Baldwin’s Papers Land In Harlem
James Baldwin may be my favorite modern American author: the one who saw deepest into the discrepancy between what the USA thinks it is and what it really is. So this story in today’s Times grabbed my attention: “Baldwin’s papers have landed in one of the nation’s leading archival institutions, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library, in Harlem. But, in a striking twist, many of his personal letters will remain off limits for another generation — a byproduct of complicated negotiations between the library and the estate, and a reminder that family members are not always comfortable with the spotlight’s falling on a loved one, even decades after death.”
