James Baldwin, _If Beale Street Could Talk_

THE ENVIABLY-NAMED Thomas Chatterton Williams began his review of Zadie Smith's Feel Free (London Review of Books, August 30, 2018) this way: ""Several of the last century's finest non-fiction writers--Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin--longed to be novelists." He is setting up the point that Smith, indisputably a novelist, happens also to turn out excellent essays, but I was pulled up short by the implicit suggestion that Didion, Sontag, and Baldwin were not novelists, but only (apparently) aspirant novelists.

I can see what he means about Sontag, even though The Volcano Lover actually sold well, as did Didion's Play It as It Lays and Book of Common Prayer; Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain made it on to a lot of syllabuses, I believe, and Just Above my Head got a National Book Award nomination. Still, I suppose Baldwin's name simply equates to The Fire Next Time and the amazing essays for a lot of people.

I wonder whether the movie adaptation of this novel, besides selling some copies of its source, will re-direct attention to Baldwin's fiction somewhat. It may well, because this is an excellent novel. As you likely know (I haven't seen the movie yet myself), it's about a romantic couple in Harlem. By the time she learns she is pregnant, he is in jail, wrongly accused of rape. Most of the novel is about her ongoing relationship with him, memories of their early time together, and her and her family's efforts to free him.

The novel's point of view is mainly the woman's--Tish's--a risky choice, but I think Baldwin succeeded. The portraits of her family and the family of her lover, Fonny, are rich, particular,, and indelible.

The lovers' main problem--i.e., the patterns of law enforcement that Michelle Alexander has taught us to call the New Jim Crow--is so enduring a one in their community that it hardly feels that the book is set in any particular time. Historical locators are scarce; the book was published in 1974, and there is a quick reference to Les McCann's "Compared to What," which was a hit in 1970, but the action could be occurring in just about any decade after World War II, including the present one.

The writing, as is ever the case with Baldwin, is graceful and incisive at the same time. The drama feels real, especially the intense confrontation between Fonny's family and Tish's family at the book's mid-point. Tish and Fonny themselves are a bit too good to be true, à la Romeo and Juliet, but why don't we just say their love brings out the best in them and leave it at that? And the book is tight, succinct (maybe even a bit too succinct at the end, when I was hoping for a bit more denouement than we get), quick-moving. Maybe Baldwin-the-novelists's day has come.