The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin (1985-10-03)
Categories: Books, History, Americas



ISBN-13: 978-0030055294
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0030055296
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Print length: 125 pages
Publication date: January 1, 1985
subtitle: Hardcover – January 1, 1985
author: Visit Amazon's James Baldwin Page search results James Baldwin
review: Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly The Atlanta child-murders case, in which Wayne Bertram Williams was arrested in 1981, is the focus of this short, maddeningly discursive book. At the suggestion of a Playboy editor, Baldwin visited Atlanta, attended Williams's trial and spoke to principals, but this book is not a work of reportage on the case against Williams. Rather, it is an extended essay on U.S. race relations. Often Baldwin is vivid and powerful, as when recalling the terrors of his Harlem boyhood and imagining poor black Atlanta children stepping into strangers' cars: "To be poor and Black in a country so rich and White is to judge oneself very harshly and it means that one has nothing to lose." Black Atlanta (its officials, the victims and the defendant) provides a point of departure for Baldwin's ruminations on deep and familiar concerns, but this book lacks the impact of his earlier works. October 31 Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Baldwin, James. The Price of the Ticket: collected nonfiction, 1948-1985. Richard Marek: St. Martin's. 1985. 690p. LC 85-11733. ISBN 0-312-64307-1. $29.95. essays One would wish these two works by America's preeminent living black writer to stand as further testaments to his literary powers. But both are problematic. The nonfiction collection, inevitably, is uneven: some of the earlier pieces are pretentious and self-conscious, but most of the volume shows Baldwin's brilliance in both insight and phrasing. However, the fact that virtually all of it has appeared before in hardcover limits the collection's value for libraries that have copies of the individual works. Evidence of Things Not Seen is an account of the Atlanta child murders and the alleged murderer, Wayne Williams. In fact, though, it adds up to a garbled, meandering set of generalizations about blacks and whites. Baldwin assumes the reader's familiarity with the details of the Williams case and the trauma that struck Atlanta, while making annoyingly unsupported general statements. He also, almost incidentally, asserts that the case against Williams was not proved. The Price of the Ticket is recommended for libraries weak on Baldwin. The self-indulgent essay on Atlanta is useful only to collections that insist on having his complete works. Anthony O. Edmonds, History Dept., Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind. Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.