New releases from The Orb, Meredith Monk, and Marconi Union
Seeker of justice in the here and now
TOM KING recommends a new biography of the great black writer and political activist James Baldwin
LANDMARK: James Baldwin, flanked by actors Charlton Heston (left) and Marlon Brando at the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963
Photo US Information Agency, Press and Publications Service
RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Living in Fire
by Bill V Mullen
(Pluto Press, £20)
IN TRENTON, New Jersey, in 1942 the 18-year-old James Baldwin walked into a diner and ordered a hamburger and a cup of coffee. “We don’t serve Negroes here,” the waitress replied.
He left, calmly and without a fight, heading straight to an “enormous, glittering and fashionable restaurant” where he “knew not even the intercession of the Virgin” would get him what he asked for.
He went inside, repeated his order, received an identical reply and, lifting a mug full of water from the nearest table, threw it at the waitress. She ducked and it smashed against the mirror behind the bar.
Similar stories
When Patterson and Liston met in the ring in 1962, it was more than a title bout — it was a collision of two black archetypes shaped by white America’s fears and fantasies, writes JOHN WIGHT
MATTHEW HAWKINS appreciates an interpretation in dance of James Baldwin’s landmark novel of doomed homosexual desire
MAT COWARD looks at the personal ideology of a man as concerned with the psychology of inventing as with inventing itself, whose ideas about education – and contributions to the war effort against the Nazis – live on
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP