Book Review: Nothing Personal was a surprise and a half! I reserved it on my library website, sight unseen. When I picked it up I found a huge coffee-table book (is that the term in other countries?), 14½ inches (37 cm) by 11 (28), beautifully printed in Italy. The first printed page simply has the year: 1964, reminding that this lovely book comes from another time, over a half-century ago. James Baldwin's words were my reason for seeking out this book and they did not disappoint. The essays seemed spoken, not written, as if I was just listening to Baldwin talk, sharing his thoughts with me, with the reader. He ranges wide, he rambles, he tells stories. He talks about President Kennedy's assassination, about the preponderance of violence against black men, about suicide, about getting arrested for "walking while black." He discusses how the wealthy continue their reign through divide and conquer, pitting the poor against the poor, poor whites against poor blacks. He notes the refusal of American men to grow up. How, when dressing to leave his apartment, it "is necessary to make anyone on the streets think twice before attempting to vent his despair on you." The exact sentiment I recently read in Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. Baldwin has the hope that one day "we will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate." He talks of the overwhelming power of love for each of us. What is most obvious in Nothing Personal, most striking, is that we're still fighting over so many of these issues today. These issues are still relevant, still important, now. Which signifies that we're not just fighting about issues, we're fighting human nature.
I came for Baldwin, I stayed for the photographs. Richard Avedon's photos were less than an afterthought for me, I expected to glance through them without blinking. I blinked. In these days when everyone is a prolific photographer and we swipe dozens of pictures in a minute, we forget the blinding emotional power hidden in photographs. Each of the black and white photos in Nothing Personal is brilliant and more meaningful than I thought possible. The subjects of these photos ranges wide through 1964: the DAR, weddings, Joe Louis, a Southern judge, Marilyn, Nazis, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm X. Each photo is a whole short story. But the pictures that chilled me to my DNA were of patients in a mental institution. There are several, and "heartbreaking" is just a word, but these break both heart and mind.
Baldwin and Avedon were high school friends. I'm not sure what their goal was for Nothing Personal. Perhaps their own version of the great Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, written by James Agee with photography by Walker Evans in 1941. This is a unique work, awkward to hold, a treasure to read, a gift from another time. [4½★]
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