In Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, James Baldwin explores the mind and experience of John Grimes, a young protagonist in Harlem. John studies the world around him, alert to its fragility, aware of its secrets and its dangers. In this talk, Colm Tóibín engages with the tone and style of the book, its narrative structure, and its focus on the past as haunting and strangely present in the lives of the older generation who came north in the Great Migration.

“Baldwin’s style could be high and grave and reflect his glittering mind,” writes Tóibín. “His thought was subtle, ironic, but also engaged and passionate. When he needed to, he could write a plain, sharp sentence, or he could produce a high-toned effect, or he could end a long sentence with a ringing sound. While the power of prayer is apparent in Baldwin’s language, it does not save his characters from having to live in history and inhabit a world that undergoes change rather than redemption.”

Presenter

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism, most recently On James Baldwin. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin, Los Angeles, and New York.

Few American writers have marked their era as powerfully as James Baldwin. As distinctive on the page as on the airwaves, his voice is indelibly associated with the demand for racial justice in the United States, a demand that continues to make him one of our most pressing and urgent contemporaries.

To mark Baldwin’s centenary, the Authors Guild Foundation invites you to join a conversation featuring some of our most exciting writers, scholars, and essayists as we gather to celebrate, study, and reflect on the legacy of Baldwin’s life and work.

The painting of James Baldwin in the graphic above is by Beauford Delaney and reprinted courtesy of the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), James Baldwin, c.1945–50, oil on canvasboard, 24 x 18 inches / 61 x 45.7 cm, estate stamp; Private Collection; © Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator, Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY