The Last Witness 

Colm Tóibín

On 1 February 2001 eight writers came to pay homage to James Baldwin in the Lincoln Center in New York. The event was booked out and there were people standing outside desperately looking for tickets. The audience was strange; in general in New York an audience is either young or old (in the Lincoln Center, mainly old), black or white (in the Lincoln Center, almost exclusively white), gay or straight (in the Lincoln Center it is often hard to tell). The audience for James Baldwin that evening could not be so easily categorised: it was, I suppose, half black, half white; half young, half old; three-quarters straight, a quarter gay. Also, there were a large number of young black men who had come alone, who carried a book and an aura of seriousness and intensity. There were a good number of writers. Some of Baldwin’s family was there.

The speeches made it clear that James Baldwin’s legacy is both powerful and fluid, allowing it to fit whatever category each reader requires, allowing it to influence each reader in a way that tells us as much about the reader as it does about Baldwin.

Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.

From the archive

Clinging to the Sides of a Black, Precipitous Hole
James Davidson writes about The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens by Danielle Allen

Writing about Shakespeare
Frank Kermode has his say

Where Does He Come From?
Sanjay Subrahmanyam: Placing V.S. Naipaul

The Shape of Absence
Hilary Mantel on The Bondwoman’s Narrative

Poisonous Frogs
Laura Quinney: Allusion v. Influence