The fire next time

Recently deceased, Baldwin lived a considerable portion of his life abroad, to extend himself as a writer and to alleviate the stifling effects of life as a black man in the U.S. Also an excellent fiction writer, Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time as a long polemical essay on the black person's search for identity of self and race in American society. His vociferous spirit is couched in luxurious prose.

Speakers or headsets will have to be turned up to listen to Jesse L. Martin's low, slow reading of Baldwin's classic long essay on racism and African-American identity. Martin seeks to be respectful of Baldwin, but he ends up rendering the meaning and the force of his work relatively inert. Pausing in poorly selected places, placing emphasis where little should be placed, Martin does not convey the precision and anger of Baldwin's prose. Instead, Baldwin's book becomes Great Literature, to be intoned and honored, but not truly grasped. Readers with an interest in Baldwin's work will be far better served by reading his prose to themselves than having Martin read it to them. A Vintage paperback. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with his eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Timestands as one of the essential works of our literature. James Baldwin (1924--1987) was educated in New York. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Another Country, and Blues for Mister Charlie. He has received many awards including the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986. Jesse L. Martin is an accomplished actor and singer of the stage and screen. He has spent nine seasons as Detective Edward Green on the perennial hit Law & Order. In the theater, Martin originated the role of Thomas B. "Tom" Collins in Jonathan Larson's award-winning musical Rent. He recently reprised his role in the film adaptation. An alumnus of NYU and a classically trained stage actor, Martin currently resides in Manhattan. "One of the few genuinely indispensable American writers." --Saturday Review "Searing...brilliant...masterful." --The New York Times Excerpted from The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.