← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
768 Young James Baldwin (with Nicholas Boggs) | My Last Book with Bruce Robbins
00:57:05
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
- [00:09]
Nicholas Boggs
This is pro linebacker TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co Design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too, because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores because your personal best is greater than anything.
- [00:40]
Jack Wilson
Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without.
- [00:45]
Nicholas Boggs
Making you feel incredibly old.
- [00:48]
Jack Wilson
Kraft Mac and Cheese Best thing ever. Hello.
- [00:55]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
There are some thinkers and cultural critics who only seem to get better with age. James Baldwin is one such writer. In my view, his vision of America and Americans has endured not because he foresaw what America could or would become, but because he saw clearly what America is, what America has always been, what it is or what it was in his time and and what it remains. It's a strange feeling to be alive in 2026 and know that a black gay man from New York City who lived much of his life abroad and who died when Ronald Reagan was president, wrote and said things that are as insightful today as they were when he pointed them out 50 or 60 or 70 years ago. But such is the nature of genius, and such is the nature of someone who sees not just the dreams of a society, but the reality of it. And not just the institutions forming the skeleton of a country, but its underlying heart, the people who make up those institutions, the psychology and psychoses of the hundreds of millions of souls who together shape the destiny of a nation. He saw it all. Baldwin with those enormous eyes that once shamed him as a child and that brain that impressed all who met him everywhere he went from a very early age. What formed this man? We'll talk to Nicholas Boggs, who has written the first full length detailed biography of Baldwin in 30 years about James Baldwin before he was James Baldwin. The childhood in Harlem, living in a crowded apartment, the ability he showed early, and the people who helped him develop. All that's coming up today on the history of literature. Okay, hello.
- [03:04]
Jack Wilson
Here we go.
- [03:05]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson with some exciting news. We are definitely going to be traveling to England this year. This show is going on the road. The plans are coming into place. It's so exciting. The very first. Who knows, maybe it will be the only History of Literature Podcast Tour. We're making stops in London, Oxford and Bath and throughout the trip we'll be joined by friends of the show who are going to help make this a week or so to remember and you can join us. This is a nice travel package put in place for fans and well wishers, friends of the show to join us and travel around the country with us. Please do join us if you can. I'm terribly excited and I'm looking forward to meeting some listeners. I suspect I might.
- [03:54]
Jack Wilson
I was thinking about this the other day.
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Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
I think I might actually weep a little bit when I meet some people.
- [04:01]
Jack Wilson
Some real actual people. I'm sorry, but there'll be.
- [04:04]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
They will be tears of joy, I promise. I've been doing this for 10 years, mostly here in my basement studio by myself, and it will be a little strange to be out in the sunlight or in that gorgeous London gray sky. Anyway, let's hope we have a nice mix of weather. But seriously, we do have room available on the tour. I've asked them to hold it open for a few more weeks so people can sign up and the folks at John Shores Travel who are putting this all together said yes indeed. They can do that through the end of this month and next of January and February. So act now to reserve your spot and meet the people behind Shakespeare's Globe Theater and the professors at Oxford who have been writing these wonderful books on all of these favorite authors of ours. And you'll meet some of these your favorite author guests who have been on the show. And you'll meet me and Emma, the show's producer. We're going to be there too. It's a small handcrafted tour created with love by people who care. Okay, enough of the waterworks. Learn more by following the link in our show notes which was broken for a while, so if it didn't work for you before, give it another try. Or go to historyofliterature.com and follow the link to the itinerary from there. Okay, Speaking of Bath, I had a wonderful interview conversation the other day with an author who has written a book.
- [05:29]
Jack Wilson
Or helped put together.
- [05:30]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
She's written the introduction to a book helping to put together a book on Mary Shelley and Bath. I'm going to try to move that one up in the schedule. It really makes you want to go see Beth. In addition to all of the beloved Jane Austen haunts that are there, Mary Shelley spent four months there and they were an incredible four months. You're not going to believe all the things that Happened to her during those four months. Happened to her and Percy and their extended families. It's astonishing Mary Shelley got any work done. And yet she did. Finishing up a little novel you might have heard of. I'm not going to spoil it by revealing the title, but I'll just say it rhymes with Clankenstein. Okay. James Baldwin doesn't need much more of an introduction. He's one of the leading literary figures of the 20th century. Let's go straight to Nicholas Boggs. And then we're going to hear from Bruce Robbins, who you may recall from our discussion about atrocities.
- [06:27]
Jack Wilson
Literature.
- [06:28]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
How does literature deal with atrocities, historical atrocities? We're going to ask Bruce what he would choose to read as his last book. But first, Nicholas Boggs and the young James Baldwin.
- [06:46]
Jack Wilson
Okay. Joining me now is Nicholas Boggs, who previously co edited an acclaimed new edition of James Baldwin's children's book, Little Man Little A Story of Childhood. After discovering that out of print book in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, he's here today to discuss his new book, A Love Story, which the New York Times calls a sensational new biography and a stunning book. Nicholas Boggs, welcome to the history of literature.
- [07:16]
Nicholas Boggs
It's great to be here.
- [07:19]
Jack Wilson
So your book is so comprehensive. I agree with the New York Times that it's sensational and stunning. Stunning. And we could really talk about Baldwin's life for hours. So I thought today we would just focus on the young James Baldwin. And as I was reading the start of your book, I had this thought that there really aren't many writers who had such an interesting life before turning 18. And then I couldn't decide if I was singing this because his young life was actually that interesting or because he was such a compelling figure later. And he. He wrote and talked about those formative experiences in such a vivid way that he's helped us to see why, what would not be such unusual incidents or why just routine incidents from his childhood even could seem so interesting. And then I decided, I guess it's probably both. He did have an interesting life, and he was really good at talking about his childhood and telling us why those things were so formative. Is that a. Is that an opinion you share?
- [08:24]
Nicholas Boggs
I share that opinion, but I think even if you took away his ability to write about it, just speaking to people about his childhood and hearing interviews and stuff like that, I think he had a remarkable childhood in many, many ways.
- [08:39]
Jack Wilson
And only in New York City is how it felt to me, too. Okay, we'll get to that. Let's start with his parents. What was his relationship like with his mother? And I guess we should call him the man that he knew as his father at that time.
- [08:55]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes. He had a very, very close relationship with his mother, Bertis Baldwin. He was one of nine children, the oldest. So he took on a very complicated role. He was more than a son, more than a child. He had to grow up very quickly. He sort of became her right hand, you know, helping with all these other children, but also working after school jobs at a sweatshop, for example, to help out financially. So while Baldwin was very, very close to his mother, and sometimes he actually said, I never had a childhood. And I think that's what he's talking about is that he had to grow up very quickly.
- [09:29]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And the father was a pretty stern presence.
- [09:35]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes. So he never met his biological father. And his stepfather, David Baldwin, was a factory worker and a preacher and lived a very challenging life himself. And Baldwin grapples with that, of course, in his great essay Notes of a Native Son and elsewhere, talks about, you know, coming to terms with kind of the reality of American racism. He also doubled for him in his life, coming to terms with his father's death, but also the way that his father was, you know, abusive towards him, verbally mostly, but also physically calling him frog eyes, saying he was the ugliest boy he'd ever seen. So there was a way that Baldwin eyes. He had his mother's eyes. And Baldwin wrote about this. So by making fun of or belittling Baldwin's eyes, he was actually, Baldwin realized, trying to say something about his mother. And also the fact that there was this father out there, this biological father out there.
- [10:28]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, it's really something that he said. He hated Baldwin's eyes and called him the ugliest boy he'd ever seen. And that, as you mentioned, Baldwin later said, I realized he was attacking my mother when he said it because I shared her eyes. It sounds like a really. A really hostile environment. And Baldwin seems to have internalized this. And he described himself as strange. And for a while he would. He would put coins on his eyes to try to make them less frog. Like when he was sleeping pennies on his eyes at night and all of that. It just sounds. I mean, how much of this. Let me ask it this way. What did he think of himself when he described himself as strange?
- [11:13]
Nicholas Boggs
Well, Baldwin's journey to self love was very challenging. And he writes about this because he thought. He internalized it. Just like you said, he thought he was ugly, but Then he had these moments. And so one moment would be when he went to see a teacher took him to see a movie when he was 10 or 11. And there was Bette Davis with his same eyes. Wait a second, my mother's eyes. And my eyes are like this. Maybe they are beautiful, but more importantly, maybe they are powerful. You know, maybe they're a source, a source of power and for witnessing and reading and all the things that eventually made him the superstar that he became.
- [11:51]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, he decided he could use his strangeness, he says, right.
- [11:56]
Nicholas Boggs
Isn't that beautiful? I mean, he understood that. You know, he. Later in life, an interviewer asked him, you know, you grew up black, poor and gay in Harlem. How was that? And it must have been so difficult. And, and Baldwin, with a smile on his face, said, I hit the jackpot because the material that he had, the perspective that he had, and of course the ability to write, I mean, one thing you have to underscore with Baldwin's childhood in particular was just how precocious he was. You know, he was reading. By the time he was 4 years old, he'd read his. All the way through the only book they had in the house, which was the Bible. So he was learning very young, you know, the power of reading and the power of his eyesight.
- [12:37]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And there was a story that he, he was reading Uncle Tom's Cabin so much that his mother thought he was going to damage his eyes with it. So she, she hid it in a closet above the bathtub, but he climbed up and, and dragged it down and just kept reading and over and over. I mean, it does seem like for whatever reason, somehow his determination, but also just he seems like he was born with this giftedness, so smart that people cannot help but recognize how smart he is.
- [13:13]
Nicholas Boggs
That's correct. That happened from a very young age. But all of his teachers, I was just on a zoom where I think it was the granddaughter of Gertrude Ayres, who was the first black woman principal in New York City, I believe, and she recognized this was in his elementary school, that he was, you know, brilliant. But it was this, you know, underfunded, over populated school. And so fortunately, a teacher came in, Bill Miller, a white teacher, the drama teacher. And she's the woman who actually took him out to see plays and movies. And they were both happened to be reading A Tale of Two Cities at the same time. And she said, but this kid, this 10 year old kid is reading the same book I am, and he has all these amazing insights about it. So she was the first, really, of many teachers along the way that recognized Baldwin's brilliance and really helped him along. Yeah.
- [14:05]
Jack Wilson
So Bill Miller, what a figure. What else can you tell us about Bill Miller? Who was she and why did she become so important to Baldwin?
- [14:15]
Nicholas Boggs
Well, Bill Miller is sort of a card carrying member of the Communist Party, which is interesting in and of itself. But she was getting a degree at Teachers College. She came from the Midwest, and she recognized right away that Baldwin was brilliant and asked him to be her kind of assistant in these drama classes. And they forged this very close relationship, really like a second family. He would even bring clothing and food to the family in the wintertime when it was very difficult. So at first, Baldwin's parents, especially his father, really did not trust her. But they grew to really understand that she was doing great things for her son. When Baldwin took his very religious turn and became a preacher a few years later, he sadly sort of told her that he could no longer see her. And then not to jump too far forward, but she tried to write him letters. And they reconnected years later during the civil rights movement in particular, and became incredibly close up through the end of her life.
- [15:16]
Jack Wilson
Much later, he used to say he loved her, of course, and absolutely with a child's love. And later he said, I could never bring myself to see white people as the devil, or I couldn't hate white people because of Bill Miller.
- [15:31]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes, he said that. But he also said, although I wish to murder more than a few. That's right. I mean, Baldwin has this phrase, you know, calls it the trap of color. And he believes that these racial categories. He believed in black culture and he loved black people, but he believed that these categories were a trap, black and white. He thought that they were created by the dominant culture and that it was meant to contain people and limit people and set people against each other. So for him meeting Bill Miller and then later other people like Lucian Habersberger, to whom he dedicated Giovanni's Room, these were instances where he understood the. That there were different kinds of white people, that all the white people weren't like the police that he would run into, who would call him bad words. That in fact, whiteness, as he later put it, you're only white if you choose to be white. And what he meant by that is, like, you're only white in the sense of this kind of very bad sense of white. If you don't do the work of exploring your own motivations, your own past, and getting rid of this idea of innocence. Right. That white people are sort of Innocent of any crimes because they didn't commit them, but their ancestors did. These are things that Bill Miller understood the history of racism, she understood structural racism. And I think she passed that along to Baldwin and it really, it changed him and changed his life.
- [16:53]
Jack Wilson
And she was a person of action as well as words. There's that story where she's taking the kids. She takes the kids somewhere where the police are handing out free ice cream to the white kids and. And she just fixes the policeman with a stare. Until that. That was basically saying, you're going to give free ice cream to these children who are with me as well, even though they're not white.
- [17:18]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. And Baldwin never forgot that. He never forgot either. Her, her husband. I don't know if I put this in the book, but there they were out at one time and the police were on horseback and almost, he feels like almost ran him over on purpose. But her husband whisked him up to safety. So he did feel that these were his protectors and they really provide. They loved each other so much, Bill Miller and his husband, that it provided a model for a domestic life too that he wasn't seeing in his own home.
- [17:46]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. He used to watch them through the window of their apartment, which was a few blocks from his, and he would just watch their silhouettes and he could tell that they were loving each other in a way that he just did not see at home with his parents.
- [18:02]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. And a lot of those descriptions come from letters that he wrote. Right. So this is not, this isn't me, you know, making an inference. These are actually Baldwin's words writing about like looking through the window, looking at the window in awe, just as you put it. I believe that's from a letter. So we all. Because he wrote these wonderful letters to Bill Miller throughout their life once they reconnected. Which are, which are just beautiful to read right now.
- [18:25]
Jack Wilson
We haven't talked about the moment he intuited, I guess is the right verb, that he was gay. He felt like he was in love with a 10 year old boy across the street. So what happened there? I found it very moving and kind of heartbreaking in the story of what happened. But why don't you tell the listeners who this boy was and what he and James ended up, how they ended up.
- [18:50]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. I believe his name was Romeo.
- [18:53]
Jack Wilson
Romeo Clark.
- [18:55]
Nicholas Boggs
Yeah, People would call them Romeo and Juliet, which was not very common. And he writes about how one day he went to see him and he knocked on the door, and they were gone. And he thought that perhaps the family moved away because they were. They wanted to separate these two boys. And how he wept. But this happened to Baldwin also with Arthur Moore, his friend who joined him in the church. Basically, that's the friend that. Who really provided the model for the character Elisha in Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain. So he. He would get these crushes, these kinds of impossible crushes. And in fact, he would kind of reproduce that structure of impossible love or impossible crush throughout his life as an adult.
- [19:38]
Jack Wilson
Okay, I want to talk to the part where he found religion, but let's take a break before we do that. But before we take the break, let's talk about his relationship with New York City and Harlem. It seems like in some ways, it seems like he's trapped in this little world where he's got this overloaded apartment with a father figure who's quite cruel, and, you know, he's got to go to school and he's got to work and all of that at the same time, especially once he meets Bill Miller. The whole city opens up to him, and he's got this huge vista of the theater and Greenwich Village and the New York Public Library. But it's. It doesn't always seem like it's available to him. So what was his relationship with the city like in these early years?
- [20:27]
Nicholas Boggs
Well, again, it's these teachers, it's Herman Porter in his junior high school who took him down to the 42nd street branch of the New York Public Library, because, as Baldwin put it, by that time he'd read his way all the way through the Schellenberg Library, and he took him down there. And Baldwin got so nervous to go inside. He saw those enormous lions that he vomited on the sidewalk. And that sort of came out of that feeling of not being welcome or belonging in these kind of great halls, but going in there, you know, in the novel version of that, in Go Tell it on the Mountain, John does not go inside. He's too intimidated. But the actual Baldwin did go inside, and it became another sanctuary. He would also run up the hill in Central park and look down at the city below him and dream of sort of conquering it someday, you know, as a writer, which, in fact, he did. So I think he felt eventually that, you know, especially later on when he moved down to Greenwich Village and met Buford Delaney, that New York City was this rich source of culture, and in particular, black culture and black music, that he eventually discovered, you know, kind of ironically, I guess, not in Harlem, but in Greenwich Village through Buford Delany, but also, pretty ironically, as an adult, Baldwin hated New York City. He never wanted to return. He found it to be noisy and chaotic and full of difficult memories. So there's that side of the story as well later on.
- [21:44]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. At one point, though, when he was in Paris, he said he missed Harlem. The neighborliness, the food, the style that the men had. And of course, he had all of these siblings, especially his sisters, that he wanted to see.
- [21:59]
Nicholas Boggs
Definitely. And in fact, when he went to Africa for the first time and watched women walking around, it reminded him, much to his surprise, because he was very sort of nervous about going to Africa for the first time. He wasn't sure how he would feel, but he actually felt very at home. And the women walking down the streets reminded him of the women in Harlem that he grew up around.
- [22:19]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Okay, let's take a quick break and.
- [22:21]
Jack Wilson
Come back with more from Nicholas Box.
- [22:33]
Nicholas Boggs
Foreign chapter of the College Football Playoff. It comes down to this. Miami's unmatched grit and tenacity through the postseason has led them home the national title. Now within reach, they are confident.
- [22:46]
Jack Wilson
They are battle tested.
- [22:47]
Nicholas Boggs
Undefeated Indiana, led by Chris Signetti and Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza, have the chance to take home their first title and claim college football immortality.
- [22:55]
Jack Wilson
The most remarkable turnaround in the history of college football.
- [22:58]
Nicholas Boggs
The College Football Playoff national championship. Presented by AT&T. Monday at 7:30pm Eastern on ESPN and the ESPN app.
- [23:06]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
New year, same extra value meals at McDonald's. So now get two snack wraps plus fries and a medium soft drink for just $8 for a limited time only.
- [23:17]
Nicholas Boggs
Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California.
- [23:20]
Jack Wilson
And for delivery, there's a world where legends race across city skylines. Romance blossoms in glittering ballrooms. And there's magic around every corner. It's a world known to many as Great Britain. You've seen the action on screen. Now visit the real star of the show. Visit Great Britain. To discover more, go to tripadvisor.com Great Britain. Okay, we're back. So, Nicholas, this whole episode that he has with religion and the way that it kind of drives a wedge between him and Bill Miller, at least temporarily. And she says, I've lost a lot of respect for you. And it's really kind of striking. It seems like he was on a certain path and then all of a sudden he takes this swerve into another path, which kind of is surprising given where he was with his stepfather who was a preacher. And I'm just Sort of surprised that he went through this, but it almost seems inevitable in some sense, too, that he did have to go through this passage. So what led him to religion and how did his relationship to religion kind of come and go during this period?
- [24:54]
Nicholas Boggs
So he grew up in a religious household, of course, you know, because of his father. But what brought him into the church really was this crush on Arthur.
- [25:01]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
More.
- [25:01]
Nicholas Boggs
He couldn't really admit this crush. And then Arthur took him to his church, and Baldwin thought, oh, okay, like I want. This was a way, in a sense, for him to be close to Arthur. And this is what he writes about in the novel version of this Go tell on the mountain. Religion was a chance to, like, both be close to Arthur and also not admit to himself these desires. Way to be in community. He hoped without having to face his true self, he could instead throw himself into the rhetoric of the church. And he was very, very good at it. You can see this in his later clips, you see on YouTube what an orator he was. So imagine him. But no, there's no footage of it, unfortunately. But imagine him as a young preacher. How electrifying that must have been. So he was very intoxicated by that. But what really happened is that when he went to DeWitt, the magnet school for high school, DeWitt Clinton, that's where, you know, that's Countee Cullen had been his teacher in junior high school and sort of helped him get in there. And then he joined the newspaper. And there he met people like Richard Avedon and Sol Stein and these young men who are also passionate about literature and culture. And he'd written for the junior high school newspaper, but he realized how much he missed it. So he was living this kind of double life where he wasn't telling. Wasn't really telling his classmates about his religious life, and he wasn't certainly talking about his literary life at the church. And this became a kind of irresolvable conflict for him. And at the center of it, of course, was also grappling with his. With his sexuality.
- [26:33]
Jack Wilson
There was an interesting detail I got from your book about his immersion in religion. That part of it was a way of getting out from under his stepfather, who used to dominate him by saying that, well, I'm more devoted to God than you are. And this was almost like being a better churchgoer than his stepfather.
- [26:58]
Nicholas Boggs
Oh, absolutely. And he wrote about that. And the thing is, he did it. I mean, his father had. His father was a storefront preacher and had, like, I think, dwindling congregation. Yeah. And then he Hears. So I think that was a big factor in it. And I think also, you know, it was something. It was still language.
- [27:17]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [27:17]
Nicholas Boggs
I mean, he wanted to be a writer, and this was a way to work with language in a way that was socially acceptable within his household.
- [27:24]
Jack Wilson
And once again, he just. His brilliance immediately stands out. He said that his. He started working for the school newspaper. They made him editor in chief, and his writing was so respected by the other kids at the school that they used to call him sissy, and instead they admired him because he was the guy who was writing these articles that they were reading.
- [27:48]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. That was in junior high school. So then he sort of left, you know, and joined the church and left the world of school newspapers. And then he. And then he rejoined, and that really was his true home. That's where he belonged to.
- [28:03]
Jack Wilson
Right. And you mentioned this already, but how remarkable is it that he also happened to meet the poet Countee Cullen, who, again, another teacher recognized him and kind of. Kind of took him under his wing. And it sounds like Cullen was maybe doing this for a lot of students who. Helping them try to see things that they wouldn't otherwise see in New York City and trying to help a lot of Harlem kids. But it does seem like the two of them had a lot in common.
- [28:35]
Nicholas Boggs
So Countee Cullen was his junior high school English teacher, and Baldwin would imitate his poetry, which was fascinating to think about, but he was one of many teachers that Baldwin. It's kind of remarkable, from Bill Miller to Count J. Colon and to just people to later Richard Wright. I mean, just happened. A friend of his in Greenwich Village just happened to know him. And so Baldwin. It's almost like, I believe Sarah Shulman said this to me, or she wrote it somewhere. It's like the world wanted Baldwin to be a writer. I mean, it's. You know, he had this extraordinary talent, but there was also this constellation of people recognizing it, and people of great repute. I mean, Richard Wright, but then also Beaufort Delany, the painter who we met in Greenwich Village. So, you know, you wonder what. Countee Cullen. He never wrote about Baldwin, but you do wonder what did he think of this young, brilliant son of a preacher, much like Countee Cullen was as well, you know. So it's fascinating to think that Countee Cullen was a generation. What if he'd had the kind of opportunities, you know, that he helped make possible for Baldwin? He might have had a different trajectory in his life himself. Yeah.
- [29:40]
Jack Wilson
And Cullen also struggled with feelings of ugliness and some other Kind of inner turmoil.
- [29:47]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. That's right. And he also. His poetry, some people say, suffered because of it, because he was sort of constrained, his literary voice, because of his sort of closetedness, essentially.
- [30:00]
Jack Wilson
So, speaking of which, Baldwin had a life changing encounter with a stranger at a church whom he later learned was named Billy. So we make sure we're talking about the same person here. How old was Baldwin when this encounter occurred and what exactly happened?
- [30:19]
Nicholas Boggs
So he had a couple encounters when he was young. Negative and more positive from his perspective. He had the one where he was, and I forget the exact age, but where he was running an errand and he got molested a little bit.
- [30:33]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Like in a stairwell.
- [30:35]
Nicholas Boggs
Yeah, yeah. So he writes about that, I mean, later in his life. And I include this in the book, because Baldwin himself was writing about this later in his life, so it felt important to address that. He had this history of. That really, you know, what must have been a really difficult experience. On the other hand, late in his life, he writes very briefly about Billy, this Spanish racketeer who he says, you know, made him. We read his poetry and helped him understand that he, you know, was beautiful. And again, it was a different time and place, but there was a big age gap. You know, Baldwin was a minor and this man was in his 30s. So it's a. It's a tricky thing to write about, but because Baldwin wrote about it, I felt like it was important. He writes about it just a little bit. So the details, you know, we don't know all the details, but I couldn't even really figure out, like, when it ended exactly. I believe it ended around the time that his father died, so. Or a little bit before that, but it was hard to trace that. But in the archives, I did find this description of meeting Billy for the first time. And he was. He was walking back. I believe he was 16 years old. He was walking back through. He got in a fight with his father. And he's walking down through the snow, and then you realize it was too cold, he had to walk back. And then he passed a church, you know, and he went inside, but he heard some footsteps behind him and he didn't know who it was. And then he entered this crowded church and people were singing and dancing and he almost fell over and he put his hand on a pew and he felt a hand behind him, and he kind of knew instinctively that this was the person who'd been following him. So what seemed like a kind of ominous experience, you know, Baldwin and I think I believe he was writing later in his life. He said he wanted to write a fictional, I believe, rendering of that experience. So unfortunately that remains a murky part of Baldwin's history. But I think it's important that he himself was exploring it later in his life.
- [32:34]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And it was one. I was like you, I was confused to know what I should be thinking about it. Exactly. Because I think you had the ages in there as 15 years old that Baldwin was. And Billy was a Harlem racketeer of about 38. And at one point I think he says something like what must people have made of the two of us? So it sounds like they were, you know, out in public together enough that he was thinking about other people who were seeing them together. And although I was, I was worried on his behalf because I was thinking that is not a good age gap and for a 15 year old. But he says, I will be grateful to that man until the day I die.
- [33:15]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right.
- [33:17]
Jack Wilson
And I think I was getting from you. I don't know how explicit Baldwin was saying this, but it sounded like it was the experience that let him know, yes, you are gay and it's okay.
- [33:30]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes, that it might be okay. I mean, he says that this racketeer loved him. Right. And I didn't say that necessarily. And actually he said he would love him. You're right. He said he would love him till the day he died. I mean, fortunately Baldwin met Buford Delany around that time. And Beaufort Delany was also sort of interested in Baldwin romantically. But Baldwin knew that what he needed next, what he really needed at this moment in his life was a mentor. You know, he called Buford his spiritual father. He needed somebody to teach him how to become an artist. And that is really what happened in that even more pivotal relationship with Buford Delany.
- [34:06]
Jack Wilson
Right. As if we haven't already talked about enough incidents for one person to encounter before he even turns 18. There's a few other I have on my list here. He saw Orson Welles, all black version of Macbeth, which has become kind of has kind of a legendary status in the history of the theater.
- [34:27]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes. It was Bill Miller who took him to see that. And he writes about it in his book length essay, the Devil Finds Work that you know, how incredible it was, as he put it, to see his own people up on stage, that Banquo's issues were his issues. He always said that, you know, it was reading literature. Right. That taught him that he was actually connected to everybody else who had ever been alive. But I think to See great literature on stage. Right. With people who looked like him. He also understood that importance, right? Yes. Yes. You could connect across race, across generation, across culture. That. That was very important and possible. But then it was also very important to see yourself reflected back. That's why he had such problems with the Hollywood films at the time, as he wrote about in that excellent book.
- [35:13]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. He has such a connection with the movies. He seems so attuned to. This is what I'm taking from seeing Bette Davis or the other people he's seeing on the screen. And here's the way I can sort of identify with them in some sense. And also the way this is white people who are acting and white people for white people who are watching. And this is what it says about that dynamic and what people are taking from these movies. And whether or not that includes Baldwin.
- [35:46]
Nicholas Boggs
Yeah. It's really Raoul Peck's great documentary to see. To see those on screen. The footage that Baldwin's writing about from, you know, guess who's Coming to Dinner or. It's really kind of remarkable to have Baldwin's words hit up against the images that he was talking about right there on screen.
- [36:06]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Yeah.
- [36:07]
Jack Wilson
It does seem like he's just one of those omnidirectional critics where it's almost like anything that he took in, whether it was theater or a movie or a book he read or an encounter he had or anything. His brain was just so capable of articulating what it was that was specifically interesting about it and what it means and what it means in context. And he's just such an original and brilliant thinker that you just. You know, I would read anything he writes about any kind of topic.
- [36:42]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. I think that book in particular doesn't get enough credit for how groundbreaking it was as a. As a work of cultural criticism and film criticism mixing with autobiography. You know, it's like we see this happening more now, you know, in contemporary writing, but he was doing this in the 70s. Really kind of amazing.
- [37:00]
Jack Wilson
Now, a couple of negative stories we've only just touched upon. There was an incident when he was 10 when two white policemen in Harlem stopped and frisked him and made jokes about what his ancestry meant about his sexual prowess and then left him lying on his back.
- [37:20]
Nicholas Boggs
Yes, he writes about that, and he wrote a lot about. If you go into his archives, he actually wrote a lot about this later in his life. He was really looking back at his childhood. That's why you get those essays where he's writing about the Racketeer he's really reexamining in two essays, three essays in particular, To Crush a Serpent and Freaks in the American Ideal of Manhood. These both appeared in Playboy and then the Price of the Ticket, his sort of. His introductory essay to his collected Essays. He was going to Deep, deep, deep into all kinds of experiences. And what makes it tricky, actually, is that you couldn't tell if he was mixing. If this was fiction or memoir. Everything was kind of mixing together, and you have to be very careful. That's why it's important to look at the published parts of it in order to see, you know, I think he was working towards novels and he was working towards essays. So that's kind of was part of his creative process, was looking back at his childhood and drawing on it throughout his life.
- [38:24]
Jack Wilson
And I don't know if we've specifically talked about this yet, but he also goes to a magnet school and meets a lot of kids who are Jewish. And once again, he stands out as a writer. Poet.
- [38:37]
Nicholas Boggs
That's right. That was Solstein and Richard Avedon and Emil Kapuya, these young men who become very, very close friends of his. I mean, Baldwin ends up collaborating with Richard Avedon on the book Nothing Personal. Sol Stein ends up editing the collection Notes of a Native Son. So these were people who he remained close with and had a big impact on. I also think they kind of the experience imprinted him a little bit in the sense that Baldwin was very uncomfortable and comfortable being an outsider. I mean, he found it very creatively productive. I mean, that's why he later in life left to France, lived in Istanbul, and he went to Switzerland to write, where he wrote his first novel, but also wrote that great essay about being the only black person in this village. It allowed him, this alienation, both linguistic and cultural, to kind of reflect back on the alienation of black Americans within America. So it was very creatively productive for him. So I believe that that experience at that school, being one of the few black students, was formative in that way as well.
- [39:40]
Jack Wilson
There are some famous clips, famous debates he was in when he was older, William F. Buckley, and a famous appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. And it really kind of helped me understand his position on those shows, hearing that lesson that he said he learned about using his strangeness and that he went into those not thinking, well, I'm going to try to be a chameleon and blend into my environment here. And I'll try to say what they. You know, the way they would answer the question. I'll try to be a, you know, kind of a good talk show guest here and play along or anything like that. But to think, no, he's going to deliver truth as he sees it, even if that makes his host uncomfortable or makes his fellow guest uncomfortable. He's going to have, like, it's not in him, or he's not there to try to impress them that he can fit into their culture. He views himself as this perpetual outsider who his job is to explain to people truths about themselves that they might not even recognize.
- [40:50]
Nicholas Boggs
Absolutely. But I think it's really complicated, too, because he's just take the Buckley debate, for example. There he is in the UK and he's speaking in this kind of black transatlantic accent that has this British inflection. So what he actually does is a ton of code switching. Right. He actually out Englishes Buckley in front of the English, which is genius. And that's something that he would do even on that Dick Cavett show. I believe he's talking to an academic, or maybe it's a different one, but he will start to talk a little bit like an academic himself and then also code switch into the black vernacular. He could do all these different registers. That's very hard to keep up with. And that's why he won most of the debates that he entered.
- [41:35]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Yeah.
- [41:36]
Jack Wilson
So your book is called A Love Story. Why is the subtitle A Love Story?
- [41:42]
Nicholas Boggs
Well, it's a love story for many reasons. I mean, first of all, he writes all about love, like all of his novels are love stories. His political writing fire of Next Time is all about how black and white Americans must come together like lovers, as he puts it metaphorically, to change the world. His own journey to self love was so difficult. His impossible love for America. He said, I love America so much that therefore I reserve the right to criticize her perpetually. So love was everywhere in his writing and in his life. But what hadn't been examined so closely were the kind of central and sustaining love affairs and love relationships that allowed him to create safe spaces to work in, but also kind of in their problems fueled the dynamics of a lot of his writing. I also think, finally, that Baldwin's legacy has become itself a love story. So many people say, oh, James Baldwin, I love James Baldwin. I mean, I think there are very few writers who inspire that kind of devotion and immediate attachment of the word love. And I think that's because that is what his legacy has become.
- [42:50]
Jack Wilson
It's funny because a lot of times people will love someone who is unobjectionable or who seems is kind of, I think, of sort of Disney ending typewriters. And you say, oh, this person makes me feel good when I read them. And Baldwin, it seems like people love that he's fearless, he's passionate, he writes with brilliance, also anger, but yet he's so readable. Like he's just interesting writer for people to love.
- [43:20]
Nicholas Boggs
Well, Baldwin wrote that love is a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up. And I think that he meant his own journey to self. Love had sort of been this battle, this battle. And he also sort of understood that the civil rights movement was going to require a love battle in a sense, you know, not with physical weapons, hopefully, but that black and white Americans would in fact have to find a way to. To see each other and love each other. And he said to his newsletter, to a nephew, you know, the ironic thing here is that they need your love, you know, and this is. You can argue with whether that was a fair thing to say or the sort of what that can mean. But, you know, that was his methodology to convince, I think. I mean, he was writing for white Americans also saying that like this hatred they had, some of them had of black people was really a kind of alienation from themselves, kind of self ability to love themselves and a projection of that onto other people.
- [44:18]
Jack Wilson
Yes. Yeah, it does seem like the obstacle to love is a failure to recognize truth or to see things for what they really are. And there's just nobody better at pointing it out. I mean, a lot of people have said this, but it just seems like we could use more James Baldwin's. It's too bad that he was just so unique because it's the kind of voice you hear something in the news and you think, I wish I could read an essay by James Baldwin about this.
- [44:51]
Nicholas Boggs
Absolutely, absolutely. And you can. I mean, people, I believe, you know, people sometimes say, what would Baldwin say about our current moment? And I always say, well, I can't answer that, but I can tell you what he was saying towards the end of his life when he was writing about the issues that are still with us very much.
- [45:09]
Jack Wilson
They are still with us. And he was so ahead of his time. I mean, he was such a visionary that it feels like the way he characterized things is still relevant today. Hopefully it won't be as relevant 50 years from now, but I fear that it probably will.
- [45:24]
Nicholas Boggs
We can only hope at this point. Yeah.
- [45:27]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Okay.
- [45:28]
Jack Wilson
Well, the book is called A Love Story. Nicholas Boggs, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [45:34]
Nicholas Boggs
It was great thanks for having me. This time of year everyone talks about going dry, but at Athletic Brewing Co. We're skipping that because we prefer going athletic, which isn't dry at all. From crisp goldens to hoppy IPAs and limited releases in between, you'll find something that fits your style. Every single non alcoholic brew is packed with flavor and the same craft experience you love. So yeah, you could call it dry, but there's really nothing dry about it. Find your new favorite near beer@athleticalbrewing.com Athletic Brewing Co.
- [46:18]
Jack Wilson
Fit for All Times Looking to create the bath you've always dreamed of without all the hassle? The Home Depot makes it easier Shop fully styled rooms and curated collections to bring your vision to life. Use digital tools to preview flooring and finishes in your space and get everything you need, from tubs to tile, delivered fast and priced right. The Home Depot Dream Baths built here.
- [46:50]
Bruce Robbins
Sam.
- [47:17]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Okay, that was Nicholas Boggs. What a great book he's written. Do check it out, and if you're looking to buy it somewhere, why not try a local independent bookstore? I've heard from some of you about your favorite bookstores. We're compiling all of those recommendations, but I'd still like to hear more. They're on the rise again, I hear, and I want to know what it is you love about your local Is it the feeling you get when you walk in that here is a place where people can feel at home? Is it the staff greeting you with warm smiles? Is the feng shui of the place good? The smell of the paper and maybe wood? Maybe some coffee from an adjoining cafe let me know. These places are treasures and they need our help. And this year on the podcast, we're going to try to help them by giving them some more visibility. So shoot me an email. Jack Wilson, author, that's J A C K E wilsonauthormail.com or reach out via our contact page@historyofliterature.com okay, finally today we talked to Bruce Robbins about great atrocities in history and how literature handled them. That was back in episode 711. You might wonder what a person who immersed himself in that topic would choose for a final book to read. After all, you might expect that literature could provide some comfort. Or perhaps that's not what we ask or expect from literature. Anyway, let's let Bruce tell us how things look to him.
- [48:56]
Jack Wilson
Okay? Joining me now is Bruce Robbins, author of the book A Literary History. Bruce, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your.
- [49:06]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Last book to be?
- [49:07]
Jack Wilson
This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
- [49:17]
Bruce Robbins
I'm going to. It's an old. Maybe an old person's answer to think about the last book that I would want to write myself rather than read. I have never written a biography. I love reading biographies. I'm not trained to do biographical writing, but reading about an author's life is something. I think people really like it. I would love to be able to do it. It would force me to think in ways that I've never thought before. To write in ways I've never thought before. It might be a biography of Kezuo Ishiguro, who's one of my favorite writer. But somebody's life. I would like to finish off my life making up a story about a true story about somebody else's life.
- [50:09]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Yeah, right.
- [50:11]
Jack Wilson
It almost makes me think of people who love reading obituaries too, where it's like they find the older they get, the more they like reading obituaries because it has that kind of summary or you see what the highlights were in someone else's life and. And it gives you a chance to reflect on your own. Like what were the major events in my life and what were the encounters or the happenstance or the chance that played a role in the course of events for me?
- [50:47]
Bruce Robbins
Yes. It's also kind of horrifying that so much life can get compressed into such a small form in the obituary. And the nice thing about the biography is you expand it out again.
- [50:58]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Right.
- [50:58]
Bruce Robbins
You try to include all that stuff that made the life what it was and still get the obituary kind of pleasure that you turned it into a story.
- [51:10]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Now, how about this? If I gave you a choice between you writing that biography as being your last book you would read or saying, I'm going to talk to Kazuo Ishiguro to write a biography of Bruce Robbins life. And that could be the last book you're going to read. Would you take me up on it?
- [51:36]
Bruce Robbins
That is one of the funniest things. My life is absolutely not worth writing about.
- [51:41]
Nicholas Boggs
But in his hands.
- [51:43]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:45]
Bruce Robbins
Well, his hands could transform anything into anything. Absolutely. I would actually like to reread James Joyce's Ulysses. I loved James Joyce's Ulysses when I was really young. And, you know, it's long. And it's wonderful, but it's long. I gotta devote some time to it. If it's just a question of reading something that's already out there, that's top of my list.
- [52:09]
Jack Wilson
I have a feeling I've read it, I think, two or three times over the years, and I have a feeling that what I would enjoy on my next read even more are all of the literary references and the different. The sections where he writes in different genres. And I don't know that I've ever really appreciated that with the kind of pleasure that I think I would take in it now that I've actually read a lot more of those works.
- [52:35]
Bruce Robbins
Yeah, I'm sure that's true. And he did, you know, famously say he wanted people to be able to, like, spend their lives reading.
- [52:42]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [52:44]
Bruce Robbins
I mean, not a quick read.
- [52:47]
Nicholas Boggs
Yeah.
- [52:48]
Jack Wilson
So maybe that's your last book. And then you pass to the other side and you show up and an angel tosses you a copy of Finnegan's Wake and says, okay, now you're going to spend the eternity reading this one.
- [53:02]
Bruce Robbins
With a guide to Finnegan's Wake, because it helps to have some guidance when.
- [53:07]
Jack Wilson
You go through that one, I think. So I think I'd probably say, well, did I make it to heaven, or did I end up somewhere else?
- [53:15]
Bruce Robbins
No, you would definitely know you were in heaven.
- [53:18]
Nicholas Boggs
Come on.
- [53:20]
Jack Wilson
Well, Finnegan's Wake without a guide might be a little bit like, you know, Burgess Meredith in Twilight Zone, having all the books in the. In the world, but not having a pair of spectacles to be able to read any of them. I'd feel a little bit like I'm going to be reading this, but I am going to be lost without someone to. Without a Virgil to help take me through Finnegan's Wake.
- [53:43]
Bruce Robbins
But just remember that it's funny. It is funny.
- [53:45]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
That's true. That's true.
- [53:47]
Jack Wilson
And Joyce has such a spirit to him that I never feel like he fails me, even when he's at his most difficult.
- [53:59]
Bruce Robbins
I agree. I totally agree.
- [54:01]
Jack Wilson
Okay, let's leave things there. Bruce Robbins, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [54:07]
Bruce Robbins
Thanks for having me again. That was really fun.
- [54:16]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Okay, there we go. A big thank you to Bruce Robbins for joining me today for that cameo appearance, and of course, to Nicholas Boggs, whose book Baldwin A Love Story is winning every prize and deserves a spot on every shelf. Baldwin is worth it. I wish he were still here, but.
- [54:35]
Jack Wilson
We will just need to try to.
- [54:36]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Fill in the gaps for him, seeing things as clearly as he did and speaking about them as fearlessly as he did. Don't forget to check out our History of Literature podcast tour. We would love to see you in England this spring. We're gonna have so much fun. Maybe bring a friend, too. Maybe your old college roommate would like to come along. Or that best friend of yours from high school. Or maybe you're part of a mother daughter duo or some other family combination. A husband and wife perhaps. We still have room at the inn. Coming up on Thursday is speaking of travel to Europe. We have a look at the European Byron and we'll have the number three entry on our list of the greatest books of all time. We look at some classical inspiration for a famous novel, and no, it might not be the one you're thinking of. Shakespeare and Thucydides are coming up soon. And Mike and I revisit the films of Rob Reiner, may he rest in peace, by looking at his uncanny ability to make movies with memorable lines.
- [55:45]
Jack Wilson
Look at that.
- [55:45]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
I've run out of theme song. Let's crank it up again.
- [55:51]
Jack Wilson
There we go. That's better.
- [55:55]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
I'm almost done. Anyway. We chose the top 10 of where was I?
- [55:59]
Jack Wilson
With Rob Reiner.
- [56:00]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
We, Mike and I were looking at his uncanny ability to make movies with memorable lines. We chose a top 10 of lines. It was not easy, but we did our best. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening.
- [56:13]
Jack Wilson
It's not easy being Jack Wilson either.
- [56:15]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
But I'm doing my best. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [56:24]
Bruce Robbins
Foreign.
- [56:45]
Jack Wilson
Hi, I'm Raj Panjabi Johnson, head of identity content at HuffPost.
- [56:49]
Nicholas Boggs
And I'm Noah Michelson, head of HuffPost Personal.
- [56:51]
Jack Wilson
We're also the hosts of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxiety we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [56:58]
Nicholas Boggs
Each week we're talking to experts in their field who are definitely doing things right about the topics you could use.
- [57:03]
Jack Wilson
A helping hand with, whether it's making new friends, getting your protein fix, or keeping your car out of the mechanic.
- [57:08]
Nicholas Boggs
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong?
- [57:11]
Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)
Wherever you get your podcasts and its.
- [57:14]
Jack Wilson
Full video episodes on YouTube.