Description
« Baldwin is the most important, he’s the one who tried to cross borders, He’s the only one who could have found a way. After him it went on : White America and Black America: two solitudes » (Dany Lafferière).
First French edition of this important book by James Baldwin.
An attractive copy, one of the only 26 printed on large paper, preserved in publisher’s wrappers, as issued.
_________________________________________________
Baldwin. Personne ne sait mon nom.
Paris, Gallimard, Nrf, 1963.
12mo of 249 pp., (1) l. ; publisher’s wrappers, uncut, as issued.
First French edition.
One of the 26 copies printed on pur fil Lafuma vellum, only large paper printed.
It is the testimony of a man who is fighting to end the tragedy that is tearing the United States apart.
Everybody knows the name of James Baldwin and the active role he played in the emancipation of his brothers of colour.
This book contains penetrating portraits of Richard Wright and Norman Mailer, a passionate critic of Faulkner’s defence of the Old South, and a highly controversial painting of Harlem.
The black problem occupies an important place in this master book and many themes constantly appear: relations between Whites and Blacks, role of Blacks in America and Europe… A fundamental concern dominates the whole: the main role of the writer is to face the true.
No author, black or white, has expounded with such intensity and eloquence the claims of an oppressed minority, while strongly condemning the excesses of extremists.
“Baldwin is the most important, he’s the one who tried to cross borders,
He’s the only one who could have found a way. After him it went on : White America and Black America: two solitudes. One sees it with young rappers, and yet Baldwin had warned them, no one would get out alone from this story (Dany Lafferière)
“What i found interesting in Baldwin, is the mix of passion and lucidity of rage and courage. The miracle is that this young man from Harlem, skinny with frightening intelligence, has become the most fearless intellectual of his generation, by the audacity of his reflections and the fire he infuses into his sentences. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread his first essay, “Nobody knows my name.” His strength lies in this desperate effort to understand the other one” (Dany Laferrière).
As a young pastor, after leaving the church as an activist and writer, he discovered the power of the verb and what it meant to be “invested with a word that must be spoken loudly, against and against all.” Widely known in the United States, James Baldwin is considered one of the greatest writers of his generation. Marked by the situation of blacks in his country, he became an important figure in the movement for civil rights without ever yielding to the visions of a world in «Black and White», avoiding until the end any communitarianism.
“ They are, and will remain, acute inquiries into the moral and political quandaries of our being, regardless of the age in which they’re read. While the books are indeed indelible documents of their era, they ponder questions of inheritance, race and social justice with a sense of perplexity and purpose that resonates far beyond their contemporary context” (James Mustich).
An attractive uncut copy preserved in publisher’s wrappers, as issued.
