Customer Reviews

Just Above My Head

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This is one of the best written, most beautiful books I've ever read. If any one book could be said to distill James Baldwin's entire life, this could be it, at least among his fiction. The sense of love, compassion, and empathy Baldwin has for his characters is tangible. Many of the passages are poetic in their power; Baldwin excels at finding the nuance, the meanings in a gesture, a glance, a touch. Baldwin was a black gay man but I believe that in this book he has transcended both race and sex, and is writing about something more basic and yet more complex: relationships between *human beings*. For those who grew up in the 1960s and 70s, it's impossible to overstate the impact Baldwin had on many of our lives (even in my case, and I'm Caucasian).

I was lucky enough to hear Baldwin lecture 20 years ago; Just Above My Head had been out for about a year and I was able to get my copy autographed and personalized. He was as arresting a speaker as he was a writer.

In the short list of the most deeply felt, most moving, most powerful books written in the 20th century, this has to come near the top.

When I read this book for the first time I was so deeply moved that I was left ranting and raving to all of my friends who share a passion for great American literature. Baldwin's even-handed, almost objective analysis of the American preoccupation with race and human sexuality leaves the reader with a changed perspective on being American. Too many books have love and politics central to their themes, however Baldwin takes this overworked subject matter and creates something truly original and timeless

I first came across the book as a teenager, rooting around amidst the books my brother left behind. I was just coming out then, and decided to try and read it. Much of it flew over my head then, but upon returning to it as an adult, I found much here to treasure. The characters not only inhabit the pages, but leap right off them at times, and the reader feels like he would want to sit in a room with them, talk with them, laugh with them and grieve with them. As a black gay man, it's nearly an autobiographical read, showing how far ahead of his time Baldwin was. It definitely comes highly recommended from this reader.

The people of Just Above My Head-- all of them, not just Julia, or Hall, or Arthur-- but the "little" characters too, all live truly as one reads. I've lost track of how many times I've read the book in its entirety, much less in bits and pieces, but every time I go down into it these characters overwhelm me. I can smell them, feel their heat. Absolutely one of my favorite books of all time.

Probably one of the more underappreciated novels in American literature. It is unfair to charecterize Baldwin as merely a social critic of the civil rights era. He stands alongside Dickens as one of the great writers of any era, with the ability to articualte an understanding of human nature that trancends any era and stands second to none.

Highly recommended...This is an "intense" read...and you will find yourself going back and re-reading certain pages to make sure that you absorbed everything from the page. A stirring story of two brothers desperately seeking to find themselves and a true identity outside of the religious world they had been so immersed in...

James Baldwin's voice creates a rich portrait to accompany the tale of a family atmosphere and all the forces that converge on them as friends, lovers, and kin. The cast of characters speak through their actions, allowing you to feel the "holy ghost" that the child-turned-preacher Julia could send through a church as well as the vocal harmony of a group of young black men who go on a singing tour of the south in a time where lynching was a pasttime of small town racists. I read this for the first time a mere seven years ago, and since then have read it again and again for the simple fact that you can pick up so much direct and indirect emotions, actions, and premises by hearing the main cast--Arthur, Julia, and Hall, as well as those they come into contact with as they all make their way towards finding a balance between the small line between existence and nonexistence historically for Afro-Americans. "Just Above My Head" reads like an almanac of people, places, and things that get lost in the romantic "good old days" that too many of our literary genius are guilty of promoting while ignoring the "have nots" of society. This book is a staple for me, and I know I'm not the only one, so if you haven't read it, then do so.

In some respects, "Just Above My Head" seems to be a successor to "Another Country"; Baldwin has taken the sexual and emotional imbroglios of his earlier novel and reimagined them on a broader historical and geographical stage, with characters whose interwoven lives are no longer confined to the bedrooms of New York. Grounding the narrative is the relatively straight-laced character of Hall Montana, the anti-Baldwin of the book, whose tender, middle-class worldview serves as calm counterpoint to the troubled, explosive, even neurotic lives of Montana's friends and--most of all--his brother Arthur.

Hall's coolness is almost essential to the novel because of messiness of the whirlwinds that swirl around him, in the form of three disparate yet overlapping families: his own childhood household, which provides a supportive environment for the fledgling musical career of his brother Arthur; the Millers, Baldwin's most brilliantly conceived dysfunctional family, whose exploitation of their coddled child-preacher daughter, Julia, all but insures their demise; and the Trumpets of Zion, four Harlem-based teenagers who form a gospel music quartet led by Arthur and who each meet a sordid and tragic end (murder, drug addiction, insanity, and alcohol-fueled death). Framing the novel and connecting the three groups is Hall's family in the "present day" of the 1970s, from which Hall looks back at how this motley crew lived through the turmoil of the civil rights era and the chaos of their own lives. We know at the outset of the book what happens to each of the main characters; we just don't know how they got there.

While the novel is ostensibly about Arthur, whose singing career peaks and wanes through the vagaries of international fame and notoriety, the most memorable and interesting character of the novel, aside from Hall himself, is Julia. One of the most worldly, enchanting women in modern fiction, Julia endures (and survives) early adulation, childhood incest, and prostitution to become an endearing suburbanite. Arthur, on the other hand, seems idealized at times--a stoic, somewhat jaded celebrity whose enigmatic aura proves hopelessly alluring to his friends and family and to his two lovers: Crunch, one of other members of the quartet, and Jimmy, Julia's underappreciated and seemingly unloved brother.

For its epic sweep, episodic structure, and epigrammatic wit, "Just Above My Head" ranks among the best of Baldwin's novels. While "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is still praised for its lyricism and "Giovanni's Room" is beloved for its passion, this book--his longest by far--combines both qualities on a vast social and historical panorama that never loses its focus on the lives of the very authentic human beings conjured out of the tumult of Harlem's streets. In his last great novel, Baldwin once again proves that the political is the personal.

This is one of my favorite Baldwin novels. Only someonle with Baldwin's background could so poignantly express who Arthur was and how he felt about his music. An excellent piece and a must read!

I hate to be the dissenting voice among all the rapturous reviews, but as much as I love James Baldwin, I had a hard time getting through "Just Above My Head." The man could write like a dream, no question about that. The problem here is that because Baldwin insists on having his characters muse on the black condition, the white condition, the history of race relations in America, the novel loses any narrative tension. There are simply too many interruptive elements in narration and dialogue. Then there is the questionable use of the brother, Hall, as a narrator. Hall writes about the sexual goings on between his brother and other characters. How could he know this? Unless I am mistaken, aren't narrators limited to what they have observed? I understand that Baldwin is using Hall as a sort of omniscient third person voice. However, because Hall is writing about intimate sexual details, his knowledge of them taints the narrative with a trace of incredulity. Then there are all the tedious references to people getting up and sitting down, entering and leaving places, and pouring endless drinks and visiting countless bars. I realize the novel takes place in another era, but all of that drinking got tiresome.

Maybe because Baldwin was such a great writer, no editor thought to comment on his storytelling style. Arthur's story is the most intriguing--although one could make a case for Julia's, as well--but the novel is so fragmented and the dialogue is so discursive that whatever emotional impact we should feel at the story's end is dulled. I also found it somewhat unbelievable that a man like Hall, from such a conservative era, would have so willingly approved of his brother's homosexuality. Men of that generation, particularly black men raised in religious households, simply were not that liberal. Granted that Arthur is supposed to be a gifted singer, but Hall's acceptance of him sounded a bit idealized to my ears.

I don't think this is a bad book; I just don't think it is a compelling one.