays, Baldwin reflects on the state of American politics, of the microcosm of life that is New York, and the love that people are constantly seeking in spite of their constant despair and the inevitability of death. He also provides an anecdote about a time he and a friend were arrested by two cops on the street, and closes out with a playful sort of creative take on home in a global context and how that is so entwined with the love we bring to our relationships. Going to include some of my favorite excerpts below:
“We have all heard the bit about what a pity it was that Plymouth Rock didn’t land on the Pilgrims instead of the other way around. I have never found this remark very funny. It seems wistful and vindictive to me, containing, furthermore, a very bitter truth. The inertness of that rock meant death….”
I’d never heard this “bit” Baldwin mentions before and I wonder if it was more common to hear when he wrote it? Baldwin goes on to chronicle, in brief, the many consequences of European contact with the Americas, zeroing in on the way that poor whites have been brainwashed into psychologically identifying with the white bourgeoisie masters who oppress them in manners much more similar to the ways they oppress racial minorities. Because of my recent personal fixation with stone, this quote really stuck out to me. We often think of natural materials like stone as passive, a sort of given in our world, yet at the same time they are touched by and also have the power to shape the course of our lives through their very persistence. When thinking about the origins of any sort of national character (whatever that means), and the reasons for this being, I feel like ecology/environment is always at the root of what we perceive as man-made. We don’t just end up different by circumstance, but are necessarily shaped by the worlds that touch us. There are more obvious things like dress, but even certain characteristics of language are shaped by climate. We truly cannot be separated from the Earth, as our bodies spring from it and are at once a part of it (#WendellBerry-pilled af).
“It is perfectly possible—indeed, it is far from uncommon—to go to bed one night, or wake up one morning, or simply walk through a door one has known all one’s life, and discover, between inhaling and exhaling, that the self one has sewn together with such effort is all dirty rags, is unusable, is gone: and out of what raw material will one build a self again? The lives of men—and, therefore, of nations—to an extent literally unimaginable, depend on how vividly this question lives in the mind.”
This is devastating and sooo the kind of writing I emotionally expect from him after reading Giovanni’s Room. So much to say about this but maybe I should just cry instead ???
“Some rare days, often in the winter, when New York is cheerfully immobilized in snow—cheerfully, because the snow gives people an excuse to talk to each other, and they need, God help us, an excuse…”
“They do not relate to the buildings, certainly—no human being could; I suspect, in fact, that many of us live with the carefully suppressed terror that these buildings are about to crash down on us.”
“But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country—to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world—and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God. Help the innocent here, the man or woman who simply want to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love.”
“If one can reach back, reach down—into oneself, into one’s life—and fine there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one’s reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day.”
“How is it possible, one cannot but ask, to raise a child without loving the child? How is it possible to love the child if one does not know who one is? How is it possible for the child to grow up if the child is not loved?…if the child is not told where the limits are, he will spend the rest of his life trying to discover them. For the child who is not told where the limits are knows, though he may not know he knows it, that no one cares enough about him to prepare him for his journey.”
“And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, air lanes, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there…We really emptied oceans with a home-made spoon and tore down mountains with our hands. And if love was in Hong Kong, we learned how to swim.”
“It is a nightly heritage, it is the human heritage, and it is all there is so trust. And I learned this through descending, as it were, into the eyes of my father and mother. I wondered, when I was little, how they bore it—for I knew that they had much to bear. It had not yet occurred to me that I also would have much to bear; but they knew it, and the unimaginable rigors of their journey helped them to prepare me for mine. This is why one just say Yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found.”
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.”
February 14, 2018
A collection of photographs by Richard Avedon illustrating four short essays by James Baldwin.
Book Review: Nothing Personal was a surprise and a half! I reserved it on my library website, sight unseen. When I picked it up I found a huge coffee-table book (is that the term in other countries?), 14½ inches (37 cm) by 11 (28), beautifully printed in Italy. The first printed page simply has the year: 1964 , reminding that this lovely book comes from another time, over a half-century ago. James Baldwin's words were my reason for seeking out this book and they did not disappoint. The essays seemed spoken, not written, as if I was just listening to Baldwin talk, sharing his thoughts with me, with the reader. He ranges wide, he rambles, he tells stories. He talks about President Kennedy's assassination, about the preponderance of violence against black men, about suicide, about getting arrested for "walking while black." He discusses how the wealthy continue their reign through divide and conquer, pitting the poor against the poor, poor whites against poor blacks. He notes the refusal of American men to grow up. How, when dressing to leave his apartment, it "is necessary to make anyone on the streets think twice before attempting to vent his despair on you." The exact sentiment I recently read in Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. Baldwin has the hope that one day "we will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate." He talks of the overwhelming power of love for each of us. What is most obvious in Nothing Personal, most striking, is that we're still fighting over so many of these issues today. These issues are still relevant, still important, now. Which signifies that we're not just fighting about issues, we're fighting human nature.
I came for Baldwin, I stayed for the photographs. Richard Avedon's photos were less than an afterthought for me, as I expected to glance through them without blinking. I blinked. In these days when everyone is a prolific photographer and we swipe dozens of pictures in a minute, we forget the blinding emotional power hidden in photographs. Each of the black and white photos in Nothing Personal is brilliant and more meaningful than I thought possible. The subjects of these photos range wide through 1964: the DAR, weddings, Joe Louis, a Southern judge, Marilyn, Nazis, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm X. Each photo is a whole short story. But the pictures that chilled me to my DNA were of patients in a mental institution. There are several such pictures, and "heartbreaking" is just a word, but these break both heart and mind.
Baldwin and Avedon were high school friends. I'm not sure what their goal was for Nothing Personal. Perhaps their own version of the revered Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, written by James Agee with photography by Walker Evans in 1941. This is a unique work, awkward to hold, a treasure to read, a gift from another time. [4½★]
Book Review: Nothing Personal was a surprise and a half! I reserved it on my library website, sight unseen. When I picked it up I found a huge coffee-table book (is that the term in other countries?), 14½ inches (37 cm) by 11 (28), beautifully printed in Italy. The first printed page simply has the year: 1964 , reminding that this lovely book comes from another time, over a half-century ago. James Baldwin's words were my reason for seeking out this book and they did not disappoint. The essays seemed spoken, not written, as if I was just listening to Baldwin talk, sharing his thoughts with me, with the reader. He ranges wide, he rambles, he tells stories. He talks about President Kennedy's assassination, about the preponderance of violence against black men, about suicide, about getting arrested for "walking while black." He discusses how the wealthy continue their reign through divide and conquer, pitting the poor against the poor, poor whites against poor blacks. He notes the refusal of American men to grow up. How, when dressing to leave his apartment, it "is necessary to make anyone on the streets think twice before attempting to vent his despair on you." The exact sentiment I recently read in Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. Baldwin has the hope that one day "we will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate." He talks of the overwhelming power of love for each of us. What is most obvious in Nothing Personal, most striking, is that we're still fighting over so many of these issues today. These issues are still relevant, still important, now. Which signifies that we're not just fighting about issues, we're fighting human nature.
I came for Baldwin, I stayed for the photographs. Richard Avedon's photos were less than an afterthought for me, as I expected to glance through them without blinking. I blinked. In these days when everyone is a prolific photographer and we swipe dozens of pictures in a minute, we forget the blinding emotional power hidden in photographs. Each of the black and white photos in Nothing Personal is brilliant and more meaningful than I thought possible. The subjects of these photos range wide through 1964: the DAR, weddings, Joe Louis, a Southern judge, Marilyn, Nazis, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm X. Each photo is a whole short story. But the pictures that chilled me to my DNA were of patients in a mental institution. There are several such pictures, and "heartbreaking" is just a word, but these break both heart and mind.
Baldwin and Avedon were high school friends. I'm not sure what their goal was for Nothing Personal. Perhaps their own version of the revered Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, written by James Agee with photography by Walker Evans in 1941. This is a unique work, awkward to hold, a treasure to read, a gift from another time. [4½★]
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews