Full Bio: James Baldwin's Years in Paris

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It – Full Bio: James Baldwin's Years in Paris

Date: September 16, 2025
Host: Alison Stewart, WNYC
Guest: Nicholas Boggs, author of "A Love Story"

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Overview

This episode of "All Of It" presents a deep dive into James Baldwin’s transformative years in Paris, as explored in Nicholas Boggs' new biography "A Love Story." The discussion centers on Baldwin's personal and creative evolution from 1948 to 1955 – his relationships, his quest to define himself as both a writer and a man, and the influence that Paris and those close to him had on his most significant works and outlook on love, race, and identity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. James Baldwin’s Beginnings and Exile to Paris

• Motivation for Leaving America: Baldwin sought escape from the confines placed upon him as a "young Negro writer" in America. He refused to be limited to writing from a place of victimhood.
  • [02:44] James Baldwin (quoted):

    “What was expected was to accept the role of victim and to write from that point of view. And from my point of view... it seemed to me that to take such a stance would simply be to corroborate all of the principles which had you enslaved in the first place.”

2. The Paris Years & Lucien Habisberger

• Meeting Lucien: Baldwin met Lucien, a 17-year-old aspiring painter, at a Parisian gay bar. Their romantic and creative partnership would shape the rest of Baldwin's life and art.
  • Lucien nursed Baldwin back to health at a Swiss chalet, directly inspiring the creation and completion of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and the pivotal essay "Stranger in the Village."
  • Their relationship was tumultuous but enduring, with Lucien even acting as Baldwin’s business manager later in life, and returning to Baldwin’s side at his death.
  • [04:26] Nicholas Boggs:

    “Lucien was his lover, his great love. He's really the prototype for the rest of his life of this kind of romantic, idyllic situation where he's being taken care of by a lover and writing his great works.”

• Impact on Baldwin’s Notion of Love: Lucien allowed Baldwin to experience love in a way previously unimaginable to him, breaking through social constructs of race and sexuality.
  • [06:23] Nicholas Boggs:

    "He just didn’t see Baldwin as a homosexual or a black man. He just saw him as someone that he loved. And that was really freeing for Baldwin to feel that way... He used that as a metaphor for race relations eventually."

3. Mary Painter and the Bohemian Paris Circle

• Role in Baldwin’s Life: Mary Painter, an American economist and Marshall Plan administrator, became Baldwin’s confidante and supporter, both emotionally and financially.
  • She was fundamental in integrating Paris’ bohemian circles into a true writer's community and inspired Baldwin’s letters and creative process.
  • [07:57] Nicholas Boggs:

    “He really wrote about the connection between his love life and the creative process... So these letters are also funny. I mean, there’s lots of funny lines and postcards that he sent. So, you know, they became very, very, very close.”

4. Outsider Status and Racial Reflection in Switzerland

• Transformation in Switzerland: Time in a Swiss village illuminated issues of racial naivete and innocence, fueling powerful essays and consolidated Baldwin’s comfort inhabiting outsider roles for creative inspiration.
  • [09:27] Nicholas Boggs:

    “The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”

  • Encounters there clarified Americans' refusal to confront racial history, using the supposed innocence of white Americans as a shield.
  • [10:10] Nicholas Boggs:

    “The innocence constitutes the crime. No one is innocent, Right. So looking at these somewhat innocent children allowed him to kind of reflect on that.”

5. Romantic Entanglements, Regret, and Artistic Fuel

• Baldwin advised Lucien to marry the mother of his child – a move driven by Baldwin’s code and feelings about illegitimacy – and there are lingering questions about regret.
  • [12:08] Nicholas Boggs:

    “He kind of needed to have this intense love that he would lose and then yearn for from a distance and then get back sometimes only to lose again. This was very creatively productive… This was fuel for his art, not just for him emotionally, but also the plots of his novels often reproduce these kinds of love triangles.”

6. Relationship with Other Black Writers: Langston Hughes & Generational Conflict

• The release of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" attracted envy and critique, especially from Langston Hughes, due to reasons both professional (publishing rivalries) and personal (homosexual subtext).
  • [14:56] Nicholas Boggs:

    “That was an era where you were only allowed to have one black writer, right? ... I also think... the fact that Baldwin had written this novel with this homosexual subtext... When perhaps, as people have written, Langston Hughes might have been closeted. What is this? How is this gonna make him feel like?”

7. Homosexuality and Literary Innovation

• Baldwin’s depiction of same-sex love, particularly in "Giovanni’s Room," set it apart from American novels of the time, which treated queer themes as pulp or “tawdry.”
  • [16:37] Nicholas Boggs:

    “It was so groundbreaking in so many different ways. Other than Truman Capote... there were kind of pulpy gay novels... But the idea that it could be literature... was still kind of a new idea.”

8. Personal Flaws and Fierce Commitment to Art

• Baldwin could be personally difficult: financially irresponsible, inconsiderate of others’ property, consumed by his art and relationships.
  • [18:43] Nicholas Boggs:

    “He did have... nothing came before [writing], right? Nothing came before the art... The reality is that Baldwin was living by his wits and by his shoestring. He really did not have the money.”

• Residencies like Yaddo gave him breakthroughs (most notably, realizing "Giovanni’s Room" would be a novel), despite his difficulties.

9. Depression, Suicidality, and Social Wounds

• Baldwin attempted suicide; his depression’s sources: an absent biological father, fraught relationship with his stepfather, and the relentless burden of American racism and violence toward Black leaders.
  • [20:15] Nicholas Boggs:

    “He would probably say that this kind of double paternity... was a kind of wound. And then, of course, the wound of his stepfather... The way that he grew up as a sensitive, brilliant black man in an America that did not want him... he turned these so-called negatives... into incredible positive in the sense that it gave him a perspective that nobody else had or was going to take advantage of the way that he did.”

10. Corsica Interlude and the Road South

• Corsica as Turning Point: Baldwin spent seven months in Corsica after a breakup; it was both a deep low (another suicide attempt) and a time of creative rebirth.
  • [22:19] Nicholas Boggs:

    “I used [a fellowship] to go to Corsica. And my mom and I found the address of the house where he stayed... We spend the whole day looking through old photographs, talking to the people who lived there... So it was just I said to Bob Caro afterwards, I said, you were missing one important thing for the biographer. Always bring your mother.”

• Political Awakening: Upon returning from Corsica, Baldwin traveled to the American South, accelerating his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, meeting Martin Luther King Jr., and recognizing the church’s political capacity.

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Notable Quotes

• Baldwin on expectations:

  “What was expected was to accept the role of victim and to write from that point of view. And... to take such a stance would simply be to corroborate all of the principles which had you enslaved in the first place.”
  — James Baldwin [02:44]

• On love and creative process:

  “Lucien also... let him escape the trap of color... He just saw him as someone that he loved. And that was really freeing for Baldwin... He used that as a kind of metaphor for talking about race relations.”
  — Nicholas Boggs [06:23]

• On outsider experiences:

  “He almost needed the experience of being a total outsider... because that’s how he felt growing up in Harlem. So he needed to reproduce these kinds of outsider experiences... to be creatively productive.”
  — Nicholas Boggs [10:10]

• Turning pain into art:

  “He was able to turn these so-called negatives... into incredible positive in the sense that it gave him a perspective that nobody else had.”
  — Nicholas Boggs [20:15]

• On biographical research:

  “Bob Caro writes about the importance of turning every page... So I find the house with my mother. We knock on the door... and next thing you know, we are in the house.”
  — Nicholas Boggs [22:19]

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Noteworthy Moments & Timestamps

• [02:44] Baldwin on resisting the role expected of Black writers
• [04:26] Meeting and defining the relationship with Lucien Habersberger
• [07:57] Role of Mary Painter in Baldwin’s life
• [09:27] The transformative Swiss village experience
• [14:49] Relationship and literary rivalry with Langston Hughes
• [16:37] Discussion of queer themes in Baldwin’s work vs American literature
• [18:43] Baldwin’s financial irresponsibility and artistic single-mindedness
• [20:15] Sources of Baldwin’s depression and trauma
• [22:19] The Corsica interlude and research anecdotes

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a conversational, thoughtful tone—balancing respect for Baldwin’s genius and sensuality with frankness about his flaws and the turbulent years that shaped him. Nicholas Boggs provides detailed anecdotes, often blending personal enthusiasm with scholarly insight, while Alison Stewart keeps the narrative accessible and curious.

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Ideal For:
Listeners interested in literary history, African American and LGBTQ+ experiences, creative process, the Parisian arts scene, and the exploration of love, race, and identity through biography. This episode sheds light on the inner life and outer context of one of the 20th century’s most foundational and complex writers.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We wanted to mark the passing of Robert Redford, the legendary actor turned director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. Robert Redford was born in California in 1936. After dropping out of the University of Colorado, he worked for Standard Oil and then attended art school in Paris, where he sold his sketches on the street. He returned to the States to study acting in New York, receiving his first big break on Broadway in 1963 as the lead of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. In 1974, he starred in the screen version alongside Jane Fonda. His career continued to ascend. He became one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the seventies with a string of hits, including Jeremiah Johnson, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Sting with Paul Newman and All the Presidents Men. His tousled good looks and roles in films like the Way We Were, Three Days at the Condor, and Out of Africa made him a sex symbol, if not a reluctant1. In 1980, he made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, which won him his only Oscar. He went on to direct films throughout the 2000s, including a river Runs through it, the Legend of Bagger Vance, and the Horse Whisperer. Based in Utah since the early 60s, Redford rejected the trappings of Hollywood. He became an environmental activist and ardent independent film supporter, leading him to create the Sundance Institute, which launched the Sundance Film Festival. According to his longtime publicist, he died at his home early this morning in his sleep. Robert Redford was 89. Full Bio is our book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Today we'll be talking to Nicholas Boggs, the author of A Love Story. Boggs spent more than a decade working on this 700 page book, and it is the first major biography of the literary giant in nearly 30 years. James Baldwin was the author of novels like Go Tell it on the Mountain and if Beale Street Could Talk, as well as essays like Notes on a Native Son and Plays like blues for Mr. Charlie. But before that, we learned that he grew up in Harlem, spent his days in Greenwich Village, and earned a scholarship to go to Paris. All he wanted to do was write. As he told FRESH Air, I worked.

[James Baldwin (quoted)]

All day and I wrote all night, and I learned a lot. I began to be being published when I was 22. I had a fellowship when I was 21, and something else was happening too, though I didn't quite see it. I was defined as a young Negro writer, and that meant that certain things were expected of a young Negro writer. And what was expected, I knew I was not about to deliver. What was expected was to. I'm putting it very brutally. But what was expected was to accept the role of victim and to write from that point of view. And from my point of view. It seemed to me that to take such a stance would simply be to corroborate all of the principles which had you enslaved in the first place.

[Alison Stewart]

Baldwin spent most of his time in France and it was there he met the love of his life, Lucien Hapisberger. Here's Nicholas Boggs, author of A Love Our Choice. For full bio, part two of the book is called Lucienne the Paris Years 1948-1955. Lucien Habersberger, correct?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

Deeply important to James Baldwin. He's almost throughout the entire book. Giovanni's room is dedicated to him. But for the time being, in the seven period, the seven year period, who was Lucienne?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Lucien Habersberger was just 17 years old. He was a sort of a. Almost a street kid. He came to Paris, much like Baldwin, to become an artist. He wanted to become a painter. Baldwin had been there about a year and he had just gotten out of prison. Actually, that's a whole other story. He was telling this story of how he got thrown into the prison and how he eventually got out. This becomes his great essay, equal In Paris, he's at a gay bar called La Reine Blanche. And he's there, he locks eyes with him and they have this immediate attraction and they become, I think in the beginning it was more of a friendship. But when Baldwin falls ill and can't finish or can't really even get started on what becomes Goteld in the mountain, Lucien tells his father that he has tuberculosis and can he use their Swiss chalet vacation spot and get some money? And he takes him there three times over the course of a couple years. The first time they go, he just nurses Baldwin back to health. And then they go on a climb on the mountain. And that's when Baldwin comes up with the title Go Tell it on the Mountain. The second time he brings Bessie Smith records. And there he is, the only black man in the Swiss village. He eventually writes Stranger in the Village, really important essay about that experience. And he finishes the novel there on his third go. So Lucien was his lover, his great love. He's really the prototype for the rest of his life of this kind of romantic, idyllic situation where he's being taken care of by a lover and writing his great works. And they had an on again, off again relationship for their entire life. Lucienne ended up marrying a woman, having a couple kids, and then returning to his bedside at his death. They had a very rocky relationship at times as well. He ended up marrying the. The wonderful black actress Diana Sands, who was a friend of Baldwin's. So there was some drama there for sure.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[Nicholas Boggs]

But there's a lot of love.

[Alison Stewart]

How did Lucien shape Baldwin's definition of love?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Utterly, utterly. And he writes about it when Lucien loved him and took him to Switzerland. And throughout that period, Baldwin writes that he just didn't think love was something possible for him. It was something that happened to other people, he says, but there it was belching up inside of me, as he put it importantly, Lucien also, I mean, Baldwin talked about this kind of like. Kind of like Bill Miller let him kind of escape the trap of color. He didn't see. He didn't see race, not in that colorblind way that we can sometimes confuse it with now. But he just didn't see Baldwin as a homosexual or a black man. He just saw him as someone that he loved. And that was really freeing for Baldwin to feel that way, to have someone else feel that way. And he understood that, you know, looking. He would write about how looking in your lover's eyes, right, that's. They see things in you, both your flaws, right, that's the risk, but that you have to confront within yourself and you can only kind of do it together. And he used that as a kind of metaphor for talking about race relations eventually. So Lucien really helped him on a personal level, but also on an aesthetic level as a novelist and also on a political level.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

There's a third person we should mention before this all takes off.

[Alison Stewart]

Mary Painter.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

James Baldwin said, when I realized I couldn't marry Mary Painter, I realized I could marry no one. The three of them became fast friends. Would you share how she was instrumental in transforming these little bohemian groups in Paris into somewhat of a writer's community?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, she had the money for the alcohol. She did. She had a good deal with some, like Whiskey Whiskey Company or something for real. But she is a fascinating figure. He ended up dedicating another country to her. She was an American economist who was living in Paris. She was involved in the Marshall Plan. Brilliant woman. Like really brilliant woman. And so they were very different in a way, but they were both these incredible minds. They met at some stuffy brunch and they became such good friends. And the letters that are at the Beinecke that he wrote to her over the course of many years are absolutely extraordinary. He wrote to her from across the globe. I mean, Africa, Corsica, when he went to the south. Importantly, his first trip in 1957, he wrote back to her about how transformative it was for him, but also terrifying it was. He could confide in her. But I think most importantly, for my purposes, writing the book, he really wrote about the connection between his love life and the creative process. Right. He would write about all of it. So these letters are also funny. I mean, there's lots of funny lines and postcards that he sent. So, you know, they became very, very, very close. And throughout, until through his death, as.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

You mentioned, James Baldwin and Lucienne went.

[Alison Stewart]

To Switzerland, and Baldwin was able to complete go tell it on the mountain. He must have stuck out in this tiny town in Switzerland. How did it change him?

[Nicholas Boggs]

It changed him immensely. I mean, he has this line from the essay, Stranger in the Village. The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again. And he already knew that. But he was using this, much as he used the experience of being in France to reflect back on the problems of race in America. Being in the Swiss village, I think it took. He took it to a whole other level, right? He was realizing something about Western civilization, period. But he also saw, I think, importantly, that these little Swiss kids who were touching his hair and doing things that we would definitely find inappropriate now, there was a certain kind of innocence to them.

[Alison Stewart]

Naivete.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Naivete, not innocence. Because that's the essay. It's one of the essays where he's. Then. That lets him talk about the false innocence of Americans, right? That one of the problems in America is that white America refuses to confront its past. It refuses to have these conversations. It refuses to look at the way that the history of enslavement and its aftermath structure everything in this country. There's just no getting beyond it. And instead, this belief in innocence, as he said it, the innocence constitutes the crime. No one is innocent, Right. So looking at these somewhat innocent children allowed him to kind of reflect on that. But it is also the case that he always, you know, he almost like, needed the experience of being a total outsider. He was comfortable in that, in a way, because that's how he felt growing up in Harlem. So he needed to reproduce these kinds of outsider experiences in different places to be creative, creatively productive.

[Alison Stewart]

When he was in the Swiss Alps, he learned that Lucien was going to be a father. And he told Lucien he had to marry the woman that was very important to him. Why was that important? To James Baldwin.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Listen, Baldwin was a. Baldwin had a code. You know, he had a code in love. And it could be very hard on people. You know, I think it was. He could be very demanding. But I think because he grew up, quote, unquote, illegitimate, he. He had this sense. He said, well, listen, I don't. You. You have to marry her. You know, you have to. I think you might have come to regret that. That later on.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

That's my next question.

[Nicholas Boggs]

But at the time, you know, that was what. That. That was how. That was how he felt. And. Yeah, I can take your next question then.

[Alison Stewart]

My next question. It's total speculation.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

And. And I realized, regardless of the reason.

[Alison Stewart]

But do you think he regretted sending.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

Lucien to get married, to seek love, some sort of love elsewhere?

[Nicholas Boggs]

I think that's a very hard question to answer. He was pretty young back then, and Lucien was pretty young. And then, of course, they got together later and all kinds of times. But I will say this. What's, again, complicated about Baldwin's psychological makeup, like many people's, is that he kind of needed to have this intense love that he would lose and then yearn for from a distance and then get back sometimes only to lose again. This was very creatively productive. He went away to Yaddo. He went away to McDowell. He went away to these places yearning for Lucien. Right. Often in the middle of a breakup. This was fuel for his art, not just for him emotionally, but also the plots of his novels often reproduce these kinds of love triangles. So I'm not sure if that was the case way back then in that first moment when he married her. But I think he did subconsciously, perhaps recognize that this was a structure that worked for him as an artist.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

Was Lucien aware that he might be hurting James Baldwin?

[Nicholas Boggs]

That's a good question.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

I don't know if there's an answer to it, but I kept thinking it like, does he know?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, he was about 17 and 18 years old then, so you gotta remember that. I think the scholar Magdalena Zaborowska, who's written some really important books on Baldwin, especially about his Turkish years, has a wonderful interview that she did with Lucien that she generously shared with me. And this was from 2010, when Lucien died a couple years later. But it was very clear that he was ambivalent about, you know, he loved Baldwin, but he kind of almost resented that he had been positioned as his lover. Kind of said he, well, I wasn't that much of a lover. But then he kind of would backtrack on that and kind of Liked the idea that he had saved him, but in other ways didn't. So I'm guessing that Lucien, throughout his life, had a sort of complicated relation to Baldwin. Listen, Baldwin was this huge figure. He became a celebrity. Baldwin became Lucien's boss. I mean, he became. Lucien became his business manager. He was very dependent on Baldwin. So we have this complicated relationship that weaves in and out throughout their entire lives.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

My guest is Nicholas Boggs. The name of the book is A Love Story. It's our choice for a full bio. When Go Tell it on the Mountain was released, it was interesting because some black writers had sharp words for Baldwin. Mainly, Langston Hughes is who I'm thinking of. Was there a generational difference between the two men? Was that the issue or was it something else?

[Nicholas Boggs]

It's probably a lot of things, beginning with the fact that Knopf, which published Baldwin's novel, had just dropped Langston.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

That too.

[Nicholas Boggs]

So, you know, that'll do it. Although that was a bad idea on Knopf's part, but. And they had other bad ideas when they later rejected Giovanni's Room. But I think there were a few things going on there. First of all, that was an era where you were only allowed to have one black writer, right? This ridiculous notion that there can only be one. So it was sort of Richard Wright. Langston Hughes maybe was in that conversation. But here comes Baldwin, right? So I think that was part of it. I also think that we can't know, but the fact that Baldwin had written this novel with this homosexual subtext. Very clear homosexual subtext. When perhaps, as people have written, Langston Hughes might have been closeted. What is this? How is this gonna make him feel like? What's that? That's gotta be a complex emotional thing going on there. I'll also say, though, that I think that some of Langston Hughes comments were generous. He did write that Baldwin wrote like the sea, like undulates like the sea. And he wrote also that it seemed that Baldwin had not yet resolved his relationship to black America and white America. And I think that's kind of true. He was in the middle of doing that by moving to France. So complicated things going on there.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

It's interesting because you note that Baldwin's writing was done mainly in Europe, and so he wasn't necessarily subject to American homophobia when he was writing. How are American novels dealing with gay characters? And how are they different in Baldwin's novels?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, you have something like Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms. Wonderful, wonderful novel you have in Baldwin, though. It's set in France. Right. It's taking this expatriate character, David, and it's fascinatingly looking at white American masculinity through this kind of transatlantic experience written by a black author, which was shocking to people. Of course, they thought he was just gonna go and write, you know, another go tell on the mountain. That's what they wanted him to do. So I think what was, you know, other than Truman Capote and a couple other people? You know, there were kind of pulpy gay novels and stuff. But the idea that it could be literature. Right. Was still kind of a new idea. Which is why when it got reviewed, you know, Granville Hicks and others, they would. They would be heaping all this praise on it, and they would say, he saves it from being a tawdry subject matter. As if just the fact that it was same sex love made it tawdry. So that was interesting. Yeah, it's sort of. It was so groundbreaking in so many different ways.

[Interviewer/Host 2]

Okay. James Baldwin could be charming, intelligent, thoughtful, but he could be a huge pain. He didn't handle money well. There's a story in your book where he stayed in an apartment of a friend in New York City and then left it in shambles. He left kind of a bad taste in the mouth of McDowell fellowships by, like, not paying his bills.

[Nicholas Boggs]

Yeah, Yaddo. We gotta be clear. That was Yaddo. And I want to have a correction to the. That. That was Bill Cole. Not a correction that you wouldn't know, but I actually just met somebody who'd stayed in Bill Cole's apartment where Baldwin had stayed and reportedly had left bedbugs and left it in shambles. This person told me when he stayed in Bill Cole's apartment. Greenwich. Greenwich Village apartment during that time, they were cockroaches. So. Just saying. So Bill Cole. Yeah, Bill Cole. I'm mechanically. I'm letting Baldwin off the hook on that one.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, he did leave these huge bills at Yaddo.

[Nicholas Boggs]

That is for sure. That is for sure.

[Alison Stewart]

So the big question is, why didn't he observe the practical nature of living an adult life?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, there's a story I will go back to when he got. When he first got to Paris and there was this kind of communist woman. They were all living in this sort of bohemian hotel. And she went off for vacation and she had a typewriter, and he borrowed her typewriter, quote, unquote. And when she came back, you know, he wouldn't give it back to her because. And she said, well, why not? He was really testing her Communist Principles. And she said, because I'm writing with it, I have to write a novel. You're not a novelist. He did have. I mean, nothing came before that. Right? Nothing came before the art. So similarly, at Yaddo, he was in the middle of a breakup with Lucien. Most of those phone calls were back to Lucien or others talking about the breakup. But that's also where he had a break through, where he realized that Giovanni's room was not this little short story he was writing, but was this big novel. Okay, the Yaddo thing is complicated because, yes, that was a big phone bill, but to Yaddo's credit, they were one of the first artist residency to integrate. Right. Which was amazing. That doesn't mean it was all smooth. That doesn't mean they weren't still paying different kind of attention to the black artists who came there and having different kinds of expectations. The reality is that Baldwin was living by his wits and by his shoestring. He really did not have the money. And then when he. He wanted to, he probably wanted to pay back. He definitely wanted to come back, but they wouldn't let him come back.

[Alison Stewart]

James Baldwin attempted suicide a few times. What was the source of his depression?

[Nicholas Boggs]

Well, what is the source ever of depression? Right. But I think for him, you know, I don't want to psychoanalyze him, but I do think, you know, he would probably say that this kind of double paternity that he was dealing with, Right. He never knew his father, and this was the one that he would never really write about or talk about. That was. That was a kind of wound. And then, of course, the wound of his stepfather who was so hard on him. So I think, you know, if we wanted to be sort of Freudian or something, we could go there. But I think the larger issue is more socio. Social. I mean, it's just the. The way that he grew up as a sensitive, brilliant black man in an America that did not want him and did not treat him correctly, did not understand the treasure that he is and that he was. You know, I also think there's a kind of just a melancholic temperament that he had. I also believe that he. That he had a calling as a writer that put him in really difficult situations. You know, Malcolm X is killed. Martin Luther King is killed. Edgar Evers, he felt he was next. That's immensely. That's pretty depressing. That's pretty stressful, you know, so I think that there were social forces that we have to deal with as well. We also lived in a Time when he wasn't gonna go get like mental health care. So, you know, I think there were a lot of sources of it. What's amazing is how he turned his suffering and he turned his challenging into, into such art. I think the interviewer asked him like, what did you do? You grew up black, poor and gay. And he said, I hit the jackpot. I mean, he was able to turn these so called negatives. Of course, these aren't negatives, but the society saw as negative into incredible positive in the sense that it gave him a perspective that nobody else had or was going to take advantage of the way that he did.

[Alison Stewart]

In section two, is there anything you wanted to point out before we go to section three that you think is real important?

[Nicholas Boggs]

So there's this four part structure and in the middle is the interlude. In the interlude, two important things happen. He goes to Corsica and then when he comes back from Corsica, he goes to the south for the first time. South of South America. South of America, Right. In Corsica is one of the times that he tries to kill himself. Okay, so no Baldwin scholar anybody had ever found the house where he stayed for seven crucial months when he was trying to work on another country and recover from all kinds of things. But my mother came with me to Corsica. So I got Bob Caro, the great biographer. I got a little fellowship and I used that money to go to Corsica. And my mom and I found the address of the house where he stayed for those seven months. And this is where he actually, you know, he was going through a breakup with Arnold and he, at night he jumped over the terrace wall and went down to the water and thought of drowning himself, thought of Virginia Woolf, but didn't, but didn't do it. And Bob Carroll writes about the importance of turning every page. He writes about the importance of place going everywhere. So that's what I did. So I find the house with my mother. We knock on the door. It's hot, it's hot, hot, hot July. No one answers the door. So I decided, okay, well, let's walk down towards the water where he would have thought of drowning himself. We turn around and on the terrace that Baldwin would have jumped down from, a woman's doing her laundry. And intrepid biographer that I am, what do I do? I jump behind a bush. But my mother goes, bonjour. And next thing you know, we are in the house. It's pretty much the same as it was when Baldwin lived there. We spend the whole day looking through old photographs, talking to the people who lived there, who knew the people who lived there before. So it was just I said to Bob Caro afterwards, I said, you were missing one important thing for the biographer. Always bring your mother. That's funny. And it was from Corsica that he wrote this gorgeous letter to his own mother. That is really important. So he spent seven months there and he really was rejuvenated. This is when he found out that Giovanni's Room was a finalist for the National Book Award. It did not win, but it was a finalist. But then he really felt the pull of coming back and going south. So he wrote an article for Harper's and another publication and he went down south and met Martin Luther King for the first time. Was sort of politically a political awakening for him. Spending some time in the church was really moving to him because he saw the church could be a kind of political community that he hadn't understood before. So that was. It was also kind of devastating seeing he wrote to Mary Painter about seeing burning crosses and having psychosomatic illness. When he arrived back at Grand Central Station, his suitcase burst at the seams and was kind of a metaphor. He was falling apart. So that's the end of the interlude.

[Alison Stewart]

That was Nicholas Boggs, the author of A Love Story. Tomorrow on Full bio James Baldwin, the.

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