Walking in the dark
James Baldwin, my father, and me
By Douglas Field
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- Format: Hardcover
- ISBN: 978-1-5261-7517-5
- Pages: 224
- Price: £16.99
- Published Date: November 2024
Description
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism.
Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance.
Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death.
Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.
Contents
Prologue: If we are not ourselves, who are we?
1 Fathers and illness
2 Writing home
3 Some who wander are lost
4 Mistakes, we'd made a few, too many to mention
Epilogue: Thou poor ghost
Index
Author
Douglas Field is a writer and academic who teaches American literature at the University of Manchester. He has published two books on James Baldwin, the most recent of which is All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin (2015). His work has been published in Beat Scene, The Big Issue, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, where he has been a regular contributor for twenty years. He is a founding editor of James Baldwin Review.
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Walking in the dark
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