Editing James Baldwin (section)

=== 1950s ===
In 1953, Baldwin published his first novel, ''[[Go Tell It on the Mountain (novel)|Go Tell It on the Mountain]]'', a semi-autobiographical ''[[bildungsroman]]''. He began writing it when he was 17 and first published it in Paris. His first collection of essays, ''[[Notes of a Native Son]]'' appeared two years later. He continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.

Baldwin's second novel, ''[[Giovanni's Room]]'', caused great controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Field |first1=Douglas |title=American Cold War Culture |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2005 |editor1-last=Field |editor1-first=Douglas |location=Edinburgh |pages=88–106 |chapter=Passing as a Cold War novel: anxiety and assimilation in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room}}</ref> Baldwin again resisted labels with the publication of this work.<ref name="Balfour">{{cite book |last1=Balfour |first1=Lawrie |url=https://archive.org/details/evidenceofthings00lawr |title=The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8014-8698-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/evidenceofthings00lawr/page/51 51] |url-access=registration}}</ref> Despite the reading public's expectations that he would publish works dealing with African-American experiences, ''Giovanni's Room'' is predominantly about white characters.<ref name="Balfour" />

==== ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' (1953) ====
{{main|Go Tell It on the Mountain (novel)}}
Baldwin sent the manuscript for ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' from Paris to New York publishing house [[Alfred A. Knopf]] on February 26, 1952, and Knopf expressed interest in the novel several months later.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=87}} To settle the terms of his association with Knopf, Baldwin sailed back to the United States in April 1952 on the [[SS Île de France|SS ''Île de France'']], where [[Themistocles Hoetis]] and [[Dizzy Gillespie]] were coincidentally also voyaging—his conversations with both on the ship were extensive.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=87}} After his arrival in New York, Baldwin spent much of the next three months with his family, whom he had not seen in almost three years.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=88}} Baldwin grew particularly close to his younger brother, David Jr., and served as best man at David's wedding on June 27.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=87}} Meanwhile, Baldwin agreed to rewrite parts of ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' in exchange for a $250 advance (${{inflation|US|250|1952|fmt=c}} today) and a further $750 (${{inflation|US|750|1952|fmt=c}} today) paid when the final manuscript was completed.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=88}} When Knopf accepted the revision in July, they sent the remainder of the advance, and Baldwin was soon to have his first published novel.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=89}} In the interim, Baldwin published excerpts of the novel in two publications: one excerpt was published as "Exodus" in ''[[American Mercury]]'' and the other as "Roy's Wound" in ''[[New World Writing]]''.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=89}} Baldwin set sail back to Europe on August 28 and ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' was published in May 1953.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=89}}

''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' was the product of years of work and exploratory writing since his first attempt at a novel in 1938.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}} In rejecting the ideological manacles of protest literature and the presupposition he thought inherent to such works that "in Negro life there exists no tradition, no field of manners, no possibility of ritual or intercourse", Baldwin sought in ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' to emphasize that the core of the problem was "not that the Negro has no tradition but that there has as yet arrived no sensibility sufficiently profound and tough to make this tradition articulate."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=91}} Baldwin biographer [[David Leeming]] draws parallels between ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' and [[James Joyce]]'s 1916 ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'': to "encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|pp=64, 92}} Baldwin himself drew parallels between Joyce's flight from his native [[Ireland]] and his own run from Harlem, and Baldwin read Joyce's tome in Paris in 1950, however, in Baldwin's ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'', it would be the Black American "uncreated conscience" at the heart of the project.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|pp=91–92}}

The novel is a [[bildungsroman]] that explores the inward struggles of protagonist John Grimes, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Grimes, to claim his own soul as it lies on the "[[Matthew 3:12|threshing floor]]"—a clear allusion to another John: [[John the Baptist|the Baptist]], born of another [[Elizabeth (biblical figure)|Elizabeth]].{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}} John's struggle is a metaphor for Baldwin's own struggle between escaping the history and heritage that made him, awful though it may be, and plunging deeper into that heritage, to the bottom of his people's sorrows, before he can shrug off his psychic chains, "climb the mountain", and free himself.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}} John's family members and most of the characters in the novel are blown north in the winds of the Great Migration in search of the [[American Dream]] and all are stifled.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=93}} Florence, Elizabeth, and Gabriel are denied love's reach because racism assured that they could not muster the kind of self-respect that love requires.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=93}} Racism drives Elizabeth's lover, Richard, to suicide—Richard will not be the last Baldwin character to die thus for that same reason.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}} Florence's lover Frank is destroyed by searing self-hatred of his own Blackness.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}} Gabriel's abuse of the women in his life is downstream from his society's emasculation of him, with mealy-mouthed religiosity only a hypocritical cover.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=92}}

The phrase "in my father's house" and various similar formulations appear throughout ''Go Tell It on the Mountain'' and was even an early title for the novel.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=91}} The house is a metaphor at several levels of generality: for his own family's apartment in Harlem, for Harlem taken as a whole, for America and its history, and for the "deep heart's core".{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=91}} John's departure from the agony that reigned in his father's house, particularly the historical sources of the family's privations, came through a [[Conversion narrative|conversion experience]].{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=93}} "Who are these? Who are they?" John cries out when he sees a mass of faces as he descends to the threshing floor: 'They were the despised and rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth's offscouring; and he was in their company, and they would swallow up his soul."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=94}} John wants desperately to escape the threshing floor, but "[t]hen John saw the Lord" and "a sweetness" filled him.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=94}} The midwife of John's conversion is Elisha, the voice of love that had followed him throughout the experience, and whose body filled John with "a wild delight".{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=94}} Thus comes the wisdom that would define Baldwin's philosophy: per biographer David Leeming: "salvation from the chains and fetters—the self-hatred and the other effects—of historical racism could come only from love."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=94}}

==== ''Notes of a Native Son'' (1955) ====
{{main|Notes of a Native Son}}
Baldwin's friend from high school, Sol Stein, encouraged Baldwin to publish an essay collection reflecting on his work thus far.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=105}} Originally, Baldwin was reluctant, saying he was "too young to publish my memoirs."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=105}} but he nevertheless produced a collection, ''Notes of a Native Son,'' that was published in 1955.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=105}} The book contained practically all of the major themes that run through his work: searching for self when racial myths cloud reality; accepting an inheritance ("the conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American"); claiming a birthright ("my birthright was vast, connecting me to all that lives, and to everyone, forever"); the artist's loneliness; love's urgency.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|pp=105–106}} All the essays in ''Notes'' were published between 1948 and 1955 in ''Commentary'', ''The New Leader'', ''Partisan Review'', ''The Reporter'', and ''Harper's Magazine''.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=106}} The essays rely on autobiographical detail to convey Baldwin's arguments, as all of Baldwin's work does.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=106}} ''Notes'' was Baldwin's first introduction to many white Americans and it became their reference point for his work: Baldwin was often asked: "Why don't you write more essays like the ones in ''Notes of a Native Son''?"{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=106}} The collection's title alludes to both Richard Wright's ''Native Son'' and the work of one of Baldwin's favorite writers, [[Henry James]]'s ''[[Notes of a Son and Brother]]''.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=107}}

''Notes of a Native Son'' is divided into three parts: the first part deals with Black identity as artist and human; the second part addresses Black life in America, including what is sometimes considered Baldwin's best essay, the titular "Notes of a Native Son"; the final part takes the expatriate's perspective, looking at American society from beyond its shores.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=108}} Part One of ''Notes'' features "Everybody's Protest Novel" and "Many Thousands Gone", along with "Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough", a 1955 review of ''[[Carmen Jones (film)|Carmen Jones]]'' written for ''Commentary'', in which Baldwin at once extols the sight of an all-Black cast on the [[silver screen]] and laments the film's myths about Black sexuality.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|pp=107–108}} Part Two reprints "The Harlem Ghetto" and "Journey to Atlanta" as prefaces for "Notes of a Native Son". In "Notes of a Native Son", Baldwin attempts to come to terms with his racial and filial inheritances.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=109}} Part Three contains "Equal in Paris", "Stranger in the Village", "Encounter on the Seine", and "A Question of Identity". Writing from the expatriate's perspective, Part Three is the sector of Baldwin's corpus that most closely mirrors Henry James's methods: hewing out of one's distance and detachment from the homeland a coherent idea of what it means to be American.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=109}}{{efn|This is particularly true of "A Question of Identity". Indeed, Baldwin reread ''[[The Ambassadors]]'' around the same time he was writing "A Question of Identity" and the two works share some thematic congeniality.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=109}}}}

Throughout ''Notes'', when Baldwin is not speaking in [[first-person narrative|first-person]], Baldwin takes the view of white Americans. For example, in "The Harlem Ghetto", Baldwin writes: "what it means to be a Negro in America can perhaps be suggested by the myths we perpetuate about him."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=107}} This earned some quantity of scorn from reviewers: in a review for ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'', [[Langston Hughes]] lamented that "Baldwin's viewpoints are half American, half Afro-American, incompletely fused."{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=107}} Others were nonplussed by the handholding of white audiences, which Baldwin himself would criticize in later works.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=107}} Nonetheless, most acutely in this stage in his career, Baldwin wanted to escape the rigid categories of protest literature and he viewed adopting a white point-of-view as a good method of doing so.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=107}}

==== ''Giovanni's Room'' (1956) ====
{{main|Giovanni's Room}}
Shortly after returning to Paris in 1956, Baldwin got word from [[Dial Press]] that ''Giovanni's Room'' had been accepted for publication.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=121}} The book was published that autumn.<ref>{{harvnb|Leeming|1994|p=124}}; {{harvnb|Campbell|2021|p=109}}</ref>

In the novel, the protagonist David is in Paris while his fiancée Hella is in Spain. David meets the titular Giovanni at a bar; the two grow increasingly intimate and David eventually finds his way to Giovanni's room. David is confused by his intense feelings for Giovanni and has sex with a woman in the spur of the moment to reaffirm his heterosexuality. Meanwhile, Giovanni begins to prostitute himself and finally commits a murder for which he is [[guillotine]]d.{{sfn|Campbell|2021|pp=108–109}} David's tale is one of love's inhibition: he cannot "face love when he finds it", writes biographer James Campbell.{{sfn|Campbell|2021|p=109}} The novel features a traditional theme: the clash between the constraints of puritanism and the impulse for adventure and the subsequent loss of innocence that results.{{sfn|Campbell|2021|p=109}}

The inspiration for the murder in the novel's plot is an event dating from 1943 to 1944. A [[Columbia University]] undergraduate named [[Lucien Carr]] murdered an older, homosexual man, David Kammerer, who made sexual advances on Carr.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=133}} The two were walking near the banks of the [[Hudson River]] when Kammerer made a pass at Carr, leading Carr to stab Kammerer and dump Kammerer's body in the river.{{sfn|Campbell|2021|p=108}} To Baldwin's relief, the reviews of ''Giovanni's Room'' were positive, and his family did not criticize the subject matter.{{sfn|Leeming|1994|p=134}}