The Aug. 18 New Yorker features Louis Menand's review of Nicholas Boggs’s Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Curiously, Menand's review, titled "The Lives and Loves of James Baldwin," concentrates almost exclusively on the former, with only passing attention to the latter.
Menand makes some claims that strike me as questionable, such as this: "The novels have their moments, but they have the humorless and fatalistic quality of literary naturalism. They are not books you are eager to get back to." Let me confess that I haven't reread either of the two Baldwin novels our group has discussed: Giovanni's Room (2003) or Just Above My Head (2022). But that isn't because I didn't find them worth my time; I've just had too many other books piled up demanding my attention.
All that said, the review is worth reading. And the bio sounds like it is, too. (I'll post other reviews as I come across them.)
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