Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Summary

Zero to Well-Read: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Podcast: Zero to Well-Read (Book Riot)
Episode Date: February 3, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill & Rebecca Schinsky

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Overview:

This episode of Zero to Well-Read takes a deep dive into James Baldwin’s 1953 debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Part book club, part literary analysis, the discussion explores the book’s plot, themes, historical context, reading experience, and enduring importance in American literature. Jeff and Rebecca unpack Baldwin’s complex exploration of family, religion, race, masculinity, and sexuality—shedding light on why the novel remains a cornerstone of both Black and American literary canons.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power and Uniqueness of the Novel

• Immersive Experience: Both hosts describe the reading experience as “fully realized,” immersive, and almost cinematic (03:32, 03:48).
• Rebecca: “It is really, really powerful. And as you get into it, it’s kind of immediately apparent how and why this is such an important novel and an important component of American literary history.” (02:53)
• Autobiographical Elements: Baldwin’s own adolescence mirrors that of John, the 14-year-old protagonist. The novel is considered “autofiction core” years before the term existed. (04:21)

2. Plot and Structure

• A Day in Harlem: The novel takes place over a single day (John’s 14th birthday) in 1930s Harlem, with frequent flashbacks into the lives of his family members.
• Multiple Perspectives: The “Prayers of the Saints” section gives long, reflective backstories to three key adults in John’s life: his father Gabriel, his mother Elizabeth, and his aunt Florence. (08:23)
• Religious and Social Themes: Central concerns include the black church, generational trauma, respectability politics, the Great Migration, and how family legacy shapes identity.

3. Themes: Family, Masculinity, Religion, & Race

• Family Dynamics: The household is defined by tense relationships: John’s fear and hatred of his violent, authoritarian father Gabriel; his feelings of not being seen or celebrated; and complex intergenerational influences—especially how trauma and striving are passed down.
• Rebecca: “So much of this is about black masculinity and manhood and the sort of gender and power dynamics that exist there.” (09:40)
• Religion & Salvation: The Pentecostal church is both a source of ecstasy and of pain, offering hope, community, and also breeding shame, judgment, and limited agency. (06:20–08:09)
• Race and Oppression: The book confronts Black life in both the South and North, tracking how systemic racism, poverty, and exclusion shape the characters’ aspirations and tragedies.
• Jeff: “His grandmother was emancipated. And the stories of emancipation, plus the stories of the church... reverberate through multiple generations.” (14:19)

4. Sexuality and Internal Struggle

• Queer Subtext: John’s sexual confusion (or awakening) is palpable; his feelings for Elisha hint at same-sex desire in an environment with no language or acceptance for it.
• Rebecca: “We’re not really sure how aware the character is of that... But how much of that he has grasped or accepted as a part of himself, we don’t really know. So really, a depiction... of a person at war with themselves.” (18:25)

5. Key Scenes and Symbolism

• Climactic “Salvation”: John’s ecstatic experience (“conversion”) on the church’s threshing floor reads simultaneously as spiritual and psychological—leaving open whether it’s true religious salvation, personal liberation, or hallucination.
• Final Ambiguity: John gains no true acceptance from Gabriel, underscoring the limits of performing expectations and the impossibility of full belonging. (20:39, 20:47)
• Biblical References and Naming: Names and events are loaded with biblical symbolism (e.g., Gabriel, Esther, the “begatting”), enriching the narrative for readers familiar with scripture. (46:32)

6. Baldwin’s Artistic Inheritance and Literary Influence

• Against “Protest Novel” Simplicity: Baldwin wanted to articulate the full, messy, and rage-filled Black American experience, diverging from predecessors like Richard Wright.
• Rebecca: “He lets his characters be messy. These are very complex and often unflattering depictions… no one deserves to be treated this way, regardless of how they behave.” (24:36)
• Direct Lineage: The book stands as a precursor to works by Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and others—offering a template for future explorations of race, gender, and history in literature.
• Intertextuality: Comparisons are made to Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (“Joyce but for Black people is not the worst shorthand you could do”). (33:08)

7. Religion as Both Empowerment and Constraint

• Ambivalence and Critique: The church is shown as a necessary refuge and source of hope, but equally as a site of restriction, hypocrisy, and pain—particularly for women and queer people.
• Jeff: “We don’t get a representation of the church in this book with a bunch of really good examples.... It’s always coming. The salvation. It’s always coming. The rapture. And you have to be wait and be patient and stay on the narrow.” (36:11–38:10)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

Rebecca (03:48):
“Not necessarily a one sitting read, because it can be so heavy, but it could be a one sitting read if you have the time and the…constitution to be that immersed inside it…Baldwin really gives us just a fully realized description of the world and moments that the characters are inhabiting.”

Jeff (18:55):
“John’s sort of last spoken utterance is to Elisha at the service after having had this vision: ‘Elisha, no matter what happens to me...you remember, please remember, I was saved. I was there.’ … There’s some other kind of saving being happened here. It’s a liberation. It’s a reckoning…he’s casting himself into the future.”

Rebecca (25:42):
“He’s 29 when this comes out. It’s incredible.”

Rebecca (56:09):
“They’re twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs, which…that’s a sentence. That could be the apex line of a writer’s career.”

Jeff (57:00):
“He would not be like his father, or his father’s father. He would have another life.”

Rebecca (43:28):
“The church…is supposed to be the source of community and warmth and salvation… but it is also the source of a lot of shame and humiliation and guilt. And it in itself is not a fully liberating space.”

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Important Timestamps

• [03:32–04:21]: Reading experience—why the book is gripping and immersive
• [06:12–08:09]: Discussion of religion, shame, sexuality, and sin
• [08:23–10:00]: Structure and “Prayers of the Saints” section
• [14:19–16:36]: Family history, generational trauma, and emancipation
• [18:55–20:47]: Climactic scene and ambiguous ending/father-son tension
• [21:26–26:15]: Why it’s important/legacy in American/Black literature
• [30:55–34:18]: First encounters as young readers; the novel’s ecstasy and sermon style rhythm
• [46:32–48:45]: Biblical symbolism, naming, and reading strategies
• [56:09–58:13]: Striking lines and the question of fate and agency

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Further Analysis & Stray Thoughts

• Intersectionality: The characters (and Baldwin himself) live at the crossroads of race, class, gender, and sexuality—struggling within a world where the only options seem to be “jails and churches.” (38:10)
• Realism & Messiness: The novel refuses to render its people as saints or sinners; everyone is broken and shaped by circumstance, yet complicit in perpetuating violence, shame, and repression.
• Unadaptable Brilliance?: Both hosts questioned whether the novel could be truly adapted—a film or stage adaptation might not capture its psychological complexity and language, though a full cast audio rendition might flourish. (70:03-71:35)
• Debut Status: The book is lauded as possibly the greatest American debut novel, setting a high bar for all that would follow. (75:20–76:31)

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Cocktail Party Takeaways

• Go Tell It on the Mountain is one of the greatest literary interrogations of the uses and abuses of religion, racial trauma, and family.
• Gabriel, John’s father, stands as an all-time tragic and complicated figure—convinced of his divine purpose, justifying harm inflicted on his family.
• The novel is foundational for understanding Black literature and American letters generally, providing a through-line from Hurston and Wright to Ellison and Morrison.
• Baldwin’s approach—messy, honest, and unflinching—rejects the “protest novel’s” simplicity, opting instead for psychological realism.
• The book is technically tight, 225 pages, and sophisticated, yet deeply approachable if readers accept that disorientation is intentional.

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Should You Read It?

Recommended If:

• You’re interested in Black or American literary history
• You appreciate complex, nonlinear narratives and ambiguous morality
• You want to understand the intersection of religion, family, and social structure

Not For You If:

• You require clear cut heroes or villains
• You want “pleasant” or escapist reading
• You want a straightforward plot or are triggered by depictions of racial/sexual violence (though such scenes are present more as context than graphic event) (64:10)

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Scoring (1–10 Scale):

| Category | Score | |------------------------------|----------| | Historical Importance | 9 | | Readability | 7 | | Relevance | 10 | | Book Nerd Read Cred | 9 | | Oh Damn! (Singularity) | 9 |

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Finale:

Go Tell It on the Mountain is as rich, relevant, and necessary in 2026 as it was in 1953. It is as likely to make you think as to move you, and is essential for anyone invested in the evolution of American literature, the tension between faith and liberation, and the lives at the heart of Black America.

Rebecca: “One of the great works that exists at intersection—race, gender, sexuality, religion, class…”

Jeff: “If you had one of the books that—and could do nothing else—this is the one [Baldwin] would do.” (79:01)

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For further discussion and book recommendations, check out the additional materials via Zero to Well-Read’s newsletter and Patreon.

Transcript

[Jeff O'Neill]

On today's episode, Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin's debut novel. Believe it or not, this is a debut novel. If you want to find a copy for yourself, ThriftBooks.com has lots of choices. You can get a standard paperback that's just the text and that's going to be great. But if you're looking for something with a little context, something a little special, I've got two picks for you here. First is the edition from the Everyman's Library came out in 2016. The special about this one is the introduction by the great Edwidge Dandy Cat. The other one you might look at here is a Library of America version, 1998. It's Giovanni's room, Go Tell it on the Mountain and some other early stories from Baldwin and a whole host of critical and biographical and bibliographical information there. Thanks to Thriftbooks.com for sponsoring this season of zero to well read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Welcome to Zero to well Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky. Today we are discussing a legendary writer's debut novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin. Before we jump in, if you're looking for show notes information about what we talk about today, you can check them out anywhere in your podcast of choice. And one of the things in those show notes will be a link where you can sign up for our free newsletter or you can become a paid member to get early access and ad free episodes along with bonus content. That's patreon.com 02 well read. You can also find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at zero to well read podcast.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you remember to rate and review wherever you're listening. That really helps the show keeps us going, helps more people find it, and that's just more fun for everyone. If there's more people in the party, we were gonna be sticking around for a little bit after the main recording that you're hearing right now to do our we call it office hours and you can sign up to listen to that bonus [e-mail] JoDowellRed as Rebecca said. Also, enjoy your emails. 0 to well read bookriot.com today James Baldwin's 1953 debut novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Rebecca It's a heavy one. It's a short one. It's. I don't know, it's a really remarkable novel. We're going to get to a minute here, but like Top of the Dome. What would you tell people about why they might want to check out Kotel on the Mountain?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Gosh, I found it to be riveting. It had been a long time since I read this. We'll talk about our first experiences with it later in the show. I was on a trip last weekend. I picked it up thinking I'll just dip in to the first little bit of Go Tell it on the Mountain. But I sat out on the, I was at the beach. I sat out on the back porch at the beach in the sun and it got me. I just read for three hours straight and kind of then came up for air like, oh, this is, it is really, really powerful. And as you get into it, it's kind of immediately apparent how and why this is such an important novel and an important component of American literary history.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We'll talk more about the reading experience here in a minute. But I think there's something too. It is immersive and you kind of just want to stay in it. Like it's hard to, it's hard to dip in and out of. Like it has its own logic and its own internal worldview that I think lends itself to staying in for as long as you can stay in the bath for as long as you can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not necessarily a one sitting read because it can be so heavy, but it could be a one sitting read if you have the time and the, I guess, constitution to be that immersed inside it because the world is fully realized. It's just very sensory in a way that you don't get on the page all that often. Where Baldwin really gives us just a fully realized description of the world and moments that the characters are inhabiting. And it, it almost feels to me like going to the movies, like we're just fully dropped into this world.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a really cool, you know, I hadn't made that connection because there's a, there's a pivotal movie going scene and Baldwin's character Well, we'll talk about here. I think we might think in terms of the cinematic elements that. That influence this. So let's go what it's about here. It takes place over 24 hours of life one day. The main character is John. It's the morning of his 14th birthday. This is important, and it will lace through our whole conversation. Here is. This is pretty auto fiction core. I don't know that we had the word for Autofiction Fiction in 1953. That's actually a nice. That would be a nice rabbit hole for some to go down to. Like, when did we start using the term auto fiction? James Baldwin's life mirrors very closely. John's the main characters in really all the important ways. And we'll talk more about that. But crucially, the scene sitting here is. It's his birthday. He's 14 and it's his birthday. And he's hoping that someone's gonna notice, but he also kind of knows they won't, and they don't for a little while until he gets a little pocket change to go through the movies. And the story, such as it is, is him experiencing the day of his birthday and something that happens there and then going to the church at the end of the day. But it's interleaved with stories from the people in his life, especially the generation above him. His biological mother, his adoptive father, his brother, his adoptive aunt, and their own relationship to each other, to the church, to America, and really to their own memory and history as well. And laced through all of this is John, the main character's own coming of age. Like it's a coming of age novel. Like it's a different kind. But it's laced through with his own hatred of his father, who's very tough on him, his own confusion about his sexuality, or maybe not confusion, Rebecca. Like he's gay and he realizes it. And not only.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's also Harlem in the 19th. Like, what kind of language and identity acceptance is available to him is pretty limited, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And, you know, the idea of sin is all over this book. Shame and guilt, shame and glory and being saved. And the way people aspire to do better in the ways that they don't and the way they can't. The limitations thereof. When he comes back from the day after, sort of walking through Central park and going to the movies, he discovers his brother Roy has been stabbed in some sort of incident. We don't get many details about that. And sort of the furor around this moment, like how it came to this, that Roy got stabbed because it's like the single thing his father especially is trying to prevent is his children being killed or jailed. Right. And he's very tough on them. And we have some quotes here a bit later about his own logic, but it's still come to this. So in a lot of ways, the complete structure around religion and the household and the parental structure and the rules of the house have sort of failed here in the scene of Roy. And I think that really catalyzes these sort of reveries of memory that people are sort of recounting to themselves how they got there and implicitly how they came to this moment where a child of the house is in mortal peril. And this lays go a church service that comes a little bit later. John has a sort of older idol, maybe romantic interest, we're not really sure, named Elisha, who kind of represents an idealized version of maybe they want this. What the community wants John to do. He wants to be. They want him to be an intellectual, a race leader and a person of the church. But then he starts to get visions and he starts to have different kinds of experiences. And he comes to some sort of revelation at the end, which we'll talk about as well. And I found that part to be quite powerful and quite elusive and elusive at the same time. We can talk about that a bit more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a really unique reading experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And then, you know, Florence, his aunt, his father Gabriel, and then Gabriel's first wife, Deborah, they all get their own backstories. How much do we want to go into each of those backstories here, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a good question. I mean, like, John's this going to the movies and walking around the city on his birthday and then coming home to find that his brother has been stabbed. That's really only like the first 50 or 60 pages of the book, which is 225ish. The large midsection is called the Prayers of the Saints. And the saints is sort of the collective term for older members of a church body. In this case, it is the older generation of John's family. His father, his adoptive mother, and his aunt. And there's a long section for each of the three of those adults in the story that their prayer is our window into what they're reflecting on and remembering while they're at this. It's called a tarrying service. It's the prayer service on Saturday night before everybody comes to church, Sunday mornings. The things that the adults reveal to themselves and to then us in the course of those Prayers and reflections are just really important pieces of the backstory. Like, that is the details don't really matter. It is that Baldwin is laying out the generational example of how John's family came to be in this way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The begat. Right. For all the old test kids that tried to do the begats at some point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Psychosexual emotional begatting of John.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And, like, it's important that we find out that Gabriel, John's adoptive father, first of all, his name is Gabriel. Like, there's biblical stuff happening here, but his first wife was a woman named Deborah who was gang raped and abused as a teenager. And the subject of, like, horrible ostracism. The specifics of that are less important than the fact that these are things that happen to black people in the American south that John's ancestors come from. Like, the book is taking place in the 30s. These folks were growing up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were part of the great migration coming to the North. We find out that Gabriel marries her partially out of a sense that this is a mission from God that he's on. We later find out that his marriage to John's mother is a version of the same thing. And this is insight into Gabriel. Like, this is not a fathers and sons man kind of book, but it is very much. There's a version of reading this that Gabriel is the main character. Like the spinning core that John's character exists around is his father. And. And then we get Elizabeth, John's mother's perspective on it. We get Florence, Gabriel's sister, her perspective on this man, like so much of this is about black masculinity and manhood and the sort of gender and power dynamics that exist there. Today's episode is brought to you by Common Ground Pilgrimages. Now, if you think that the perfect trip involves a good book, Common Ground Pilgrimages is a company that agrees with you travel company that believes reading the books we love helps us live better lives. They offer literature inspired group trips, bringing together a fantastic faculty member, a beloved book, a considered theme, a beautiful location, and of course, some great food. And they have a super exciting upcoming trip that I think you'll like. So in May, they're taking a group of readers to Cornwall, England to read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier with the amazing faculty member, the Carmen Maria Machado. Yes, girl. Author of in the Dream House. Yes, girl. So sign up for that [e-mail] but even if you can't join the trip, make sure to sign up for their newsletter again @commonground pilgrimages.com Tell us how the trip goes, friend. Thanks again to Common Ground Pilgrimages for sponsoring this episode.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, and one of the things that these the begatting, the Prayer sections give us is how close Baldwin is to emancipation and by extension, actual real, institutionalized American slavery. Like his grandmother was emancipated. And the stories of emancipation, plus the stories of the church, plus the stories of the pharaoh enslaving the Jews and then being liberated. And that's something was long hoped for in the black community during times of slavery. And then the actual thing happens, there was actually the emancipation and how that kind of reverberates through multiple generations of like this thing that was hoped for happened, but now what does this religion still help us? Does it hurt us? What are we looking for at this point from the church and from each other? So that part is really interesting. I think on the autofiction front. We'll get to Baldwin's a little bit of biography in just a minute. One important emendation is Baldwin's mother never told him who his father was. In this book we get a version of who John's father is, could be. And I couldn't really find much criticism about what people make of this. Is this sort of wish casting? Is this. Did he import someone else's story? But essentially in the book, the main character's father's name, Richard, and he is intellectual, he's read everything. And he gives a little bit of a soliloquy about wanting to arm himself with knowledge and education and books to show white people that he can do it too and black people can do it too. He then kills himself after a horrible incident of racial prejudice, kind of showing like the insufficiency of a kind of respectability politics, right? Like no matter how good you are or how noble or how well intentioned you are, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is sort of always everywhere already in America now to some degree, and especially then, and especially before, it didn't matter if you'd read every book in the Harlem library like James Baldwin said he did as a kid. So I don't know, I always found that I find that little, I don't know, dream figure as being really important to recognize as well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that Baldwin himself was very involved in the church and was a preacher for a while as a young man before ultimately becoming a writer. And that's the pressure for that is on for John. Like the family has sort of accepted that Roy is the bad son, that he is the one who goes out and misbehaves. And they blame Roy for the fact that he gets stabbed in some way. Like, how could you allow this to happen to yourself? And John knows his family is counting on him to probably become a preacher, to be the successful one. He's been resistant to the church. He's been resistant to the idea of getting saved. He knows this is the thing that everybody wants of him. And he is hoping that, like, his secret belief is that it's not the church, but that it's knowledge and freedom. It's knowledge that will free him. The fact that he gets saved in the end, that he has, or maybe gets saved, he has this, like, religious experience. And if it reads like a hallucination or something kind of psychedelic happens to him in this church service and that he's going to, at least for a time, go down the path that his family and his community have laid out for him. While we have seen the internal struggle that's happening with resistance to the idea of believing in something, even resistance to the notion of God at all, but also not knowing what to do with his sexuality, where to put it, And. And we're not really sure how aware the character is of that. Like, we know that he thinks of himself as having sinned. There are references to masturbation. There are references to having looked at men. There's certainly tension on the page between him and Elisha. But how much of that he has grasped or accepted as a.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or even has language to understand what.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

An innate part of himself, an undisputed or an unchangeable part of himself, we don't really know. So really, a depiction there, too, of a person at war with themselves, as a lot of novels, especially from this time period, that deal with both race and sexuality, reflect that society was not open and available to black people. Society was not open and available to queer people. And James Baldwin and this character John, are both doubly oppressed in those ways.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's important here. It frames the conversation where we end. I have this in the quotes, but I'll say it here. John's sort of last spoken utterance is to Elisha at the service after having had this vision, some sort of ecstatic experience that I frankly have a hard time picturing what's happening and what's real and what's not. But he comes out of it and he says, elisha, no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember, please remember, I was saved. I was there. And I have never really bought the whole. This was, you know, the saved as using the language and experience of the church. There's some other kind of saving being happened here. It's a liberation. It's a reckoning. And his exhortation to Elijah specifically, you remember where I go, what people say about me, sort of a. He's casting himself into the future. And of course, Baldwin, looking back, I left this place. I lived a different life in many different ways, but I was a part of this community. I was there and I was saved. That has a lot of different valences on it. Right. And you can imagine this being important for him to say to someone that he respects that's a little bit outside of his own family system, to bear witness to his own life, to bear witness to his own experience and that it has value, even if it eventually, he knows, Baldwin knows that John's life is not going to be something that this community is going to really have an easy time accepting and certainly celebrating, but even accepting.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And what happens right after that is really important that the family leave like they leave the tarrying service.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

John has had what appears to be a conversion experience. And his father, who supposedly this is all his dad has ever wanted is for him to get serious.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He takes it well. Right. Rebecca? He's so happy and he's like, great job.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All that Gabriel has ever wanted is for John to follow in his father footsteps. Gabriel thought of himself as a prophet of sorts, and he wants John to take that same path. And Gabriel is skeptical about whether this is an authentic thing that John is professing. So there's. It ends on this ambiguous note. Like, now John knows that even if he does the thing his. His family wants for him, he's not going to get his father's approval. And Baldwin knows, and then we know of Baldwin, that he gets out, that the only way forward is actually to get out. There is no success inside that world, that system for John.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, let's move on to why it's important, why we're talking about it, what sort of its legacy is, I mean, regularly listed among the greatest American novels. I think there was a time list that was had at, like, number 39. Like, the actual placement doesn't matter as much as it's just thought in those circles. At the same time, it's also hard to remember now, if you're the kind of person listening to the show, you've probably read a lot of the books in the American canon and the black American canon especially, that followed in Baldwin's footsteps. One thing he said was, and we'll get to the tension he had with Richard Wright in his own participation in black American literary discourse and American literary discourse on a larger scale. But he was trying to capture black culture as he understood it. This combination of racism, church, music, community, poverty and shared history and a representation in art, in a book of a working class. This is not a Harlem Renaissance community. It's Harlem, but it's a little bit later, it's doing something different. It has a certain psychological realism mixed in with some of this blended stuff that Baldwin was doing. But we just didn't see representations like this. And if you read, you know, Rebecca has all the recommendations for follow ons that you might do, the Morrisons of the world or the Ellisons of the World, you can see the DNA here. It's so clearly here in so many ways. The protest novels of Richard Wright and then sort of coming out of the Harriet Beecher strode tradition of, well, of like using a novel to be overtly political for political change is something he was trying to. He was rebelling against. Not so much that he thought they were wrong, but they thought they were limiting. They thought they were, you know, kind of leave stuff out. There was a bigness to a black experience that didn't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I always thought that he was trying to write what he thought the ultimate protest novel would be like. A good one that doesn't sacrifice in quality of language or quality of story in service of making its point. And this does read differently than many of the things that came before it and a lot of the things that came after. The rage is tangible. So much of this book is about rage and the characters are angry. And Baldwin names the rage that they feel and illustrates all of the ways that they are victimized. What the oppression of being a black person in the American south and then even in the north, where it's supposed to be better, what that looks like, that police violence is prevalent, that poverty is a fact of daily life, and that they are angry. And that rage and shame and not knowing where to turn is one of the driving forces and one of the primary appeals of the church. But that protest novel element here, I don't know if Baldwin thought of it really as a protest novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I mean, he wrote clearly against the idea of a protest novel in Richard Wright and others. Like, he wanted to capture what he understood to be the fullness and complexity of black experience and have that be not enough, but that be on the record, so to speak. Like that gets captured and taken seriously by readers of all kind.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And he lets his characters be messy. Like these are very complex and often unflattering depictions of characters that a protest novel can tend to, like, deify some of its characters or beatify them that like, how dare anyone subject these people who are so saintly to this kind of experience? And underneath, the truth of Baldwin's writing is instead, no one deserves to be treated this way, regardless of how they behave. And also, humans are complex and messy, and the circumstances that these characters are subjected to shape a lot of their behaviors and choices that they make in ways that are limiting, that could be expansive, but that ultimately really constrict the amount of agency that they have.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then as his debut novel, it was well received. I don't think it sold great, didn't sell like gangbusters, but it sold well enough and was considered highly enough by the critical establishment that Baldwin has a writing career now. He'd had a writing career before, but he's a writer of the author of books. And then he goes on to write Giovanni.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's 29 when this comes out. It's incredible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And he's been working on it for a long time, which we'll say we'll talk a little more about when we get into the biography stuff. But then he goes on to write Giovanni's Room and Notes of a Native Son and the Fire Next Time, one of the great titlers of books, Baldwin. I think we don't talk about that, but the Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son and Go Tell it on the Mountain are three as a troika of the best titled books you're gonna see by a single author.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And if you are not familiar, Go Tell it on the Mountain is an old hymn.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I hear you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is what the title comes from.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And then Baldwin, of course becomes the leading public black intellectual of like the 50s, into the 60s, into the later in his life. And you can see him on Instagram, quotes all over the place.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of the most misquoted or out of context quoted authors we've got.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do encourage people google James Baldwin interview video and you're going to find something interesting. And a lot of what he says still seems sharp and honest and unfiltered in a way that feels fresh and new, which is both a testament to him and an indictment of American culture. But such as we are, Baldwin himself was born in Harlem in 1924. And like I said, the biographical details roughly line up to Go Tell it on the Mountain. His father was unknown to him. His mother married a much older preacher. I think I get the Gabriel age a little bit wrong, but I think his real life, his adopted father is Much, much older, like maybe 30 years or something like that. And they did not have a great relationship. Baldwin did gain admission to one of these elite public New York high schools, and that was his entree into the wider world. I mean, the easiest thing is he was working right next to Richard Avedon and people that become important in the New York intellectual scene for the ensuing decades. He made a connection early to Richard Wright. Richard Wright, who had in 1940, native son, was chosen by the Book of the Month Club and sold like 400,000 copies. A little hard to understand.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's incredible when you think about 1940s America.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's hard to. We don't have an equivalent kind of a moment like this. And then Richard Wright had a lot of juice, and Baldwin would sort of have his own little literary rebellion against Wright. They did stay friendly. He'd no longer consider of Wright his mentor. Like, he kind of feel like he was moving beyond him. I always thought it was cool that they stayed friendly because Wright could be a tough customer. Like, he had a long going feud with Jordan. And he seemed to have a little bit of lassitude when it came to, like, holding Baldwin to account for what he said. So I think that's a sign of his own recognition and respect for what Baldwin was doing. Baldwin said he began this book or something that would become this book when he was 17, and it was long in germination. And there was a couple of deals Tavit published that fell through. But eventually he'd moved to France and he got some distance from the racial bubble. Panopticon of the US finished a manuscript and he got an advance of $10,000 in today's dollars, which, Rebecca. The more things change, the more things stay the same. It's not a lot of money for a debut novel. And the first chunk was on. He got 3,000, I think I read this. He got 3,000 initially, and then the subsequent 7,000 again. This is in $2024. So the 1952 $53 would have been different on the completion of the manuscript. And it was well received enough that he had a career. And that's the story of. Go tell it on that. And I said, he becomes the most visible black intellectual. Really? I mean, I was thinking about this too. Is he still the most famous public black intellectual? I mean, I think Martin Luther King Jr. Tony Morris. I mean, King is a political leader. I'm not sure they thought in the same stripe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think Morrison eclipsed him in visibility, especially with a Nobel win. But also, we don't get a Toni Morrison without a James Baldwin first. Like there is a clear lineage of thinking writing both in the direct subject matter that they take on, but also really the philosophy, the vibe of their writing that allows their characters to be and there are certain nuggets in Go Tell it in the mountain of characters wrestling with being perceived as ugly, with wanting to be loved, with wanting to be accepted, with feeling the long term impacts of hatred as internalized shame and guilt that then Toni Morrison took as subjects for herself. We talked a lot about that in our episode in the Bluest Eye last season that you can go back and find in the feed. But there are certainly like seeds of Morrison's thinking in Baldwin.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I thought about Blues a lot while reading this book. I mean not just because we'd read it recently, but he's also just a striking figure. Like wearing those like really tailored black suits, smoke at a heater, dard on a black and white. Like he just looks cool. He looks like a serious intellectual. And I think that kind of branding matters as culture moves on. Rebecca, what was your first experience of reading Go Tell It All?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I read this in a liberation theology class in college.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh God, you gotta love the Jesuits, man.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You do. You gotta love the Jesuits. It was like an 80 year old Jesuit priest talking to us about James Baldwin. Turned out to be a pretty formative literary and educational experience. This was the first time that I had picked up Go Tell it on the Mountain since then. So as these experiences tend to be really eye opening and astonishing, to come to this as an adult with a more complete appreciation of American history and also of American literature and to see things that I didn't understand or appreciate about Baldwin since. What about you?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, similarly undergraduate in a survey African American literature course. I remember being pretty astounded by it then I think I didn't have the tools to process. Still is outside of my ken to fully grasp, I think. But I do remember it being very transporting and having a. Having an ecstatic like reading experience. I think Baldwin does something unusual. I guess there's a good way of transitioning to the reading experience. Discussion of at moments he is trying to capture a feeling of religious ecstatic experience that he would have seen in the church and then kind of using it to his own ends, to using it as a trans. As a moment to do something outside of the scope of everyday life, to sort of say the unsayable and explore the unexplorable. Which I think is really interesting. I don't know. I read the Nicholas Boggs book, but I forget it was a huge book and I really liked it, but I don't remember the details and how much it got into, like, what was Baldwin. What was Baldwin reading that let him write this book? I mean, I'm sure there was the stream of consciousness modernist classics like, I know he was reading Joyce as an example. And there's you could do worse as shorthand. And maybe I should have put this into the cocktail party takeaways is Joyce but for black people is not the worst shorthand you could do. But it's also much more approachable than Ulysses. It just is. It's just much more approachable.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it's a combination of a lot of extensive reading in that kind of zone with a lifetime at the time that he was writing this, of exposure to the black church, and not just to any black church, but to Pentecostal churches, which if like, if that's unfamiliar to you, that is speaking in tongues, dancing in the aisles, the spirit of God comes upon you and you do have an ecstatic experience, a full.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Body contact sport, the Pentecostal experience.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that rhythm, like, nothing is more riveting than a preacher in the zone. And the rhythm of a good sermon and the buildup of a good sermon is really present in the writing, especially in the section of Gabriel's Prayer, which is the longest standalone section of the book. I found myself like, oh, this. It rises and falls. It pulls you into different components of the sentence. I really wanted to hear a full cast audio version, which doesn't exist. There's not a full audio like performance with a bunch of different voices. But I wanted to hear especially the church scenes and Gabriel's memories in that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Someone, if they wanted to, could do an unbelievable audience if they really wanted to put their back in resources.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it could be really incredible. But that experience of Baldwin's so clearly shapes not just the content of the book, but the way that the language comes across. That it does feel like hearing a preacher pulling you further and further into something and that there's momentum picking up in the story and momentum picking up in John's reflection. And then ultimately in this experience that John has that is ecstatic is the right word for it. If you've never been in a church like this or like seen footage of people in a church like this, it feels a lot like being at a concert where the best possible version of a concert where everybody knows the words and you kind of feel like all one body. And in fact, there's like really interesting neurological research that the same things are happening when people have collective effervescent experiences at concerts that are happening in church services where people say that they're experiencing the presence of God. Like, it is something about how our, like our pulses sync up with each other, our respiration syncs up. It just makes our neurons fire in a way that is wild. And like Baldwin has felt that, his characters have felt that and he uses it to bring us into this story. That's I think, largely about the social and emotional functions of religion. Like what is the appeal of surrendering to God when a lot of your everyday existence is out of your control and. And the appeal of the idea of a future in heaven, in paradise, when you are living in the daily hell of being a black person in the United states in the 1930s in this story. And how that all comes across, that it's beautiful and terrifying, that it serves a purpose and also is it really serving us. Like, none of this is straightforward.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And since Gabriel himself is the fulcrum of the book, his own own strengths and weaknesses very much become heightened and feel extensible to larger social structural figures. Right. Like, we don't get a representation of the church in this book with a bunch of like really good examples of. Look how it helped this person. And they did it. Right. Not only there, not a lot of great male figures, but you don't get the sense that the women themselves are super happy in this particular dynamic because some of us being subject to race and some are being subject to these men who in their lives who are not. Not doing great all the time. But we don't. Outside of Elisha, who we don't know that much about, we don't have. You could grow up to be X. Right. Look at that person over there who did it the right way and they're thriving and everything's great. It's always coming. Right? It's always coming. The salvation. It's always coming. The rapture. And you have to be wait and be patient and stay on the narrow. But we are humans, Rebecca, and it's hard for us not to be human. And there's sort of an asking us to be human. That's one of the things that I always found most difficult about my understanding of my own church. Up grooming even. It was the more watered down version of sin in the Methodist Church. It's like we're just human people and you got to do the best you can. And how do you figure out your own agency and your own fallibility and manage those things? Together. And I think that's one thing the book is, I think implicitly trying to figure out is there's a bunch of reasons that the people in this book have been subject to the world world, and that is real and that is powerful. And at the same time, at what point do they have some agency not to be mean to their kids, not to think of them as just staying out of jail or not dying as the highest end of their child rearing functions or their relationship to each other. And I think Baldwin himself is conflicted. And that frankly, that's one of the great human conflicts. Right. How much do you have agency over your own life versus life is also subjecting you to itself?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's what he's trying to work out. Like no person and no institution gets off the hook. And no person and no institution is one dimensional here. That Baldwin and John recognize the benefits of the church. They also recognize the ways that the church is harmful. They recognize the benefits of like sort of this call to respectability, but also that that's really incomplete and insufficient for protecting anyone out in the world. And that I think he also is recognizing. People are trying. Most people are trying their best and still falling short. But there are people that don't seem to be trying as hard as Baldwin or John believe that they should. And it's especially the men here, like the novel, is just deeply concerned with manhood, with masculinity. The women in the novel universally have a low opinion of the men in their lives. And John is looking around him for an example of manhood that he can aspire to. And he doesn't see one. Like, Baldwin never says it directly, which, thank goodness, like we, we don't need authors to say it directly. But he invites us to consider how much of the. The men in the book, especially Gabriel, how much of their bad behavior is really their fault. How much agency do they have? How much can we hold them responsible for it? And how much of it is the product of existing in a system where your only real options are jails and churches. Like early in the story, Roy says to their mom, you think that's all that's in the world? Jails and churches and. And we understand how she's arrived at that way of viewing things and also why Baldwin wants to push against it. Yeah, kids, they grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small and their Dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up, up. Smile because you can profit off of it for real. There are a bunch of parents on Depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download Depop to start selling.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a moment where I kind of like the cloud. It's not clouds, but like it. The book parted for me a little bit. And usually for me it's a specific moment. And for me. Florence's aunt has. Has harbored this letter that a woman wrote to her. I'm sorry, no. That Gabriel's first wife. Gabriel's first wife wrote to her expressing her knowledge, suspicion that Gabriel had had a child with another woman. And that was a thing. So like kind of proof of his sin, proof of his imperfect ability that he's not the saint purports to be. And Florence, who wants nothing more to. Than to tear Gabriel down for complicated reasons, has been harboring this and sort of waiting for the right moment. And she confronts him with the letter and it doesn't really matter, right? Like, it doesn't change the reality of the situation. It doesn't. It's not cathartic, nor is it proof of something. You don't get a huge confession. You don't get a huge rending of garments and a tearing down.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They already know that Gabriel's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everyone already knows that every. I mean, everyone already knows that everyone is broken. And so one specific instance isn't enough. And that feels a little bit emblematic of what Baldwin was trying to think about. Like, even if you know these things, there's no gotcha here. There's no, you know what? The walls came tumbling down because it's not set up like everyone says it is. And what do you have to do in the meantime? Figure some. Figure out something else for your life.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it does. That story, I think, more than anything, just illustrates the dynamics of the world that they're existing in. That rage and power and sex are all tangled together and no one can sort them out in a way that feels really good. Like nobody has threaded that needle among these characters in a way that has resulted in a life that they feel fully satisfied with, choices that they feel fully good about. But they're all, of course, because we're human, looking for escape and looking for ecstasy. And the avenues for that are so limited that it's. It really is. Sex and church are the only places that they can go to try to have some moment of. Of release and of freedom. And the descriptions of the religious experiences sound a lot like sexual ecstasy here. And Baldwin. It's just masterful how we understand why these characters make some bad decisions about who they sleep with and when and how. And also why the church is so appealing and that it's the same desires at the core of all of those behaviors.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's this one scene early on in the book where he's kind of narrating the neighborhood, like walking through the neighborhood and saying, narrating what's going on and representing what's going on. And there's like, someone who is maybe a prostitute that's getting raped. And he. And Roy's watching them. And that flows right into his mother and father, comma, who went to church on Sundays. They did it too. Like, there's a real moving in and out of their religious life and their lived life. It's much more fluid and connected. Where. One of the things I picked up on this time, and it struck me, is the binary choice this particular religious tradition offers in terms of being saved or not being saved. I think he said at one point, you're either saved or it's a binary condition. And what Baldwin is representing here is that that is not true of. There is nothing in life that's a binary condition. They're all sort of Hegelian. Hegelian dialectics. They're on a spectrum from one to another, and they flow back and forth. And in this mode where you're either saved or not, you're going to hell or heaven, that is that walking that precipice for your whole life is frankly kind of impossible. You can't. You can't really make. That's crazy making that. It's crazy making. And one thing he's doing is showing how. How the worlds of the human, the body, the natural man, the sin, and the elevated world of the holy and the divine are actually just sort of holding hands. They are not different spheres. They are connected and always bleeding in and out of each other. And that sort of goes against the grain of how he understands his church is asking him to be either always in the light or in the dark. And the truth is, it's some of both. And it depends on the day. And you do the best you can. But if you're only presented a binary choice and you can't stay on the good side all the time, it doesn't offer like a B plus, I guess, or an A minus or a C plus on a day, it's very difficult to live that way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Really gives lie to the promise that the church makes that if you get saved in the spiritual sense, you will be saved in all of the senses forever and forever. That this is the thing that you do need that will make life feel better. Because all of these saints, John's father and his mother and his aunt, like we call them saints on the page, and yet. And they've all been saved and they all want John to get saved. And yet they also continue to struggle. Of course they do. They continue to be human. They continue to make decisions that are ultimately harmful to them. And they all. Everybody here continues to experience this church that is supposed to be the source of community and warmth and salvation. And it is those things, but it is also the source of a lot of shame and humiliation and guilt. And it in itself is not a fully liberating space.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And that last scene of his own salvation or conversion or whatever you want to say it, it did strike me too. It felt more to me like being in community with the people in that room, in that building, more than sort of about something that's going on in the Bible. It was very much about being. Being in communion with his community and black people. Yeah. It becomes a more visceral and felt thing than a. You know, I'm thinking about John chapter 3:16 at this particular moment.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's not a spiritual. It's not like a spiritually driven decision. Like he knows all the arguments for believing in God. It's an emotional, physical, like, almost chemical thing that happens to him there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Stray thoughts, Rebecca, where would you like to go?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, you have this note that I had the same thought as well, that like, if Baldwin, if we could, you know, back to the future him into today, what would he think about, especially a work of art like Sinners. And I mean, I was thinking about this in the context of the threshing floor scene, which the threshing floor is both a reference to, like the place where the wheat is separated from the chaff in a farm. But also that's a Bible reference. But it's what the church members call the floor in front of the. Where they're dancing and falling down to pray. And where John is having this convulsion vision, whatever it is that's happening to him. Like that to me feels like the big scene in Sinners in the Juke, you know, of I lied to you with all the ancestors coming. Unbelievable sequence, full body experience. That as I was reading it was like, where is Ryan Coogler? What could Ryan Coogler and James Baldwin have done together? Was something That I thought. Thought just a whole lot about related to the threshing floor thing. This is one of those books in American literature where it really helps to know some Bible, both for the general points of conversation among the characters. They talk about the upper room, which is a biblical thing. They talk about he had run well. And that's a pull from a Bible verse about running the race before you and what God wants you to do. And really, for the names here, like in the New Testament, we get John the Baptist, who's one of Jesus's primary apostles, but we also have John the Revelator, who sees the visions of the Apocalypse. And there are direct verse pulls from Revelation in part of John's in the book, in Go Tell it on the Mountain, in John's religious vision. Gabriel, of course, a biblical name, Esther, who is the woman that Gabriel had an affair and an illegitimate child with. Also a biblical name. A woman who sacrificed herself for the nation, who was called for and created. You're told she was created for such a time as this. Like, there's a lot going on here that Baldwin was definitely aware of with names. And you can have a full, I think, reading experience of this book without that. But it really enriches it if you either know or take the time to do some Bible research.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean, it's ironical, right? Gabriel in the Bible means hero of God, and that's a loaded thing and hard to live up to. And boy, does Gabriel, let's say, struggle with living up to in its own way. I was thinking of sinners similarly, but also differently. Just this historical. Sixteen Academy Award nominations. Thinking about Baldwin wanting to kind of enter his own experience of black culture into the record of American life. This is a sign of how integrated black art and black experience has made it into American life. I wonder, would he be shocked to see how much black culture is still part of the church, but also so divorced from it. Like part of the thing about sinners is historical period piece, frankly, probably happening around the same time that Go Tell it on the Mountain is happening during Prohibition in the late 1930s. But also that it's still dealing with some of the issues that he was wrestling with. You know, the relationship, whiteness, and the sort of vampiric sucking of life of white America from black experience. You know, I think he would be shocked about how prominent, or maybe he wouldn't be. I think he would notice, certainly, but I don't know what he would say. Again, he died in the late 80s, so he would have seen some of the emergence, especially in popular music through the 50s and 60s. But to see it on film and to see this kind of racial storytelling be recognized at a historical level, would he think it's still late or still early? I don't know. So that's why I don't know what he would say. I wouldn't deign to wonder.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And there are some just even through lines in the text of Go Tell it on the Mountain and the text of Sinners, that kind of post great migration analysis of did we actually get the things that we were promised? Like, there's a quote in the book of there was not, after all, a great difference between the world of this north and that of the south, which she had fled. There was only this difference that the north promised more and this similarity. What it promised it did not give. And what it gave at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took with the other. And there's a moment early in Sinners where Smoke and Stack are saying they came back from Chicago, like, not just because they've been stealing from everybody and they have to get out of town, but like Jim Crow is everywhere. And at least it's a real the devil you know situation. You know, of course, the deal that they're offered is maybe you want to become a vampire because life as a black person in the south is worse than living as a vampire. And the deal that the characters in Go Tell it on the Mountain are presented with first is come north and it will be better. Make this great migration and it will be better. And then also join the church, be part of the church. This is the way to a better life. And of course, like, this is not exclusive to James Baldwin and Ryan Coogler. A lot of black art has explored.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, it just so happened that we were like prepping for this the day the Oscar nominations were coming out. So it was like put on our lap to consider together at the same time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Really interesting. What else were stray thoughts from you?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mentioned the Joyce before, the most famous line in Portrait of the Artist as a young man. So I was mentioning Ulysses in the formal things that Joyce is doing. Ulysses that seem there are some shared morphology there. But Joyce explicitly says in that work of auto fictioncore that his goal as an artist is to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race. And. And that seems very. That seems like a useful way of thinking through what Baldwin was trying to do in Go Telladon Mountain especially. And it's difficult to understand how much of this stuff was new to see represented in a text at this time. I thought, is this the best book ever with a 14 year old narrator protagonist? It has to be there. And that led me to. I would love a list of the best books by the age of narrator starting. I don't know, is there an infant narration? I'm sure there's some experimental fiction that's like an uncreated consciousness seeing the world for the first time. But what's the best book with a 9 year old narrator, a 13 year old narrator, a 17 year old narrator going all the way through it? You would have to. It doesn't come to mind. Maybe there's some book I'm not thinking about, but this is the leader in the clubhouse for the best book ever with a 14 year old narrator.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Totally. Also just incredible shit for a debut novel. I thought about this all the way through. Like, not just as it's someone's debut, but he started writing it when he was 17 and it comes out when he's 29. Like we used to be smarter. And James voice. James Baldwin.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a nice Freudian slip. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Baldwin is smarter and wiser. And there's just the weight of so much life experience too. Like, debut novels often have this kitchen sink feeling to them that the author threw in everything they've been wanting to say for 30 years and they put it all into the book. And like Baldwin has, clearly there's a lot of that, but he's clearly been distilling his perspective. This feels crafted and concentrated, that he had some very defined things to say, it doesn't feel overstuffed in the way that a lot of debut novels can. It's tight, 225 pages. Like you'll love to see that. Especially for a book that has so many points to make. And even though like the memories and the dreams and the hallucination sequences can be a little hard to track, it felt more to me that they were hard to track because Baldwin trusted the reader than that they were hard to track because he lost control of it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whatever you were feeling in those moments was intended.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. I felt like I was in good hands the whole time. And that's an unusual feeling to have from any debut novel. So just really incredible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think part of that too is he is putting his. His fictional avatar in the broader context and structure of his family, community and history. And that's something that also Joyce does in Portrait of the Artist. He draws this circle where it's a universe and then Europe and then Ireland and Then Dublin, then my neighborhood, and then my house and then me. So he's thinking expansively about his place in the world and what that means. But in order to do that, you have to have some sense of. Of being able to understand the people around you and the structures around you and how all put together and your relationship to those things and understanding your place in your community, in the world as being part of, like, an ecosystem. Like there is. There may be apex predators in any ecosystem, but that doesn't mean they're the hero. They're all part of the same thing. And sometimes what you see in a debut novel is the narration, the specific narration of a specific experience. But it feels isolated and contained where this feels connected and expansive. And that is extraordinarily hard to do, really. Especially in 20. 24. 220 pages.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Quotes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Quotes. Okay. So many. There were so many things I loved and just so many things that are notable. There's a scene of someone remembering watching. I think it's Gabriel remembering watching people dancing in a juke joint. And he describes them twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs, which. That's a sentence like, that could be the apex line of a writer's career.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And not a bad encapsulation of the whole book. You know, it's a lewd hallelujah. Right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Like up there in pop culture. Hallelujah references with Leonard Cohen. Then also, there are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process. People who are never destined or people who are destined never to arrive. Related. Folks can change their way as much as they want to, but I don't care how many times you change your ways. What is in you is in you, and it's got to come out. And. And like, there's a lot here about how much are we fated? Like, let's go back to Oedipus. What's our fate and what can we control? How much can we actually change?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's good. Let's see. I broke out a short one in trying to imagining what he was going to be like. He doesn't have a lot of good models for. Or goals or targets or role models, I guess is the word we would use now. Just simply. He would not be like his father or his father's father. He would have another life. And I do wonder. You know, I used to teach this course that was loosely. Not loosely. It was called how to Find a Critical Consciousness. And each of the books was like, there was. There'd be an. I was looking for books where there was a moment where the character's like, this isn't this. This value system, this world, this community, this dynamic. It ain't it. And I want to try to forge something else. And I find this maybe the most interesting and maybe the most human and maybe the most, the greatest and highest, best use of art is be able to say no, and then this. Or, like, go out. But this is. I would. I don't want. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to have another life. And this, another life is not just rebelling against the church because people have done that. It's something that he does need to. He can't even really quantify. It's a true act of intellectual and emotional courage to think that's possible. And I don't know where it comes from. I find it one of the most interesting things in life and art.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We pulled the same quote here, I just noticed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, interesting. Okay, do that one back to back.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They sang with all the strength that was in them and clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart and wonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord. Indeed, it was no longer a question of belief because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy they felt. Yet he could not doubt that it was for them the very bread of life. Could not doubt it, that is, until it was too late to doubt.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A fascinating representation of what the inevitability of your own cultural world can feel like. That it's beyond, beyond consideration, reproach or even escape. And he doesn't reject it completely, but he also is not going to stay in it. And that's one of the great ambiguities and pleasures of trying to understand what this book is trying to do. The other inescapable thing, the other Gordian knot that Baldwin in the book cannot really get outside of. Is this what his mother says to him? Or this is his mother talking to him? She sighed and turned slightly away, looking out the window. Your daddy beats you, she said, because he loves you. Your father, she said, watching him knows best. You listen to your father, I guarantee you and you won't end up in no jail. And that is one of the prime directives. One of the spoken, logical premise of some of this dynamic is the thing we're trying to do is really the thing we're doing to you to raise you is very bad. But it's not as bad as the thing, thing that could happen to you if we don't. And that's the Faustian bargain being made. And it doesn't always work. But that's the only they know how to do. That's all. That's their biggest fear.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, Wilkerson writes about that in the Warmth of Other Suns, her great book about the great migration. And that this was part of black culture at the time, that parents felt that they had to be strict and had to be scary with their children because that was the only way to protect their children from the even worse things of the outsider world.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we talked about that dynamic in those scenes in Their Wives Were Watching God Too. For those of you who have listened to that one, that might sound familiar too. My last one. Here I have. This is Frank, who is in the book positioned as John's biological father, but as far as we know doesn't have a analog in James Baldwin's real life. And John's mother has asked Frank why he reads so much. How did this happen? Where did you get all this information? And he says, I just decided one day that I was going to get to know everything them white bastards knew and I was going to get to know it better than they. So no white son of a bitch nowhere would never talk down to me and never make me feel like I was dirt when I could read him the Alphabet. Back, front, sideways, shit. He weren't going to beat my ass then. And if he tried to kill me, I'd take it with him. I swear to my mother I would. And Frank, unfortunately that's insufficient to deal with the structure he is up against.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's Richard. Like, yeah, Frank, there's so many names. Draw yourselves a family tree. Yeah, Frank is Florence's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm sorry. Yes, you're absolutely right. Thank you for that. Correction. We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the hot Pammy snack crap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This message is sponsored by Greenlight. With school out, summer is the perfect time to teach our kids real world money skills they'll use forever. Greenlight is a debit card in the number one family finance and safety app used by millions of families, helping kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely. Parents can send their kids money and track their spending and saving while kids build money, confidence and skills in fun ways. Start your risk free Greenlight trial [e-mail] Spotify that's greenlight.com Spotify.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, let's help people decide if they want to give this a try. Rebecca, is this. What. How will you. It's for you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What. What kind of people are you?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is really high on my list of. Just do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We try not to say on every episode because, like, I mean, that's also good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a little bit of cheat. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This you note here, and it's right. That this is a really core component of the lineage of 20th and 21st century black literature. And so if you're interested in what that evolution looks like, reading some Baldwin is an important part of that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would say implicitly. That also means it's the lineage of 20th or 21st century American literature as well. But especially important in that. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The messy overlap of religion in real life. Some people can't give two wits about religion. If you grew up in a church or know someone who does. I do think it has something to say about the attractions. Uses abuses and shortcomings of a religious experience. It is not wholly embracing or rejecting. And I always find that kind of wrestling, I guess, to continue with that. The most interesting kind of encounter.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And if you are comfortable with a narrative structure that's gonna move back and forth in time and in perspective, like even when we're in one of the three adults prayer reflective moments, we pop back out to what's happening with John. And there's not like a big notice that that's what is happening. So some comfort with a slightly unconventional. But it's not that difficult to track narrative structure. Not for you. If, like, trigger warnings galore, racial violence, sexual violence. All of the things that, you know, that were difficult about life for black people in America are present on the page here. So careful with that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not graphically, really or extendedly, but they're definitely here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They're there. And in a very matter of fact way, like, that was a stray thought at the beginning.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And who fondled his daughter? Is that what you're thinking of in the very beginning?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, there's that. And then just like real direct. They're not graphic descriptions, but the fact that it's just a direct sort of matter of fact. Like these things are so commonplace that the characters don't feel the need to go into great detail about what happened to someone who was beaten by the police or lynched or, you know, any number of things that. That in itself, just like the dailiness of it is of Course, true. And can be difficult to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To read and has a different kind of effect in power when represent. I mean, there's. There's. There's no right way to do anything. But this is a different way of showing how eminent and always around those kinds of dynamics were. I guess the other. Maybe not if. Is. If you're one of. If you're a likable character. Person, you may have a hard time finding purchase here. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or if you want a clear interpretation, like, if you want a clear indictment of the Church, if you want a clear indictment of, like, Satan, some mode of expression somewhere. Baldwin shows all of these things in, like, the warts and all. Like, we see the appeal of the Church. We also see how it's harmful. We see the ways that John's parents are trying. We also see the ways that they're doing a lot of harm. It's a real. Like, no one is one thing. No one is one dimensional. And I mean, I think that's one of the reasons that it endures. But if you want. Like, if you want clear moral judgment about and against characters who don't do objectively bad things, you're not going to find it here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's very clear what right and wrong is. But how that maps into being a good or bad person is not as neat. And that is fascinating to say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well said.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think this may take the cake for the saying yes to the number of questions Immortal Art asks. We do this with all the books. Which of these questions are primary here? What is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with a certainty of death? Death. What else might there be? And what's the deal with good and evil? Rebecca? It's all of them, isn't it? It really is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It really is all of them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there a primary, like, or maybe what's the one it's least about? I'm not even sure how to handle this. It broke my system. Baldwin broke my system, which I should have expected.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe. How do I know what I know? Actually?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because John at the beginning is so. Like, it seems like he's never gonna get saved. He's not interested in that. And then I realized at the end of the book, when I went back to look at passages I had marked from the beginning, knowing how it ends, stuff that happens in the beginning makes it seem inevitable. Like, oh, of course he's gonna end up getting saved. But how does he know what's true about him? How does he come to this conclusion about religion? And the answers to the rest of these questions I think flow from that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But they're all there. I would also like to submit a new immortal question.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. The jury is open for submissions.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Something along the lines of can people change? Or how much of our existence is under our control?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. Free will stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Free will stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Do my dog. Do. Can I have any say? There you go in my life? Or how much say do I have in my life? There we go. How about that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Free or just free will stuff can be there. Or casual. Real question mark.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. With lots of different adventures there. Are we sure this isn't about art and writing?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not at all. Like we're not at all sure. It's overtly about the power of knowledge. And in the beginning John thinks that the. The way he's going to save himself is through education. Clearly Baldwin had some feelings about that too. There's less creativity, art, writing, stuff on the page. But it seems to me that that's something Baldwin was thinking about. Where did you come down on this?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean transmogrified slightly into. There's a great scene of preaching and many great speeches and speechified. Identifying and felicity with language is clearly of use and clearly seen as a tool neither good nor evil, but to the use to which it's put. But that is very much at stake. I think it's about the limitations of knowledge and the limitations of education. I think it's interesting that Baldwin is writing. This 14 year old is being interested in. You know, there's a scene where he comes across the New York Public Library and doesn't feel like he can access it and he won't be welcome or comfortable there. Which is both true and not true at the same time. And that was sort of true for the rest of Baldwin's life. That education and art and writing was an entree into a different world. But he was not perfect or fixed forever. So there you go. That's the answer, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I read an interview with him. I think it was the Paris Review Art of Fiction interview where they asked him something about like, and how did you. Did leaving the US save you? How did you get out of everything? And he's like, I'm not sure that I did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, right. I didn't. I mean I'm not. I'm not all the way back on the. The terror in the tearing service, but I'm not gone. I'm not away from it totally either. Could you get the most of the gist from watching a signal adaptation. You know, sure. There really isn't one. There's an 84 made for TV movie that as far as I can tell, you cannot get if you. Even if you wanted to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I tried to get it. I think you could maybe rank, but for a lot of money.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But Baldwin was happy with it. Like the cast is a murderer's row of people who were in black pop culture in the 80s. So that's really interesting just to see. But Baldwin was happy with that adaptation. He said that it did not betray the book. And as I said earlier, I feel like this is really rich material. But it would need to be in the hands of somebody like Ryan Coogler, maybe Romel Ross, who did the adaptation of Nickel Boys.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Barry Jenkins. Like the Underground Railroad adaptation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's so much that is internal. Those prayer scenes. You would need a director that could move between. Here are the people on their knees in the church and here is the flashback that they're having. And for both of those existences to be fully realized and just enveloping all of your senses. There's only a couple directors that can really do that. And Coogler is the top of my list for it right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I find myself uninterested in the idea of an adaptation. Yeah, I mean, I'm not even interested. I don't find myself saying, boy, wouldn't it be cool to. I think the book is book. The book does book things in the way that if I could.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If I could get anything from this, I would want the full cast audio.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I agree with you with real.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Preaching or maybe, you know, our next question here. Do you want. Should this be a movie, a musical, a TV series or something with the Muppets? I think it would have to be a musical to be done well on stage. You have the church and the hymns and people falling on the floor and dancing before the Lord, all of that. But I want to hear these surroundings sermons given. I want to hear the preaching.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think the performances of the sermons is the thing that would be most additive to the book experience. Most of the other kinds of things would be a compromised version of what this book's do. But that would be the one piece that would be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's present day and past day. Like you get the present day preacher that John has his conversion in front of. But also Gabriel is a revival preacher in the south before he comes to New York. And there's like one really great sermon that he gives that's part of getting the girl and it's Also just part of his own origin story that I want to be in that tent at that revival and see that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Miscellaneous trivia adaptations, rumors, misattributed quotes and more. Rebecca, what did you uncover here?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As you said, you can go down a lot of fun YouTube rabbit holes with James Baldwin and you really should specific to this book. Just a few things. The original title was Crying Holy, which go tell it on the mountain. Way better.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Crushes Crying Holy. Yeah, yeah, I don't give that note or else. Good job. Gold star for you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, good job on that too. It did take Baldwin 10 years to finish the book, and at one point he didn't think he would ever finish it. He told Studs terkel in a 1961 interview after the fact that he was so ashamed of where he came from that he wasn't sure he could actually tell the story and that it was specifically about the black church that was that driving source of shame for him. I don't know if you went back and read some of the original news. That's rough reading now. A lot of academic white guys bringing a lot of academic language and approaching.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What it felt to me, even though I don't think this is how black people actually are. I thought it was a good book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's like, whoa, yeah, it's real rough. And the most popular Goodreads quote is the one about there are people in the world for whom coming along is a perpetual process. People who are never destined to arrive.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, side by side bar. Studs Terkel is a pinching ass name, by the way. Also, also, also, if you've ever seen a photo of Studs Terkel, the eminence of Studs Terkel is one of the more confounding and hard things to explain. And I don't know that there's an equivalent now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If you're younger than us, do you even know who Studs Terle is?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I barely know who Studs Terkel is, but a hugely important cultural figure. And I, I, I was thinking, when I saw you put this in here, I was like, like, who would I even make? I guess it would be a podcaster of some kind. I have no idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And no big interview podcaster is worthy of a comparison to Stud Circle.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's just an unbelievable movie. I need to go find out, like, did he get that name somehow? Is it ironical what's going on here?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, hot takes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not a lot of hot takes for us here. It feels sacrilegious to have a bunch of hot takes, frankly, about Go on the mountain.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Just like I don't want the spirit of James Baldwin to come back for me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, Guess mine is. It's just underrated. As a teenage coming of age novel, I think the radiation of Baldwin's name is warranted. But I think at a very basic level this is a coming of age level of a 14 year old, a precocious one, an aware one, and of course written in hindsight, but is essentially about a kid coming to terms with themselves and the world in which they live as a teenager. YA and those sort of genres have their own strictures and it doesn't apply in those strict terms. But as a coming of age novel, it is as good and complicated and fraught and remunerative as anything you're likely to read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is this the best debut novel in the American canon?

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a really good question.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm trying to think of. This just occurred to me. I mean it's up. The blue is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, do you think it's better than To Kill a Mockingbird? I mean, I do. Better than the Secret? Just the things we've covered. Better than the Secret History?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Just for canonical reasons. It's better than the Secret History.

[Jeff O'Neill]

V by Thomas Pynchon, I think was his. I think we're now an interesting company at that level.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's up there. And like V, I mean, Pynchon is canonized, but is V canonized like in what we think of as the American canon?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I guess that's. Those are maybe different questions and maybe they have different answers. I think V is so technically precocious and vertiginous that it's hard to put against them. And it's not a. I don't enjoy this kind of pitting against each other. I put it alongside of it right in the first place.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a real hot take exercise. Like, I don't know if this is the best debut novel in American literature ever, period. But like in the canon, it's really. It's really stunning.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's really. It's really something else. I guess for further reading, that's maybe a good transition. It stands alongside the greats of certainly African American literary history. Like it's very much in a continuum. Like you say, their eyes were watching God into Ellis. You know, their eyes were watching God into. Right into this, into Ellison to Morrison is a through line. And they're different. They're not all the same.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You make yourself a little miniature syllabus by do Their Eyes Were watching God read Native Sun, Read Invisible sun or Invisible Man, Pick up the Bluest Eye. Also, you mentioned the Nicholas Boggs book that came out last year, a huge biography of Baldwin called Baldwin A Love Story. And then the Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, which great work of narrative nonfiction and oral history about the Great Migration.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was thinking this is not really a read alike, but I was thinking of are there equivalent scenes of white Pentecostal experience in art and culture? And the one that jumped to mind maybe because Tarantino was slagging him recently as Paul Dano and There Will Be Blood. But I think those scenes and those figures years are interesting to think in context and how they're presented as differently and similarly operating. But I think that's another interesting way to tack because this is about American ecstatic religious experience.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just had to Google it. But it's a work of Nonfiction from the 90s called Salvation on Sand Mountain. That's about Appalachian Pentecostal snake handlers and I mean that's written by a journalist. But the depictions of those worship services and the rituals are pretty stunning. I read that. I will read as listeners of the Book Riot podcast know Love a religious sect. I love a cult. I'll read any sort of journalistic exploration of those. And Salvation on Sand Mountain was memorable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Final. Oh, cocktail party crib sheet. Three to five takeaways. You have one here and I've got one here. So why don't you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of the great literary interrogations of the uses and the abuses of religion and of the dangers of getting high on your own supply. That Gabriel is an all time tragic figure and his belief that he is destined for something great and that his bad behavior is justified because it's in service of this mission from God that he believes he's on is just kind of an all time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One of the great scenes of rationalizations you're ever gonna see in a book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, and just up there in like. We didn't have the language of intersectionality when Baldwin was writing, but this story and these characters exist at intersections of race, gender, sexuality, religion, religion, class, obviously. But one of the great works that does that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I saw in an interview that Baldwin said this was the book he would write if he could never write anything else, which I thought was pretty interesting. It reminds me that scene in Walk the Line, the movie where Johnny Cash is sort of performing for Sam Phillips and Sam Phillips is bored. He's like, is that really what you would say if you're lying dead on the side of the road and you had one chance to say to God. And I don't remember the line exactly. Exactly. And then he does something different. But if you've got one, if you had one of the books that. And he could do nothing else, this is the one he would do. We haven't really talked about this in kind of the relationship to the rest of the Baldwin stuff. I think Giovanni's Room is more red now. It's a love story. And I think it's a little more approachable. He's better known maybe as a purveyor of nonfiction essayistic intellectual talents takes. I think probably this book is now underread significantly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. It only has 80,000 Goodreads ratings.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, you know, I didn't think that's interesting. I didn't go think to go back and look at that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was astonished. Like I was going to just look and see, you know, looking for popular quotes, doing my general Goodreads poking around. But that a book that is part of so many people's educational experiences. But I think you're right that the nonfiction gets assigned more often and Giovanni's Room gets assigned more often. But I was really stunned to. To see that it was under 100,000 Goodreads ratings. That's very low for a book that is this old and this important and well known.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think the pleasures of it are hard to call pleasures. And I think that just makes harder to people for pick up on their own if they. You know, most of the books that get read more or even meaningfully outside of the classroom have one or more pleasures that attend to this sort of artistic concern. Whatever the edification here, it's hard to say that there's many parts of it that are pleasurable in a simple sense on a character or story or whatever else it might be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Out of curiosity, I just looked. The bluest eye has 300 1000. It's more current. Also Oprah talked about it. But that's an equally. When you say the pleasures of it are not overt pleasures, it's the same class of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. What is do while you're. While you're looking at it? What does Giovanni's Room have for Goodreads reviews or ratings? I would assume an order. Not an order, but like twice as many.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. 253,000.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So more on the order.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A quarter of a million.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's just I was in Powell's last night and I looked at the Baldwin shelf and it's not a perfect representation of relative weighting of sales, but it's not that. And there were like two copies of Gotella de Mountain and like 15 of Giovanni's room. Right there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's Giovanni's room. The fire next time is 121.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So Giovanni's room that gets assigned all the time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then if Beale street could talk, go tell it on the mountain. Write like neck and neck within a couple hundred of each other.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have never read if Beale Street Could Talk. That's one big blank on Baldwin. I know there's a well regarded adaptation that came out recently and I meant to get to it and just didn't. All right, final beat. A zero to well read score. Each score gets a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. The five categories, categories we have instituted thus far are historical importance, readability, current relevance of central questions, and oh, damn factor. Historical importance. Rebecca, I think is pretty damn high.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Nine, ten. I think it's a nine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Nine, eight and a half or nine. Just. It's less than 100 years old. So I, you know, I. I tend to wait. Older things are more historically important. That's why the historical part is in there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But I mean, I think for the time in American history and culture that it represents, like in the long arc of the literary universe, it's going to be harder to find a book about this moment that it does more things better than.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Readability is kind of a mixed bag here. There's no individual sentence that's hard to understand, but the plot is not linear, nor is plot really the. The point. There are scenes that are quite difficult to feel like you are confident that you know what's trying to be accomplished in that scene because of the sort of embodied metaphysical nature of it. On the other hand, it's quite easy to get it. I don't find myself resisting keeping the pages turning, Rebecca. So I'm not really sure what to do with the reading experience of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would go with like a seven.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, say more about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Seven or eight. The parts that are smooth are really smooth. Like the opening section where we're just with John walking around the city, his family is talking to him. That's really direct. This stuff that's challenging is having your grip on what's going on when he's having these hallucinatory moments and when we're in the prayers with people. But I think that's intentional.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I think it's intentional, sure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Consciousness is slippery. They're praying, they're in one room and they're also thinking about something else. And we move back and forth through those spaces as they move back and forth through them intellectually and emotionally.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But the honest stories are also quite. I mean they're kind of paged like they're kind of gripping like what's going to happen there in this situation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it is gripping and like the reveal. We don't find out that Gabriel is not John's biological father until like midway through the book and how and when that's revealed and that that's the source of the tension between them. That's why Gabriel hates John and is so hard on him. Like that's masterful that it's saved for later in the book. The ways that some of the stuff spins out. I think it's pretty readable on a sentence level if you can. If you are willing to just like kind of let it wash over you and be okay with not having having a full handle on everything all the time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's sort of an ouroboros where it's snakes disease, own tail. But if you kind of know going into it that these visions ecstatic sections are going to be more difficult to parse, that actually makes them easier to deal with. So like even having this conversation means that it's going to be more readable to you right now if you haven't read this than if you go into it cold. And we tend to sort of. We're trying to sorting if you go into a cold. So yeah, I think I would agree with you in that six or seven range in there. The current relevance of central questions.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It doesn't get higher than this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

10.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not obviously about specific things right now but their versions and echoes and ancestors of them. Book nerd read cred. I think given what we just said about the Goodreads stuff. And again it's high if you've gone and read this. Not many people have and combined with its under redness and that historical importance number we get that manufacturers a pretty high number where we you peg it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm going to go eight and a half. Nine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I agree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll give him a nine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We'll round up oh damn factor. Rebecca. This is our kind of a catch. Our je ne sais quoi. I didn't know books could do this. I can't get this anywhere else. The singularity of the artistic experience and artistry here. Also quite high.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also very.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And this points back to what we were saying about like not really being interested in an adaptation or in any story in any other format. It really does things that only books can do and it does them at a high level. I mean again, that it's a debut.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Novel is just if you grade on a little bit of a curve for debut, it only enhances its reputation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Considered his biggest literary achievement in many circles, which is also saying something given the career that James Baldwin goes on to have here like this. The odam factor is high. Eight and a half. Nine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I was thinking eight and a half to to I think one thing that maybe is a demeriton and it's just only and this comes down to personal opinion, I didn't find myself looking at an individual sentence sort of on its own as being striking. Now the lewd Hallelujah maybe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean that's a perfect one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's one. But he's also not trying to do that like he's trying to do something else here because he's thinking of a 14 year old, but he's going inside and out. But I'm perfectly happy with an ode factor. A hell of a book. Rebecca, that brings us to the end of our formal syllabus here. Office hours, which we're going to. We'll take a quick break. This will be the end of the recording the main feed, but for those of you subscribed over on patreon.com 02 well read, you can get detailed show notes. You can sign up for the free newsletter. Vanessa Diaz, our managing editor, Book Riot is helping us put together a companion piece, but it can kind of stand on its own as well to learn more about Baldwin. And I'm sure she'll find an interview and other things that we have yet discovered ourselves here. And there's a couple different membership options. One include ad free early access to episodes and then another one includes that and the additional discussion we're going to do here in a few minutes. Office hours go False on the socials at zero to well read podcast. Email us at 02 well read pododcast.com.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bookriot.Com what did I say?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Who knows? I can't even tell. Zero to well riot book riot.com thank you so much to Thriftbooks for sponsoring this season of Zero to well Read. Go check out thriftbooks.com and Zero to well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Rebecca, thank you so much.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This was a really good one.