Volume 34, Number 21 & 22 · January 21, 1988
On James Baldwin (1924–1987)
By Darryl Pinckney
Go Tell It on the Mountain, its pages heavy with sinners brought low and prayers groaning on the wind, scared me when I read it as a teen-ager. I was afraid that around any corner in the story of how Johnny Grimes, 'frog eyes,' came to be saved I ran the risk of exposure. It spoiled my wistful identification with The Catcher in the Rye, which all my friends were soaking up at the time. None of them had read Go Tell It on the Mountain, though, as did everyone else in the late 1960s, they knew what the name James Baldwin stood for. I was left alone with the book, as if it had been the little box at the bottom of the exam form that only I, as a black, was asked to pencil in. I thought I was better than Johnny, sweeping dust from a worn-out rug on his birthday, but I wasn't sure that the trap of Harlem, 1935, was as long ago and far away as I wanted to believe.
Feature, 2482 words
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