Talking At The Gates: A Life of James Baldwin by James Campbell

There are a few things I like more than a biography with a narrative twist…

The twist in this excellent literary biography of the late unpunctual James “Jimmy” Baldwin is that the much younger Scottish literary critic James Campbell had actually known him in real life, if peripherally and only towards the end of Baldwin’s career when his critical star had dimmed, but still! A real life connection! Phone calls and a few dinners! A couple of pieces published by Campbell’s (then) magazine… A real connection!

It’s not much of a twist, tbf, I know that…

It’s not like Campbell was a significant lover or a critic and editor who somehow ushered Baldwin into a late career Renaissance, but it’s enough of a relationship for me to impressed by in in the final section of the book!

James Campbell and James Baldwin met irl on multiple occasions, and Campbell has read some still unpublished manuscripts of Baldwin texts (notably a completed play, The Welcome Table), and published some of his late essays in a small magazine Campbell ran as a young literary hot shot… (In the decades since, James Campbell has been a long-term columnist / contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, for example, and has published several other books on literary history, many of which sound like they could be quite interesting and I may well read some day, one day, who knows???)

Having recently read a (for me) disappointing biography of Baldwin that explicitly focused on politics and political consistencies and inconsistencies within his work, this more human and humane and tbf more “traditional” biography is (understandably) a more satisfying read but… not quite salacious or prurient enough to be excellent…

in fact Talking At The Gates often criticizes Baldwin’s own tendency to gossip and uses this as a justification for failing to do… I think it might have been quite satisfying, an intentionally gossipy biography, and though Campbell doesn’t offer that to as reader, he does provide a history both personal and professional of one of American literature’s greatest 20th century practitioners…

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Of course, having read Baldwin’s autobiographically inflected essays and fiction – as well as that more academic biography – over the past few years, there was nothing here really that shocked or surprised me, so rather than coming to Talking At The Gates for shock and or scandal and or surprise, it is more for detail, for detailing, for coloring in the sketched lines… I wanted a less vague understanding of the life of Mr Baldwin. And, I think, I got that…

Baldwin’s friends and rivals and colleagues and editors are mentioned and described and discussed here… the places and the situations in which he worked and wrote and socialised and lived, where he stayed and who he stayed with, all that is detailed… and there is also more focus on the later (and less successful) part of his career than is often found in texts about writers who lose cultural import before they lose their publishing deals…

For example, Baldwin had much more of an interest in theatre – including theatre direction (was going to post a link to something corroborating that, but couldn’t find anything quickly!) – than I had any idea of previous to this…

Baldwin was also super interested in adaptations – both stage and screen – of his own work, in fact if anything he was overly interested in potential adaptations of his work and it may well have been his failure to let go of these potential projects that led some of them to flounder and never make it to fruition…

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What else?

Campbell writes about Baldwin as a socialite, Baldwin as a networker, Baldwin as as as as a potential alcoholic, however even later in life he continued to do the work (i.e. he continued to write) even as – at least according to critics generally and to James Campbell in particular – the spark was slowly disappearing from the writing that made it to the page…

On that note, it’s nice to read a literary biography of someone by a writer who doesn’t care that much for the work of the subject.

And although James Campbell is constantly full of praise for Go Tell It On The Mountain and gives Baldwin the credit he’s due for The Fire Next Time and those first couple of essay collections, he very much seems to think that Baldwin peaked hard – and high – at the start of his career, and there was, if not necessarily an exponentially downward trajectory, a break after which point everything created wasn’t quite as good.

For Campbell, the reason for this was that Baldwin’s politics – and in particular his personal voice which was used with such great skill, charm and power in numerous famous speeches, interviews and public appearances – began to overwhelm and take over his prose, which was exactly what young James Baldwin made a name for himself by criticising in the work of others, particularly his former mentor (though I don’t think – at least according to James Campbell’s evocations – either of them would have used that word to describe their relationship), Richard Wright.

Anyway.

It’s an excellent book, full of the warmth and wit of Baldwin, as well as the power and the conviction that led him to be such an important voice, and the fear of the reality of terrifying violence that caused him to absent himself repeatedly from the United States and – possibly in his own eyes as well as a critical mass of the public – distance himself from the subject of his work and thus lose his connectedness, his potency.

Baldwin is great, though (of course you, whoever you are, must know this!) and it’s always a pleasure to be reminded of this.

It’s a well put together biography, and Campbell is engaging, evocative and engaged with his prose. Would definitely read something else of his if it ever fell into my hands!

Have a lovely day, byeeee