Just Above My Head - Hardcover

BALDWIN, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718117646 ISBN 13: 9780718117641

Publisher: Dial Press, 1979

Synopsis

The damn'd blood burst, first through his nostrils, then pounded through the veins in his neck, the scarlet torrent exploded through his mouth, it reached his eyes and blinded hum, and brought Arthur down, down, down, down, down.The telephone call did not go into these details, neither did the urgently demanding my arrival because my brother was dead. The laconic British press merely noted that a "nearly forgotten Negro moaner and groaner" (this is how the British press described my brother) had been found dead in a men's room in the basement of a London pub. No one told me how he died. The American press noted the passing of an "emotion-filled" gospel singer, dead at the untidy age of thirty-nine. (from the text)

About this title

From the Publisher

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to a church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It On The Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land.

"A work of passion... Glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, movements of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks--scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding."--The New York Times Book Review.

"His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in in late-twentieth century America."

From the Back Cover

"If Van Gogh was our 19th-century artist-saint, James Baldwin is our 20th-century one."
--Michael Ondaatje

"The work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers... glimpses of family life in Harlem, rapturous music-making in the churches, moments of uneasiness in even the most casual meetings between whites and blacks--scenes that Baldwin seems preternaturally gifted in understanding."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A fine novel...it seems impossible for [Baldwin] to write with anything other than eloquence. His great and peculiar power is to re-create the maddening halfway house that the black man finds himself in late-twentieth-century America."
--The New Yorker

Edition details

• Publisher: Dial Press
• Publication date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0718117646
• ISBN 13: 9780718117641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 598