Latest news with #NicholasBoggs
Washington Post
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
He spent decades on his James Baldwin biography. It's out at the perfect moment.
Nicholas Boggs describes himself as an 'accidental biographer,' and his new book, 'Baldwin: A Love Story,' as something he fell into. 'I don't know if I should say this,' said Boggs, 51, 'but when I got the book contract, I had never read a biography from start to finish.'
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Tender New Biography Emphasizes James Baldwin's Romantic Side
BALDWIN: A Love Story, by Nicholas Boggs Early in 1966, the author James Baldwin described his 'charms' in a letter to his friend and personal assistant David Leeming: 'Precisely that weird combination in me of helplessness & ruthlessness, of total availability & absolute elusiveness, of impenetrable stupidity & unshakable intelligence … I was in nobody's box & nobody knew my name.' Six decades later, everybody knows Baldwin's name — but the elusiveness remains. The writer and scholar Nicholas Boggs aims to change that in his sensational new biography, 'Baldwin: A Love Story,' expanding on what we know of Baldwin's gifts and suffering, his writing life and his love life. The publishers call this 'the first major biography of Baldwin … to explore Baldwin's queerness in depth,' and it delivers on that promise in droves. Boggs chronicles the carousel of Baldwin's loves and lovers, from his ''ignorant armies' of one-night stands and lecherous would-be secret lovers in Paris and in Greenwich Village' to the great loves of Baldwin's life, both platonic and romantic. Most of those love interests were younger and white. And many might safely be considered bisexual, men whose attractions — or commitments, anyway — were weighted toward women, men who would never or could never devote themselves to Baldwin in the way he desired. But Boggs's book is far more than that. It describes how a poor, slight Harlem boy, who thought himself ugly — but whose towering intellect was quickly recognized by himself and others — grew up and out of an emotionally abusive relationship with his stepfather to write books like 'Giovanni's Room' and 'The Fire Next Time,' works that made him one of the most significant writers of his generation. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
