The 941 Book CL-B: James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name (In which I question what I’m doing with my life)
August 18th, 2009 by Cooper Levey-Baker in Arts, Books, Editor's Desk
I’m going to start today’s entry in The 941 Book CL-B, which is supposed to draw on my recent reading of James Baldwin’s 1961 essay collection Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, with a totally unrelated topic: the recent film Julie & Julia. My wife and I went to go see the movie last week, and we generally agreed with most of the reviews that praised the Julia Child segments of the film and criticized the Julie Powell sections as trivial and uninteresting.
But the problem wasn’t just that Child was a larger than life figure while Powell comes across as a mousy bedroom blogger. It’s a bigger conundrum than just a question of this particular movie’s style. What haunted me all evening after seeing the movie was this: Our world is so intellectually degraded that a figure like Child will probably never again exist, and that if Child were beginning her writing career today, her ruminations on French cooking would be drowned out by a myriad of less talented voices who attract attention by simply shouting louder than all the others.
Based simply on seeing the film, what is the point of Powell’s blog? You can understand why she chose to challenge herself to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, but why record her banal thoughts on the process? Why does anyone care? Why does she not take Child’s mastery of French cooking truly to heart, and set out to become the master of a new, less widely known cuisine? The answer, I’m afraid, is that no one would care. Picture Child releasing Mastering the Art today: Can anyone honestly imagine a 752-page compendium of recipes flying off the shelves?
Which brings me to James Baldwin, and a big question I can’t answer: What the hell am I doing blogging about the books I’ve been reading? What the hell can I say in a short, quippy blog post that really adds anything? I could easily write about Baldwin’s perceptive depiction of contemporary American race relations and how things don’t seem to have really changed all that much on that front in the past 48 years. Or I could marvel at how Baldwin tells the story of his complicated friendships with Richard Wright and Norman Mailer. But what’s the point? Will it spur even a single person to pick up a copy of Nobody Knows My Name? Surely not. And unless readers are being turned on to my original source material, I’m not adding much to the discussion.
There’s been a lot of discussion about “saving” Sarasota News & Books lately, and I admire the effort. I want the place to thrive. But most of the commentary doesn’t focus on the really fundamental reason why the store is struggling: The vast majority of Americans have neither patience nor tolerance for real reading.
Do I sound hopeless about the future of intellectual engagement in an era in which Britney Spears saying the word “pussy” onstage is Creative Loafing’s most popular story of 2009? Well, good. I feel hopeless.
Upcoming entries in The 941 Book CL-B, if I decide to continue it:
- Jacques Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy
- What will land on this list next? Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies? Marilynne Robinson’s Hosuekeeping? Franz Kafka’s Amerika: The Missing Person? Richard Price’s Clockers? Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbo? Saul Bellow’s Herzog? Sophocles? Jorge Luis Borges’ Collected Fictions? Harold Pinter’s Betrayal? Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove? You won’t know unless you tune in, so to speak, next time.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Please keep up the 941 Book CL-B. Even if we don’t comment, we think about the book.
I vote for Housekeeping (so cold) and Herzog.
And don’t forget, while I love Sarasota News and Books, you can always check out the library.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:26 am
I know how you feel. I am a proud book absorber, I call it that because I normally read 4-5 books at the same time. Not literally that is.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Agreed! Keep it up! I don’t ever comment, but it does help me to choose my next possible reading selections. Another vote for Housekeeping.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:27 am
You guys are too nice. I’m in the middle of a couple books now, but after those, Housekeeping will be next in my queue.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:22 am
[...] really adds to the understanding of or interest in the books that find their way to my shelf. But then a couple commenters chimed in, told me to buck up and encouraged me to make my way through Mari…. Although I had to make a few detours before I got to it (had to review a couple other books for [...]