The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are: James Baldwin on the Empathic Rewards of Reading and What It Means to Be an Artist
“A
society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he
must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven,” James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) wrote in his classic 1962 essay “The Creative Process.”
By then, he was already one of America’s most celebrated writers — an
artist who shook up the baseboards of society by dismantling the
structures of power and convention with unflinching fortitude, dignity,
and integrity of conviction.
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