Last year, I nominated Nicholas Boggs' magisterial biography of James Baldwin, Baldwin: A Love Story, for our reading list. It didn't get quite enough votes to make the cut, but I may put it forward for consideration again this year.
I'm finishing it now, and wanted to highlight a serendipitous connection between the bio and Marlon James' latest novel, The Disappearers (see the post above this one for more details about that). In the novel, a group of gay eight young black and mixed-race men in Kingston gather in private, in 1988, to rehearse a dangerous play: John Herbert’s “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” (1967), about prison life and degradation and sex acts, both desired and not. (One character refers to it as “Lord of the Flies with big people.”) Most if not all the actors are closeted gay men.
Believe it or not, James Baldwin directed a Turkish-language production of the play in Istanbul that ran from 1969 to 1970. Boggs' coverage of the episode in the biography is a tour de force.
Inspired by that coincidence, I really wanted to nominate Herbert's play for our reading list, but it's not in print and used copies are priced at $60 and up. Let us hope the Marlon James connection will spur some enterprising publisher to reissue the play. 🤞
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