Nothing Personal
James Baldwin
More of an extended essay than a "book" per se, this writing was originally published along with some artwork that a friend of Baldwin's had completed to go hand in hand with the words, but the editor and preface writer found this essay profound enough to present in book form, without the accompanying art.
I wish I could write solely about the essay, but frankly, the preface and the afterword overshadows the magnificent perceptive writing by Baldwin, by attempting to apply what he wrote in 1964 after the death of Medgar Evers to the Trump presidency of our present day. They attempt to ascribe some sort of prescience to Nothing Personal; in effect, making it very personal ... to them.
This dilutes the work itself, which speaks to a much more universal theme of the overall American character: our self-loathing, our inability to be truly honest with ourselves and our past, our inability to articulate what it is we truly long for.
While I write this, I think perhaps, then that the words written by the preface writer and the afterword are perhaps integral to that book, or that edition, to be more accurate. Their words are not as brilliant or as thought-provoking as Baldwin's, and it is easy to see who, of the three essays in that tome, is the true master storyteller, who is the true master of thought. It is Baldwin, and the others merely try to use Baldwin to defend the point that is emotionally painful to them in the here and the now.
But these times will move on. They will change. And if anybody reads this particular edition of Nothing Personal one hundred years from now, they will find that Baldwin's essay still holds some inspirational message, whereas the writings that bookend the essay will seem like antiquated rantings.
