Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone by James Baldwin (EPUB)

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Ebook Info

  • Published: 1998
  • Number of pages: 496 pages
  • Format: EPUB
  • File Size: 2.20 MB
  • Authors: James Baldwin

Description

A major work of American literature that powerfully portrays the anguish of being Black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable.For between Leo’s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo’s loyalty. Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone is overpowering in its vitality and extravagant in the intensity of its feeling.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Baldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers.” —Saturday Review “He has not himself lost access to the sources of his being—which is what makes him read and awaited by perhaps a wider range of people than any other major American writer.” —The Nation From the Publisher “Baldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers.”–Saturday Review “He has not himself lost access to the sources of his being–which is what makes him read and awaited by perhaps a wider range of people than any other major American writer.”–The Nation From the Inside Flap At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo’s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo’s loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. Overpowering in its vitality, extravagant in the intensity of its feeling, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone is a major work of American literature. From the Back Cover At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo’s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo’s loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. Overpowering in its vitality, extravagant in the intensity of its feeling, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone is a major work of American literature. About the Author James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were bestsellers that made him an influential figure in the growing civil rights movement. Baldwin spent much of his life in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in France in 1987, a year after being made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I went down again. My heart and I went down again. I was aware of her hand. I was aware of my breathing. I could no longer see it, but I was aware of her face.”Barbara. My dear Barbara.””My dearest Leo. Please be still.”And she’s right, I thought. There is nothing more to be said. All we can do now is just hold on. That was why she held my hand. I recognized this as love–recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began for a moment to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet–one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.The door to my maturity. This phrase floated to the top of my mind. The light that fell backward on that life of mine revealed a very frightened man–a very frightened boy. The light did not fall on me, on me were I lay now. I was left in darkness, my face could not be seen. In that darkness I encountered a scene from another nightmare I had had as a child. In this nightmare there is a book–a great, heavy book with an illustrated cover. The cover shows a dark, squalid alley, all garbage cans and dying cats, and windows like empty eyesockets. The beam of a flashlight shines down the alley, at the end of which I am fleeing, clutching something. the title of the book in my nightmare is, We Must Not Find Him, For He Is Lost.When Caleb, my older brother, was taken from me and sent to prison, I watched, from the fire escape of our East Harlem tenement, the walls of an old and massive building, far, far away and set on a hill, and with green vines running up and down the walls, and with windows flashing like signals in the sunlight. I watched that building, I say, with a child’s helpless and stricken attention, waiting for my brother to come out of there. I did not know how to get to the building. If I had I would have slept in the shadow of those walls, and I told no one of my vigil or of my certain knowledge that my brother was imprisoned in that place. I watched that building for many years. Sometimes, when the sunlight flashed on the windows, I was certain that my brother was signaling to me and I waved back. When we moved from that particular tenement (into another one) I screamed and cried because I was certain that now my brother would no longer be able to find me. Alas, he was not there; the building turned out to be City College; my brother was on a prison farm in the Deep South, working the fields. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐James Baldwin is one of two favorite writers of all time along with Hemingway. And reading him thirty odd years later always baffles me to the striking resemblance of the past to the present and how our evils and sins inherited from our forefathers follows us everyday into the present and the future, and remains inescapable despite our best efforts.This work remains a rich study of our past and a mirror to look into when we forget where we are from and how much further we are to go as a species, and race. And race is very important despite what some would make us believe, and the importance has very little to do with our conceptions and dogmas, the importance lies in its unimportant aspect which only logical minds will ever reach. Good read!

⭐The copy I ordered was missing thirty pages or so, and in their place were thirty pages from a random mystery novel! Intriguing, nonetheless… Swept me from edge-of-insanity to the edge of my seat.However, I returned it (after a tantalizing 30 pages of straight suspense) only to get a new copy with a DIFFERENT thirty pages substituted for a DIFFERENT thirty pages of that SAME mystery novel! Returned again. Going to get it from the library.Just order from a different provider…

⭐I loved reading this book, up to page 422, where it became obvious that the next 33 pages had been randomly replaced by 33 pages from a novel by Maureen Jennings titled “Except the Dying”. Now I’m left hanging because the rest of it makes no sense. Hopefully I can get it replaced with a copy that has no misprints like this one. I included scans of the beginning and end of the 33-page misprint.

⭐This book seems to have been a rush-write. One can find Mario Puzo’s (yes, THAT Mario Puzo) review of this book online. I believe it’s from 1968, or ’69. I think he adequately captures the disappointment I had for this book. The protagonist, Leo Proudhammer, a high-minded intellectual stage actor, is an interesting enough character, but there are too many holes surrounding him that, as a consequence, dilute his story (the book). I like the narrative being told through flashbacks experienced as Proudhammer recuperates in the hospital after his heart attack. This sets up the central tragedy of his character –why is he so internally afflicted? We see young Proudhammer as a boy in Harlem, trying to understand and interpret his family and the streets of his day, where he one day finds a theater house and falls in love with the stage (as an escape). We’re thrown back to the preset-day, as, due to his heart attack, the lights have brightened and the curtain has fallen, and Proudhammer is forced to truthfully deal with himself…not the character he’s created through the years, but the blood and bone and spit and flesh of his own “self.” That, to me, is about all that’s interesting with the book. I thought it could’ve been so much more –a uniquely captivating introspective journey, like ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’, or a melancholic expose that leaves you begging for more, like Rufus Scott’s story in ‘Another Country.’ Instead, we’re given shallow swaths of Proudhammer because we’re given unclear, surface characters who best reflect him: Barbara (Proudhammer’s heterosexual love) and Black Christopher (Leo’s homosexual love). I thought the strongest parts of the story were of Proudhammer’s childhood, when Baldwin expertly weaves together Harlem, family, faith, and loneliness. Here, Baldwin crafts a true story. So much of the rest of the book seems like over-extended scenes in which Leo, boggled down by dialogue and introspection, misses his cue and forgets to exit the stage. Caleb, Leo Proudhammer’s wayward older brother, serves as a reprieve. A well-crafted character, Caleb is, at times, more interesting than Leo. This is especially true when, after finding religion, Caleb meets Leo and retells his experiences during the war. Strong prose, but, again, the conviction of voice isn’t coming from our protagonist. The book could’ve went so many different ways (I suppose all books can, but here, the way it WENT was disappointing.) I was left wanting to truly have a better understanding of Leo Proudhammer who, by book’s end (and because of the book’s end), was just totally ambiguous. I was left wanting to read more of Leo’s relationship with Black Christopher, and of his failed relationship with Sally, a character in the book that deserved more life. What I was left with wasn’t complete ruin…it just wasn’t complete fascination, either. All-in-all, I’d suggest the book to those interested, as I think Baldwin fans should familiarize themselves with his entire canon, from his novels and plays, to his essays and short stories. Baldwin fans will rejoice in the author’s standard narrative elements: color and humor, self-analysis and tragedy. ‘Tell Me…’ surely tells it, taking you into such familiar Baldwin territory and yet, still, it leaves you in want for more.

⭐I’m a Balwin collector of sorts and hadn’t read this one. It is a good relaxing read and as do most of his novels provides insight in the the writer’s personal life through a character.

⭐This is the first James Baldwin work I’ve ever read and I wasn’t prepared for the emotional depth, precision, beauty and moral stance of the writing. I call it incendiary b/c it set my heart and mind on fire. He’s a great American author.

⭐Well, this is the first time I’ve written a review for a book and I’ve bought many. This book wasn’t printed correctly. I got most of chapter one, none of chapter two (there’s another book in its place), and chapter three.

⭐This may be the best book I have ever read. I was so engrossed that I read it very slowly because I didn’t want it to end. Baldwin is a genius writer at the highest level. I’m now reading all his novels and story collections.

⭐Another of James Baldwin’s works that I loved. Great writing and an exercise in empathy that never ceases to humble me.

⭐Goods as described. many thanks

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