James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time"
I was hankering to read this after finishing a book of letters between Hunter Thompson and Oscar Acosta who made repeated references to how �Whitey was gonna burn if enough people read this book.� Since I�m all for burning whitey, I picked it up for myself.
I don�t see how Hunter and Oscar got that idea. Baldwin to me comes off as �tired� rather than �angry� and the most interesting part of the book came from a meeting with Baldwin by the Honorable Elijiah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, who Baldwin thinks are manipulative and ill-informed.
A lot of people seem to think that way, though they all mostly say so in hindsight, so I wonder just what it is about Elijiah that makes such ardent followers, if only for a little while.
In the meantime, this is a combination of a quick biography and social commentary that�s a quick read, though it did threaten to put me to sleep more than a few times. He writes well, but it almost comes off as timid, and I like my race relation commentators to be full of fire and pissed off, so this really didn�t do much for me. I really think it�s more on those lines of things that people are �supposed� to read.
Well, I did, can I go now? I got some muthafuckin� crackers to burn.
