With the exception of "The Man Child," a macabre, faintly
Lawrentian study of repressed love between two white men in the
rural South, all of Baldwin's tales here deal in one form or
another with the Negro problem. Technically, a good portion of the
work is crude and unconvincing. "Come Out the Wilderness" and
"Previous Condition," for example, rest on slight themes: the first
concerning a Negro girl's hapless involvement with an opportunistic
white Village artist, and the second presenting the frustrations of
a Negro actor when he is denied lodgings in a white neighborhood.
"This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" is an ironic mood piece, a
chronicle of a Negro expatriate in Paris: on the verge of fame and
fearful of returning to the states, the singer discovers that his
friend, a Tunisian outcast, is not above stealing from people of
his own race. "Sonny's Blues" is an over-long, over-loud lament of
a doomed jazz musician who becomes a junkie, ending on a muted
moment of recognition between himself and his square brother. "The
Rockpile" is a brief , bitter account of children blighted by
Harlem family life. The title story is reminiscent of Baldwin's
recent play Blues for Mr. Charlie; the white protaganist, a deputy
sheriff, is momentarily impotent until aroused by a terrible
memory: as a boy, he witnessed, along with his gloating parents and
other adults, the brutal castration and burning of an uppity Negro.
All of these tales have an undeniable urgency, power and anger, yet
only "The Outing" achieves true artistry, probably because it is
the most personal and not melodramatic at all. Symphonic in
structure, mixing religious and sexual motifs, encompassing various
shades of characters and situations against the background of a
boat trip up the Hudson, "The Outing" is memorable in every sense;
funny, sad, colorful, it is a triumphant performance. (Kirkus
Reviews)
'Few, it seems to me, have driven their words with such passion'
Guardian How our earliest experiences can shape our destiny is the
theme that runs like a thread of revelation through these
extraordinary stories. They explore the roots of love, of murder
and of racial conflict, from the child in 'The Rockpile' who can
never be forgiven by his God-fearing father for his illegitimacy to
the loneliness of a young black girl in love with a white man who,
she knows, will leave her in 'Come Out of the Wilderness' and the
horrifying story of the initiation of a racist as a man remembers
his parents taking him to see the mutilation and murder of a black
man in 'Going to Meet the Man'. In them Baldwin unlocks the
concepts of history and prejudice and probes beneath the skin to
the soul.
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