A Flawed Talent

Only someone with an undisputed and high literary talent could write a play as nearly worthless, and yet as important, as Blues for Mister Charlie. James Baldwin has such a talent. In his command of language and the atmosphere of outraged suffering, in the irresistible intensity of the vision which grips him, in the freshness and size of his observations, he is unique on the landscape of contemporary American letters. You have to go back to Melville to find another author with the same magnitude of expression, or as implacable an awareness of the tensions and terrors which lurk under the surface of the visible life-stress, struggling ferociously to escape.

The easy explanation for the failure of Blues for Mister Charlie is to blame it on Mr. Baldwin’s ignorance of, and inability to cope with, the mechanics of dramaturgy. Indeed, this is a major contributing factor. Like so many other American novelists (Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Harris) he uses the wrong tools and works against the medium’s grain. He thinks in terms of words, not as they sound when spoken, not as they reveal a person and advance an immediate and ultimate action, but as they look on the printed page. He has no sense of theatrical character, giving his cast no individuality, and merely implying by a few token stage instruction or fragments of dialogue their, specific dimension and the nature of their interacting relationships; he assumes that somehow these will emerge of themselves in the actual performance.

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Nathan Cohen

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Only someone with an undisputed and high literary talent could write a play as nearly worthless, and yet as important, as Blues for Mister Charlie. James Baldwin has such a talent. In his command of language and the atmosphere of outraged suffering, in the irresistible intensity of the vision which grips him, in the freshness and size of his observations, he is unique on the landscape of contemporary American letters. You have to go back to Melville to find another author with the same magnitude of expression, or as implacable an awareness of the tensions and terrors which lurk under the surface of the visible life-stress, struggling ferociously to escape.

The easy explanation for the failure of Blues for Mister Charlie is to blame it on Mr. Baldwin’s ignorance of, and inability to cope with, the mechanics of dramaturgy. Indeed, this is a major contributing factor. Like so many other American novelists (Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Harris) he uses the wrong tools and works against the medium’s grain. He thinks in terms of words, not as they sound when spoken, not as they reveal a person and advance an immediate and ultimate action, but as they look on the printed page. He has no sense of theatrical character, giving his cast no individuality, and merely implying by a few token stage instruction or fragments of dialogue their, specific dimension and the nature of their interacting relationships; he assumes that somehow these will emerge of themselves in the actual performance.