The Fire us Time

摘要

When I play reverse time traveland imagine historical figures turning up today (what would Ben Franklin say about the iPad? Or Jane Austen about Jersey Shore?, etc.). James Baldwin's name comes to mind. The essayist and novelist spent four decades picking at the scab of American racerelations. He could be incendiary, but at his best he was sly, writing with a sharply ironic sensibility that gave him one of the most distinctive voices of the early postwar years.