Volume 17, Number 9 · December 2, 1971
Tape's Last Krapp
By Stanley Diamond
A Rap on Race
by Margaret Mead, by James Baldwin
Lippincott, 264 pp., $6.95
Margaret Mead had nothing to lose as a result of this tape-recorded conversation, which lasted more than seven and a half hours over two days and was arranged by the publisher, previewed in McCall's, and followed by joint appearances on TV talk shows. James Baldwin had nothing to gain. It does not advance him as an artist, or even as a literary radical, but merely engages him—a mock engagement—with an exemplary daughter of the culture from which he is in flight. Were both participants what they presumed to be, this conversation could hardly have taken place—for their points of difference are, on the face of it, classic, irreconcilable. But here they are, exchanging compliments in the same bugged room.
Review, 1288 words
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