Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
James Baldwin
At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. Overpowering in its vitality, extravagant in the intensity of its feeling, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a major work of American literature.
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I have a deep, deep love for books in which the plot is slow but the writing is stunning. James Baldwin is a gift to the literary world, and his discussions of race, class, sexuality permeate everything he writes with a resonance that spans decades. The back and forth timeline of Leo Proudhammer's personal history is ripe with engrossing details, keeping me turning page after page with rapidity. The slow burn and fizzle of Leo's love stories--with Barbara, his white long-time lover, with Caleb, his older brother, with Black Christopher, his Black activist lover, with his friends, with his parents, with Harlem itself--are beautiful and devastating in their own turns. Leo's world is on the brink of something: racial tensions are brewing, sexuality politics are gaining traction, his health is failing. I read this before the eruption of COVID-19, but the parallels to today's world are (disappointingly) undeniable. Baldwin is one for the ages, but here's to hoping that his works become less immediately relatable and more appreciated for their powerful depictions of a time since past.
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