Two years before his death in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in France, I met James Baldwin, in Atlanta, Georgia, while on a speaking tour. Perhaps I find that with the French, who are my friends, a frankness, a sense of disrespect for things which are necessary for my life” ( Quotidien de Paris).ĢFast forward. There is something in the French character that makes me feel more comfortable than any other place in the world. Baldwin came to love France and the French: “I can tell you this,” he said twenty-nine years after his arrival in France, “each time I leave France, I understand why I live there. 1By the time I was twenty-four I had decided to stop reviewing books about the Negro problem – which, by this time, was only slightly less horrible in print than it was in life – and I packed my bags and went to France, where I finished, God knows how, Go Tell It on the Mountain.” James Baldwin’s frank declaration in Notes of a Native Son (2) begins a narrative of his adventures, misadventures, and reflections about living in France before he had authored the body of works that would eventually identify him to the French as a great American writer who “honored France with his presence” ( Nouvel Observateur 81).
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