Reviews

I recognized this as love - recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed for a moment to be opening out behind me; a light seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but, in the event, nearly no-one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet - one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.

James Baldwin is an author who I first experienced only last year, upon reading If Beale Street Could Talk, a vividly raw depiction of life in mid-century Black America. It was this vivid rawness that left me wanting more - quite honestly, I'd never read anything quite like it in terms of that peculiar combination of subject matter and harsh, honest grittiness, that Baldwin brought to the page with apparently effortless ease. When I finished that novel, I did some research, watching vintage clips of Baldwin speaking, in either interviews, or debates (his interview on the Dick Cavett show was a particular highlight of this viewing experience) and found that he was every bit as eloquent verbally as he was in his writings. And that is what drew me to Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone - clearly Baldwin was a rare talent and I wanted to enjoy the fruits of that talent once again.

Baldwin's fourth novel, published in 1968, is incredibly simple in terms of premise; Leo Proudhammer, a black bisexual actor, has a heart attack on stage, at the end of a performance. Whilst recovering, he muses on his early life - how he ended up where he is, the journey he followed to find his identity, the relationships he had with his on/off lover Barbara, as well as the relationship with his brother Caleb and how that changed over time.

A theme that always seems to loom large in Baldwin's novels is race and Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone is no exception. There is always that sense that as a young black man, Leo felt the weight upon his shoulders, that accompanied a sensation of 'otherness'. He didn't feel that he could walk where he wanted, when he wanted, with whomever he wanted, without risk of racial prejudice or attack. There was a sense that he was perceived differently. He didn't perceive himself differently. An awareness of such differences only grew with the experience of passing time and a perception that because of nothing more than the colour of his skin, he had to always be aware that he would not be treated equally. One of the most tender scenes in this novel is that in which Leo realises that he cannot be with Barbara. He cannot ask of her that which would be demanded in an intra-racial relationship during this era; that she endure the same treatment that he himself could expect. To be tarnished because of her desire for Leo, who just so happens to be black.

This work has some tender, moving and eloquent passages. But be warned - overall it's as slow as stagnant water. More often than not, it meanders like a lazy river. The number of occasions when Baldwin's grammatical acrobatics, his desire to twist the rules of grammar in order to shoehorn into a passage the sentiments he wants included, makes the prose unnecessarily dense and is at least equal in number to those occasions on which his writing makes you sit up and take notice. And Baldwin doesn't tend to go for 'flowery prose'. There is little in the way of aesthetic beauty to his writing - he says it as it is. This works best when there is a situation that demands it; when the visceral raw ugliness of a situation is unsuited to poetic prose. But there isn't an awful lot of examples of that here. It happens, but just not an awful lot and consequently, Baldwin's literary prowess fails to buttress his work well - the weight of those passages that are dull just permeates the flavour of the work. The slowness of the book comes to the fore when Leo and Barbara attend an acting workshop, that takes place in the parochial environment of a small town in the middle of nowhere. We get vignettes of Leo's experiences of racial prejudice and the dynamic of his relationship with Barbara, as well as a cast of other characters. But nothing really bites deep. Things happen. Much in the way that things happen in everyday life, without the need to read about them. This is definitely that portion of the book during which I felt it drifting away from me. I could almost tangibly perceive my interest ebbing away. Don't get me wrong - like I say, moments that almost touched the right nerve...only to have the scene change in such a way that my excitement dulled again.

Before I really got stuck into literature, I used to hear reviewers saying that a book 'worked well on the sentence and paragraph level, but not so well at a novel level'. At the time, I remember thinking this was baloney - a book either works, or it doesn't. But this novel fit's very snugly into that bracket; a number of really thought-provoking and well-written passages that work excellently in isolation but when the book is taken as a whole, it is rather slow and ponderous. Race is a big, big issue in the minds of most of Western society right now - so it's easy to see why this book holds appeal. But for me, it was just okay.