Toward Total Recall

Was it in the summer? It probably was . . . when you thought you had enough time on your hands to fill them with a book, when an unappointed… More

Nikki Giovanni: Making James Baldwin

This excerpt is part of the Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute to James Baldwin, sponsored by PEN American Center and Lincoln Center, with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture… More

A Mighty Heart

In 1933 John Steinbeck was so poor he couldn't afford a dog. The literary critic Lewis Gannett uncovered this fact in Steinbeck’s correspondence with his agents during the time… More

Language Barriers

I met Beckett in the mid ’60s. I’d started to read him in the mid ’50s and I wanted to meet the man. I didn’t often want to meet… More

Deranged Punctilio

“I lay inert on the bed and it took three women to put on my trousers. They didn’t seem to take much interest in my private parts, which to… More

To Change the World

Though I never met James Baldwin in person, and never even saw him at a public event, he is nonetheless to me like a father, or a beloved uncle,… More

Parce Que C’était Lui

The little phrase I’m about to read comes from a famous passage in Sodom and Gomorrah when Marcel the narrator is suddenly reminded of his grandmother. He had stayed… More

The Day I Finally Met Baldwin

The 1960s opened propitiously for me, and for my country, Nigeria. In 1960 Nigeria freed itself, at last, from British colonial rule. I published my second novel, and proved… More

The White Problem

In Go Tell It on the Mountain, the young protagonist, John Grimes, stands on a hill in Central Park: “He felt like a long-awaited conqueror, at whose feet flowers… More

Pure Magic

I want to tell you the three most important theatrical events of my life. There have been many—my first Sophocles, my first Shakespeare, my first Molière, my first Uncle… More