ON JAMES BALDWIN

Hearing an Irish-accented voice discussing James Baldwin might surprise the listener, but Irish writer Colm Tóibín's text soon makes the necessary connections. In fact, Tóibín winds up making meaningful connections between Baldwin and James Joyce, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde, among others. This is a serious and, at times, personal discussion of one of America's finest 20th-century writers. Narrator Gary Furlong's pleasant tone makes the interesting but sometimes complex argument easy to listen to. And the argument, although never explicitly stated as such, is that Baldwin deserves consideration not just as a great American writer, but as one of the great writers in English of his century. Listeners may not be convinced, but this should encourage them to go back to his fiction and essays. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2025]