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The Lives and Loves of James Baldwin

An older generation dismissed him as passé; a newer one has recast him as a secular saint. But Baldwin’s true message remains more unsettling than either camp recognizes.

Donald Fine, the editor-in-chief at Dell, which published the paperback edition, called it “an almost overelegant, altogether polished exposition of black-white relations that white Americans could embrace without discomfort, and which really was considerably less fiery than its biblical title.” And, in 1966, the left-wing muckraker Ramparts published an article by the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, who, the magazine explained, was imprisoned in Soledad, California, for “assault with intent to murder,” omitting mention of his rape conviction. A transcript of their seven-and-a-half-hour conversation was published, seemingly unedited, as a book called “ A Rap on Race ”—two hundred and fifty nearly unreadable pages in which Baldwin tries to get Mead to acknowledge her guilt for Black oppression.

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