James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories: Go Tell It on a Mountain / Giovanni's Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man

This is a volume in the Library of America series, so it is a handy size, packs a lot in (LoA uses thin paper, so volumes run 900-1000 pages), presents reliable editions, has a bookmark ribbon built in, is a durable, high-quality clothbound volume, and is a very good value. I've read a lot of Baldwin's prose, mainly about race in America, and find it eloquent, deeply intelligent, and powerfully moving. I had never gotten around to reading his fiction, but I'm very glad I got into it. I started with "Giovanni's Room," a short novel set in Paris. The narrator is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality--even just to figure out what it is. There are very luminous, very beautiful pages about Paris itself. The dialogue is engaging and intelligent--characters talk about their feelings as they struggle with what they want, what their deepest values are, and draw closer or farther apart in their relationships with each other. Baldwin is a very good, very thoughtful writer. I look forward to reading more of his fiction, and I particularly recommend these LoA volumes.

Powerful ideas and poetic language. I only wish he were with us today. His passionate fury was only surpassed by his loving forgiveness. Do yourself a favor and read as much Baldwin as you can...start with his “letter to my nephew” if you want a taster of his brilliance

James does such a great job on telling his stories that you feel like you are in the room with the characters....very few writers can do this as well. If you are looking to understand racism better or what it is like being a gay man before Harvey Milk read these stories.

I have this already but returning it is too expensive. I didn't realize it was the same until I took off the cover.

This is my first exposure to Baldwin's literature and am enjoying reading his work. My only criticism is as a senior citizen I wish the pages and print were a little larger. Though the book is easy to carry on trips, there is something to be said for a full size book.

Go Tell It on the Mountain - an excellent work revealing truths about race relations in the 30s (setting of the book), 50s (when it was written), Pentecostal religion in the black community and closeted homosexuality. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading his later works.

Beautiful stories by Beautiful James Baldwin! His stories applies today.

This is by far the most I have enjoyed Baldwin is a long time. Again not disappointed with the truth about the images that were real in his writings for a time past.

The writing in this collection of books is simply amazing.

Baldwin's best Volume 1. Be sure to get Volume 2 as well.

This is a volume in the Library of America series, so it is a handy size, packs a lot in (LoA uses thin paper, so volumes run 900-1000 pages), presents reliable editions, has a bookmark ribbon built in, is a durable, high-quality clothbound volume, and is a very good value. I've read a lot of Baldwin's prose, mainly about race in America, and find it eloquent, deeply intelligent, and powerfully moving. I had never gotten around to reading his fiction, but I'm very glad I got into it. I started with "Giovanni's Room," a short novel set in Paris. The narrator is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality--even just to figure out what it is. There are very luminous, very beautiful pages about Paris itself. The dialogue is engaging and intelligent--characters talk about their feelings as they struggle with what they want, what their deepest values are, and draw closer or farther apart in their relationships with each other. Baldwin is a very good, very thoughtful writer. I look forward to reading more of his fiction, and I particularly recommend these LoA volumes.

Powerful ideas and poetic language. I only wish he were with us today. His passionate fury was only surpassed by his loving forgiveness. Do yourself a favor and read as much Baldwin as you can...start with his “letter to my nephew” if you want a taster of his brilliance

James does such a great job on telling his stories that you feel like you are in the room with the characters....very few writers can do this as well. If you are looking to understand racism better or what it is like being a gay man before Harvey Milk read these stories.

I have this already but returning it is too expensive. I didn't realize it was the same until I took off the cover.

This is my first exposure to Baldwin's literature and am enjoying reading his work. My only criticism is as a senior citizen I wish the pages and print were a little larger. Though the book is easy to carry on trips, there is something to be said for a full size book.

Go Tell It on the Mountain - an excellent work revealing truths about race relations in the 30s (setting of the book), 50s (when it was written), Pentecostal religion in the black community and closeted homosexuality. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading his later works.

Beautiful stories by Beautiful James Baldwin! His stories applies today.

This is by far the most I have enjoyed Baldwin is a long time. Again not disappointed with the truth about the images that were real in his writings for a time past.

The writing in this collection of books is simply amazing.

Baldwin's best Volume 1. Be sure to get Volume 2 as well.

Due to the dedication and philanthropy of The Library of America this book is a forthright memorial and honor to the genius and hardship of Master James Baldwin. Thank you with a full heart.The book is the start of the full rich body of work which Baldwin left to us, the global public. A very fine artifact of genius authenticity.

James Baldwin is the best writer this country has produced. Get his books and read them!

Great book by one of America's greatest writers!! An inspiration for this aspiring writer!

Gift

Used for school

A Christmas present for my wife. She loves it.

Makes me wonder what reading this in the zeitgeist of its creation would have been like. It's masterful, even today.

Excellent stories from a legendary author. The book is also compact and easy to carry so I can read it at my leisure.

Thoughtful, intense and honest writing.

Very enjoyable reading. Also, James Baldwin is a great writer and I am happy with this book from Amazon. Thank you.

I bought this for Giovanni's Room which changed my life. We could use another Jimmy Baldwin now.

James Baldwin's writings and stories are beyond words - words that even he and all his greatness of word usage probably could not conjure up to describe the magnitude. The stories leave an imprint on one's mind, provokes thought and intrigues corners of the mind that one may not have known ever existed until reading Baldwin's Stories...

Excellent

Amazing

James Baldwin was a genius. An amazing read!

There isn't anything that James Baldwin has written, and that I have read, that I did not like. I feel he is such a wonderful author and some of the quotes and saying from James Baldwin are ones you can actually live by because they are so true. My favorite quote from his is “You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.”- James Baldwin I would recommend this book and any books or writings by James Baldwin as must reads.

Great package 📦 was brand new book was covered nice 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Of course this is great literature by an outstanding American author; we all know that. After hearing an NPR segment on Baldwin, I realized that I had nothing in my home library by him, a major oversight. The Library of America project's mission is to keep in print outstanding literature in a form that is affordable. I was happy to be able to buy their 2 volume set and begin to read and re-read these stories and essays.

I love James Baldwin and his works! So it was great to see a book that held many of his great stories all put together in one! Definitely worth the price.

Perfect

You'll never know if Baldwin's writings are trash or treasure because no one could ever read this tiny print. Back in the last century when there were 'telephone books," they were the standard for declaring a print size to be too small to read. This edition of Baldwin's work sets a new milestone for tiny print that is likely to stand for many decades.

Good

Beautifully written, almost like a symphony. Perfect

I havent had time to read it yet, but I have read his other books. He is a great author.

A sloppy writer and a poor storyteller. Too many false starts. Unbelievable characters. Unlikely associations. Baldwin seems to believe that what unites and potentially redeems individuals is poor behavior.

This volume contains Baldwin's earlier fiction. There is a second one with later novels, and an essay volume. His most famous book is probably the essay 'The Fire Next Time', from the times of flaring racial conflicts in the 60s. 'Go Tell it On the Mountain' is the first published novel. It deals with the life of an adolescent boy in a religious family in Harlem. The boy can't quite participate in the religious ecstasy of his people. He stays on the fringe. He struggles with his hatred for his stepfather in a violent family, and with his admiration for another young man in the church community. Strong work. 'Giovanni's Room' was a scandal for its open treatment of homosexual relationships. A young American in France has a fiancée, but also a young male lover, an Italian waiter. Things lead to no good end. I don't expect the novel to survive for centuries. It has flaws. I have laid them out in a separate review. 'Another Country' is set among artists in New York, plus a chapter in France. Musicians, writers, actors, painters have all kinds of relationships with problems. Gay, hetero, bi-sexual, all happens, and nothing leads to satisfactory lives or lasting happiness. This extremely condensed summary makes it look trivial. It isn't, but I also didn't find it entirely satisfactory. I have explained that also in a separate review. 'Going To Meet The Man' is a collection of 8 short stories. Some are set among the same people as Go Tell It On The Mountain. Fair enough, but not overwhelming; that cow has been milked already. Others are set in the world of Another Country: race, art, drugs, troubles in New York and France. That's a broader canvas. For me, the strongest story is 'This Morning, This Evening', about a black singer wo returns to the States with a Swedish wife and a little son after having lived for several years in France. His anxieties for his boy, based on his memories, are gripping and scary. Two stories enter new territory, the violence in rural America, racist and otherwise. Baldwin could have been a great short story writer, if he had tried. This collection is a bit short and uneven. All in all, I must fivestar this volume, despite concerns with the individual pieces. This is just too important for the history of American fiction in the 20th century to be excessively critical on a literary level.

James Baldwin is an astounding writer. He deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Faulkner, Hemingway, et al. -- in short, among the best writers America has ever produced. He is dazzlingly intelligent, perceptive, thoughtful, provocative, bitter, tender, and always astute. That being said, I simply could not engage with his final, sprawling novel, Just Above My Head, no matter how many times I tried. It just seems off, somehow: unfocused and uninhabited compared to his other works. But make no mistake: the novels collected here are eminently worthy of inclusion in the greatest work to come out of America. I would probably rank his novels in the exact order in with they were published, with his earliest works being his greatest, but nearly everything by Baldwin is better than just about anything else out there. He's a major voice, being finally given his due by virtue of these sets from the Library of America.

The book arrived in a very timely manner and in a condition; the book is the next best thing to being "new"...the. content of the book, meets my James Baldwin expectations. Thank you very much!

I enjoy reading James Baldwin's writings.

aside from any considerations of his significance (great) in discussions of race or homosexuality. Baldwin was a great writer and one comes away from this collection with many gifts.

James Baldwin along with Ann Petry were the two most successfull black authors of the mid 20th century. Their novels should be considered required reading in the study of modern American Lit.

The Library of America is engaged in publishing definitive texts of the best-known writing in the U.S. Including James Baldwin in this series - and having Toni Morrison edit these volumes - has generated considerable critical review. It is remarkable that James Baldwin can still exercise so much hold over us. Both the fiction and the essays have a kind of raw power: it makes us realize how sensitive the nerve of "race relations" still is. "Go Tell It on the Mountain" - one of the early autobiographical stories - has already become an American classic. Baldwin's homosexuality and his ambiguous feelings towards the white establishment makes this a painful coming-of-age novel. There is no easy access to some one so at-odds with himself and his society - and no greater rewards for anyone interested in the literature of self-discovery. These are fine volumes. They are well worth owning and belong on the shelves of anyone interested in American literature. Not all collections are worth having. The Library of America - and these Baldwin volumes - are worth owning, and they are certainly worth reading.

Absolutely, this book was a great purchase, and worth every cent. James Baldwin one of the greatest African-American thinkers, fighters for social justice and racial equality. A brilliant human being.

New

It was a real pleasure reading this book. It has the master's quality.

Interesting perception of the fifties/sixties regarding civil rights for gay and African Americans. Decided to read this following reading Baldwin s biography Excellent quality writing painting a very visual picture of the times. I don't usually read fiction but mainly regarding civil rights of the period. Will follow up with reading more of Baldwin s work.