The "maw of western culture": James Baldwin and the anxieties of influence

African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Elise Miller

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Many first-person narratives focus on the autobiographer's genesis as an author, and Notes typifies how "autobiographical, authorial and literary spaces exist in complex interdependence with each other" when the autobiographer identifies himself as an author whose life story will demonstrate the development of his artistic self (Marcus 17). The first half of Notes of a Native Son surveys Hollywood, the Harlem Renaissance, and the American social protest novel, and includes literary discussions of Dickens, Stowe, Faulkner, Margaret Mitchell, and his notorious critique of Richard Wright. As he portrays himself in Notes, Baldwin is a "son" in many senses of the word, and he uses these autobiographical reflections to organize multiple identifications, emulations, and differentiations. Notes thus functions as cultural commentary and as a personal record of Baldwin's wish to create a place for himself in the literary traditions of America and Europe--as well as a place within himself to hold and organize authors and texts. The "occasion," to use Albert Stone's term, for Notes of a Native Son is an exploration of one author's cultural inclusions and alienations. By placing the writer's life in the context of "shared cultural experiences of the past," Baldwin's narrative "creates a model of literate culture" and explores his concerns about who is open to whom and how openness can fill or deplete the writer's self and his art (Stone 4-5).

Notes begins with an allusion to one of Baldwin's American literary predecessors whom he simultaneously honors and displaces. The passage is not an explicit discussion of Baldwin's reading, but rather, a residue of it, and it exemplifies how Baldwin acts upon the sources of his literary identity without completely destroying them: "The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again" (3). Baldwin's use of the term "fantasy" signals to readers that the autobiographical narrative is a space of play and imagination. And it is within this space that Baldwin lays claim to a foundational narrative of American literature-the beginning of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, wherein Franklin relishes the prospect of reliving his life:

   ... were it offer'd to my choice, I
   should have no objection to a
   Repetition of the same Life from its
   Beginning, only asking the Advantage
   Authors have in a second Edition to
   correct some of the Faults of the first so
   would I if I might, besides correcting
   the Faults, change some sinister
   Accidents and Events of it for others
   more favorable, but tho' this were
   deny'd, I should still accept the offer.
   However, since such a Repetition is
   not to be expected, the next Thing
   most like living one's Life over again,
   seems to be a Recollection of that Life;
   and to make that Recollection as
   durable as possible, the putting it
   down in writing. (43-44)

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The "maw of western culture": James Baldwin and the anxieties of influence

African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Elise Miller

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