Customer Reviews

James Baldwin: Artist on Fire, A Portrait

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Funny how many biographies you have to read of someone to get any reasonably rounded sense of his or her life. James Campbell's has the most detailed analysis of Baldwin's writing (though like many critics he disparages Baldwin's excellent later novels) but Campbell pulls back from Baldwin as a gay man; reading Talking At The Gates one would think he never had a sexual/romantic relationship after his unrequited crush on Lucien Happesburger. W J Wetherby's biography, the subject of this review, though clumsy on the psychology and weak on the literary analysis, is gossipy and vividly evokes Baldwin's tempestuous bohemian personal life, and is worth reading for that reason. It returns one to Baldwin's humanity in all its flaws, and does not, I think, diminish him in doing so. The other Baldwin biog I've read, by David Leeming, is rather po-faced and dull, but worth a look for the last section leading up to Baldwin's death, for which Leeming was, as Mr Baldwin might say, a witness. But really, you have to read all three to get a single decent 'life' out of them.