Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for James Baldwin's "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone"
Get On The Train- To Black Liberation Struggle
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin
Book Review
"Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone", James Baldwin, The Dial Press, New York, 1968
Recently I started a review of a film documentary, “Lenny Bruce: Without Tears”, using the following lines that I found appropriate to use to set the same kind of tone in reviewing James Baldwin’s his 1974 novel, “If Beale Street Could Talk”. I also find it useful to do so here as well in reviewing "Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone":
“Okay, the average black male kid on the average ghetto city block today knows, and knows without blinking, and knows from some seemingly unspoken source deep within his genetic structure that the cards are stacked against him. That the cops, the courts, or some other part of the “justice” system will, eventually, come knocking at the door or grab him off the street for something, usually dope. The average Latino male kid on the average barrio city block pretty much knows that same thing, again usually on some bogus drug charge. And nowadays young black and Latina women are getting that same message coded into their psyches.”
And that sums up the message behind almost all of Baldwin’s’ best work, at least the message that will last and that should be etched in the memory of every fighter for social justice.
Now I have been, as is my wont when I get “hooked” on some writer, on something of a James Baldwin tear of late, reading or re-reading everything I can get my hands on. At the time of this review I have already looked at “Go Tell It On The Mountain”, the play “Blues For Mr. Charlie”, and "If Beale Street Could Talk. Frankly, those works, caught my attention more so that this work of "black uplift". Although it is well-written and powerful in spots it did not remind me why I was crazy to read everything that Baldwin wrote when I was a kid.
Why? Well, while I could definitely relate to the main character, Leo's, struggle to make a career for himself in the very white theater of his day and I could also sympathize with his struggle against the ingrained racism that he faced in daily life, even when he was successful, there was just a little too much self-satisfaction to move me into his direction. I will say that Baldwin's use, as on previous occasions, of the two-tier past and present interspersed literary format to tell Leo's early story (and his brother Caleb's and his white paramour Barbara's as well) and his current ill-health induced dilemma makes the novel move better than expected when I started reading the book.
That said, Baldwin is at his best when he creates situations where his characters have to confront the hard, hard reality of up-front racism in American. Little scenes like "being black" while in small town New Jersey, being black while in big time Broadway, and being black while dealing with a white (female) lover bring home the point nicely. And of those racial nodal points the strongest is when Baldwin has the bi-sexual Leo's male paramour, Black Christopher, who represents the "new" post- civil rights movement young black draws just the right historical parallel to the Jewish experience in World War II when he states, in effect- we will not go sheepishly into the concentration camps that the whites have ready for us when things get too hot. Powerful stuff. To bad it got buried in a story line that in the end has Leo traipsing off to Europe and not worthy of such insights.
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