PEL Special: Phi Fic on James Baldwin’s Fiction

0:08 Mark: Hey, this is Mark Linsenmayer of the Partially Examined Life. And that funny music means we're doing something different this time. On the feed we'd like to feature another episode from the Phi Fic podcast. This will be a discussion of two of James Baldwin's famous short stories this Morning, this Evening, so soon from 1960 and Sonny's Blues from 1957. Those were both published together in the collection Going to meet the the Phi Fic podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcasting network. You can find their discussions@fiveficpodcast.com or right there on the partiallyexaminedlife.com site.

Phi Fic has now been going for a year. They've got 13 posted discussions. Plus before they went public they were the philosophical fiction group part of our Not School program. So there are more discussions by this group posted as Pel Citizen Content. Now the idea of our expanding into a podcast network is to support the efforts of those who have been influenced by the Partially Examined Life who do something complementary. There's so many things we'd love to do on the podcast, like interview lots of academics about their new philosophy books coming out or talk about other subjects like history science.

Hopefully you've listened to the Nakedly Examined music podcast that I run. So if you're serious about podcasting and want to reach out to us, ask

1:21 Unknown speaker: us about the network.

You can't listen to this and not have spoilers.

So we read two stories from Going to Meet the man by James Baldwin. And the first was this Morning, this Evening, so soon, which I will give a little synopsis of. And then Mark had requested that we read Sonny's Blues and I was hoping that he had a little synopsis of that for when we talk about that for this morning, this Evening, so Soon. I think the first paragraph is pretty perfect. It starts out with his wife saying, you know, you are full of nightmares. And we meet the narrator and his wife as they're getting ready to go out for a night on a town.

It's two nights before they are going to the United States. They're in Paris. The narrator, whose name you never get, is an African American. His wife is Swedish and white. And they have a child who I think is about six years old. And the narrator has been living in Paris for 12 years. He is a singer and, and an actor and has recently become, or fairly recently become pretty famous. It's the early 60s and they're in Paris and he hasn't been to the United States for eight years. He went back when his mother died and he is nervous and afraid about going back and the way that his wife and son will be treated by people in America, you know, being with a black man, the way that he'll be treated, whether he can protect them.

But there's a lot more that goes on. They go out for, you know, he goes out for a night with his friend Vidal, who was the director of, was a French man who was the director of the film that made him famous. And his wife is going to go out with his sister. His sister has been with them in Paris for a month or so. And so basically through the course of the night, he tells us the story of his life in the United States, his life in Paris, his life with his wife, and why he's so afraid about this step. They want him in the United States, they want him in New York for music, they want him in Hollywood to make more movies.

So basically they will co opt his fame in the United States. They'll accept him back in the United States with his fame. And I'm just going to leave it at that. It's basically in a night you find out what his story generally is. And it's very, very beautifully written, I will say that also. But please, someone Else talk.

So what was the movie? I couldn't remember that and find it. The movie that he's in with the director.

He plays Chico, an Algerian who has a black mother and a white father. And he was so mistreated that he ends up hating all black women, all white men. He basically ends up hating everyone. And I don't think that they tell you the name of the movie, so

I looked it up, and it could be I heard it through the grapevine, because that's an actual movie he was in with, like, his acting credit, but it could also be a fictional movie, or I just can't remember because I wanted to see it, because that, like, there's so many different pivots on the aspect of race and what's going on here. I mean, through the narrative of the story. I mean, there's the Arab that we meet at the end. Like, I think that's a really important one to look at.

Right. The Algerian war is going on at the time.

Right.

That's a huge side thing. Right. Because the way that Algerians are treated in Paris at the time, we're led to believe that, you know, he's been treated very well, but the Algerians are treated very poorly.

And the Algerians are Muslim. Right. With the Orthodox Church in France or some kind of Christian power.

Yeah.

There's no Orthodoxy in France at the time, but there is. Yeah.

Huh.

Okay.

Well, they're a colony. Algeria was a colony of France. And so they're fighting for freedom. Yeah.

I mean, so much of this I'm learning about, and it's opening up big blind spots. I wanted to see that character specifically in that movie, because that's one of the major ones here, precisely because of the conversation he has with the director. And the director outlines, you know, like, I want to talk to you about that performance and what you had to pull from. He's like, well, I had to pull from every bit of feeling I've got about race and my rage and anger and also talking about it and performing it.

Yeah, but the director had a problem with it.

Well, yeah, well, he got him to open up to him. And then he goes through that whole thing where, I mean, without reading the whole conversation, I mean, he says in the rehearsal, or one of my favorite lines actually comes from that bit, because they're talking about being on scene and it's not working. And the director is like, listen, we need to talk, you and I. And everybody feels relieved. That's the line I liked. Everybody feels relieved because everybody knew it. And no One could say anything. But now the director was calling attention to it and he takes him aside and like smokes a cigarette and he's like, what was one of the things it was.

You don't have the right to talk to me like this. And the director says, yes I do. I have a movie to make and I've got to get it seen through. And he opens up the door to his emotional response at being specifically in the movie. I don't know what but like an outsider or like a less than. And like tapping into what he must feel like as an African American in white America and feeling disregarded and not visible. Having to beg for work. And that's really critical because that's why he so called exiled himself, you know, in France as well. Like he's not gone back to America because he doesn't want to live in that system and dreads going back.

Right. And so that's how we get into all this other stuff.

Yeah. The director really manipulates him into. Basically pushes him over the edge so that he can get his. The performance that he wants.

Yeah. You said the director says you are playing this boy as though you thought of him as the noble savage.

And so the key it seems to be that he's displaying too much pride that the character in particular has been degraded and the rage that comes out of that. And so he wants him to tap into that his own experience of that, which is something the narrator does not really want to do.

I think what the short story kind of struggles with is the idea of the noble savage. And what the actual experience is like is that degradation that you talked about. And one of the moments in the book is him on the river having a fight with his wife. And that is something that he longs just this ordinariness, not having to be conscious of being this noble savage figure, but literally having experiences as mundane and as stupid as having a fight.

Yeah. Because he wants to go through his life without having to have the color of his skin affect everything and be in his frickin face every minute of the day. And he can't even have a fight with his wife without the color of his skin coming into it. And I think that's what colors everything, for lack of a better term, or that's what's in everything that Baldwin said in all his interviews and his speeches and his writings. Why does the color of my skin have to be a part of everything?

Yeah. And that he had a real freedom in Paris because of that. He got to become himself in a Way that he never could. And I mean, and that's in speeches, but in the story, he talks about another. One of my favorite lines is how he talks about his wife. It's a great little bit, but it says that it's, you know, like the first time he ever could possess a woman in this way. That there is something about the way that he would have had to have lived and how she would have also had to have lived in America that would have not been able to cultivate their love. I really want to find it because it talks about all the. Like all these words are there, but he talks about not being able to degrade her for the first time. Like he could have her in love.

Yeah, that's the passage that Cesare was talking about, about being on the bridge. It's when he first realized that he

loved her and that he couldn't have loved her like that in America.

Yeah. Because in France in particular, I think is interesting so, like in him having to go back to it for his son within the story or, you know, for the movie, but also worried about how his son will deal. It's not just him anymore. And that's something he goes about in his speeches. And that letter to his nephew, you know, that's circulated.

Well, there is that whole theme of protection, of how can you. Not only protecting his son and protecting his wife, but then also protecting himself. Looking at his father, the way that he felt about his father, knowing that his father couldn't have done anything to save his own dignity in front of his son. And that story about his sister, I mean, I think the most heartbreaking part of it was that his sister, you know, out on a double date and the cops make the other girl, who's light skinned, strip or basically show them her, you know, privates so that they can determine that she's actually black. And that basically the thing was, his sister never married. His sister never knew love because they were all just beaten down so badly in that moment.

I want to read this. I'm 60% through because I'm on an iPad or whatever. And I love Paris. I will always love it. It is the city which saved my life. It saved my life by allowing me to find out who I am. It was on a bridge one tremendous April morning that I knew I had fallen in love. Harriet and I were walking hand in hand. The bridge was the Pont Royal. Just before us was the great Horloge. High up and lifted up, saying 10 to 10. Beyond this, the golden statue of Joan of Arc with her sword Uplifted. Harriet and I were silent, for we had been quarreling about something.

Now, when I look back, I think we had reached that state when an affair must either end or become something more than an affair. I looked sideways at Harriet's face, which was still. Her dark blue eyes were narrowed against the sun, and her full pink lips were still slightly sulky, like a child's. In those days, she hardly ever wore makeup. I was in my shirt sleeves. Her face made me want to laugh and run my hand over her short dark hair. I wanted to pull her to me and say, baby, don't be mad at me. And at that moment, something tugged at my heart and made me catch my breath.

There were millions of people all around us, but I was alone with Harriet. She was alone with me. Never in all my life until that moment had I been alone with anyone. The world had always been with us, between us defeating the quarrel we could not achieve and making love impossible. During all the years of my life until that moment, I had carried the menacing, the hostile, killing world with me everywhere. No matter what I was doing or saying or feeling or. One eye had always been on the world. That world which I had learned to distrust almost as soon as I had learned my name.

That world on which I knew one could never turn one's back on. The white man's world. That's everything he does. That's his modus operandi. That's everything.

I don't know if we have different versions, but there's a little bit more below that I don't think you read that. I really like. And just to go along with all that, for the first time in my life, I felt that no force jeopardized my right, my power to possess and to protect a woman, for the first time felt that the woman was not, in her own eyes or in the eyes of the world, degraded by my presence.

When I read that line, that's the only line that really stuck out and stuck out to me in the sense that it grates against norms of today. Right? Because, of course, I think feminism would quarrel with the idea of men needing to protect women or possess. Possess women, Right? Like, obviously, you know, this shouldn't turn a conversation about whether, you know, James Baldwin is problematic when it comes to feminism, but it is interesting in the language that it uses. And you could be, I think, charitable and think of what he means by love and maybe, you know, talk about mutual possession. But the language, I don't think would fly today, certainly.

I think this is one of the things that complicates interpreting Baldwin as somebody talking about, say, white privilege or something, Something directly applicable to the modern day. A lot of the specific things he's talking about. And we'll get into this more in the second story in Sonny's Blues. He really is very big on this. What nowadays would be talked about as a pathology among black men, black maleness in particular, of just having to feel. In our discussion with Law Ware, he said, yeah, this is actually still a thing. Now, of course, the need to be tough, the need to be hard, that the oppression of society ends up damaging people in such a way that it actually hurts their ability to love at all.

And that's exactly what's being talked about here. And you might say that probably women, though similarly degraded, have a different coping mechanism that he's not dealing with in this story, at least.

Yeah. And in neither of them does he go into his homosexuality, which I tend to think that he would have been, you know, a great voice had he lived. He would have been a great voice for the gay rights movement. But you also have to put it to its time, like anything, to allow people to live in the time when they lived, so that as outrageous as civil rights were at the time, there were things that were still so embedded in the culture that it wasn't, you

know, this phrase degraded by my presence, that line that Cesare was saying jumped out. I mean, that still exists. Very much so. I mean, I know we all like to talk about the Marriage Equality Act. We've got how Many states now? 27 states now have marriage equality.

Well, the Supreme Court.

Yeah. And Supreme Courthouse. And we have, obviously, women's rights, and we have voting and doing a million things, but there's still a heavy glass ceiling there. And I know that we have this incredible, vocal and profound equality of gay rights, transgender rights, all of that. But in real life, when you get down to the details, when you get down to the corner, on the street corner, and I'm in New York City, so I have a real sense of this, I guess. Not that anybody else wouldn't, but I'm just saying Baldwin comes from the Bronx. I mean, I really have to question in reality how far that equality goes. Really. I feel like people still experience that concept that Baldwin brings up, that being degraded by their presence.

That concept can be extended, I mean, not just to race, but, like, you, you know, like you mentioned, to sex and even body type and class. You know, there's a lot of ways that you could feel degraded as a human being. What I'm Wondering, it seems to me, just from what we had mentioned, as far as what Baldwin seems to be doing or pointing to is the lens that black people are forced to experience their lives through as far as they're always having to be conscious of being black people. And I mean while it's not made explicit, it seems that a way to get away from that or a goal would be a freedom from having to experience life through that essentializing lens.

And I'm wondering if that is a reasonable goal, is that something that race equality would look to today and how far can that be extended? Because you know, there's a lot of it seems essentializing categories that we perceive our lives through. As far as, you know, I am treated as a man when I am in society. I'm treated as a white man even. I mean, I don't mean to make this a sort of equivocating case, but there's a lot of categories that you are perceived through in society and is some sort of blank state of being possible or a worthwhile goal even Again,

I think it's interesting to look at it at the time. I mean there were anti miscegenation laws in various states until 1967. Right. It wasn't just that they were going to bethat that people were going to look at them funny down on the corner. It was actually against the law in

many states to be with a white woman.

Yeah, yeah, that was 1959 or 1969. The illegal to marry. Right. Like that's like so recent and before the scope of this book. And you know, in a lot of the speeches he's talking about the era and the sit ins and being a part of the movement and feeling compelled to go back after seeing the, the girl in the segregate like breaking down the segregated schools and being surrounded by people. One comment he said was that somebody should have been with her. And I think he felt personally compelled to and torn with going back. Didn't want to, wanted to escape but then felt bad for maybe a survivor's guilt or something that you know, there was a big tide coming around and he should be back on the forefront. But that, I mean really brought him back into the conversation.

I want to bring up what you're talking about, Mary, about the time that we still have to take into account the time when this was written, when Baldwin was talking about and writing. I mean because I feel that it still exists what he's talking about.

Right. But anti miscegenation laws don't exist. That's all I'm saying is that you have to, you know, if you put it into context, you look at the actual laws.

What are laws? And I'm a lawyer and I'm like, what are laws? Okay, I'm sure we can say that there was an anti misogynistic law at that time at work. But I'm talking about what's really going on behind closed doors in the real world. I mean, if you think about the story Sunny's Blues, right, that still is going on in the Harlem now.

So it seemed like the question specifically about the degraded by my presence issue was, is the racism so pervasive, is it the culturally dominant thing that it gets internalized? Because he's saying prior to this moment, he would have felt that she was degraded by his presence. In other words, he is actually thinking of himself as lower because that's what was pounded into him. And so if you want to ask, like, well, have things really changed? Of course there's racism. Of course. But is the fact that it is now taboo to be a racist, that like, admitting you're a racist is like admitting that you are in favor of man boy love relations?

Is that much off of the mainstream? Does that mean that while young black people, for instance, are developing, have. Have to have these, okay, here's what to do. And if you're arrested, like, you know, these terrible things. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes ways that they have to unfairly, obviously prepare themselves to deal with the world. But is it such that the disrespect is internalized so that there's still the same dynamic of psychologically having to get over a society that hates you? Which was definitely how Baldwin saw things and didn't see that in.

In France, even though there was obviously racial awareness in France and people didn't treat the Algerians well and they had their whole. The last part of the story tells about that. But it was a different enough dynamic that I think we can still say, or we can ask the question in America, given that it's not the norm to have lynchings, or given how mores have changed, how has that affected the psychology? And that's more a question because I'm not in a position to answer that.

I totally agree with that. And I think that it is very internalized. And I think it is so internalized that in a way, when we're born or the children we give birth to, it's there already because there is this thing, this existence in humans that have a problem with the other, not what is me. The thing is, this is What I was thinking about pretty actively when I was reading the story and the Buckley debate, which is that we can't just attribute this, I think, to a societal dynamic. I think that this goes way back. Maybe it is a function of us biologically, I don't know. But I think there is a problem that we have with, quote, unquote, the other tribalism.

Yeah, I want to go to the story here on 175, because I think it's this. It's whenever he's talking with the director and he explains, like, what he was going through to get the there in the role, and then he says this, you know, I know what that boy felt. I've felt it. They want you to feel that you're not a man. Maybe that's the only way they can feel like men. I don't know. Now, that would be a pretty good function for another. That kind of describes what the other dynamic could be. It's like, oh, well, you're getting your superiority off of this. And then you follow white supremacy and see where that goes. And you see it, you know, this is, according to Baldwin, you know, just like throughout Europe, that's where we got it in America was from Europe, you know, like the white identity, you know, and it's prevailing. And Margaret Mead has some interesting things to say about that.

Yeah, I don't know how you would test the hypothesis empirically. I certainly agree that racism today is incredibly unpopular or socially unacceptable, but it gets subsumed in certain ways. As far as we don't talk about the color of people's skin, but we talk about cultures and we talk about it's still socially acceptable to talk about a black culture, or if we're going to extend this to bud, eventually Muslim culture and black value systems, which are incompatible with this, that and the other. So I think those feelings do get subsumed and I mean, making unempirical claim, I think it does just point back to a difference in other. As you said, the color of a person's skin.

I think something really important that Baldwin said another. This is how like it. I think it helps for the story. He talks about, like, the sense of reality. This is how he opens up the Buckley debate. He talks about.

Yeah, the sense of reality.

Yeah, one's own sense of reality. So even though we're talking about all these terms as if they're whatever conceptual, ideological, you have to realize that you're seeing it through like your own lens that you've inherited, and mine is different than that. And here's the ways that it's different and you don't get to take off your skin and, like, I see the world through this way. He's talking about, like, the way things are and like, when we talk about, like, the facts and, like, what's, like, on the books, you know, what do we have as laws, right, Laura?

Or, you know, like, what people say and, like, how to test for this. One thing that kept coming up with the Baldwin interviews is, I don't believe you. We don't believe what you say anymore. Like, the things that you're saying don't really track with how our lives actually are. And so there's no trust and. Or, like, faith in, like, your even kind of righteousness, you know, or, like, what. What seems to be correct because people will tend to, like, middle it and be like, well, things are better. And so, like, we don't need to do much and, like, all this stuff.

There's a lot of ways that, like, our knowing and the way that we've broken up and decided to think about reality is untrustworthy. I mean, it seems like a dominant, maybe just kind of, like, matrix thing to keep people distracted or, like, just to put things off or, or, you know, some kind of control mechanism at

the same time that all of that is true. There is something to getting to a place where you're actually kicking and screaming. The United States went to civil rights, like, went to basically the law that said that you truly can't discriminate. I know that there's a difference between the way that people live and the laws that we have, but there is something different about saying there is a law against marrying someone from another race and having a law that says you can't discriminate against someone because of who they marry, you can't tell someone they can't marry someone from another race. If you move it legally, then basically the idea, I think, is that it has to follow. It has to follow at some point that it will be okay.

Are you pointing towards, like, there is an importance of this, even if you call it a symbolic act of having this thing? I don't want to. Well, I'm going to bring Trump back into the conversation. But you can say, for instance, that even though we have a wildly unequal, terrible society today, there's a difference in that. And then having a president who normalizes that by saying, for instance, we should further marginalize and discriminate against people. And even though that is already happening,

I'll tell you what, if it weren't for the law that was made in 1967, Muslims would already have been thrown out of the country.

So I think just looking this up, that you're talking about the Civil Rights act of 1964.

Yes, that was it. Yeah. And that struck down anti miscegenation law. There was never a nationwide anti miscegenation law. There were laws in certain states. I know someone here, she's just a little older than me. Her. Her mom is Chinese. Her dad was white. They were in California. They had to go to Arizona to get married at the time that they got married because they weren't allowed to get. You know, it was against the law for Chinese people to marry white people in California at the time that they got married. So there actually is a difference. If you make a law that it actually makes a difference in the world, in your life.

I don't disagree with you in the big picture, but. Or even the small picture, but the reason why certain laws are made or created or passed are who you know and not what you know.

I just wanted to relate this back to the time when he was writing this. When he was writing this, it was against the law in various states for him to be married to his wife, period. That's all I'm saying.

Oh, I know.

So he's bringing his wife and child back to the United States. And it was a big deal.

I mean, I totally agree with you, but even today, I don't see many black and white people married. And also the other thing that sort of has nothing to do with this particular thing, but when Baldwin was saying in the discussion with Buckley about how did the Southern American states economy become so strong because of slave labor, Our economy is also today North, South, Midwest strong because of slave labor. And it's not slaves, quote unquote, or black people, quote unquote, but brown people probably.

Yeah, I think that ties in with the white privilege thing there because while one ninth of the population built something that was integral to it, they get the shaft and everybody else gets the privilege. And you get to forget about your thing. But, like, I have to remember it and live in it.

Right?

Well, go ahead and use your iPhone. Right. It doesn't just happen here. It's every, you know, it's everything. It's. Every salad that you eat would cost whatever, $50 if people weren't working for slave. And slave wages are zero wages. So we can't really call it slave wages, but it's basically for very little. Most of our economy is all over the world. Children and people who work for Very little money for big multinationals.

Yeah, I mean, whenever I get some food delivered, it's not like a white man is delivering it or a white woman. I'm sorry. I mean, I don't mean to be awful here, but the fact is it's usually Hispanic person or a Muslim who delivers the food.

Well, I'll tell you, Laura, if you come to Chicago, use me on this app that I'm not going to mention because I just got a job doing that. Times are rough. It's bad work.

Everybody's so poor right now. Yeah, yeah, There are plenty of white people come to your house and bring stuff.

Okay, good.

Maybe we should look at the dynamic of how the. This white privilege kind of stuff goes in the discussion between him and the director. And this morning, this evening, so soon. My version, it's page 170. He says. The director is saying, consider this. I'm a French director who's never seen your country. I've never done you any harm, except perhaps historically, I mean, because I'm white. But I cannot be blamed for that. And he answers, but I can be and I am. I've never understood why, if I have to pay for the history written in the color of my skin, you should get off scot free. But then I was surprised at my vehemence. I had not known I was going to say these things by the fact

31:44 Mark: that I was trembling.

31:45 Unknown speaker: And from the way he looked at me, I knew that from a professional point of view, anyway, I was playing it in his hands. The director answers, what makes you think I do? His face looked weary and stern. I'm a Frenchman. Look at France.

31:55 Mark: You think I.

31:56 Unknown speaker: We are not paying for our history. He walked to the window, staring out at the rather grim little town in which the studio was located. If it is revenge you want, well then, let me tell you, you will have it. You will probably have it whether you want it or not. Our stupidity will make it inevitable. Turned back into the room. But I beg you not to confuse me with the happy people of your country who scarcely know there is such a thing as history. And so naturally, imagine they can escape, as you put it, scot free. That is what you are doing and that is what I am about to say.

I was about to say that I am a French director and I have never been in your country. I have never done you any harm. But you are not talking to that man in this room now. You're not talking to Jean Luc Vidal, but to some other white man who you remember, who has nothing to do with me. All right. It keeps going. So the point is, there's some back and forth. It's not just saying, yeah, director, you're white. So in other words, he starts off saying what people say now when they're accused of white privilege. Don't blame me. You know, these are bad people in the past that did these things.

And the Baldwin stand in character's answer is, well, that's a double standard. I am considered because I'm black that I'm lumped in. Why should you have the privilege to get out of it?

But.

But that's not presented as the last word. That's presented as actually something he's saying because he's kind of being manipulated by the director into anger. And so it's like Baldwin is explaining the dynamics of how it feels and how this discussion goes back and forth between two well meaning people who are entered in a business relationship here. But it's almost that the conclusion is not, yes, every white person should feel guilty for white privilege. He's much more subtle than that. He's saying, we have to acknowledge the way that history has affected our psychology and deal with each other humanely and be honest with ourselves. And it's something like that. It's not any kind of simple recipe for social change. That is what comes out of this.

Yeah. And also that the director had lost his wife and a child during the war and he obviously still suffered for it. And going from that into the scene with. Is it Boona?

33:59 Mark: Sounds right.

34:00 Unknown speaker: Who. There's also, all of a sudden, Baldwin is the privileged one in that scene.

Yeah, that's the big flip there, because. And he doesn't want it to be true. And he knows this guy doesn't have many friends. And I think that he borrowed like the concept of Boona. I mean, just in another conversation, he talks about, you know, what would he be like if he were an Algerian living in France. He said, I'd be dead on the street. And so he acknowledges how hard this man's individual life is in the power structure. He's also knows that he steals, you know, even though he hopes that he won't steal from these people, but knows that he probably would be lied to. And, you know, so goes through all that.

So just explain for the audience what's going on in that scene.

Well, I mean, this is the director and they're going out for dinner. I mean, who all's there? It's him and the director at a nightclub. And because he's James Baldwin, he gets attention as well. No, I mean, he gets attention as a famous celebrity. That I'm not sure. Did we decide what he was called? The narrator?

He's a singer, but we.

Yeah, the singer and. But he's known as, you know, acting too, and for singing. And that's what he's gonna tour in America and do.

And he's gonna make a movie also. But yeah, he's a celebrity in Paris.

Right. And they're at this nightclub and they meet these kids.

Yeah.

From North Carolina, black kids. And they're North Carolina in some other place and some other place, but it's like a mix of minority people. They're visiting France and hanging out and have met the great singer and they've heard that he's coming. So like he's famous and wants to hang out. Then another guy comes along, Buna, who is an Algerian and he is shady and skittish and is living on the edge, but is happy to have fun, friends and be welcomed in. And so they're all hanging out and so there's all sorts of things going on. They're talking about what's going on at the state of America right now with, I guess what is happening in this timeline.

I mean, like segregation's not quite sit ins yet, probably. I mean, we're probably talking about. I'm not sure, but it's in the heat of civil rights. And then he's living his life there. And he's also. Well, let's cut to it. They accuse Boona of stealing from the kids. The kids do. One of the girls saw him do it.

No, from her bag. They accused him from stealing money from her bag.

And that's his friend. And that's an awkward situation. Right? You're hanging out with friends and one of your friends steals from your other friends, but they don't know each other. And he wasn't sure about bringing this guy along who he only knew as a boxer. Is that right?

Right.

From another lifetime, basically, that they were friends together. These circles don't often meet. And he's put in a position to confront his friend about stealing from these new groups of people that they're trying to entertain. And he's put in a position to cover for the guy because he denies it. He doesn't want to insult him as and accuse him. And Boona holds him by his chest and like starts to tear up and says, you know me. You know me. And he doesn't want to put this man in the position of accusing him of being a low down, dirty scoundrel because he knows what people assume of him and that he always steals. But this guy really probably did it. It doesn't say so in the story exactly, but he must have. And so it's an awkward position.

It doesn't matter if he did or he didn't. What matters is how it's perceived. I think that's what Baldwin's point is.

Yeah, because you can also appreciate why this guy would steal, knowing that he comes from the life that he does. It's also a survival mechanism that he would even lie to him about it and, like, he doesn't blame him for it.

So, Laura, I think maybe again, in saying it doesn't matter, it's how it's perceived, that you're trying to interpret the story in kind of a simpler way than I would like, in that it's just condemning racism, that if you're in the low end of the totem pole, that you're always accused of something. And I think Baldwin, of course, wants to recognize that, but he also wants to say that it's complicated. Like in this state, the guy probably actually did it. But why would he do it? Well, because he's in a social situation that he doesn't have any other options or many other options.

So it's neither that Boona is a noble savage, that he's fully innocent, driven by his circumstances and by the color of his skin into this situation. Because once we're in this bad social dynamic, nobody is innocent. In the. The other story, get the father off the hook for being such a jackass, where, you know, he's really talking about his own stepfather as the fictionalization of this, the fact that society has treated you so poorly. You internalize this, and you actually kind of become a bad person in certain ways. He's not going to just, you know, bad person.

He's not morally simplistic like that. Just, it's a more interesting interpersonal dynamic than just, we should stop judging people based on the color of their skin. Like, that's the first level.

I mean, that may sound simplistic, but it makes sense. I mean, I think that is a primary motivator for a lot of Baldwin's positions, is that the color of his skin is not the point. It should not be there. My color white should not be there. It should not exist in a discussion, in a social situation, any social dynamic, non social dynamic, anywhere. It should not exist.

I felt that his position was complicated. I wasn't sure that it was ever made clear. I just want to read a quick line from page 149 on my edition. And it just says, I would never have met her and would never have established a life of my own, would never have entered my own life. For everyone's life begins on a level where races, armies, and churches stop. And yet everyone's life is always shaped by races, churches, and armies. Races, churches, armies, menace, and have taken many lives. So in that line, I mean, there's definitely a aspect of race. He also mentions churches and armies as far as shaping one's own existence. So I don't know if it's as simple as saying that it shouldn't ever become a factor. I don't think Baldwin ever gets to that extreme of a position, that race

should just be expunged from the vocabulary because historically it's been such a big deal. It isn't something we can expunge. In fact, it's a primary white strategy to say, can we just stop talking about race? Like, you know, I'm not racist. I didn't do this. So let's just expunge this from our vocabulary. Whereas he sees that as. That's whites being insecure. It's them calling for a cessation to this discussion that they find uncomfortable, that the solution has to be something more complicated, more. I don't want to say gradual, but certainly that involves facing up to the truth of the way things have been.

Are you saying that regarding just race or regarding anything, any kind of oppression,

he's concerned with race as the primary thing here?

Well, of course he is. That's what he was dealing with, obviously. But I'm asking you, would you apply that to other levels of oppression, disregarding degradations of other people, not for color, but for anything. Sex, you know, body type, whatever.

I think that the dynamic is different in each of them, but that there needs to be some element of vive la différence, something like that, where you recognize this is not me talking, this is the dynamic of the way these race discussions end. I think you'd have to consider each of them. It would be a separate discussion whether to what extent this applies to feminism. Like, in other words, I've heard the. You just want to ignore my color. This is like a black woman talking or something. But really to treat me with respect, you have to treat me with respect as a black woman, not just as just a person trying to ignore that.

Like, because there really are important cultural differences, or. It's never really specific exactly what these amount to, but part of it would be a recognition of the history of oppression. And so if you Just say, I'm just going to treat you just like I would a white person. That is amount to ignoring the history of oppression. So would that be the same with sexism or something else?

No, I disagree. I don't think that that's ignoring the history. I think it's respecting the history. My point is, if you go back to his statement where he says degraded, where he was talking about being with his wife on the bridge, that he felt, this was the first time he felt like he could be with someone who was not degraded by his presence. Have you ever, have any of you in our discussion here ever felt like someone was degraded by your presence? Tell me.

I just mean I've been in official capacities around ambassadors and thought to myself, God, I hope they don't know who I am. But in a much less of a visual sense than simply, you know, being a black person or a woman or a homosexual is more of just feeling, you know, self conscious.

Anybody else?

Well, I'm curious, like, what the heart of like the maybe the disagreement is here because I think that Baldwin has said both things that, you know, first, we're all human beings. So in that way we're similar. And I need respect to see that. And I want to be a man, not a boy. And that's like when he gets off the ship and that guy calls him boy, it's like, like the first fucking thing that happens whenever I get to America is I'm downgraded. Yep. He also, this is more from interviews, but wants to be identified as like, no, see my color and like, respect it. And let's not pretend that we have no differences. Let's be able to share those again. vive la différence.

In fact, he talks about white culture very critically. You know, of course, I kind of interpret him like I interpret, you know, when Nietzsche talks about groups like this, it's not necessarily that every single white person acts like this, but he sort of, in a general way is kind of equating white culture with. Now we might say it's bourgeois capitalism or something like that. And so to ignore race, to say, I'll treat you just like I treat everybody else is to say, and I accept you to accept my cultural norms. So it's this push toward race integration.

I know we're getting outside of the story and we shouldn't dwell too much on this, but that integration just means I'm going to erase your individual experience and accept you to follow the norms that I have set up. And so it's not that I acknowledge you in yourself as being of value. It's that I'm pushing for social means to, through education, through whatever, to condition you so that you will act like the rest of us white bourgeois people and then I won't have to treat you differently.

Okay? But that's not where I'm coming from and let me tell you why. And unfortunately I'm going to have to get personal about this. I use a wheelchair, okay? And I am definitely treated differently and definitely ignored and definitely degraded because of that. I was out on the corner walking my dog and some kid comes up to me, a 10 year old kid, and says, I feel so badly for you. And I was like, what is this? Why do you feel so badly for me? I remember talking to someone once and saying that I, I felt like. And I pointed to my chair and I said, this is my black skin. I tend to think this is where Baldwin's coming from. But I need someone to listen to what I'm saying, not how I look.

Sure.

I don't think that that's a question of ignoring the history of oppression. It's respecting it and saying, look, we're not going to do that anymore. I'm going to listen to what you have to say. I don't care that it's coming out of your black skinned face. That doesn't matter. I think. Weren't you talking, Mary, earlier someone quoted some statement that Baldwin said in a discussion that why do I have to explain my skin color to you? Right. Or why do I have to take that into account? It doesn't mean you're ignoring the history of the oppression.

In a way, it's respecting it. It's saying, and I see your point, you know, why should I have you be accepted within my norm? I understand that. That makes sense. However, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just. I want to hear what you have to say. What are the thoughts and concepts and contributions that you have to make? I don't care what the color of your skin is. I just want to hear what you have to say. That's what's important.

I agree with both of you. I think that one is kind of a matter of manners, right? It's like, okay, so you just, you treat people well, you don't consider them. It's like all the those sci fi movies where the aliens come in and take over your personality. This assimilation, join or die kind of thing means that you have to leave behind what you brought with you. And what you bring with you is part of your identity. And to say that your identity doesn't matter or because we're going to accept you into ours.

Yeah, but we are white. That's another thing. We are white. Right.

Well, so what you're saying, the listen to what you have to say. That would involve accepting that race is a factor insofar as the person who has something to say brings it up. And so the example that I was giving, which was something I heard on a talk show or something a long time, you know, I don't want you to just treat me like a woman. I want you to treat me like a black woman. Well, what does that mean to the black woman talking? Well, she's the one that is putting forward in that scenario that there is something relevant about her experience to ultimately how she wants to be treated.

And it would also be, you know, the comparable thing for the wheelchair is if, you know, somebody was really wheelchair blind. Then we don't need to have ramps. I don't need to, like, accommodate whatever different needs you might have if I'm serving you coffee of like, bringing it to you, as opposed to just calling you up and expecting you to reach up on the high counter and get it. Like, it's manners. But obviously the listen to what you have to say means that when somebody is running into, you know, a group that they're not used to dealing with, maybe they don't see too many people in wheelchairs, maybe they don't live around people that are not white or whatever, that there's going to be a learning curve in figuring out what is the polite way to be.

And certainly in situations where listening is a factor, ordering coffee is not necessarily give me your life story, but in public forums like, yeah, of course, just use the manner of listen to what the person has to say and do that openly and sincerely and all that.

It always confuses me as far as how much of this is social manners or social cues, and how much of this goes beyond that in the sense that, I mean, taken to parody not seeing that someone is black or in a wheelchair. You know, there's comedy sketches about that now where someone's at a store and is being helped by an African American and is asked, you know, who helping them and is trying to describe them in every single way without mentioning their skin. But of course, because we're creatures with visual who are visual, we obviously see the color of a person's skin, or we'd see if someone is in a wheelchair. But what part of that goes back to, you know, we don't meet someone that Says, oh, you're black. But obviously that thought happens in our brain, and then how do we react to that?

That goes back to my thing about the other.

But we don't have to necessarily see that in bad light. And I think what I would take that to is if we completely denude our language of these categories. Black, white, man, woman, gay, straight, for instance, I think the reason for doing that would be that there is a negative connotation involved in that other side. So that we're not supposed to see people as black because black has typically been seen as infinite inferior, or feminine, because feminine has been seen inferior to masculine, or, for instance, gay inferior to straight. But is the goal to denude our language of those categories or to simply see that there is no hierarchy among them?

Right.

To root out whatever bad associations might be with those.

Yeah, we can see people as black. We can see them as a black person and just realize that in seeing them as that person, that does not take away, elevate, or change their humanity in any sense.

Yeah. Except that the way that our social structures handle it. In other words, history of oppression, you can see someone is black. But I think my position is that I kind of want to eliminate that. I'm not trying to eliminate the history of oppression or downgrading it, but my response to the history of oppression for all types of feminism, body types, all types, all situations is that. And I think I mentioned this with, talk to Mary about this once, that I always had a problem with going out and marching and saying, okay, we demand our rights. We demand our rights. And on one level, I think that's great, but on another level, I think it should just be that way. And that's why I go back to the concern that there's something in the human psyche, the human biology, that has a problem with the other. Anyway, we should go back to the story.

Well, should we go ahead and introduce the second story? At least we can still talk about the first one. So Sunny's Blues I had recommended just because this is the one that's picked out. It's in short story collections. In fact, Law Ware, as soon as we, you know, I said we were doing this, he's like, oh, are you gonna read that? Sonny's Blues, like that's the story that people know, especially the very end of it is just amazing. It's a guy talking about a fictionalization of Baldwin himself. Most likely, you know, grew up in Harlem and has siblings that are of different ages.

I think he was the oldest. I think he was the only one that was not natural born from his father, that he had a different father. But he refers to this irascible guy that comes up a little in the story in flashbacks as his father has a bunch of younger kids. Well, one of these younger brothers in the story is Sonny, seven years younger than the narrator. At this point in the story when it opens, both of the parents are dead and they've been separated for a while and he hasn't really been much in contact with Sonny. The narrator is in the army, is now a Schoolteacher still in Harlem, I believe.

And Sonny is just been busted for peddling and using heroin. And so he's wondering like, well, how did Sonny get to this point? He lost contact with him. As he's kind of dealing with Sonny, you know, getting back in touch with him, introducing him back to his family, which incidentally, one of his daughters, as three year old or something has just died. And this is kind of prompts him to finally write to Sonny and try to get back in touch with him a little while. I'm not sure how long after Sonny has been busted for this and then has been released after a treatment program.

So it's him connecting back with his brother. And then there's some flashbacks in there to what his parents were like and in particular how his mother was telling him when he was younger, like, you got to look out for Sonny. You got to look out for this, your younger brother. And his mother in turn, telling the story about his father and why he was so insane in certain ways, because he had witnessed his own brother, the father's brother, getting hit by a car full of white people who were, you know, trying to. They were out at night. It was. They'd been drinking, and it looked like this car full of white boys.

They were just trying to have a little fun and scare the guy, but they ended up like running him right over. And so his father is, you know, forever after that. You know, every white person he runs into is like, is this one of the people that ran over my brother? But this just demonstrates how dangerous it is to be a black person in this society. Then gives a little more. More of the backstory of, like, how Sonny, after his brother had gone away to be in the military, how he decided that he wanted to be a musician, how he had lived for a while with the narrator's fiance's family.

The narrator was gone, and he's just. Sonny is just playing piano all the time. All the time. And just throwing himself into playing piano. And how that ultimately, like, drives the family crazy. And when Sonny realizes he moves out and sort of disappears from the picture. So that's really the last that his brother hears about him until him getting in trouble for heroin. So finally they're back together and Sonny wants to show him. They have some discussions about suffering. And then Sonny wants to show him really what his music's all about. So even though he hasn't played piano for a while, they go to a club with Sonny's friends.

And this is kind of his home turf. Coming back to Harlem after This while. And then there's just this great description of. Of how the jazz combo reacts to each other and how Sonny is just playing his heart out. And I, I very much. I felt like the people that wrote the La La Land were like the second. The best scene in that is where the guys is showing to his girlfriend, like, why jazz is awesome. And he's like describing the interaction of the jazz musicians with each other. Like, I felt like that was a cleaned up, removed from all the sound suffering, the crazy suffering version of this.

I thought it was interesting that everything came down to that final scene in this story. And I also thought that something that I didn't mention in this morning, this evening, so soon, that I think is really even more prominent. I don't know if it's more prominent, but it's the idea of control that the narrator, in both of them, he's fighting in some way to control what's going to happen. You know, trying to control the circumstances around the lives of the people he loves and how intense that is and really heart wrenching to watch. Can I save my son from going through this?

Can I save my brother from going through this? And all the while not dipping into to his own suffering himself because he is so nervous and upset and on edge and always at the edge trying to control what is going to happen. You can't live that way. And then when he finally dives in at the end of Sonny's Blues, it's just. You can feel the freight train coming down the track for him when he finally dives into the suffering that the music exposes and also salves in some ways. So, yeah, I thought that that would. I mean, it's incredibly powerful.

Yeah. Just to respond to the musical aspect at the end there. I love that final passage where it describes the interplay between the three musicians and how there's a sort of creation going on. And I don't know if it's more compounded or less competitive for me as a non-musician and being eternally jealous of people who can see life through this musical frame because it seemed to be pointing towards like a way of being in the sense that he was making his imprint known on the world through these notes that he was putting out there. And I've gone through long diatribes of how I think, you know, music is a way of seeing the world. And I'm jealous of people who can do it talking to musicians and then they sort of shrug their shoulders and saying, no. You know, I just play music. So I don't know how you think of that as a musician, Mark, or anyone else who's into that.

I mean, it's interesting that I don't know how intimate Baldwin's connection with music was either. I mean, I think maybe he's identifying with the narrator here, who is kind of. He's had some experiences like this of really great music where he now feels like he kind of gets it. But he's not coming up from it, obviously, from the musician's point of view either. In some of the little details, Creole, who's the bass player, began to tell us what the blues was all about. They were not anything very new. He and his boys were keeping it new at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness and death in order to find new ways to make us listen.

Well, Creole is the bass player. If you're a bass player playing the blues, there are limits to how expressive you could be. He's not being the lead guitarist who gets to like. You're just holding it down. So coupling that description, which I think works great as a narrative, dramatic thing, with the fact that he's talking about the bass player. And as a bass player, I can say this. I don't think that works quite. You can't take that quite so literally.

But I do think that there is something about being the bass player and being in control. And that there's something about him being, you know, a bit of the father figure in the band. And he's gonna call you in or send you back, depending on it. And so, I don't know. I think of. If you think of it as, you know, he's the metronome, and you get to either, basically that he's going to be the. Being the leader of the band is one thing. And then having him be the bass player, having him be the one who sets the beat, basically. So you thought that didn't work?

Oh, I'm just nitpicking. I don't want to make a big thing about it.

I felt like Creole's role, and especially as a bass player was kind of the stability that the characters in the story were looking for and couldn't really find in life in general. I mean, I feel like the story was sort of an acceptance of life being a way of, you know, suffering through it and finding your own way to suffer through life and looking for these, you know, stable rocks that you could base it off of. But they were always lagging. They were missing. You know, the father figure was found wanting. And, I mean, the one stable figure in the Story was Creole, the bass player, but who let out and let. Sorry, I forget his name, but let the piano player have freedom. Sonny. Yeah, it shows you my intelligence. But, yeah, there you go.

I thought that it was interesting that Sonny, who had the very difficult experiences and experiences that no one wants to have, also was the one who actually lived his life very close to the bone, felt, you know, had a lot of feeling. In the end, the narrator finally comes to some sort of intense feeling about his daughter dying. And. And there's a conversation that they have before they go out where Sonny says, I want to feel that suffering is real. Basically, if you're not going to actually walk through it with your eyes open, then you're not really living.

And just to connect it to our previous discussion, the real thing, what drove him to this lifestyle. And he wants to say that it was heroin is a way of dealing with the suffering. And it's hard to distinguish when Baldwin talks about suffering as just an existential thing. Everybody experiences suffering. But since he's specifically talking about these characters and black folks in his period of time, then he really sets up how, like, the danger period, the time when he was really supposed to look out for his brother, was when his brother is hitting 14, 15 years old.

He thinks this is around when he probably started taking heroin. Baldwin describes in Work After Work how this is. He's usually talking about boys where they recognize the. We could call it a glass ceiling, but you know, that. How their possibilities are extremely limited by society. And so it. It's where, you know, he personally became then a teenage preacher. That was his way of. And kind of grappled onto education. So he had a fortunate way of getting out of it, but that most of his peers did not. And so it was a matter of, you know, are they gonna go on the street?

Are they gonna become pimps or something? Or what are they gonna get sucked up into? So this is the problem that he was seeing that Sonny was an example of. And there's a. Earlier on, there's a friend of Sonny's that's introduced, you know, one of the guys who's kind of revealing to the narrator what was going on with Sonny, who just seems like he's turned out to be mostly a waste of space like that. He really. The narrator, actually kind of despises him. Like, he knows that this guy's always going to conclude the conversation by asking him for money.

He hasn't made anything of himself. But this is the trap that they're socially living in, that it's very difficult to avoid ending up like that or worse, even though Sonny. Okay, it was a mistake for me to actually go into heroin in particular. But pursuing a jazz lifestyle and not just becoming a capitalist worker drone, like, that's a legitimate choice. And you should recognize that my way of dealing with suffering is as legitimate as yours. Talking to his brother, you know, who became a school teacher.

Yeah. And also the tremendous sense of responsibility, I think is interesting in both. I mean, I guess it's the same control issue, but maybe that has something to do with, you know, the idea of Baldwin came back to the states to help with the civil. You know, because he felt responsible, because he felt like he had to do something about the civil rights movement and to contribute to the civil rights movement. And that kind of tight grip that the narrator has on his life in becoming a worker drone and in not dipping into his own suffering, I find very interesting.

Both of the narrators in both of these stories make me really nervous the whole time I'm reading them. Like, oh, God, when's he going to snap? You know, when's it going to come out? And you see it in his performance, you know, the director having to manipulate him into dipping into his real. His own suffering to get a performance out of him in this morning, this evening, so soon. Sorry, Cesare, I think I cut you off there.

No, I was just going to extend the thought as far as, you know, dealing with life, dealing with pain and doing it a certain way. And there was that line that I was looking for something about, you ought to start thinking about your future. And Sonny responds to like, I am thinking about. I'm thinking about it all the time. And it's this disconnect with, you know, how you deal with life between the two. The whole story, I think I've mentioned this before, is very sad, or it's very negative in the sense that it puts the basis of life as some thing to be suffered through. The goal of life is to find some healthier way to transmute the sadness of life into.

Yeah, I love that it's hopeful at the end, you know, that there's vision and hope. I think at the end, no matter what kind of suffering you have, if you had that kind of, you know, if you can come to music, if you cannot be a musician and come to music the way that the narrator did at the end, I mean, that's a tremendous gift, that true sense and that understanding that he came to.

Yeah, I think we could probably play on that metaphor and theme a little more in the Sense that the musical finale at the end and for involved communication with other people. It involved a sort of constraint, but a freedom through that constraint. Because, I mean, I won't tell you about the blues because I wouldn't tell you about it, but the blues signifies a certain something. Or jazz signifies something that you have to. That you can play within but sort of make it your own. But it's freedom through a constraint and freedom through communication with others. So I do see that whenever we're

talking about the scene with the director, there's just a bit. I know we talked about pressuring him. And I think that this is just a good way to cap that because it seems like he was kind of maybe just being like, a dick or something. But it's not that easy. This is on my 169. This is after the conversation. We've talked about it already. He says, I was humiliated for being called out and too angry to speak. But perhaps I also felt at the very bottom of my heart, a certain relief, an unwilling respect. I think that's kind of tying in what we were saying about earlier with, like, just being, like, honest and connecting with people and, like, not looking at, you know, like, putting up barriers to how they.

Or taking away and simplifying things. But that he had a respect for him, like, getting in touch with him. And that there was something about that performance that tapped into the real rage that he has living his life. And the rage that I think goes through a lot of these stories and conversations that he's had.

I couldn't connect. I know we talked about this, but I couldn't connect his. The anger there as due to it being so personal, due to it trying to communicate it to a white person or due to that person just trying to commodify it. What the purpose of that scene is for him to get a performance out of him, to commodify it into this movie. And that anger spills over into. I think that same theme is in Sony's anger that he takes out in music and drugs. But I couldn't quite grasp that.

I mean, it's not so personal, but I related to this as an actor and someone in a scene and just what it can be. And also what I was attracted to in the Body Artist that we talked about was that there was something really transcendent about being true in a moment. And if someone is, you know, saying, hey, you're not dealing with something and can pull that out of you, and then you really go into it, then there's something that can be really powerful about that and respectful even sometimes whenever people are just hiding or protecting themselves, you know, and someone can make you vulnerable and make you feel, you know, like you're embarrassed, but at the same time tap into what you ought to be saying or expressing.

And I think that's the respect I see in that director scene that he was happy to be able to confide and also to perform that. And maybe it was healthy for him to dig into it and to be able to. There seemed to be a respect and a friendship there. That was true. And I think it was not just like a financial making a movie thing, but I think that if James Baldwin is at all talking about his own movie experience, then, you know, it's short lived. It's not like he's, you know, a profiteering movie star or something like that. I think it was getting at something for him artistically, creatively, which is to say expressive.

And that was my reading there. And that's why I think that the rage is so important, because it's something that allows you to express that rage and put it into a positive direction. Just like as he does as a writer, but also as you may do as a performance, as an actor more I suppose as a singer. Though there's something interesting about singing that this is going back to this morning, this evening, so soon. He talks about what it is for the people to watch him. Once again, he says, under cover of the Midnight Fiction, that I was unlike them because I was black.

They could stealthily gaze at those treasures which they had been mysteriously forbidden to possess and were never permitted to declare. So this is talking about the other here too. I wanted to bring that up because he talks about like what it is for them to be able to exhaust his size and put a fiction, midnight fiction onto him and kind of have a story. And like, just the last thing I'll say, like here is, I think something I heard through a lot of his conversations that we haven't addressed. And what I think is also a part of these stories is it's a double edged sword racism.

It actually cuts both ways. It actually deprives the oppressor of a possible moral better world and interactions. So I think that there can be something better for both. Again, going back to that respect, like he has this respect for this director and they are friends.

So it's interesting in Sonny's Blues how we're confined to just the experience of the oppressed and the dynamics between those characters as they're dealing with their situation. So for instance, the family. Isabelle's, his fiance's family that is looking after Sonny, trying to make him get all the way through high school, they don't get. They can't understand why he would be all I need to play piano every second of the day. Like, they don't. They don't recognize this as his way of coping with thinking about his future and the limited possibilities in front of him.

You know, just the general fact of oppression. All they know is that it's oppressive to them to have somebody playing this goddamn thing every freaking second and eventually, you know, let it. Let him know that and kind of spill it out that, like, the only reason you're here is because of your brother. And we don't actually. It's enough to drive him from the house. How this oppression ends up creating, you know, in an indirect way, creating rifts between people, between him and his family, between Sonny and his brother, et cetera.

Yeah. And what he went off to, you know, he went off to join the army. Like, he ran all the way away. He ran away from music, too, which is interesting. It's like, I thought it was amazing that he. That he lasted as long as he did with them. I was trying to think about that situation. Staying with your brother's fiance's family. Yeah. Coping as best you can. And also being a teenager and how oppressive that is. And how oppressive it is to everyone around you.

Everyone around you. Yeah, absolutely.

The reason that he left. I can't find this line. But he realized that the reason that they were being nice to him the entire time and they never brought up the piano playing. They dealt with it the entire time. But there was the one blow up moment, I think, when they realized he wasn't going to school is when he realized that they were doing it not for any purpose other than the fact that they wanted to be nice to his brother. And it was this kind of dehumanizing thing where that was the final straw, where he realized he wasn't important in this picture.

Yeah.

And I wonder what that meant to the story. I mean, both of these stories. I mean, always my thing with short stories, I think of them as like novel haikus. Right. They kind of have to be perfect in. Not in a set number of words. But I'm always impressed when there are no extra words, when there are no extra thoughts. I always think someone is truly a great writer when they can tell their greatness by the story being spare in that aspect. So I wondered about that, about his realization that this was a favor and he was A burden and what that meant to the overall, the messages of the story.

Well, I shouldn't overstate. You know, I was trying to look at that through the lens of oppression, which is certainly one of the themes why Sonny's in danger in the first place. But, yeah, one of the great things about a good fiction writer is that it's not all about the message. It's kind of an organic laying out of the situation and setting up these poignant moments and things. So, yeah, I don't know exactly how that feeds the overall story other than after the parents die, there's no one really to look after him that really cares about him, that his brother has put himself at a distance with his choice of job.

He knows he's eventually going to be coming back, but he just wants his, you know, wants Sonny to just. Just hold on, just get through school, just be in this environment. And that's not the way support works. Like, we need human support more consistently than that. You can't just, like, just stay in the crappy situation for another year. Then it'll work out.

Yeah, especially when you haven't lived that many years.

Yep.

And every year is an eternity. Right.

So right now, if somebody tells me to wait a year, yeah, whatever, I'll just blink.

I should have brought this up earlier. I had read some secondary source about this story this morning, this Evening, so Soon I'm going to read it. It's by Adrienne Atkins, who wrote in the Journal of the Short Story in English, which is actually a French publication, and she cites Jacqueline C. Jones, who's written about Baldwin. Jacqueline C. Jones avows that Baldwin spent his career writing, quote, about the inherent untruth of life in this democratic United States and how its citizens ultimately mirror that dishonesty in their lives. In this Morning, this Evening, so soon, the narrator's view of American justice and American identity is paradoxically brought into sharper focus with his distance from the country of his youth.

The story most likely reflects Baldwin's own experience as an American expatriate artist in Paris, where, like the narrator of this Morning, this Evening, so soon, he found that, for better or worse, he was seen as an American first and a black man second. In fact, Baldwin asserted in a New York Times interview, only white Americans can consider themselves to be expatriates. Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I could see where I came from very clearly, and I could see that I carried myself, which is my home. With me you can never escape that I am the grandson of A slave and I am a writer.

I must deal with both. End quote. In this morning, this evening, so soon, Baldwin reveals a deep awareness of the way in which the America that he loves and criticizes more than any other country in the world shapes the identity of her black sons and daughters. And then she says, citing Jacqueline C. Jones, who's written a lot about Baldwin, avows that Baldwin spent his career writing, quote, about the inherent untruth of life in this democratic United States. Now its citizens ultimately mirror that dishonesty in their lives. I already quoted that.

All right. Yeah. So I just thought that was an interesting discussion. It's in the Journal of the Short Story in English.

There's a line that I think that encapsulates that from this morning, this evening, so soon, this is about the American flag. He said, I would never, as long as I live know what others saw when they saw a flag. There's no place like home, said a voice close by. And I thought, there damn sure isn't.

The other thing that we didn't talk about with that, and it's something that, I mean, I've only half thought about. And Mark, I don't know if you've thought about it, is the song this Morning, this Evening so soon, which is an old song. And it's. The story in the song is basically about a guy who's. He goes to town, you know, when you go to town, stay away from the loose women, basically. And then he gets brought back in the morning in a way, you know, hurry Up Wagon, which is, some people think it's, I guess, would think was an ambulance. Whatever it is, it's hurry up and get this dead body off. You know, he gets brought home the next morning dead. And I, you know, I started to think about it and then didn't think very much about it. And I just wondered, Mark, in the. If. If you had related the song at all to the.

I didn't know there was a song, so.

Oh, I think, you know, Bob Dylan recorded it at one point. It's, you know, the Smother's brother has recorded it. But it's an old, you know, a lot of people who are like country Merle Haggard and Bob Wills, like, a lot of people, different people recorded. It's like a traditional American south story. And people put different lyrics in it and stuff. But it's just this morning, this evening, so soon is I was just with you this morning, and then this evening this happens, and now it's so whatever. So, yeah, okay, if no one's Thought about it then finally.

I didn't know it was a song either, but at this point. Yeah, be happy to hear it.

So I could read. To get close to closing us out, you were saying I should have a quote.

We do our favorite lines.

Yeah, it's a little hard from Sunny's Blues. It's really the last four pages. Solid. But I'm not going to read all that. Let me just start on 137 here. All I know about music is that not many people really ever hear it. Not many people really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within and the music enters, what we mainly hear or hear, corroborated are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air.

What is evoked in him then is of another order. More terrible because it has no words. And triumphant too, for the same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. I just watched Sunny's face. His face was troubled. He was working hard, but he wasn't with it. And I had the feeling that, in a way, everyone in the bandstand was waiting for him. Both waiting for him and pushing him away long. But as I began to watch Creole, I realized it was Creole who held them all back. He held them on a short rein up there, keeping the beat with his whole body wailing on the fiddle with his eyes half closed.

He was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sunny's witness. And that deep water and drowning. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing. He had been there and he knew, and he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water. And while Creole listened, Sonny moves deep within, exactly like someone in torment.

I'd never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones and ivory. Well, there's only so much you can do with it. The only way to find this out is to try to try and make it do everything. And then skipping over another couple pages here, top of page 140. Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played.

Every now and again, one of them seemed to say Amen. Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back. He really began playing with the spare flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his. And it was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried. And it was no longer a lament I seemed to hear. With what burning he had made it his. With what burning he had, we had yet to make it ours. How we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us. And I understood at last that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

Yet there was no battle in his face. Now I heard what he had gone through and would continue to go through until he came to rest in the earth. He made it his that long, of which we know only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back so that passing through death, it can live forever. And it really hits on the again, the relationship to history and how it's not just a matter of getting rid of the factor of color, but somehow fully living. You know, maybe that's what you want as your end game with the society, but as an individual, as one of the victims of this, at least.

He's not necessarily. He doesn't care in the story about the oppressors. Those people are not important. Those are not characters at all in the story. It's dealing with the whole thing in an emotionally honest way. And then you'd have to figure out then, well, what would be the best way to treat somebody who is dealing with that? Okay, well, that's a different thing. Well, kind of treat them however they ask you to treat them or something. Be sensitive. And there's no easy way off the hook for anyone, given that this stuff has happened. But he at least thinks there are more positive and more negative ways as someone in the thick of this, that you could deal with it.

He also talks. I mean, it also says a lot about opening up and allowing. Allowing someone else's message in.

Yeah, how necessary it is that Sonny will not be free until we hear it's not just him expressing himself.

And the narrator achieves some freedom in that. The importance, personally, of letting down your guard and allowing in this message from someone else. It was really beautiful. He's such a beautiful writer.

I have one but if it's yours, Laura, then just stop me and then you can.

You know what? Probably it's mine.

This one's from this morning, this evening, so soon on my 182. And it's Vidal talking. We have suffered here. You have suffered too. But most Americans do not yet know what anguish is. It is too bad because the life of the west is in their hands. He turns to Ada. I cannot help saying that I think it is a scandal and we may all pay very dearly for it, that a civilized nation should elect to represent it a man who is so simple that he thinks the world is simple. And silence falls at the table and the four young faces stare at him.

Well, that was sort of mine. It was part of mine.

That's great.

Self explanatory. So, yeah,

yeah. I wonder how much more strong his language would have been if it had been Trump you were talking about. But it's still true. It's truer now.

Yeah, I'm looking for those heavyweights here. I mean, just to see his response versus not to get off text so much. But with Buckley, again, just Buckley was like wilting and, you know, it was nothing compared to what Baldwin threw down in such plain, beautiful language. There's so much truth that he's telling that what he spoke about there, what he speaks about often or what he writes about deals with amazing stuff.

Yeah. What I got from it or from the style of writing from what we've read and what else I've read of Baldwin's is the complexity of the issue and how it is certainly not simple. And it's not like he has it figured out and is simply preaching that this is the way it should be. It's still a very complex issue that he certainly hasn't fully resolved.

Did any of you actually read the story Going to Meet the man in this collection, Going to Meet the Man,

Is that the one when a sort of autobiographical. Him becoming a preacher and.

No, no, that's an essay. That's actually the one we talked about in the other discussion, the nonfiction discussion. But Going to Meet the man in this is about a white police officer who has just gotten home from. From kicking the crap out of a black guy in a cell. And the whole thing is sort of his perspective and his various obsessions and how he'll, you know, go down and get a piece of black tail every once in a while. And it's just an extremely unflattering, of course, picture. And, you know, and reflecting back then on a lynching that he witnessed as a kid and how his, like, parents presented it as, like, yeah, this is an awesome thing.

We're gonna go see a lynching. You'll never forget this. And so it's a really brutal story. And you wonder, is he, as a literary figure, he's just giving you a vivid picture of a particular psychology or how much is he trying to say socially about it? Like, is this what he actually thinks? That the white people who even. Who are doing this are like, that they actually. We discuss in the other podcast how at the end of the I Am Not Your Negro documentary, there's an interview with him where he says, like, the whites have to figure out why they needed this other.

This. The Negro, why they. Because I'm not, you know, I'm just a person. If you're putting that label on me, I didn't do that. There must be some reason you need that. And so what exactly he means by that, what he thinks is wrong with the white psyche. Well, at least that particular story gives a very bleak picture. It's not just like Laura was saying, like, that we have a. We all have a in group out group. We all have an issue with the other. I think that's totally accurate. I think Baldwin is being much more specific that he thinks that there's actual sadism going on.

And that's. What if this character in this other story is any representative. Like, that's what the white people who created this, the negative images of blacks, that's what they have needed, is that they have needed somebody that they can feel superior to, somebody that is. Is this brute. And again, you could just say that sadism is part of human nature or that it's at least its manifestation is specific to this time and place. And, well, we can reflect on ourselves and see to what extent we actually reflect that or that it's much more subtle.

Anyway, I didn't want to leave it entirely in the. He gives pictures of how the oppressed to deal with their oppression. He. He does have some thoughts, at least even in his fiction, seemingly about the reasons for the. The oppression and the oppressor's point of view. But they're not helpful or encouraging thoughts.

Yeah, we didn't really get into it, but I. I'm wondering if there's that conversation between. In this morning, this evening, so soon, between Harriet and the narrator's sister. So, you know, a white woman and a black woman. And they mentioned the impossibility of usually talking to white people, because how much you have to save their consciousness. And I'M wondering if that came into your discussion as far as white guilt and all that stuff. And if, you know, white guilt is just a performative act that just feeds upon the same shitty dynamic that Baldwin is complaining about, in the sense that you can't talk to white people because you have to say their consciousness.

Yeah.

I mean, certainly it's very easy to. Whenever in this kind of conversation a white person says, you know, as I said earlier, like, well, this is. He's talking about a specific historic place in time. And then Nathan, you know, jumped on that as well. You know, basically trying to weasel out that it is part of the dynamic that's being described here, that white people are so fragile and don't want to face up to the reality of what they have done. And as part of a historical, bigger social structure, what they are in some sense responsible for are looking for any way to feel better about themselves and get out of it.

So, of course, we should be suspicious of ourselves whenever we say, oh, yeah, what he's describing actually doesn't apply to us. But I don't want that fear of being dishonest with ourselves to keep us from recognizing objectively what Baldwin was actually talking about and that he really was talking about a particular time and place, that those are separate issues. You can be trying to make a specific point about what Baldwin did or did not mean without your motives being impugned, because you must be a white person trying to weasel out of responsibility.

Just part of the dynamic of the discussion.

It's always a fine line, right?

So there's one line here from this morning, this evening, so soon. And it's literally just one line. And it's. Our culture is as thick as clabber milk. And I highlighted that because I like the language. And that's talking about American culture. Our culture is as thick as clabber milk. And then the last line, and then I have the one at the end, because you know how I am about endings. And I'm always fascinated about why a writer ends something the way they end it. And so the end of this story, this morning, this evening, so soon he's gone to pick up his son from the woman who was watching his son that night when he and Vidal went out.

And he gets on his. You know, she's all like, oh, that's going to be so exciting, this journey you're going on. Paul is going to be so excited. And then narrator gets on the elevator, and he says, I open the cage and we step inside. Yes. I say all the Way to the new world. He's responding to this woman. I press the button and the cage holding my son and me goes up. I remember after I read that, I was like, wow. And I'm just wondering what you all thought of the way that ended.

I could certainly read way too much into it, and it's certainly not me too. What I would read into it is like this kind of change that they're looking at for is not going to happen through some sort of individual self redemption or individual white self flagellation, but through the building of some sort of structure that lifts. Lifts these people up. And you know, the elevator is this institution, this structure, rather than some individual, you know.

But it's interesting. He says, I press the button and the cage, comma, holding my son and me, comma, goes up. I mean, I know he's going to his floor, but again, why is he ending it on this? He could have just ended it with I picked up my son and she was just a wonderful trip and done right.

But no, I've always interpreted it that he's found some sort of peace with himself about moving forward. The facts are the facts about the way that the world is. But he's got his son, he loves his son, he loves his wife. You know, he is going to move

forward because the sort of general idea or concept of going up indicates or insinuates goodness or happiness or something positive.

Well, I've sent this line to all of you in an email, but I'm going to read it out loud again anyway because I think that it's just an incredible vision of Americans, or I should say us Americans. I always feel kind of bad that we take all of America, all of the continent, down with us.

Let's call ourselves norte Americanos from now on.

Yeah, but Cesare is a norte Americano. So this is when he's going back after his mother has died. So it's eight years prior to the current time in the story, and he's on the ship and he says the Americans on the boat did not seem to be so bad. But I was fascinated after the such a long absence from it by the nature of their friendliness. It was a friendliness which did not suggest and was not intended to suggest any possibility of friendship. Unlike Europeans, they dropped titles and used first names almost at once, leaving themselves, unlike the Europeans, with nowhere thereafter to go.

Once one had become Pete or Jane or Bill, all that could decently be known was known. And any suggestion that there might be further depths a person, so to speak, behind the name was taken as a violation of that privacy, which did not, paradoxically, since they trusted it so little, seem to exist among Americans. They apparently equated privacy with the unspeakable things they did in the bathroom of the bedroom, which they related only to the analyst and then read about in the pages of best sellers. There was an eerie and unnerving irreality about everything they said and did, as though they were all members of the same team and were acting on orders from some invincibly cheerful and tirelessly inventive coach.

I was fascinated by it. I found it oddly moving. But I cannot say that I was displeased. It had not occurred to me before that Americans who had never treated me with any respect had no respect for each other.

This one here I really like because it talks about, I think, the other thing specifically. So I just wanted to put a pin in it. It's 172 on mine. He talks about how can. About the sun going back and, you know, about being prepared. How can one be prepared for the spittle in the face, all the tireless ingenuity which goes into the spite and fear of small, unutterably miserable people whose greatest terror is the singular identity, whose joy, whose safety is entirely dependent on the humiliation and anguish of others. And then opposite that page just at the bottom, this is about white friends.

His white is on him today. And when we didn't hate them, we pitied them. In America, that's usually what it means to have a white friend. You pity the poor bastard because he was born believing the world's a great place to be, and you know it's not. And you can see that he's going to have a terrible time getting used to this idea, if he ever gets used to it. But then on 1 182. There's something that's just good about metaphysics, I think. Or it's just one of his beliefs that come out. He's talking about leaving Paris. And this is it. For a long while.

Paris will no longer exist for me except in my mind and only in the minds of some people while I exist any longer. For Paris, after departure, only invisible things are left. Perhaps the life of the world is held by. Together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people depart, and we can only repossess them in our minds. Perhaps this is what the old folks meant, what my mother and my father meant when they counseled us to keep the faith.

I love that one. I had picked out that One, too. Yeah, yeah. The continuity. Right.

It's just a last general thing. What did you guys feel about the structure of these stories? That both of them had a fairly small amount of stuff that actually happens in the present. So it's like an episode of Lost. It has these flashbacks to fill in to kind of make it clear why the present actually has the emotional impact that it does. Just the fact that he does this in both these stories in kind of the same way, that was interesting.

The narrator doesn't have a name this

morning so soon that that story, like, it wasn't even clear to me at first. I think I was reading a little too fast and like, oh, he's already in America now.

He's just.

No, no, no. He's describing the last time he was in America. So I found that a little puzzling at first. Like, why go through all that? Why not just talk about him going to America and having a bad time of it as opposed to, I'm about to go to America. I don't know if I'm going to have a bad time of it. Let's talk about last time I was there.

It's an incredibly complex story, though. To have gone to France 12 years ago and all that had happened in those 12 years made him who he was, going back, you know, if he had never left. If we only knew what was going on. Now. The complexity of going back as a man having left or as a man who knows himself in some ways and has developed his talents and has come to be free with within himself, has learned to love. I mean, how do you explain that without going back, without going back into the past and discussing who you truly were when you got there and why it's so difficult to go back.

Yeah, I think that expands the power of what he's trying to say.

It adds some complexity to have, though. He could kind of give the same emotional impact by just talking like, I haven't been back in 12 years, and now I'm going to describe what it was like back there. And, you know, he has a sister as a sort of a more recent witness to it. But then throwing in the story of, well, last time I went back, you know, five years ago, that just adds an extra. It's probably just like. Because it was actually reflective of what had actually happened to him is why he would structure the story that way, as opposed to just because, you know, Mary was talking about doing it in the most economical possible way, like, well, to get that full emotional impact.

You didn't necessarily have to have the story of the last time I visited back there. You could just talk about when you were there in the place. First. First place and all these horrible things that happened. I'm not trying to second guess him, but just wondering about why have that layer of complexity. Just probably because that's the way it happened.

Well, because the last time that he was back was actually. Had actually been eight years before. And in the time since then, he went back and he had a hell of a struggle getting back to Paris after that. And when he got back, he got married and he had a son and he became famous. You know, he did his big works. And I think that that was. I'm usually thinking about the economy of language. And, you know, the thing that makes it so tight is that when I say there aren't any extra words, there really aren't. That you have everything that you need here and you don't have a lot of extra.

I don't think that it was that he has extra words in describing anything that he described. I thought that it was interesting that both stories had, like, one really intensely horrifying tale in this morning, this Evening, so Soon, his sister and her friends out on the double date, and Sonny's Blues, the story of his father's brother. And at neither of those incidents was the narrator present. And so I thought that that was really interesting.

That's curious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just kind of setting up the atmosphere that he was in as opposed to something that had personally scarred him, necessarily.

Yeah. It had a huge effect on his life because it happened to people around him, but it didn't happen to him directly. And he didn't become a heroin addict and he didn't have to steal his sports shirts from the Algerians. Like, that was one of the things in the beginning when he first got to Paris and he was living with the Algerians because they were the downtrodden and he had no money and they had stolen from him. I think that it's interesting the way that Baldwin writes and the way that he speaks. I think that it's interesting that he peppers his stories with.

He goes into the personal. He digs into his own personal experiences and then he also generalizes. And that shifting from bringing himself into it, even the, you know, at the Cambridge debate with Buckley, he talked about the situation in a very general way, but dipped into his own personal experiences. And he moves back and forth. And it's a very subtle thing. And it's interesting because he couldn't tell the story if he didn't have a personal experience.

Yeah. I mean, isn't that what makes it that much more powerful? Isn't that the whole point of a writer?

I have a secondary source where Baldwin says that all art is a kind of confession. That all artists, if they are to survive, are forced at last to tell the whole story. To vomit the anguish up.

Yeah, absolutely. We write what we know.

Well, I'm grateful to you all for letting me come on and contemplate this vomit with us. It's the best damn looking vomit I've ever tasted.

Another good note.

Yeah, that should be the title for this episode. Contemplating the vomit.

It sure was nice to upchuck with you.

Yeah, it was nice.

Thanks for the things to digest.

Sa.