Latest news with #JamesBaldwin
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Morrissey at the 3Arena review: Singer folds in four Smiths songs over chimeric evening
Morrissey 3Arena ★★★★★ 'This is not an hallucination,' Morrissey tells us, in case we were wondering, and yet tonight does seem strangely chimeric. In modern music, Morrissey remains something of an anomaly, perhaps because he remains so firmly himself; 'in my own strange way, I've always been true to you' he sings on the brilliant Speedway, backed by a band comprising Juan Galeano, Jesse Tobias, Camila Grey, Matthew Walker and Carmen Vandenberg. While Morrissey doesn't completely refuse the past (he folds in four Smiths songs), he is more interested in using it for inspiration and amplification, including visuals that survey some of his perennial obsessions: James Baldwin, Edna O'Brien, Brendan Behan, Dionne Warwick, David Bowie and Oscar Wilde. READ MORE And obsession is the touchstone for Morrissey, something he partly details in Rebels Without Applause ('the gangs all gone, and I smoulder on'), recasting himself again and again as the outlier and last man standing. His voice has always somehow belonged to another time. On One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell, he is the 'savage beast' with 'nothing to sell', and yet his voice, still so majestic, manages to 'sell' us, sweeping us up. On something like the stirring Life is a Pigsty, it is genuinely transporting, where he makes a song about 'brand new broken fortunes'. The reason Morrissey continues to intrigue is perhaps because he speaks to the disenchanted, tracing a thread from adolescence, with its heady sense of gilded possibilities to the often jarring realities of the world that is to come. And at the heart of his work is a sense of high idealism in conflict with crushing disappointment, from Best Friend on the Payroll to I Wish You Lonely. Morrissey's most affecting songs are steeped in a kind of faded romanticism, like the melancholy Everyday is like Sunday and the swooning I Know It's Over, with an accompanying image of Morrissey's late mother, deepening the impact. There is wry humour too, when Morrissey sings 'stab me in your own time' on Scandinavia, he tells us that 'some of these songs are tongue-in-cheek, but that's not one of them', before rampaging through Sure Enough, the Telephone Rings and its transactional tales. There is a swaggering menace to something like I Will See You in Far Off Places, which resembles a kind of warning bell. While many of his songs contain that sense of panic, he leavens some that convey uneasy resignation. This happens with the first of his two encore songs: Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, which has evolved into a sort-of lullaby, or an alternative anthem for doomed youth (and beyond), to borrow from Wilfred Owen. It leaves the audience bloodied, but unbowed, as Morrissey takes us into the visceral gut-punch that is Irish Blood, English Heart, reminding us that he will die 'with both of my hands untied', as if we didn't know already.
Forbes
2 days ago
- General
- Forbes
James Baldwin's Top Books, Ranked And In Order
American writer James Baldwin during an interview with Harlem Desir, founder of SOS Racisme, a ... More French anti-racism group. James Baldwin's books didn't just capture the American moment; they exposed it with a clarity that made the literary establishment flinch. Baldwin didn't compromise. Ever. That may be why America hesitated to fully embrace him. He refused the safe confines of literary convention, transforming every form he touched: novels with the rhythm of scripture, essays with the pulse of fiction and plays and poetry that preached in secular tones. His writing style fused biblical cadence with surgical clarity: at once prophetic and forensic, lush and spare. Baldwin's prose carried the conviction of a heretic who still remembered the heat of belief. At 14, he was Harlem's boy preacher, delivering fire-and-brimstone sermons at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. By twenty-four, he had walked away from the church—and from America—haunted by the sting of spiritual exile. That estrangement deepened as a gay Black man in a nation that demanded his silence and a literary world that preferred him sanitized. Baldwin refused both. He turned that rejection into agency, repurposing the sermons that once offered salvation into blistering literature that forced America to reckon with its own damnation. American novelist and activist James Baldwin addresses an audience in a church. Baldwin is most remembered for The Fire Next Time, Giovanni's Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain, works that didn't just challenge American complacency but shattered it with language as bruising as it was redemptive. His Malcolm X screenplay became the clearest metaphor for Baldwin's relationship with American institutions: praised for his vision, then discarded for its truth. When Hollywood altered his script into an unreleased documentary, Baldwin did what he always did—he published it himself as One Day When I Was Lost. In 1948, Baldwin fled to Paris not as an expatriate seeking adventure, but as a refugee from a country that demanded his silence in exchange for his survival. Yet exile became his greatest strategic advantage. From the safety of Parisian cafés, he could see America with the clarity that only distance provides and the intimacy that only love makes possible. He returned not as a foreign correspondent but as a native son armed with uncomfortable truths, speaking with the authority of someone who had loved America enough to leave it and cared enough to come back and tell it the truth about itself. To know Baldwin is to read him in order and trace the evolution of a writer who never stopped sharpening his pen or holding up the mirror. James Baldwin wrote six novels, seven essay collections, one short story collection, two plays and a screenplay. Ranking his work is inherently subjective because Baldwin wrote to disrupt, not to be categorized. But some works have proven more essential than others for understanding both the man and the nation he never stopped diagnosing. Below, I rank Baldwin's most impactful works, not by literary prestige, but by how urgently they speak to America's unresolved wounds. Baldwin's 'The Fire Next Time' is a non-fiction book composed of two essays written at the height of America's segregation era, yet they remain among the most urgent moral reckonings in American literature. The first, 'My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,' is Baldwin at his most intimate and searing. Addressed to his 14-year-old namesake nephew, it reads like a father's urgent whisper: survive this country that was built to break you. Baldwin exposes the psychological foundation of American racism: White Americans require Black inferiority to sustain their own sense of superiority. But even when he exposes that violence, he refuses to abandon hope. In the second essay, 'Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,' Baldwin turns inward. The boy preacher from Harlem who once fled to Paris has returned as a reluctant prophet, confronting a nation that has not changed and a self that has. His conversation with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad becomes a turning point. Baldwin is offered a clear path: Black separatism, but instead, he chooses something far more radical—the agony of hope. He demands that America become worthy of the love he refuses to withdraw. He loved America the way a parent loves a wayward child: with rage, yet tenderness. Baldwin delivered the moral blueprint for a Civil Rights Movement, one that demanded change, not reform. 62 years later, that challenge remains. Who should read this: Readers struggling to understand racial injustice will find Baldwin's clarity as necessary now as it was in 1963. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Baldwin's first essay collection established him as one of the most important Black intellectuals of his generation, one who was honest and refused to offer blind allegiance. Across 10 essays that blend memoir, cultural critique and social commentary, Notes of a Native Son introduced the style that became his signature: using personal experience to interrogate national failure. The title essay draws a line between the death of Baldwin's stepfather and the 1943 Harlem riot, bridging the gap between private grief and public rage. In 'Stranger in the Village,' Baldwin reflects on his time in a remote Swiss village, where the locals had never seen a Black man. The piece contrasts European racial innocence with America's violent history, showing that Black identity in the U.S. is shaped by intention and confrontation, not detachment. The collection also marked Baldwin's public break with Richard Wright. In 'Everybody's Protest Novel,' he criticizes fiction that reduces Black life to suffering or symbolism. In 'Many Thousands Gone,' he revisits Wright's Native Son, arguing that Bigger Thomas, as a character, risks reinforcing stereotypes rather than dismantling them. Baldwin respected Wright's courage but resisted the idea that rage alone could define Black life. The Modern Library ranked Notes of a Native Son among the top 20 nonfiction works of the 20th century. Who should read this: Writers learning how to transform personal experience into universal insight or readers interested in the relationship between individual psychology and social systems. Where to read this: Beacon Press James Baldwin Baldwin's debut novel redefined the coming-of-age story by grounding it in Black Pentecostal Christianity in 1930s Harlem. The semi-autobiography follows 14-year-old John Grimes, who is struggling with his identity as the stepson of Gabriel, an abusive Baptist preacher whose checkered past affects how he treats John and his mother, Elizabeth. Though the novel itself happens over the course of 24 hours, Baldwin employs sophisticated flashbacks that span 70 years to show how slavery's trauma has scarred successive generations of the Grimes family. There is a lot of emphasis on the American South, showing how the family's migration north carried their wounds with them and how geographic escape couldn't heal generational damage. Baldwin understood that trauma doesn't respect geography; it travels in the blood. The novel's religious framework allows Baldwin to examine questions that secular language couldn't address, and John's conversion experience on the church's 'threshing floor' functions as both religious awakening and psychological breakthrough—spiritual transformation and self-acceptance become inseparable. The biblical allusion to Matthew 3:12, where John the Baptist describes Jesus separating wheat from chaff, becomes Baldwin's metaphor for John Grimes's own sorting of salvation from eternal condemnation. Baldwin drew heavily from his own childhood while avoiding mere autobiography to create multifaceted characters. Who should read this: Anyone who grew up in strict religious households and struggled with identity or readers interested in how historical racial trauma can affect Black families. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Baldwin's Giovanni's Room is one of his most discussed novels because it represented his most daring departure, not from American soil, but from its expectations. Set in postwar Paris, the novel centers on David, a young American torn between the life he promised Hella and the ill-fated love he finds with Giovanni, an Italian bartender. The room at the novel's center is Baldwin's most loaded metaphor. Cramped, dark and steadily decaying, Giovanni's room, where the two men have their affair, traps David and Giovanni in a love that cannot speak its name and a shame that clings to the walls like rot. Dim, airless and increasingly filthy, the space becomes the physical embodiment of David's repression and Giovanni's despair. The novel is narrated in retrospect on the eve of Giovanni's execution and traces David's psychological unraveling as he fails to reconcile his desire with the expectations of masculinity. There are no Black characters in Giovanni's Room, which is a decision that stunned critics at the time and distanced Baldwin from the literary establishment that had already begun boxing him into the role of a 'race writer.' At the time the book was published, scholars believed that whiteness inherently meant heterosexuality and Blackness meant homosexuality. But Baldwin's point was clear: the act of repression, which is the cost of denying one's identity, goes beyond color. After the book was published, Baldwin's author photo was removed to obscure the fact that this bold, intimate, and unsparing novel about white gay men had been written by a Black man. It remains one of the most important novels ever written about sexual identity, exile and the high cost of emotional cowardice. Who Should Read This: LGBTQ+ readers seeking a serious literary treatment of same-sex relationships from the pre-liberation era and readers who are interested in how internal conflict drives narrative. Where to read this: Penguin Random House. James Baldwin knew exactly what he was doing when he titled his 1974 novel after a blues song. The story is simple enough to fit on a police report: Fonny Hunt, 22, a Black sculptor, is wrongly charged with rape while his pregnant fiancée, Tish Rivers, fights to prove his innocence. But Baldwin decided that simple stories expose the most complex truths about institutional power and bias. Baldwin structures the story around Tish's voice, letting her 19-year-old perspective carry the weight of institutional betrayal and injustice. She moves between the present crisis while remembering the past joy and showing how love develops, even when there is surveillance. Yet Baldwin refuses to let racism eclipse the love story at the novel's center. Tish and Fonny's relationship develops from childhood friendship into intimacy, and their physical connection is considered beautiful rather than shameful. If Beale Street Could Talk concludes without resolution; Fonny remains in prison as Tish prepares for motherhood, though their child represents proof that Black love creates futures despite every effort to prevent them. The novel's contemporary relevance became undeniable after Barry Jenkins' 2018 film adaptation, and audiences recognized the same patterns of institutional misconduct. This may be Baldwin's most direct political novel, one that uses intimate storytelling to expose systemic violence. Who Should Read This: Readers seeking to understand how personal relationships survive under systemic pressure. Where to read this: Barnes & Noble Baldwin's Another Country is a train wreck, overstuffed with ideas like a jazz improvisation spiraling off-key. The novel follows a group of Black and white, gay and straight, men and women—artists, lovers, misfits—trying and failing to love each other cleanly in a country that has never been honest about what love costs. The novel opens with the suicide of Rufus Scott, a gifted Black jazz drummer tormented by racism, poverty and shame. His tragic death pushes the story outward, tracing the impact of Rufus's absence on the lovers and friends he left behind, and Baldwin makes it clear that trauma does not stay contained. Instead, it spreads and affects outward. Every interaction in Another Country is charged with the awareness that something important has already been lost and maybe was never possible to begin with. What follows, subjectively, is Baldwin's most ambitious storyline—formally messy, emotionally volcanic and at times maddeningly undisciplined. James Baldwin in Paris with friends. At some points, the plot sprawls, but this formal messiness serves Baldwin's purpose. The novel's emotional register shifts constantly—from tender to savage, from lyrical to clinical. Baldwin captures the exhaustion of people trying to love across lines that America has drawn in blood. When Ida says to Vivaldo, 'You don't know, and there's no way in the world for you to find out, what it's like to be a Black girl in this world, and the way white men, and Black men, too, baby, treat you," the statement carries the weight of centuries, but Baldwin doesn't let it end the conversation—it begins one. Baldwin was trying to write the Great American Novel at a time when no one believed a Black, queer writer could do so, and he nearly pulled it off. The book is replete with interracial desire, bisexual longing, friendships strained by race, gender and class and the righteous anger of a generation trying to invent new ways of being human. To put it in perspective, Baldwin wrote about the price of denial in this book because every character in the story is running from something, whether it's their history, identity or accountability, and no one goes away scot-free. The novel is imperfect, but its imperfection feels earned and at times even necessary. Baldwin was attempting something unprecedented: a Great American Novel that refused to center whiteness or heterosexuality, written at a time when no one believed a Black, queer writer could claim that territory. Every character pays the price of denial—whether denying their sexuality, their racism, their complicity, or their pain. Decades later, Another Country stands as Baldwin's most ambitious gamble: forcing American fiction to confront the messy, painful, necessary work of learning how to love across the chasms this country has created. Who Should Read This: Readers who want to understand how Baldwin wrote about queerness and interracial relationships in 1962, when both were largely unrepresented in American literature. Where to read this: Barnes & Noble If Baldwin's first essay collection, 'Notes of a Native Son,' introduced him as a sharp observer of American life, 'Nobody Knows My Name' is where he starts aiming straight for the jugular. These 13 essays were written at the cusp of the civil rights movement, and they all show Baldwin testing and trusting his voice both as a keen observer and a truth teller. The writing is tighter, colder and more overt because he is no longer just describing the wound but also tracing it back to the hand that made it. The centerpiece is 'The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,' Baldwin's patient takedown of Norman Mailer, and, by extension, white liberal self-deception. And even though Baldwin doesn't cancel Mailer, he expresses his disappointment all while asserting that Mailer didn't mean any harm, because we know what comes next: good intentions that still manage to distort Black pain into aesthetic currency. His warnings about performative allyship feel eerily prescient, especially in a post-DEI era. Writer James Baldwin candid portrait session circa 1965. In 'Fifth Avenue, Uptown,' Baldwin walks through Harlem without flinching. There's no nostalgia, no romanticism, just one of the most damning portraits of structural neglect in American literature and Baldwin's observations on inequality, poverty and the visible filth lining Harlem's streets. In 'East River, Downtown,' he turns his gaze to the white bohemians of Greenwich Village, people who believe they've opted out of America's racial hierarchy. Baldwin's response? Not quite. His analysis also calls out how these well-meaning liberals construct theories about racial superiority while remaining trapped by the very systems they claim to reject. Even at his most scathing, Baldwin never pretends he's above the system he's critiquing. In 'Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,' he admits to the temptation of escape—of leaving the whole mess behind—but concludes that there's nowhere to go. The honesty costs him something. And he knows it. Some of the essays feel like sketches for The Fire Next Time—a few ideas half-formed, a few punches not fully landed. By the end, it becomes clear that Baldwin is not writing solely for readers, but rather because silence is no longer an option. Who Should Read This: Anyone tired of watching difficult conversations about race fizzle out before they begin. Where to read this: Penguin Random House James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues weaves together addiction, jazz, pain and estrangement to tell a story that is ultimately about how fragile, yet resilient, complicated family relationships can be. What keeps the storyline engaging is the conflict and silence between two Black brothers who love each other deeply but have never learned how to say it. But Sonny's arrest is just a trigger for the unnamed narrator because the real short story unfolds in pulses of memory, confession and sound. As the older brother tries to make sense of Sonny's life, he is forced to confront the pain in his own: the death of his daughter, Grace, the trauma of their childhood and the rage of watching your people suffer while the world moves on. The story spans just a few conversations, a walk through Harlem, and one unforgettable live performance—but in that small space, Baldwin discusses grief, race, masculinity, generational guilt and the high cost of survival. Sonny, a musician and recovering addict, becomes what Baldwin once described as 'the artist as disturber of the peace.' His drug use, volatility and music are all expressions of resistance, misunderstood by a society and a brother that values control and respectability over emotional depth. Readers soon learn that what makes Sonny's Blues so haunting is that the narrator isn't cruel—he's simply been taught not to feel anything and does not listen until it's too late. In the final scene, as Sonny plays jazz in a Harlem nightclub, his brother finally hears the music not as noise, but as testimony. The performance is chaotic, mournful and defiant. In it, the narrator doesn't just recognize Sonny's pain—he recognizes his own. At the very least, Sonny's Blues is about the lives we live beneath the surface, the stories our bodies carry, and the reality that sometimes, the only way to speak is to play. Who Should Read This: Readers trying to understand or relate to estranged family members they love, or anyone navigating a complicated relationship. Where to read this: Oxford University Press Baldwin's most unforgiving collection yet is eight stories that read like psychological autopsies of American racism. If you think you understand how hatred works, think again. In this collection, Baldwin maps out the exact neural pathways that turn children into monsters. The centerpiece, "Sonny's Blues," might be the greatest short story ever written about art as survival. A Harlem teacher watches his jazz-pianist brother battle heroin addiction and finally understands that some people don't use drugs to escape reality but to help them face it. When Sonny finally plays, pouring his pain into bebop, it feels like catharsis. But the real gut punch is the title story, told from the perspective of Jesse, a white Southern deputy who can't get aroused until he remembers the lynching his parents took him to as a child. Baldwin forces you inside the mind of a torturer and shows how racism doesn't just destroy its victims but creates monsters out of its perpetrators. The story ends with Jesse lost in a violent fantasy, his pleasure inseparable from Black pain. There's a rawness about this collection that makes readers understand that this isn't literature as therapy or politics as entertainment, but rather, it's Baldwin performing surgery on the American soul without anesthesia. Every story here is a map of desperation—heroin, music, violence, sex or God. Some paths offer release and others leave ruin in their wake. Who Should Read This: Readers who are ready to confront the psychological cost of racism, not just for its victims, but for the people who enforce it. Where to read this: Penguin Random House Bottom Line James Baldwin didn't just write about America—he performed emergency surgery on it. His prose cut through decades of self-deception to expose what lay beneath, and he forced a nation to see itself clearly, and what he showed us was so disturbing, we're still trying to look away. His work remains one of the most important of the 20th century, not because it's beautiful, but because it's true—and the truth, as Baldwin knew, is the one thing America has never been able to handle. What Should You Read First For James Baldwin? For newcomers, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955) is a great starting point. This seminal collection of essays has a personal twist to it that is complete with intelligent social commentary, laying bare the difficulties of race, identity, and belonging. Baldwin's reflections on his father's death, the Harlem riots and his experiences in a racially divided America provide a visceral understanding of the Black experience. Following this, "Giovanni's Room" (1956) offers a daring exploration of love, sexuality, and isolation. Set in postwar Paris, the novel follows the life of an American man grappling with his sexual identity, challenging societal norms and expectations. Baldwin's eloquent prose and unflinching honesty make this work a poignant examination of the human condition. What Are Famous Quotes By James Baldwin? 'Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.' - James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk) 'Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.' — James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son) 'The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.' — James Baldwin (The Devil Finds Work) Was James Baldwin LGBTQ+? Baldwin never allowed himself to be constrained by labels, yet his identity as a Black queer man shaped everything he wrote—and how he moved through the world. In novels like Giovanni's Room, Baldwin wrote openly about queer love and longing, long before such stories were welcomed in the American literary canon. In 2021, he was inducted into the LGBTQ Victory Institute Hall of Fame.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Move aside, Trump – here's the man who made conservatism fun
William F Buckley Jr was, above all else, a debater. He's perhaps best known today for jousting with the liberal writer Gore Vidal in 1968 during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. This formed the centrepiece of the 2015 Netflix documentary, Best of Enemies, and an acclaimed 2021 play by James Graham of the same name. Three years earlier, in 1965, Buckley also debated the novelist and essayist James Baldwin at the Cambridge Union on the motion: 'The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.' But many people, including me, have discovered Buckley through Firing Line: the television show he hosted from 1966 to 1999, in which he argued with a variety of distinguished public intellectuals, from Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky to Germaine Greer and Christopher Hitchens. In these video clips, readily available today on YouTube, he's both charming and ready to tear down his opponent's arguments. And yet he was also a builder, rather than simply a pugilist, and became the preeminent figure of the American intellectual Right from the moment he founded the conservative magazine National Review in 1955 until his death in 2008. In the late 90s he appointed the critic and journalist Sam Tanenhaus as his official biographer, after Tanenhaus had published a biography of the writer and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers with the help of Buckley. After more than two decades, we have the result: Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. It's an enjoyable and fascinating romp through American political and cultural life in much of the 20th century. And it helps the book, too, that Buckley had such a colourful personality. He possessed a peculiar mid-Atlantic drawl, very expressive eyebrows, and an idiosyncratic vocabulary. He made conservatism seem fun. Buckley was mostly raised in Connecticut, but he spent parts of his childhood in France and some of his adolescence in England. His first language was Spanish because he had a Mexican nanny. From such a worldly background, one might conclude Buckley was an urbane and jet-setting bon vivant. He loved sailing. He spent his winters skiing in Gstaad in Switzerland. He owned a maisonette in Park Avenue, and socialised with Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov and Charlie Chaplin. But this was only a part of him. He also passionately stood up against any liberalism and progressivism in a way that put him at an awkward angle to much of elite Manhattan's social life. His hostility to the Soviet Union was another essential part of his political worldview: throughout his life, he defended Joseph McCarthy and his campaign to expose the communists who had allegedly infiltrated the federal government. Anti-communist on foreign policy, libertarian on the economy and conservative on matters of society and culture: this triumvirate of beliefs did not automatically go together until the 20th century. And the fact that they seem to do so now – and indeed for many, constitute a definition of conservatism – is testament to the enduring influence of Buckley's colleague, Frank Meyer, creator of this 'fusionism' and also a founding editor of National Review. That magazine, Tanenhaus writes, was at the 'sharp advancing edge of an avowedly radical movement and its politics of insurgent revolt'. One of the things the magazine revolted against was the power of the federal government to impose laws on southern states against racist discrimination. During the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s Buckley stood up for the segregationist South. His parents, who were from Texas and Louisiana, 'came from segregated regions whose social life was shaped by the rigid formations of caste'. Buckley wrote an essay entitled 'Why the South Must Prevail' in 1957 in which he argued that 'the White community' in the South 'is so entitled [to discriminate against black Americans] because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.' For Buckley, this was not an issue of biology. It was to do with culture. White Americans were better educated than black Americans: this meant they should be entitled to greater rights. Later on in life, however, he expressed regret for his opposition to the civil rights movement, and said the federal government was ultimately right to enforce anti-discrimination laws. What, in the end, was Buckley's legacy? It does not seem readily clear after putting the book down. (Presumably Tanenhaus intended for it to be published this year to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Buckley's birth.) Buckley never wrote a great book. In the two debates he's most famous for – with Vidal and Baldwin – he humiliated himself in one (threatening to 'sock [Vidal] in the face' after he called Buckley a 'crypto-Nazi'); and definitively lost the other (Baldwin won by 544 to 164 votes). Many of the causes for which he passionately stood – on race, sexuality and the role of religion in society – have ended in total defeat. Buckley was on the losing side of the 60s revolution in terms of culture. But not politically. The final section covers his last 24 years – from 1974 to 2008 – where Republican presidents, galvanised by Buckley's influence, occupied the White House. And yet, ironically, it's the most boring part of the book. It's far more exciting to read Buckley as an opposition figure than in the role of éminence grise. He seemed most alive in the 60s: this was when he became a syndicated columnist; when he got his own show, Firing Line; when he ran for office as Mayor of New York. His instincts, Tanenhaus writes, 'were those of a public talker and writer, an actor and performer.' And yet Buckley's greatest resonance for our times came from his earliest political conviction. At 15, he presented a paper in his New England boarding school in which he proclaimed that, 'far from being America's long-standing ally, England has been to date this country's worst enemy'. Fascinatingly, this was a view shared by Buckley's greatest nemesis, Gore Vidal. They also shared a hero, the handsome and charismatic aviator Charles Lindbergh, who had warned America against getting involved in the Second World War. America, the advocates of this isolationist movement argued, should focus on its own security interests rather than being entangled in Europe. Their motto was: 'America First'.
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Korea Herald
6 days ago
- Politics
- Korea Herald
[Kim Seong-kon] We keep waiting for 'another world'
Everybody fantasizes about another world. We do so especially when we are disillusioned with our present reality. It is no wonder that amusement parks have places like Fantasyland, Dreamland or Tomorrowland. In his stunning 1962 novel, 'Another Country,' African American writer James Baldwin dreamed about another world where the taboos of contemporary society were absent, such as those prohibiting or condemning interracial marriage, homosexuality or bisexuality. He envisioned a country where racial, sexual and political biases do not exist. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the alternate world we fantasize about will turn out to be better than the present one. Although we now live in a world where the prejudices of Baldwin's time have themselves become taboo, our society is still far from paradise. Communism is a good example. When rich capitalists exploited destitute workers ruthlessly, Karl Marx dreamed about a paradise of equal distribution of wealth. Unfortunately, his dream, when made actual, turned out to be a nightmare of equal distribution of poverty instead. Still, however, we cannot help seeking another world where we can be happier and wealthier. When and if we are disappointed in 'another country,' we might begin to explore yet another 'another world.' Although our quest for a better world will continue, it cannot be forever satisfied. The same goes for the presidential election. We cast a vote for our future leader, expecting 'another world.' We hope that our new president will change the world for the better, so we can live happily and comfortably in economic stability and rock-solid national security. To our disappointment, however, all the previous presidents in our country have made us unhappy and miserable in one way or another, despite their merits. When we complain about the pain-inflicting president we have wrongly chosen, those who did not vote for him deride us, muttering, 'You deserve it.' In the past, some of our presidents wrecked our internationally coveted economy with their imprudent populism and misguided real estate policies. Others jeopardized our already precarious national security by steering the country in the wrong direction. Some of them used our country for the experimentation of their outdated socialist ideology and others were so myopic and parochial that they could not wrap their heads around radical and rapid worldwide changes. Some of them were so clumsy in diplomacy that they irrevocably ruined good relations with other countries, still others embarrassed us by their obsequious attitude toward the arrogant leaders of big, bullying countries. When we are disappointed in our current leader, we vote for another candidate at the next presidential election. Yet, the outcome is always the same. No matter whom we elect, he cannot meet our expectations. That means we will not be able to live in paradise for good. Of course, our political leader could make us live in a completely different 'another country.' For example, he may turn our country into a totalitarian socialist country that defies liberal democracy. Or he can turn our country into an authoritarian country where he, as a tyrant, dictates everything as he wishes and oppresses his people with secret police. Either would be a nightmare to us, far from a utopia or paradise. That is why we must think twice before casting a vote. A wrong choice will mar not only our beloved country, but also our precious lives. If we really want to live in an ideal society, we must choose a leader who exhibits decency, integrity and nobility. He should be honest, credible and reliable as well. That means he should know the weight of his words because we cannot trust anyone who keeps telling lies or changes promises whimsically. He should be law-abiding, too. Moreover, we need a leader who knows the world quite well and will steer us on the right path in the whirlwind of international crises. Some people do not want to vote because they are disillusioned with hopelessly low-level political skirmishes. Others do not vote because they are not interested in politics. Instead of lining up at the election site, therefore, they choose to go on a hike or fishing. At a crucial time like these days, however, we cannot give up the opportunity to choose the right leader who knows where to turn at the crossroads and how to avoid the crossfire between our neighboring countries. Some people may think that they have nothing to do with politics or ideological brawls. But they are wrong. In the American TV series, 'Into the Badlands,' a woman named Odessa says, 'I thought we could just sit back and let everyone else fight for a better world. But the fight came for me anyway.' We want a better world. We strongly hope that our future leader is a respectable, competent one who can build the utopian 'another world' we so desperately need.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Forbes
Istanbul's Foreign Literary History: 5 Must-See Spots For Literature Lovers
Exterior view of Pera Palace building which located in beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey. Most travelers think of Paris or London when conjuring up visions of the golden age of the literary scene in Europe—but Istanbul has equally deep roots when it comes to being a safe-haven for writers and creatives from around the world. Major writers, including the likes of Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin, have famously called Istanbul home, and the city is plenty with former literary hang-outs that every literary lover or aspiring writer should add to their itinerary. Here are five must-see spots for literature fiends in Istanbul: Pera Palace is most well-known for literature lovers as the hotel where Agatha Christie allegedly wrote Murder on the Orient Express. The hotel has still preserved room 411 as a memorial to the author. Authors Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene also include the Pera Palace in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Travels with My Aunt, respectively. French writer Pierre Loti first came to Istanbul in 1876 and called the city home—at least for part of the time—for over four decades. The writer frequently visited a cafe on what is now called Pierre Loti Hill, where he completed his novel Aziyadé. Now the hill is home to a cafe that overlooks the Golden Horn as well a a museum dedicated to the writer. James Baldwin lived in Istanbul for a decade, between 1961 and 1971, when he was suffering from writer's block and looking for seclusion. Baldwin, like many authors, took to the Pera Palace Hotel, but he also famously arrived in Istanbul and went straight to Taksim Square, where he was staying with Turkish actor Engin Cezzar. Ernest Hemingway worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star in Istanbul in 1922. He took the train from Paris to Istanbul and allegedly stayed at the still-standing (and budget-friendly) Grand Hotel De Londres after someone recommended the property to him on the train from Paris. Ernest's Bar is a contemporary address just around the corner from Pera Palace Hotel—but it aims to evoke a sense of the golden age of travel and literature from the 1920s. Named after Ernest Hemingway, it boasts a bit of a speakeasy vibe with live jazz and Thai bites from sister restaurant Çok Çok Pera.
