"A MAJOR WORK OF BLACK AMERICAN FICTION… HIS BEST NOVEL YET": JAMES BALDWIN'S IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

BALDWIN, James. If Beale Street Could Talk. New York: The Dial Press, 1974. Octavo, original orange cloth, original dust jacket. $900.

First trade edition of Baldwin's lyrical novel set in Harlem.

Baldwin, "the most eloquently intense and morally insistent essayist in mid-century America," here creates a novel in which "there is neither love nor mercy in the Black church, neither truth nor justice in American law, and neither hope nor sanctuary in anything but familial and personal love. Probing the racist-fomented dilemmas of his young Harlem narrator… Baldwin transcends his earlier renderings of Black men: [they] are strong men precisely because they accept as a masculine challenge their Black ancestry and the needs of their children" (Vinson, 86). On publication, the New Republic hailed Beale Street as "a major work of black American fiction… his best novel yet," and Joyce Carol Oates praised the work as "a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless" (New York Times). Issued the same year as a signed limited edition (250 copies), no priority established. Basis for the award-winning 2018 film starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Teyonah Parris and Regina King. Blockson 5504.

In fine condition.