Knowing Who You Are: <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nJames Baldwin on <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nthe Empathic Rewards of<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n Reading and <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nWhat It Means <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nto Be an Artist<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n\u201cAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.
\nHis role is to make you realize the doom and glory
\nof knowing who you are and what you are.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BY MARIA POPOVA<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n <\/p>\n
\u201cA society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin<\/strong> (August 2, 1924\u2013December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay \u201cThe Creative Process.\u201d<\/a> By then, he was already one of America\u2019s most celebrated writers \u2014 an artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity, and integrity of conviction.<\/span><\/p>\nOn May 17, 1963, Baldwin appeared on the cover of TIME<\/em>magazine as part of a major story titled \u201cNation: The Root of the Negro Problem,\u201d whose lead sentence read: \u201cAt the root of the Negro problem is the necessity of the white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to live with himself.\u201d Although Baldwin\u2019s civil rights advocacy was the focus, the piece shone a sidewise gleam on Baldwin the artist and raised the broader question of the writer\u2019s role in society.<\/span><\/p>\nThe following week, the May 24 issue<\/a> of LIFE<\/em> magazine \u2014 which was owned by the same company \u2014 built on that cultural momentum with an extensive profile of him by journalist Jane Howard, where under the dated title \u201cTelling Talk from a Negro Writer\u201d Baldwin\u2019s timeless wisdom on life and art unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"James](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/JamesBaldwin-01.jpg\")
<\/a>James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nThe lengthy profile is divided into several sections covering different aspects of his life and views. Beneath the spectacular subhead \u201cDoom and glory of knowing who you are,\u201d Baldwin \u2014 who had read his way from Harlem to literary celebrity<\/a> \u2014 considers the unparalleled empathic gift of reading:<\/span><\/p>\nYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nA year after he formulated his abiding ideas on the artist\u2019s role as a disruptor of society<\/a>, and more than a century after Emerson insisted that \u201conly as far as [people] are unsettled is there any hope for them,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin considers this vital commitment to generative unsettlement as the central animating force of the creative spirit:<\/span><\/p>\nAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can<\/em> tell, what it is like to be alive. All I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I\u2019m not trying to solve anybody\u2019s problems, not even my own. I\u2019m just trying to outline what the problems are.<\/span><\/p>\nI want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nTwo decades before he shared his advice on being a writer<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>, Baldwin reflects on the inevitability of the calling:<\/span><\/p>\nThe terrible thing about being a writer is that you don\u2019t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"James](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/JamesBaldwin-02.jpg\")
<\/a>James Baldwin writing<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nEchoing what E.E. Cummings wryly termed \u201cthe agony of the Artist with capital A,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin adds:<\/span><\/p>\nIn this country \u2026 if you\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re guilty of a crime: not that you\u2019re aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don\u2019t admit are there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nComplement with Baldwin on the artist\u2019s struggle for integrity<\/a>, freedom and how we imprison ourselves<\/a>, and the writer\u2019s responsibility in a divided society<\/a>, then revisit his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art<\/a>, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness<\/a>, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
the Empathic Rewards of<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n Reading and <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nWhat It Means <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nto Be an Artist<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n\u201cAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.
\nHis role is to make you realize the doom and glory
\nof knowing who you are and what you are.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BY MARIA POPOVA<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n <\/p>\n
\u201cA society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin<\/strong> (August 2, 1924\u2013December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay \u201cThe Creative Process.\u201d<\/a> By then, he was already one of America\u2019s most celebrated writers \u2014 an artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity, and integrity of conviction.<\/span><\/p>\nOn May 17, 1963, Baldwin appeared on the cover of TIME<\/em>magazine as part of a major story titled \u201cNation: The Root of the Negro Problem,\u201d whose lead sentence read: \u201cAt the root of the Negro problem is the necessity of the white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to live with himself.\u201d Although Baldwin\u2019s civil rights advocacy was the focus, the piece shone a sidewise gleam on Baldwin the artist and raised the broader question of the writer\u2019s role in society.<\/span><\/p>\nThe following week, the May 24 issue<\/a> of LIFE<\/em> magazine \u2014 which was owned by the same company \u2014 built on that cultural momentum with an extensive profile of him by journalist Jane Howard, where under the dated title \u201cTelling Talk from a Negro Writer\u201d Baldwin\u2019s timeless wisdom on life and art unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nThe lengthy profile is divided into several sections covering different aspects of his life and views. Beneath the spectacular subhead \u201cDoom and glory of knowing who you are,\u201d Baldwin \u2014 who had read his way from Harlem to literary celebrity<\/a> \u2014 considers the unparalleled empathic gift of reading:<\/span><\/p>\nYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nA year after he formulated his abiding ideas on the artist\u2019s role as a disruptor of society<\/a>, and more than a century after Emerson insisted that \u201conly as far as [people] are unsettled is there any hope for them,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin considers this vital commitment to generative unsettlement as the central animating force of the creative spirit:<\/span><\/p>\nAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can<\/em> tell, what it is like to be alive. All I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I\u2019m not trying to solve anybody\u2019s problems, not even my own. I\u2019m just trying to outline what the problems are.<\/span><\/p>\nI want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nTwo decades before he shared his advice on being a writer<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>, Baldwin reflects on the inevitability of the calling:<\/span><\/p>\nThe terrible thing about being a writer is that you don\u2019t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>James Baldwin writing<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nEchoing what E.E. Cummings wryly termed \u201cthe agony of the Artist with capital A,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin adds:<\/span><\/p>\nIn this country \u2026 if you\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re guilty of a crime: not that you\u2019re aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don\u2019t admit are there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nComplement with Baldwin on the artist\u2019s struggle for integrity<\/a>, freedom and how we imprison ourselves<\/a>, and the writer\u2019s responsibility in a divided society<\/a>, then revisit his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art<\/a>, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness<\/a>, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What It Means <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nto Be an Artist<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n\u201cAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.
\nHis role is to make you realize the doom and glory
\nof knowing who you are and what you are.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BY MARIA POPOVA<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n <\/p>\n
\u201cA society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin<\/strong> (August 2, 1924\u2013December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay \u201cThe Creative Process.\u201d<\/a> By then, he was already one of America\u2019s most celebrated writers \u2014 an artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity, and integrity of conviction.<\/span><\/p>\nOn May 17, 1963, Baldwin appeared on the cover of TIME<\/em>magazine as part of a major story titled \u201cNation: The Root of the Negro Problem,\u201d whose lead sentence read: \u201cAt the root of the Negro problem is the necessity of the white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to live with himself.\u201d Although Baldwin\u2019s civil rights advocacy was the focus, the piece shone a sidewise gleam on Baldwin the artist and raised the broader question of the writer\u2019s role in society.<\/span><\/p>\nThe following week, the May 24 issue<\/a> of LIFE<\/em> magazine \u2014 which was owned by the same company \u2014 built on that cultural momentum with an extensive profile of him by journalist Jane Howard, where under the dated title \u201cTelling Talk from a Negro Writer\u201d Baldwin\u2019s timeless wisdom on life and art unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nThe lengthy profile is divided into several sections covering different aspects of his life and views. Beneath the spectacular subhead \u201cDoom and glory of knowing who you are,\u201d Baldwin \u2014 who had read his way from Harlem to literary celebrity<\/a> \u2014 considers the unparalleled empathic gift of reading:<\/span><\/p>\nYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nA year after he formulated his abiding ideas on the artist\u2019s role as a disruptor of society<\/a>, and more than a century after Emerson insisted that \u201conly as far as [people] are unsettled is there any hope for them,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin considers this vital commitment to generative unsettlement as the central animating force of the creative spirit:<\/span><\/p>\nAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can<\/em> tell, what it is like to be alive. All I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I\u2019m not trying to solve anybody\u2019s problems, not even my own. I\u2019m just trying to outline what the problems are.<\/span><\/p>\nI want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nTwo decades before he shared his advice on being a writer<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>, Baldwin reflects on the inevitability of the calling:<\/span><\/p>\nThe terrible thing about being a writer is that you don\u2019t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>James Baldwin writing<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nEchoing what E.E. Cummings wryly termed \u201cthe agony of the Artist with capital A,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin adds:<\/span><\/p>\nIn this country \u2026 if you\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re guilty of a crime: not that you\u2019re aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don\u2019t admit are there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nComplement with Baldwin on the artist\u2019s struggle for integrity<\/a>, freedom and how we imprison ourselves<\/a>, and the writer\u2019s responsibility in a divided society<\/a>, then revisit his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art<\/a>, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness<\/a>, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.
\nHis role is to make you realize the doom and glory
\nof knowing who you are and what you are.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BY MARIA POPOVA<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n <\/p>\n
\u201cA society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin<\/strong> (August 2, 1924\u2013December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay \u201cThe Creative Process.\u201d<\/a> By then, he was already one of America\u2019s most celebrated writers \u2014 an artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity, and integrity of conviction.<\/span><\/p>\nOn May 17, 1963, Baldwin appeared on the cover of TIME<\/em>magazine as part of a major story titled \u201cNation: The Root of the Negro Problem,\u201d whose lead sentence read: \u201cAt the root of the Negro problem is the necessity of the white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to live with himself.\u201d Although Baldwin\u2019s civil rights advocacy was the focus, the piece shone a sidewise gleam on Baldwin the artist and raised the broader question of the writer\u2019s role in society.<\/span><\/p>\nThe following week, the May 24 issue<\/a> of LIFE<\/em> magazine \u2014 which was owned by the same company \u2014 built on that cultural momentum with an extensive profile of him by journalist Jane Howard, where under the dated title \u201cTelling Talk from a Negro Writer\u201d Baldwin\u2019s timeless wisdom on life and art unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nThe lengthy profile is divided into several sections covering different aspects of his life and views. Beneath the spectacular subhead \u201cDoom and glory of knowing who you are,\u201d Baldwin \u2014 who had read his way from Harlem to literary celebrity<\/a> \u2014 considers the unparalleled empathic gift of reading:<\/span><\/p>\nYou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nA year after he formulated his abiding ideas on the artist\u2019s role as a disruptor of society<\/a>, and more than a century after Emerson insisted that \u201conly as far as [people] are unsettled is there any hope for them,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin considers this vital commitment to generative unsettlement as the central animating force of the creative spirit:<\/span><\/p>\nAn artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can<\/em> tell, what it is like to be alive. All I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I\u2019m not trying to solve anybody\u2019s problems, not even my own. I\u2019m just trying to outline what the problems are.<\/span><\/p>\nI want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nTwo decades before he shared his advice on being a writer<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>, Baldwin reflects on the inevitability of the calling:<\/span><\/p>\nThe terrible thing about being a writer is that you don\u2019t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>James Baldwin writing<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nEchoing what E.E. Cummings wryly termed \u201cthe agony of the Artist with capital A,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin adds:<\/span><\/p>\nIn this country \u2026 if you\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re guilty of a crime: not that you\u2019re aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don\u2019t admit are there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nComplement with Baldwin on the artist\u2019s struggle for integrity<\/a>, freedom and how we imprison ourselves<\/a>, and the writer\u2019s responsibility in a divided society<\/a>, then revisit his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art<\/a>, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness<\/a>, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin<\/strong> (August 2, 1924\u2013December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay \u201cThe Creative Process.\u201d<\/a> By then, he was already one of America\u2019s most celebrated writers \u2014 an artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity, and integrity of conviction.<\/span><\/p>\n On May 17, 1963, Baldwin appeared on the cover of TIME<\/em>magazine as part of a major story titled \u201cNation: The Root of the Negro Problem,\u201d whose lead sentence read: \u201cAt the root of the Negro problem is the necessity of the white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to live with himself.\u201d Although Baldwin\u2019s civil rights advocacy was the focus, the piece shone a sidewise gleam on Baldwin the artist and raised the broader question of the writer\u2019s role in society.<\/span><\/p>\n The following week, the May 24 issue<\/a> of LIFE<\/em> magazine \u2014 which was owned by the same company \u2014 built on that cultural momentum with an extensive profile of him by journalist Jane Howard, where under the dated title \u201cTelling Talk from a Negro Writer\u201d Baldwin\u2019s timeless wisdom on life and art unfolds.<\/span><\/p>\n James Baldwin (Photograph: Sedat Pakay)<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The lengthy profile is divided into several sections covering different aspects of his life and views. Beneath the spectacular subhead \u201cDoom and glory of knowing who you are,\u201d Baldwin \u2014 who had read his way from Harlem to literary celebrity<\/a> \u2014 considers the unparalleled empathic gift of reading:<\/span><\/p>\n You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n A year after he formulated his abiding ideas on the artist\u2019s role as a disruptor of society<\/a>, and more than a century after Emerson insisted that \u201conly as far as [people] are unsettled is there any hope for them,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin considers this vital commitment to generative unsettlement as the central animating force of the creative spirit:<\/span><\/p>\n An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can<\/em> tell, what it is like to be alive. All I\u2019ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I\u2019m not trying to solve anybody\u2019s problems, not even my own. I\u2019m just trying to outline what the problems are.<\/span><\/p>\n I want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Two decades before he shared his advice on being a writer<\/a> in The Paris Review<\/em>, Baldwin reflects on the inevitability of the calling:<\/span><\/p>\n The terrible thing about being a writer is that you don\u2019t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n James Baldwin writing<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Echoing what E.E. Cummings wryly termed \u201cthe agony of the Artist with capital A,\u201d<\/a> Baldwin adds:<\/span><\/p>\n In this country \u2026 if you\u2019re an artist, you\u2019re guilty of a crime: not that you\u2019re aware, which is bad enough, but that you see things other people don\u2019t admit are there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Complement with Baldwin on the artist\u2019s struggle for integrity<\/a>, freedom and how we imprison ourselves<\/a>, and the writer\u2019s responsibility in a divided society<\/a>, then revisit his increasingly timely forgotten conversations with Chinua Achebe about the political power of art<\/a>, with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and the experience of otherness<\/a>, and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>