Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Burlington Public Library | BIO BALDWIN, J | 32116001013313 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library | B BALDWIN, J. | 31481002533193 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | B BALDWIN | 31478001304964 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
James Baldwin (1924-1987), whose novels and essays aimed to liberate white America from the hypocrisy that made oppression and racism possible, was obsessed with his mission to bear witness to injustice, observes Leeming, who was Baldwin's secretary and longtime friend. Beneath the fiercely eloquent, prophetic writer was a troubled, vulnerable, lonely individual longing to be cradled and protected. Both sides of the man are probed in this highly perceptive, revealing biography, which Baldwin authorized in 1979. Leeming, who is now a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut, draws on interviews with Baldwin to illuminate the writer's difficulty in accepting his homosexuality, his attempted suicide in Paris in 1956, the strong autobiographical component in his fiction, his uneasy association with the Black Panthers and his formative relationship with his unloving stepfather, a puritanical, bitterly frustrated preacher who went mad. Photos. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
This fourth life of writer James Baldwin won't give a bad name to authorized biographies, but neither will it elevate the suspect genre to new heights. Leeming (English/Univ. of Connecticut) met Baldwin in 1961. By then, Baldwin was perhaps the best-known and most widely read living black writer in the United States. Their meeting place was Istanbul, where Leeming was teaching and Baldwin was visiting a friend. Although Leeming's presence in this biography is minimal- -even in the Turkish chapters--his professional and social relationship with Baldwin grew rapidly. He was designated authorized biographer and granted access to Baldwin's private papers in 1977, ten years before Baldwin's death at 63. Throughout the text, Leeming seems to struggle with his official status; he slips into the various roles of friend, sycophant, defender, and personal secretary. The alternate references to ``Jimmy'' and the more formal ``Baldwin'' give the book a split personality. Despite this schizophrenic tone, this biography has value as a life chronicle. After all, Leeming saw and heard a great deal that previous Baldwin biographers had no opportunity to see or hear. Leeming deals extensively with Baldwin's precarious (and shifting) place on the racial divide, with his homosexuality, and with the mental instability that led to suicide attempts. Leeming does a workmanlike job of portraying Baldwin's Harlem childhood, the writing of the early books, Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room (among others), the search across the world for a country to call home, and much more. The book is rich in detail but not overly long. Baldwin's life was so inherently fascinating that only a hack could make it dull. Leeming is no hack. But, despite Baldwin's labeling of Leeming as ``my Boswell,'' the biographer is clearly not that, either.
Booklist Review
If perhaps Baldwin's significance in American literature has faded somewhat in the public mind over the past decade or so, Leeming's intimate, artful--and major--biography should prove restorative. Leeming was a personal friend of the great novelist and essayist, and his book, while objective, was more or less authorized by the subject before his death in 1987. Baldwin's was not an easy life to lead; he felt forever an outsider because of his race and his sexual orientation--"a lonely and extremely vulnerable man" is how Leeming refers to him. Baldwin saw himself as a "prophet," someone placed on earth to see and announce the truth, particularly about racial injustice. Born into poverty in Harlem, Baldwin knew from an early age all about racism and to get away from it, to have peace to write, he spent much of his adult life in France. His love relationships were always difficult, and Leeming explores these frankly but sympathetically. His books gave him deserved fame, and Leeming proffers good insights into these works. An exceptional literary biography deserving wide promotion and readership. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1994)0394577086Brad Hooper
Choice Review
Unlike some recent biographies that are withering indictments of their subjects, this highly readable work is a moving tribute to Baldwin by Leeming, who was Baldwin's personal assistant in the mid-'60s. In fact, Baldwin authorized this biography. Yet this book is hardly sanitized. Leeming manages to show the many facets of a complex man in this insightful work. He discusses such important aspects of Baldwin's life as his relationship with his stepfather, his homosexuality, his struggle against racism, and his time spent abroad in France and Turkey. Leeming is also perceptive in his interpretations of Baldwin's work, particularly the novels, rarely making fanciful analyses. Baldwin said of himself, "I want to be an honest man and a good writer." This biography displays both honesty and good writing. Recommended to all readers. L. J. Parascandola; Long Island UniversityDSBrooklyn Campus
Library Journal Review
Conscience-afflicting prose that probed what it meant to be an American, a Negro, and a male put Baldwin (1924-87) in the first rank of 20th-century American writers. His one-time personal secretary Leeming argues in this biography, which Baldwin reportedly authorized before his death, that the writer was a prophet and witness tormented by demons of illegitimacy and racial and sexual alienation. Obsessed with the question of identity and struggling to work out a vision of his life, Baldwin ( Go Tell It on the Mountain; Giovanni's Room ) necessarily welded his writing from autobiography. The personal Baldwin that Leeming contributes will be indispensable to Baldwin scholars and a complement to other recent works of evaluation such as James Campbell's Talking at the Gates ( LJ 4/1/91), William J. Weatherby's James Baldwin: Artist on Fire ( LJ 5/1/89), and Horace A. Porter's Stealing the Fire ( LJ 2/1/89). Recommended for collections on Baldwin, blacks, and 20th-century U.S. society and literature.-- Thomas J. Davis, SUNY at Buffalo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.