James Baldwin
American novelist and essayist whom Jean Malaquais introduced to Mailer in Paris in the summer of 1956. Baldwin's essay "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" (in Nobody Knows My Name, 1961) is a famous response to Mailer's "The White Negro."
Jean Malaquais introduced James Baldwin to the Mailers in Paris in the summer of 1956. Baldwin later wrote one of the most searching responses to Mailer’s “The White Negro” — the essay “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” collected in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (New York: Dial, 1961). The 1961 publication of Nobody Knows My Name coincides with the Village Voice letter from Richard Grossman (61.9) complaining of too much Voice coverage of Mailer, Baldwin, and Krim, and with Mailer’s reply.
Related pages
- 1956 | 1961 | Jean Malaquais | The White Negro | The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy | Letter to the editor