13:02:18 --> 13:02:19 Francesca Rheannon: Okay, that's… 13:02:20 --> 13:02:22 Francesca Rheannon: Stop recording. 13:02:23 --> 13:02:24 Francesca Rheannon: Resume a call. 13:02:25 --> 13:02:28 Francesca Rheannon: Start recording myself. 13:02:28 --> 13:02:34 Francesca Rheannon: Great. Okay. Nicholas Boggs, welcome to Writer's Voice. 13:02:33 --> 13:02:36 Nicholas Boggs: Thanks so much for having me. 13:02:36 --> 13:02:40 Francesca Rheannon: This is your first biography. 13:02:40 --> 13:02:42 Nicholas Boggs: It's my first book, yes. 13:02:42 --> 13:03:00 Francesca Rheannon: It's your first book. It's very impressive and it's beautifully written. It's a labor of love and a love story in many ways. Or love stories. Why did you want to write this biography of James Baldwin? 13:03:01 --> 13:03:16 Nicholas Boggs: Gosh, that's a good question and a difficult one because I never actually wanted to write a biography of James Walden or, in fact, biographies were not a genre that I had really much familiarity with. 13:03:16 --> 13:03:34 Nicholas Boggs: But I did read David Leeming's really important 1994 biography when I was an undergrad at Yale. And when I read it, this was 1996, it had just come out a couple years earlier, I read about this children's book, this outer print children's book, Little Man, Little Man, that was actually at the Beinecke Library. 13:03:34 --> 13:03:54 Nicholas Boggs: And Baldwin had collaborated on it with an obscure French painter named Joran Kozak. And so I went and saw the book. It was a beautiful book. And then I wrote, like, the second email of my life to David Leeming, who was teaching at the University of Connecticut at that time, asking him if he knew anything more about Joran Kozak, because I suspected there was a story there. And he wrote back and said he never met him. 13:03:54 --> 13:04:08 Nicholas Boggs: He didn't know anybody still alive who met him, and he believed that he was dead. About 7 years later, I'm in New York, and I write emails to art historians in Paris to see if they know anything about an obscure, dead, you know, French painter. Yvonne Kozak leaving my phone number. 13:04:08 --> 13:04:24 Nicholas Boggs: And then I get a phone call in my studio apartment. It's a raspy, French-accented voice calling from Paris. This is Joran Kazak. I'm alive. Come over here and interview me. I have many stories to tell you about Jimmy. So that was the beginning of an effort to get the children's book republished, which eventually happened. 13:04:24 --> 13:04:36 Nicholas Boggs: And then many years later, and in the process of speaking to Joran Kozak, I began to realize that there were gaps in Baldwin's life story, and that is what drew me eventually to writing a biography. 13:04:36 --> 13:04:40 Francesca Rheannon: And first, just tell us who Yorin Kazek was. 13:04:40 --> 13:05:00 Nicholas Boggs: So Joran Kazek was a fascinating guy. Excuse me. Joran Kazek was a fascinating guy. He was a protege of Balthus, born in Paris, but then he went to the Villa Medici and sort of studied with him, was mentored by him. And then he moved, he stayed in Tuscany and lived off the land. He was in a ramshackle farmhouse with his wife, Beatrice. 13:05:00 --> 13:05:19 Nicholas Boggs: They had no electricity, running water, heat, and he really was an outsider artist. And this is, I think, part of what attracted Baldwin to him. They met earlier. They collaborated on the children's book in the 70s, but they actually met in the late 50s in Parisian-Bohemian circles, introduced. 13:05:19 --> 13:05:24 Nicholas Boggs: by their friend and common, the great African-American painter, Beauford Delaney. 13:05:23 --> 13:05:28 Francesca Rheannon: Yes, and of course, he was James Baldwin's last lover. 13:05:28 --> 13:05:46 Nicholas Boggs: His last great love. He had some lovers after that, but he was Baldwin's last great love. Baldwin dedicated the novel If Beale Street Could Talk to Him. He wrote a bunch of published and unpublished love poems to Juran. Some of them were published in Baldwin's collection, Jimmy's Blues. 13:05:46 --> 13:05:54 Nicholas Boggs: And he really, really influenced, um, his later novels, not just, uh, If Beelzeburg Could Talk, but also his last novel, Just Above My Head. 13:05:54 --> 13:06:10 Francesca Rheannon: Hmm. So a love story. You open with, and that's the subtitle, Baldwin, a love story. You open with an epigraph from Baldwin. Love is the only reality, the only terror. 13:06:10 --> 13:06:14 Francesca Rheannon: and the only hope. What does this epigraph mean for you? 13:06:15 --> 13:06:21 Nicholas Boggs: I chose this epigraph because Baldwin, all of Baldwin's work. 13:06:21 --> 13:06:39 Nicholas Boggs: was about love. All of his novels were love stories, okay? And his non-fiction writings, you know, political writings, were also about love. They were about how black and white Americans must come together like lovers in order to make freedom real and change the world. But he understood that this love, right, this kind of history. 13:06:39 --> 13:06:56 Nicholas Boggs: of black and white mingling, really, right, was a history of terror, actually, right? So he knew that love was terrifying, but it was also the only hope, right? He knew that in order to… 13:06:49 --> 13:06:50 Francesca Rheannon: Oh. 13:06:56 --> 13:07:12 Nicholas Boggs: Change the world, as he put it, uh, white Americans in particular had to get rid of this idea of, of, of innocence, this false innocence, this idea that they were pure and that there was no horrible history behind this country of violence against indigenous people and. 13:07:12 --> 13:07:29 Nicholas Boggs: kidnapping and enslavement of Africans. These were the histories that white Americans in particular, you know, had to look at, and face, truly face. But at the same time, he was also telling Black Americans in his essay, you know, The Letter to My Nephew, which is part of The Fire Next Time. 13:07:29 --> 13:07:50 Nicholas Boggs: he is telling his nephew, and the really difficult part, nephew, is that you must love these white people, right? Even though these white people can't really see you, or they misrepresent you, or they don't understand you, don't want to understand you, or themselves. So love was the key, and, you know, we can talk more about it, how Baldwin's journey to self-love was a very, kind of. 13:07:50 --> 13:07:54 Nicholas Boggs: precarious and difficult one, and that was a big theme in his writing as well. 13:07:55 --> 13:08:14 Francesca Rheannon: And such an important message at this time as well. I mean, not just that love is the way, but also that memory of the true story is so key at a time when we have an administration that is trying to erase that true story. 13:08:14 --> 13:08:29 Nicholas Boggs: Exactly. You know, I don't… you know, people sometimes say, oh, well, Baldwin is so relevant now, and he absolutely is, and that's a sad thing. At the same time, he's such a wonderful writer that his writing is timeless, so it's both timely and timeless. 13:08:29 --> 13:08:47 Nicholas Boggs: And it's still the test of time. His writing would still be taught and read and appreciated if we lived, you know, in a better… we were in a better place as a country and as the planet. But for better or worse, his words were, in fact, prophetic, and he still very much describes, like, the world that we're living in today. 13:08:47 --> 13:08:49 Francesca Rheannon: Yes. 13:08:49 --> 13:09:06 Francesca Rheannon: Um, so your biography organizes Baldwin's life around four consequential relationships. We've mentioned one. We actually mentioned two. Um, Yoran Kazak was the last. Um, Beauford Delaney was the first. 13:09:06 --> 13:09:14 Francesca Rheannon: Tell us about these 4 relationships of Beauford, Delaney, Lucien, Happersberger. 13:09:14 --> 13:09:18 Francesca Rheannon: I don't know how to pronounce. Is it end? 13:09:16 --> 13:09:19 Nicholas Boggs: Engeen Jazar. That's a tough one. Engeen Jazar. 13:09:19 --> 13:09:24 Francesca Rheannon: Engin Jazar, and of course, Joran Kazak. 13:09:24 --> 13:09:29 Francesca Rheannon: Why did you organize this book around those four relationships? 13:09:29 --> 13:09:44 Nicholas Boggs: So I organized this book around these four relationships in part because we have these excellent Baldwin biographies, a bunch of them. We haven't had, you know, a trade one in 30 years, but James Campbell and David Leeming and a couple of other folks have written really, really important and excellent biographies. 13:09:44 --> 13:09:51 Nicholas Boggs: But there were these gaps in particular around these kind of same-sex bonds and how they influenced his work. 13:09:51 --> 13:09:57 Nicholas Boggs: Um, and so it felt like this was one way, especially given. 13:09:57 --> 13:10:06 Nicholas Boggs: you know, the primacy of love in Baldwin's work to examine his life. Part of the challenge is that Baldwin was drawn to and involved with men. 13:10:06 --> 13:10:24 Nicholas Boggs: romantically who were usually involved with women. So, you know, how do you tell… it's not exactly a *** love story, because Baldwin himself rejected the category **** and these lovers certainly did. So, instead of sort of, um, shying away from that, I instead leaned into it and said, what happens. 13:10:24 --> 13:10:39 Nicholas Boggs: If we actually organize the book around these complicated relationships that were so central to his life and art. So Buford Delaney is the first one. He's an obvious choice because though they were not lovers, Buford is the painter that Baldwin met when he was 16 in Greenwich Village. 13:10:39 --> 13:10:54 Nicholas Boggs: And it was entering Buford's studio and being introduced to jazz and blues, which were outlawed in his home, that changed his life, as was seeing the paintings that Buford painted in his studio and understanding, in Baldwin's words, that a black man could be an artist. 13:10:54 --> 13:11:06 Nicholas Boggs: Buford became what Baldwin called my spiritual father. And that's part of what the book explores, is how these relationships may be ******* platonic, paternal, but also how they shift. 13:11:06 --> 13:11:22 Nicholas Boggs: throughout his life. These were relationships that he, you know, it's organized by these four chapters, but these men don't disappear. They recur throughout his life in this kind of complex kinship structure that, as he put it, saved his life. So Buford's the first one, and when Baldwin gets to France. 13:11:22 --> 13:11:47 Nicholas Boggs: He falls in love pretty quickly with a young Swiss man named Lucien Happersberger, and it's Lucien who takes Baldwin to his family's Swiss chalet, nurses him back to health, and it's where Baldwin discovers the title for his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountains, when they're off hiking. But he also is the only Black person for miles, but he's brought Bessie Smith records with him, and it's listening to her records in this, as he calls it, alabaster landscape, all this snow. 13:11:47 --> 13:12:04 Nicholas Boggs: that he finds the voice of his childhood and finishes the novel up there. In the process, he and Lucian also fall deeply in love, and they build this… and Baldwin would dedicate his next novel, Giovanni's Room, to Lucian. This was a dramatic and difficult relationship in many ways. There were several breakups. 13:12:04 --> 13:12:22 Nicholas Boggs: And part of what I was interested in the book, and part of why I look at these relationships, it's not navel gazing. It's these relationships help us understand his creative process. These breakups with Lucian were immensely creatively productive. He was able to write Giovanni's Room because of this. 13:12:22 --> 13:12:32 Nicholas Boggs: He was able to, you know, he also had other kinds of breakups we could talk about, with Richard Wright, that were platonic. That breakup is what enabled him to write his first novel. Um… 13:12:32 --> 13:12:49 Nicholas Boggs: Then the third figure, Angin Jazar, is somebody who actually played Giovanni in a Greenwich Village actor's studio, a sort of rendition of Giovanni's room. Baldwin fell in love with him, but this was, they became blood brothers, they called each other. They cut their arms and mixed their blood. 13:12:49 --> 13:13:05 Nicholas Boggs: And Baldwin ended up following him to Istanbul in 1961, where he finished another country. And this is important because Istanbul, there's been a great book about it by the scholar Magdalene Zabarelska, but many people don't understand that Baldwin spent most of the 60s. 13:13:05 --> 13:13:22 Nicholas Boggs: in Istanbul would come back to engage in the March on Washington, et cetera, et cetera. And part of what this shows us is how, you know, looking at these breakups helps us understand that actually, in these impossible loves, is that Baldwin had an impossible love for America. 13:13:22 --> 13:13:38 Nicholas Boggs: He was going, breaking up with them, going back, writing books about it. This was part of the structure of his creative process. And this was true, in fact, very much with the fourth figure, Joran Kazek. They collaborated on Little Man, Little Man. He dedicated the novel If Beale Street Could Talk to Him. 13:13:38 --> 13:13:53 Nicholas Boggs: And you see these beautiful love poems, and one of them was out of print and unpublished that I discovered, where we really get an insight into how this kind of yearning, connection, return, how this was part of the way that Baldwin lived his life and how he created his art. 13:13:53 --> 13:14:04 Francesca Rheannon: How beautiful. So, let's go back, actually, to his childhood, because it was so important, as it is with anyone in their formation, but in the themes. 13:14:04 --> 13:14:18 Francesca Rheannon: that we've already touched upon. Um, he grew up in poverty in Harlem under a domineering stepfather who called him ugly, and who was a preacher, and preached that white people were devils. 13:14:18 --> 13:14:27 Francesca Rheannon: How did that childhood shape both Baldwin's understanding of racism and his lifelong struggle to believe himself worthy of love? 13:14:27 --> 13:14:37 Nicholas Boggs: Well, I begin the book with this scene when Baldwin's been taken to see the film, and he's like 10 or 11 years old, and he sees Betty Davis. 13:14:35 --> 13:14:37 Francesca Rheannon: What the… 13:14:37 --> 13:14:39 Francesca Rheannon: Say what, Phil? 13:14:39 --> 13:14:55 Nicholas Boggs: Oh, "Sing Sing," 20 years in "Sing Sing," 30 years in "Sing Sing." And it stars Spencer Tracy and also, more importantly, Betty Davis. And he had been told that his eyes were ugly and that his mother's eyes were ugly. 13:14:55 --> 13:15:01 Nicholas Boggs: And in fact, that was a kind of a sign that he wasn't biologically his father. It's the eyes with the link to the mother. 13:15:01 --> 13:15:16 Nicholas Boggs: Baldwin had internalized this and believed it, but then when he saw Betty Davis's eyes, he realized that, in fact, his mother's eyes were beautiful, and that his eyes were beautiful. More than that, that his eyes could be powerful, that his strangeness, as he put it, his strange eyes could be turned into weapons. 13:15:16 --> 13:15:32 Nicholas Boggs: for witnessing the world. This was a very, very big moment for him, but it was still a longer journey to self-love. Buford Delaney was actually an important part of that. He painted these beautiful portraits of Baldwin in his teens that helped him see himself as a young man worthy of love. 13:15:32 --> 13:15:37 Nicholas Boggs: You know, but Baldwin was asked in an interview late in life, you grew up Black, poor, homosexual. 13:15:37 --> 13:15:56 Nicholas Boggs: You know, how was that? And what he said is, I hit the jackpot. You couldn't get more outrageous. And the material was phenomenal. He got to use it. So Baldwin saw… Baldwin understood, you know, that he came from a disadvantaged background, but he saw the advantages of this. He saw what he could see with those eyes. 13:15:56 --> 13:16:12 Nicholas Boggs: that nobody else could see. And the other interesting thing about it is, yes, he grew up disadvantaged, but he also had these incredible teachers who recognized his brilliance very early on. You know, he had read the Bible, the only book his house… was allowed in his house. By the time he was four, he'd read it. 13:16:12 --> 13:16:28 Nicholas Boggs: All the way through. And he had some Harry Beecher Stowe books. In school, when he met Bill Miller, the teacher who took him to the film, Bette Davis film, they were both reading A Tale of Two Cities, and he had all these smart things to say about it. His junior high school English teacher was the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen. 13:16:28 --> 13:16:45 Nicholas Boggs: Right? So, yes, he had some difficulties in his background, but he also, when hands were reached out to him by these teachers, he reached back, right? He was brave enough to do that. He was brave enough to go to Beauford Delaney's studio. He was brave enough in his teens. 13:16:45 --> 13:17:03 Nicholas Boggs: or late teens, to go and meet Richard Wright, the most famous living Black writer in the world. So, you know, I think that's really key to understanding, and it's also why looking at relationships in his life is so important, because it's these kinds of relationships. 13:17:03 --> 13:17:13 Nicholas Boggs: That he not only wrote about, he was all writing about human, the messiness of human relationships, but these are also the ones that saved his life, that made his art possible. 13:17:14 --> 13:17:16 Francesca Rheannon: Yeah, and um… 13:17:17 --> 13:17:34 Francesca Rheannon: You mentioned how he could see with those strange eyes. There's a lovely scene that you paint in the book between Buford and Baldwin when Buford. 13:17:34 --> 13:17:43 Francesca Rheannon: asks him to look at a muddy little pool in the street. Tell us about that, and what kind of a revelation came from that? 13:17:43 --> 13:17:59 Nicholas Boggs: This is a very famous story that Baldwin wrote about and also talked about a lot in interviews. Basically, they're walking down Broadway one day, and Buford, who often parables and aphorisms and is this kind of shaman-like figure. 13:17:59 --> 13:18:17 Nicholas Boggs: points down at a gutter and says, look, and what do you see? And Baldwin says, I see a gutter. And he says, look again. And when Baldwin looks this time, he sees on the surface of the water, the black water, like mercury, the buildings around them are being reflected back into something beautiful. This was a lesson in how to see the world. 13:18:17 --> 13:18:31 Nicholas Boggs: as an artist that he would use when he was writing. It really changed his perspective on how to create art. Those are the lessons that Buford gave him. How to look, how to be an artist, and also that, as Baldwin put it, all great art is created out of love. 13:18:31 --> 13:18:48 Nicholas Boggs: These are lessons that Baldwin carried with him to France, and then Beaufort eventually followed him there, and then followed him to Istanbul and the south of France. And it's just a beautiful example of how Baldwin lived this life. He loved his family in Harlem, but when he spent so much of his life abroad, he had to construct. 13:18:49 --> 13:18:55 Nicholas Boggs: These alternative families, really. And Beauford was sort of the spiritual father of that family. 13:18:56 --> 13:19:15 Francesca Rheannon: Yeah, and he ended up taking care of Buford as well, which I think is really lovely. Buford had some real challenges with mental illness, schizophrenia. And Baldwin returned that care that he had been given. 13:19:07 --> 13:19:08 Nicholas Boggs: Right. 13:19:15 --> 13:19:21 Nicholas Boggs: He absolutely did. I mean, he was devastated, devastated by Buford's death in 1979. 13:19:21 --> 13:19:39 Nicholas Boggs: You know, the reality is Baldwin died only 8 years later, and I don't think they're unrelated. You know, people often talk about how married couples might, you know, die around the same time, and this wasn't right around the same time. They weren't a married couple. But there was a way that he lost. This was the loss of his primary. 13:19:39 --> 13:19:55 Nicholas Boggs: partner, in a way. They were certain kind of life partners. They were committed to each other in this really deep and complicated way. I mean, Baldwin was actually so upset by Buford's death that he couldn't attend the funeral, and he later regretted that. 13:19:55 --> 13:20:13 Nicholas Boggs: But he… there were complicated reasons why he couldn't do that, related to other people saying that Baldwin had stolen some paintings that he hadn't, in fact, stolen. But the point is, this bond was so deep. And really, I think once Buford was no longer there. 13:20:13 --> 13:20:16 Nicholas Boggs: In a way, he felt like he had lost his North Star. 13:20:15 --> 13:20:32 Francesca Rheannon: And what's so interesting, too, is that this was not a ****** relationship, although what you imply is that Buford was attracted to Baldwin, but that he understood that Baldwin needed a mentor, not a lover. 13:20:32 --> 13:20:50 Nicholas Boggs: That's right. Baldwin talked about this. He never wrote about this in anything published, but he talked about it in a late life interview with David Leeming. In fact, that's available at the Beinecke Library. And he talked about that. And I think that's important. 13:20:50 --> 13:21:08 Nicholas Boggs: We live in an era, you know, where Baldwin was 16 when he met Buford, and he was 36, so people hear that, and they kind of, whoa, you know, he's a minor, etc. But there was no attempt on Buford's part to kind of have a ****** relationship with Baldwin. Buford was incredibly. 13:21:08 --> 13:21:15 Nicholas Boggs: recessive person, and he never really had a long-term or even really short-term romantic relationships. He, um… 13:21:15 --> 13:21:30 Nicholas Boggs: so, so it wasn't like an incident occurred. I think this is something that Baldwin felt ambiently. And it's true, later in life, Baldwin, uh, uh, Buford accepted this role, but he would get kind of jealous of, of Baldwin's, um. 13:21:30 --> 13:21:47 Nicholas Boggs: lovers, you know, in the same way that, you know, we can get jealous of our friends' lovers, right? If we… if they're spending less time with us, et cetera, et cetera. This is a natural… a natural thing, but… but it just points, once again, to the kind of, um… the various… the way that Baldwin's relationships. 13:21:47 --> 13:22:03 Nicholas Boggs: escape categorization. Remember, he rejected all these categories, black, white, **** straight, even male, female, later in his life. So his relationships, not surprisingly, also kind of escape the kind of categories that we impose on them. Now, even though he spoke about Yorin Kazak. 13:22:03 --> 13:22:15 Nicholas Boggs: as… that relationship as a marriage, in fact, even though Joran was married to a woman at the time. So, this was an unconventional life that he was leading, and all of these figures, Engin as well. 13:22:15 --> 13:22:27 Nicholas Boggs: had bonds with Baldwin that we, in our contemporary world, or even then, didn't really have the language for describing. And that was part of the challenge of this book, but also why I felt it was important to write it. 13:22:27 --> 13:22:40 Francesca Rheannon: Yes, and when you say unconventional, not unconventional in the sense of epithet le bourgeoisie, you know, the chaque de bourgeoisie, but unconventional because. 13:22:40 --> 13:22:44 Francesca Rheannon: conventions limit. 13:22:44 --> 13:22:46 Francesca Rheannon: Authenticity. 13:22:46 --> 13:22:53 Francesca Rheannon: And, you know, in my experience of Baldwin, there's a wonderful biographical film about him. 13:22:54 --> 13:23:02 Francesca Rheannon: You know, that I remember vividly. You know, his authenticity just comes through so, so vividly. 13:23:02 --> 13:23:09 Francesca Rheannon: And, you know, he was just no ********* Oh, well, there was ******** in his life. 13:23:07 --> 13:23:25 Nicholas Boggs: When it mattered, there was no ********* I agree, and he was a truth-teller. I think it's a reason why young people today are very drawn to Baldwin. You know, we live in an era where truth is so manipulated, and I think there's an exhaustion, actually, among young people in particular, but all of us. 13:23:25 --> 13:23:41 Nicholas Boggs: with being lied to and being manipulated. And that, you know, Baldwin was telling the truth. I mean, you know, he could also joke around and have some funny moments and all of that, but when it came to the big things, the things that really mattered, you know, how… 13:23:41 --> 13:23:47 Nicholas Boggs: We treat each other as human beings. He was always telling the truth. 13:23:47 --> 13:23:58 Francesca Rheannon: So now, I want to step back in time just for one more time. I'm a teenager, because I want to talk about how his… 13:23:52 --> 13:23:54 Nicholas Boggs: Sure. 13:23:59 --> 13:24:15 Francesca Rheannon: the faith that he grew up in and influenced his writing. He became, as a teenager, he became Brother Baldwin, a celebrated child preacher whose congregations eclipsed his own stepfathers. 13:24:04 --> 13:24:06 Nicholas Boggs: Yes. 13:24:15 --> 13:24:31 Francesca Rheannon: And yet, at the same time, he privately wrestled with his attraction to other males. The church seems at once to be a refuge, a form of repressing his own desires. 13:24:31 --> 13:24:34 Francesca Rheannon: and an artistic apprenticeship. 13:24:34 --> 13:24:36 Francesca Rheannon: Talk about that. 13:24:35 --> 13:24:52 Nicholas Boggs: Yeah, that's very, very well put. He captures this conflict in his essays like The Fire Next Time, but also so beautifully in his first novel, Go Tell on the Mountain, about John, who's a child preacher, much like Baldwin, who's wrestling with his desires for Elisha, another. 13:24:52 --> 13:25:05 Nicholas Boggs: young man at the church, boy at the church. And, you know, the church was so formative for Baldwin. He, excuse me, he became a preacher in a way to kind of one-up his father, right? And he succeeded at it. 13:25:05 --> 13:25:16 Nicholas Boggs: But it also was a way of not dealing with his desires, finding community, finding a place where he could connect with people without having to truly face himself. 13:25:16 --> 13:25:22 Nicholas Boggs: And he really had a crisis after he was, quote-unquote, saved. He was also writing for the school newspaper. 13:25:22 --> 13:25:29 Nicholas Boggs: And also meeting Buford, I think, helped him see another way. And he ended up leaving the church to become a writer, and then, um… 13:25:29 --> 13:25:36 Nicholas Boggs: He thought that the church was hypocritical, and that he was being hypocritical. Um, but interestingly in his life. 13:25:36 --> 13:25:48 Nicholas Boggs: He took the rhetoric of the church, and it thoroughly infused his nonfiction and his fiction in dazzling ways, but not just that, he also, in 1957, made his first trip south. 13:25:48 --> 13:25:49 Francesca Rheannon: Mmhm. 13:25:49 --> 13:25:54 Nicholas Boggs: And that is when he returned to the Black church, actually, to see Martin Luther King give a speech. 13:25:54 --> 13:26:03 Nicholas Boggs: He also met with Cain privately, and he was transformed by this experience. He was reminded of the power. 13:26:03 --> 13:26:19 Nicholas Boggs: of the church. But in these new ways, he saw, oh, you know, this church that he had left in this context with King was actually a powerful site of authentic community. And even more than that, it was the site of political mobilization. 13:26:19 --> 13:26:38 Nicholas Boggs: So this was a massive transformation. Before that, he was thinking of himself really as an artist, as a novelist, as a playwright. This was a moment where he understood that these eyes that he had, right, could be used and needed to be used to become a messenger. First, he called himself a messenger about the civil rights movement. 13:26:38 --> 13:26:41 Nicholas Boggs: And later, he would call himself a witness. 13:26:41 --> 13:26:44 Francesca Rheannon: Do you need to get some water? 13:26:44 --> 13:26:48 Nicholas Boggs: I have some right here, but I just have a little cold. 13:26:47 --> 13:26:50 Francesca Rheannon: Okay, so feel free. 13:26:50 --> 13:27:00 Francesca Rheannon: Yes, and that sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr, that was at the famous church in Atlanta, where King presided. 13:27:00 --> 13:27:14 Francesca Rheannon: As a minister, he heard something there that connected with his own developing moral vision that bigotry is a disease whose greatest victim is the bigot. 13:27:14 --> 13:27:17 Francesca Rheannon: What did that lead to? 13:27:17 --> 13:27:19 Francesca Rheannon: Baldwin to understand. 13:27:19 --> 13:27:36 Nicholas Boggs: I think this is something that Baldwin was already thinking and writing, especially "Stranger in the Village," that essay, "The Preservation of Innocence." He was already, you know, he had been writing about how white masculinity and whiteness were sort of… 13:27:36 --> 13:27:49 Nicholas Boggs: these repressions that, that injured the white person as much. But I think, I think when, when, when, when King said it, it sort of renewed his interest in the possibilities of, um. 13:27:49 --> 13:28:03 Nicholas Boggs: of understanding, again, that racism is a white problem, not a black problem. He's in this congregation, and he also… one of the other things that King said to his congregation was. 13:28:03 --> 13:28:23 Nicholas Boggs: Uh, yes, we know that white people are doing lots of messed up things, but we also have to stop, as Black people, stop accepting it, and tell them. Actually tell them. You know, you cannot be accommodationist down here in the South, or anywhere, towards white people. You have to say, you know, that segregation is wrong, and I hope you do something, as King put it, by tomorrow morning at 9am. 13:28:23 --> 13:28:32 Nicholas Boggs: So, I think he saw that, that, that, that this kind of, this move of convincing white people, right, that they were damaging themselves. 13:28:32 --> 13:28:51 Nicholas Boggs: as much as others, was an effective… could be an effective rhetorical strategy. It's something that he probably brought to perfection in The Fire Next Time, you know, the essay that landed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. You know, I think today, when we look back at it, it's interesting. It seems… 13:28:51 --> 13:29:06 Nicholas Boggs: as well as his call for his nephew, you know, to love white people. I wonder if Baldwin would, you know, would have the same approach, because that approach didn't seem to work so well in the long term. I mean, it had… there were inroads. 13:29:06 --> 13:29:23 Nicholas Boggs: But the persistence of division and racism in this country makes you think it's making it a calling. It is a white problem, but asking black people to love the white people who are still oppressing them. 13:29:23 --> 13:29:41 Nicholas Boggs: decades later, is a conundrum and a quandary, I would say. But it was certainly… and even later in his… in the 70s, Baldwin kind of made this turn away from this kind of Martin Luther King-style approach into essays and novels that were no longer really concerned with interracial. 13:29:41 --> 13:29:54 Nicholas Boggs: collaboration in the same way. Instead, he was really looking more closely at the Black family, at Black liberation, at Black communities in his later novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, Just Above My Head, and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone. 13:29:55 --> 13:30:04 Francesca Rheannon: And yet I still think that the approach that hasn't been done, and I think is important. 13:30:04 --> 13:30:06 Francesca Rheannon: is, um… 13:30:06 --> 13:30:11 Francesca Rheannon: for white people to understand how racism hurts them. 13:30:11 --> 13:30:27 Francesca Rheannon: I mean, taking accountability is key, but I'm not sure that deep down things are going to change until both, you know, men who ascribe to kind of toxic masculinity, which. 13:30:27 --> 13:30:42 Francesca Rheannon: you know, is the dominant mode, and also very linked in some ways to racism. I think Baldwin understood that completely, intersectionality, before that term ever came about. 13:30:36 --> 13:30:38 Nicholas Boggs: Absolutely. 13:30:42 --> 13:30:50 Francesca Rheannon: you know, I don't think things will change until they understand how diminished they are as human beings, and I think that's true for any oppressor. 13:30:50 --> 13:31:08 Nicholas Boggs: I think it's true. Baldwin has that famous quote that I'm gonna mess up, because it's a bit of a tongue twister, but it's something like, nothing can be… I don't know, not everything can be changed, but nothing, you know, you have to face it in order to have a chance of it being changed. And that is why this erasure of, you know, history right now. 13:30:58 --> 13:30:59 Francesca Rheannon: Okay. 13:31:08 --> 13:31:23 Nicholas Boggs: as we, as you mentioned, is such a problem, because we cannot face the past if the past is erased. You know, if the past is not, um, is not out there for, for us to, to examine, uh, in, in truthful ways. 13:31:23 --> 13:31:32 Francesca Rheannon: Yes, and also reason why this book is so important, just as a side. Yeah. Now. 13:31:28 --> 13:31:30 Nicholas Boggs: Well, thank you. 13:31:32 --> 13:31:33 Francesca Rheannon: Okay. 13:31:35 --> 13:31:47 Francesca Rheannon: Yes, I'm put in mind, in my next question, I'm put in mind of an interview, and I think it's in that movie, it's I Am Not a ****** I believe is the name of that movie. 13:31:45 --> 13:31:50 Nicholas Boggs: I Am Not Your ****** Raul Peck's excellent documentary, yes. 13:31:49 --> 13:31:56 Francesca Rheannon: I am not your ****** I am not your ****** exactly. Yes, um, that… 13:31:52 --> 13:31:53 Nicholas Boggs: Okay. 13:31:56 --> 13:32:03 Francesca Rheannon: His conversation with William Buckley, William F. Buckley. 13:32:03 --> 13:32:20 Francesca Rheannon: In there. Uh, not that Buckley was a liberal, he wasn't, but Baldwin was famous for saying things about America that white liberals didn't want to hear. That supposedly enlightened people were often just as invested in racial hierarchy as anyone else. 13:32:20 --> 13:32:22 Francesca Rheannon: Could you say more about that? 13:32:22 --> 13:32:37 Nicholas Boggs: Well, you know, he had an interesting relationship with white liberals because he was saying things that they didn't want to hear. On the other hand, he was saying things they did want to hear, which, you know, "The Fire Next Time" was such a sensation in part because it kind of towed that line. 13:32:37 --> 13:32:53 Nicholas Boggs: They did want to hear, you know, they kind of wanted to be, you know, told that they weren't doing the right thing, but that they could. This was what he was, you know, if the relatively conscious whites and relatively conscious blacks can come together. 13:32:53 --> 13:33:10 Nicholas Boggs: They can change the world. Of course, this is sort of urging white liberals. White liberals want to think of themselves as relatively conscious, at least, right? So it's kind of urging them to really meet the civil rights moment. It's a strategic move that Baldwin made several times. 13:33:10 --> 13:33:16 Nicholas Boggs: in his career in different ways, on television as well. Um, so, um… 13:33:16 --> 13:33:31 Nicholas Boggs: The problem is that it's actually, you know, after the fire next time. In his later works that I was just referencing, No Name in the Street, his essay collection in 1972, this is when he's no longer saying, you know, oh, you know. 13:33:31 --> 13:33:49 Nicholas Boggs: that's come together in these ways. He's saying, you have failed. You have failed to come together in these ways. And as he put it, how much time do you want for your progress? And this is part of why you see in the 70s, suddenly, the critics are saying, oh, he's lost his way. 13:33:49 --> 13:34:04 Nicholas Boggs: His novels are a mess. You know, he's repeating himself. Well, he was repeating himself because things weren't changing, and they needed to be said again. So, you know, his relationship with white liberals in that sense was… 13:34:04 --> 13:34:11 Nicholas Boggs: was evolving and complicated. With Buckley, that debate is fascinating because, you know, people are today. 13:34:11 --> 13:34:29 Nicholas Boggs: even more so than then, I would say, like, drawn to that because it's such a kind of amazing masterclass in code switching. He's moving between, you know, Black vernacular and the Black church and even, like, the King's English, right? He's out-Englishing the English. 13:34:29 --> 13:34:47 Nicholas Boggs: To me, what's interesting, though, is that our culture seems so fixated on that debate, when in fact, to me, what was, you know, I don't think that that debate was as important to him as it has become in our culture. If you think about the things that were happening before and after that. 13:34:47 --> 13:35:00 Nicholas Boggs: A few months earlier, his dear friend Lorraine Hansberry, who was a real socialist, right, and was pushing him to think in broader ways, she died of cancer early, at the age of 34, and he was devastated. 13:35:00 --> 13:35:05 Nicholas Boggs: just 3 days after the debate with Buckley, in what was a far more, I think. 13:35:06 --> 13:35:13 Nicholas Boggs: a life-changing experience, he gets the phone call that Malcolm X has been murdered. 13:35:13 --> 13:35:18 Nicholas Boggs: Those two events transformed him, especially the murder of Malcolm X. 13:35:18 --> 13:35:38 Nicholas Boggs: turning him… this is when he really understood, right, that this approach, this conciliatory approach, was not working. This is when he understood more and more that Malcolm X had some, you know, important points, and then later that the Black Panthers had some important points, were doing important work building Black communities. If the country was not. 13:35:38 --> 13:35:53 Nicholas Boggs: They were not going to do so. They were going to build the infrastructure themselves, right, to make Black lives viable. So the Buckley debate is very interesting. I think of it as a turning point, a kind of apotheosis moment for Baldwin of what Toni Morrison called the white gaze. 13:35:53 --> 13:36:08 Nicholas Boggs: Baldwin was writing in part for the white gaze, and performing for the white gaze through the 60s, but by the… later in that decade, there was this… this turn away that I described before that Baldwin is less well known for in the popular imagination. 13:36:08 --> 13:36:24 Francesca Rheannon: And yet the irony is that the assassinations of both Malcolm X, which by the way, hugely impacted me, I mean, I was still a teenager, but wow, more than… 13:36:24 --> 13:36:36 Francesca Rheannon: Kennedy, even. Um, and even more than Martin Luther King. Um, but anyway, that's an aside. Both assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. 13:36:25 --> 13:36:26 Nicholas Boggs: Hmm. Okay. 13:36:36 --> 13:36:46 Francesca Rheannon: came at a time when both men were turning more towards a class analysis of struggle than a racial analysis. 13:36:46 --> 13:37:01 Francesca Rheannon: And I have long thought that that was the real thing that led to their death, because I don't think their deaths were, you know, something out of the lone gunman out of the blue. 13:37:01 --> 13:37:08 Francesca Rheannon: You know, that's my belief. Anyway, I don't have any proof, but. 13:37:08 --> 13:37:22 Francesca Rheannon: It is in their willingness to begin to heal the divisions that the ruling class is so desperate to maintain in order to maintain its own power. 13:37:22 --> 13:37:24 Francesca Rheannon: What's your comment on that? 13:37:23 --> 13:37:39 Nicholas Boggs: Yeah, I mean, I think as soon as you start looking very closely at class or race, you see that they are twinned, they are conjoined. There's no way in this country that they can be pried apart because, for many reasons, but the slave trade is one of them. 13:37:39 --> 13:37:55 Nicholas Boggs: You know, that the way that that is a class system, class hierarchy, as well as a racial hierarchy, and the disenfranchisement that it, you know, puts into being, even, you know, post-emancipation. 13:37:55 --> 13:38:12 Nicholas Boggs: reconstruction, et cetera, et cetera, um, it does… if it's never truly addressed and faced the history of it, as it hasn't been, um, then it… that kind… those kinds of inequalities will… will always persist. So, for Baldwin, you know, and for… I think, I mean, for… certainly for Malcolm X, as you mentioned. 13:38:12 --> 13:38:18 Nicholas Boggs: The class analysis and the race analysis always have to be thought of together. 13:38:18 --> 13:38:23 Francesca Rheannon: Yeah, and I think that's why people use the term racial capitalism. 13:38:22 --> 13:38:26 Nicholas Boggs: Exactly, exactly. Important work. 13:38:26 --> 13:38:37 Francesca Rheannon: Yes. So in his final years, as you pointed out before, he settled in the south of France with Joran Kazak. 13:38:37 --> 13:38:53 Francesca Rheannon: What did? What was that household like? It became a kind of welcome table for many people and other family of choice. Could you describe that to him, and how you know his view of love. 13:38:53 --> 13:38:59 Francesca Rheannon: might have been informed or developed by that household. 13:38:59 --> 13:39:17 Nicholas Boggs: So Baldwin, as I said, Baldwin spent much of the '60s in Istanbul and directed a play there. And when he left there in 1969, he wasn't sure where to go, and he was very ill. He often fell ill when he was having sort of emotional difficulties. 13:39:07 --> 13:39:08 Francesca Rheannon: Okay. 13:39:17 --> 13:39:24 Nicholas Boggs: And his best friend, Mary Painter, and his agent in the Time Tree of French suggested he go back to Saint-Paul-de-Vence. 13:39:24 --> 13:39:34 Nicholas Boggs: And he stayed in a hotel, and then he saw a For Rent sign across the street, and it was this old Pied Noir, which is a white Algerian woman who was kind of… well, she was a racist. 13:39:34 --> 13:39:35 Francesca Rheannon: Mmhm. 13:39:35 --> 13:39:48 Nicholas Boggs: Somehow, he moved in to her house and rented a room, but she, you know, she put up a dresser against his door that came to the rest of the house. She was so scared of him. They forged this unlikely friendship. As Baldwin… 13:39:48 --> 13:40:02 Nicholas Boggs: often did in his life, actually. He was… Baldwin was capable of connecting with people, uh, you know, in bars and elsewhere, who were racists. And in part, he wanted to understand the way the racist mind worked. 13:40:02 --> 13:40:20 Nicholas Boggs: And in part, he really wanted to transform people, even on that sort of personal level with strangers. So anyway, eventually they became very close friends, almost family. He buys the house from her. He settles into this beautiful property overlooking the Mediterranean. 13:40:20 --> 13:40:38 Nicholas Boggs: And it's there that he really has a renaissance in the 70s, writes several works, and his lovers come visit him, his brother David comes and lives with him, Buford comes, you know, Josephine Baker comes by, Nina Simone, Miles Davis. It's like, it becomes this incredible, in fact. 13:40:38 --> 13:40:58 Nicholas Boggs: In fact, at a certain point, there are so many people coming there that he has to escape back to Istanbul one summer in the '80s or elsewhere. But it really became this kind of idyllic spot. He had written to Engin Jazar earlier in his life that his dream someday was to have a home, as he wrote, by the side of the mountain and the edge of the sea. 13:40:58 --> 13:41:13 Nicholas Boggs: And this is what he finally had at this home, in his home in St. Paul de Vence. And, you know, at the time of his death, he was working on a play called The Welcome Table, which you just mentioned. And this was a table where people would gather from all walks of life, his friends and lovers. 13:41:13 --> 13:41:30 Nicholas Boggs: townspeople, and have these kinds of meaningful conversations. Toni Morrison would come over as well. And so he was working on a play that was sort of based on that, and he had transformed himself into an aging blues singer, diva, Laverne. 13:41:30 --> 13:41:37 Nicholas Boggs: Um, and this play was never fully put on, but it was his last sort of completed literary work, The Welcome Table. 13:41:38 --> 13:41:40 Francesca Rheannon: And yet he died young. 13:41:40 --> 13:41:45 Nicholas Boggs: It's… he accomplished so much. I mean, having written this book, I always… 13:41:45 --> 13:41:49 Nicholas Boggs: I'm always shocked that he died at 63, because his life… 13:41:49 --> 13:42:07 Nicholas Boggs: was… had so many twists and turns, and he witnessed so many huge events in this… in the world. Um, and he wrote so many books that 63… but the fact of the matter is, um, he was very, very active up until the end. He was still writing, he was still thinking, he was… 13:42:07 --> 13:42:23 Nicholas Boggs: writing about the Reagan… the Reagan years, you know. He was writing, beginning to write about the AIDS epidemic. He was beginning to talk about it. And so, it is a, you know, a shame for so many reasons, but one of them is that, you know, he was writing at the end of his life. People wanted to say that he was passe, but in fact. 13:42:23 --> 13:42:42 Nicholas Boggs: he was writing about precisely the issues that we are, um, that we're dealing with now. What we think about is trans debates. He was really writing about, kind of, non-binary gender at that time. And he was also writing, uh, in his last non-fiction book about the Atlanta child murders, he was actually writing about the way that the media cycle, the way that it represented, um. 13:42:42 --> 13:43:00 Nicholas Boggs: Black people in ways that are very relevant now for sort of the manipulation of truth, but also the way that we are constantly desensitized to Black suffering through our phones, or the suffering of people with all these images that are sent our way. He was very interested in that phenomenon. 13:43:00 --> 13:43:15 Nicholas Boggs: actually, in the history of racism later in his life. So he, in fact, was not passe. He was, you know, people sometimes say, well, what would Baldwin say about today? And I said, well, it's not for me to imagine, but we don't have to imagine because he was actually writing about it. 13:43:15 --> 13:43:18 Nicholas Boggs: a lot of these issues in his later work. 13:43:19 --> 13:43:27 Francesca Rheannon: Well, it is just a terrific biography. It's a terrific read. 13:43:27 --> 13:43:30 Francesca Rheannon: Do you have anything else on the horizon? 13:43:30 --> 13:43:47 Nicholas Boggs: I say the paperback just came out and they did a beautiful job with it. It's got deckled edges and French flaps, so it's great for the beach. And it's a long book, so this is an easier way to carry it. So I'll be touring that book this fall. 13:43:47 --> 13:44:04 Nicholas Boggs: Um, the paperback, and I will never write another biography. I am one and done. No more footnotes. Uh, I, you know, this was an honor, an honor to write this book, um, but I can't do any better than this, so I'm gonna stop. I'll write other books, but I will not be writing another biography. 13:44:04 --> 13:44:10 Francesca Rheannon: Well, I look forward to the other books because you are. 13:44:08 --> 13:44:10 Nicholas Boggs: Thank you so much. 13:44:10 --> 13:44:19 Francesca Rheannon: You are a terrific writer, Nicholas Boggs. It's just been a delight to talk with you about Baldwin, a love story. Thanks so much. 13:44:19 --> 13:44:21 Nicholas Boggs: Thanks, Francesca. 13:44:21 --> 13:44:28 Francesca Rheannon: Terrific interview. You're really a great, great interviewer. 13:44:24 --> 13:44:27 Nicholas Boggs: Oh, thank you. Great questions. 13:44:27 --> 13:44:32 Nicholas Boggs: I'm sorry about my cough. I'm sorry about that. Hopefully you can edit some of that out. 13:44:32 --> 13:44:36 Francesca Rheannon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'll stop recording. Yeah. 13:44:37 --> 13:44:41 Francesca Rheannon: Yeah, it's really a wonderful interview. 13:44:41 --> 13:44:50 Francesca Rheannon: You know, there are authors that are very eloquent in their writing who cannot talk very eloquently. 13:44:45 --> 13:44:46 Nicholas Boggs: Mmhm. 13:44:46 --> 13:44:48 Nicholas Boggs: If it… 13:44:48 --> 13:45:03 Nicholas Boggs: This is true, this is true. I know that very well. But, you know, I think it's just, in a way, it's just because I've been working on this material for so long, you know, 20 years, 20 years, 20 years. 13:44:51 --> 13:44:52 Francesca Rheannon: Thank you. 13:45:00 --> 13:45:01 Francesca Rheannon: Oh, wow. 13:45:03 --> 13:45:13 Francesca Rheannon: Oh, that's not that long. I've been working on a book. I'm just now trying to mark it for 25 years. It is a long time, though. I get it. 20 years. 13:45:03 --> 13:45:04 Nicholas Boggs: Thank you. 13:45:11 --> 13:45:15 Nicholas Boggs: This is the writing life. It takes time. 13:45:16 --> 13:45:26 Francesca Rheannon: And gee, I was tempted to ask — well, to ask you this, but I'll record it on my side. 13:45:27 --> 13:45:37 Francesca Rheannon: Did you notice a change in the way in your fluidity with writing, or any changes in yourself in taking so long to write a book? 20 years. 13:45:37 --> 13:45:39 Francesca Rheannon: What happened to your role? 13:45:38 --> 13:45:54 Nicholas Boggs: Certainly. Toni Morrison has that quote, you have to write the book that doesn't exist that you want to read. And looking back now, I can see that that's what I have done. There was a book that I, you know, and I discovered David Li Ming's great biography. 13:45:54 --> 13:46:09 Nicholas Boggs: there was still a book that I… there was information I wanted that wasn't there. And I also wanted… I wanted to read a version of Baldwin's life that felt like a real narrative. Not a novel, because it's true, but, like. 13:46:09 --> 13:46:16 Nicholas Boggs: I wanted it to feel like you were there with him in the room. You were there with him in St. Paul de Vence. 13:46:16 --> 13:46:32 Nicholas Boggs: And so, to write that book, I had to become a writer, the writer that I was not 20 years ago. I had to learn how to write in these ways. So, certainly, my whole journey as a writer is completely bound up with… 13:46:32 --> 13:46:36 Nicholas Boggs: With this project and the need to tell the story in this way. 13:46:35 --> 13:46:46 Francesca Rheannon: Oh, that's wonderful. Yes. Okay, well, I have your email. I don't have my calendar in front of me, but… 13:46:46 --> 13:46:54 Francesca Rheannon: I will let you know when the show, when the podcast goes live, and I'll send you a link. 13:46:51 --> 13:46:52 Nicholas Boggs: Okay. 13:46:52 --> 13:46:53 Nicholas Boggs: Sure, there you go. 13:46:54 --> 13:47:00 Francesca Rheannon: It goes out to stations on Wednesdays and it podcasts on Thursdays. 13:47:00 --> 13:47:01 Nicholas Boggs: Great. 13:47:00 --> 13:47:08 Francesca Rheannon: But yeah, I will let you know, and I probably will also rebroadcast it for Black History Month, because I… 13:47:07 --> 13:47:10 Nicholas Boggs: Oh, great. Wonderful. 13:47:09 --> 13:47:11 Francesca Rheannon: Yeah. Okay. 13:47:10 --> 13:47:14 Nicholas Boggs: Well, thank you so much for having me on, and good luck with everything.