ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Before James Baldwin became James Baldwin the figure, before the televised debates, before the public speeches, he was a writer. Today marks 100 years since his birth. And we figured that makes now a good time to do a close reading of one of Baldwin's novels, now decades old, to tease out the way it resonates today. Here's NPR's Andrew Limbong.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: When it comes to Baldwin's novels, his fiction work, there are plenty of books worthy of examination. But there's something special about his first novel, "Go Tell It On The Mountain."
MCKINLEY MELTON: He describes this as the book that he had to write if he was ever going to write anything else.
LIMBONG: Here to help us through some key passages from the book is McKinley Melton. He's an associate professor and chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes College and has taught this book in class for more than 20 years. And he says the book marks an important arc in Baldwin's career.
MELTON: In part because it is a deeply autobiographical novel. It is a novel that I often think of as a revisitation of his childhood with a kind of narrative perspective that knows and understands all of the things that a young Baldwin wished he had known and understood when he himself was 14.
LIMBONG: The novel follows a boy named John, and it starts like this.
MELTON: (Reading) Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his 14th birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then, it was already too late.
LIMBONG: That last clause kind of reads like a horror story.
MELTON: Right?
(LAUGHTER)
MELTON: There's something deeply, deeply ominous about the way that that opening paragraph closes.
LIMBONG: Like many of the great opening lines in literature, the entire thrust of the novel is laid out here.
MELTON: You come into it feeling kind of hopeful and optimistic and, oh, what a beautiful thing that everybody's envisioning this future for this young man. And everybody - you know, we think about everything that it means when people say, oh, that kid's going to be a preacher. It's like we see him as an orator. We see him as an intellectual. We see him as charming. We see him as engaging. We see leader when we look at this kid. And so there's something very optimistic about that opening that then turns by the end of the novel into, but that was actually the source of his doom.
LIMBONG: Doom permeates throughout the entire book. John has to navigate how he feels about key aspects of his life - his family, his church, his own sexuality. A few pages in, John is at church, but he's distracted by Elisha. Elisha is a few years older. He's the pastor's nephew, and he teaches Sunday school. But on this Sunday, John has some trouble focusing on the lesson.
MELTON: (Reading) John stared at Elisha all during the lesson, admiring the temper of Elisha's voice - much deeper and manlier than his own - admiring the leanness and grace and strength and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit, wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy. But he did not follow the lesson. And when sometimes Elisha paused to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, feeling the palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. Elisha would smile and reprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.
LIMBONG: You could read this as a crush, but it's not just a crush.
MELTON: It's a crush that is about the fact that he's got a deeper voice and a manlier voice. And, you know, it's the leanness of his body, but it's also grace. And it's also the way he looks in the Sunday suit, and it's also this question of - will I ever be as holy as this? And so I look at this passage, and because of all of the ways that the kind of different clauses bounce off of one another throughout the sentence, you're kind of leaving this saying, well, is John - does John have the hots for Elisha because John is learning that he's probably gay? Or is John admiring Elisha because he is all of the things that John has been told he's supposed to be?
LIMBONG: Baldwin broadens the narrative later on in the book, giving readers the perspectives of John's aunt, stepfather and mother, which for Melton means the novel leaves a multifaceted legacy. On the one hand, as a piece of semi-autobiography, it is a work looking back on the past with pure honesty.
MELTON: What it takes for a writer to be this vulnerable, to be able to write this work that so hits at the core of their own life, their own family, their own history, their own experience, their own psychology.
LIMBONG: But as a work of fiction, the novel says something about the future.
MELTON: The fact that our protagonist is a 14-year-old boy, I think is really important, not only for the kids who see themselves in John but for those who see themselves in the community surrounding John, to say, what is it we're doing to our kids when we teach them and we train them that who they are is unwelcome, is impure, is just wrong? And what does that do to their ability to find their way in the world?
LIMBONG: As long as the world exists, there will also be confused 14 year olds, and we'll also have Baldwin's work to point them towards. Andrew Limbong, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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