"It says something about the excellence of Vogel’s analysis of Baldwin in the Reagan era that, reading through the book, one can almost imagine Baldwin digging through the rubble of the Trump era in order to write a road for us to a Jerusalem that, somehow, always seems to recede before us." Aderson Francois reviewing Joseph Vogel's James Baldwin and The 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era.
Today's outrage - Gingrich calling to jail the investigators of the January 6 coup attempt - almost makes one wistful for the Gipper on the aircraft carrier anchored before the Statute of Liberty, his racism thinly coded and wrapped the American flag.
But Aderson Francois' exquisitely crafted account of the great writer's dying optimism reminds me of the one time I heard and saw Baldwin. A rally for Ben Chavis - then jailed in North Carolina - at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church. Baldwin - a tiny figure in the Bishop's great chair - said "do not despair. It was said that the sun never sets on the British Empire but today the sun can't find the British Empire." - GWC
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