"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Baldwin lays down the terrible symmetries of these two blighted lives as the ironic context for John's dark night of the soul. When day dawns, John believes himself saved, but his creator makes it clear that this salvation arises as much from blindness as revelation: "He was filled with a joy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, though he would not trace them on this new day of his life, were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not yet discovered."
Though it was hailed at publication for its groundbreaking use of black idiom, what is most striking about Go Tell It on the Mountain today is its structure and its scope. In peeling back the layers of these damaged lives, Baldwin dramatizes the story of the great black migration from rural South to urban North. "Behind them was the darkness," Baldwin writes of Gabriel and Elizabeth's lost generation, "nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" This is Baldwin's music--a music in which rhapsody is rooted anguish--and there is none finer in American literature. --David Laskin
"The most important novel written about the American Negro," says Commentary. "It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill," writes Harper's. Saturday Review praises it as "masterful," and the San Francisco Chronicle declares that this important American novel is "brutal, objective and compassionate."
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Book Description paperback. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!. Seller Inventory # S_400092536
Book Description paperback. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!. Seller Inventory # S_393267281
Book Description Mass Market Paperback. Condition: Used - Acceptable. Cover not as depicted. Name of previous owner inside cover. Slight shelf wear on the cover. Seller Inventory # 231772
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. 288 pages. Cover worn. Seller Inventory # 3274l
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. Paperback. 254 pages. *** PUBLISHING DETAILS: Corgi, UK, 1970. *** CONDITION: This book is in good condition. More specifically: . Pages are reasonably tanned. *** ABOUT THIS BOOK: "Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. *** Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; ISBN: 055207764x. ISBN/EAN: 9780552077644. Inventory No: 23061025. Seller Inventory # 23061025
Book Description Condition: Good. 1970 reprint. Different cover design. Worn cover/spine with scratches/creases/scuffs/fading. Tanning to pages. Text good. Seller Inventory # 049336-13
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: VG+. Reprint. 12mo. original printed paper wraps (a little rubbed & creased, slight toning and sunning, else clean & unmarked); pp. 254, [2 (pubs. cat.). A very good copy. Seller Inventory # 032736
Book Description paperback. Condition: Acceptable. NOT an ex-library book. Clean copy in good condition. Alkali spotting along top and fore edge. Book in generally good condition considering age. Quick dispatch from UK seller. Seller Inventory # mon0000454958