Domhnall

Early in this novel, Baldwin devotes a few pages to a humorous comparison of the ways French, Swiss and Italian border guards behave: the French being rude and inefficient, the Swiss intensely serious, efficient and systematic, the Italians rather surprised that one had bothered to visit their country but delighted all the same and not remotely concerned about the rules. From this gentle piece of absurdism, he switches suddenly and brutally to the point: there was no border as sharp and dangerous as the demarcation between the Black and the White segments of an American town or city. So when Leo Proudhammer, a Black American born to a poor family in Harlem, takes it into his mind to become an actor, his brother is incredulous, until Leo makes the inspired observation that his prospects of success in any line of work available to him are precisely zero, and that is how American society is designed; however remote his prospects of success in acting, they are nevertheless better than nil by at least some marginal fraction. Of course we know from the opening pages of this story that Leo will in fact become famous and affluent as an actor, and towards the end he is exposed to the cynical assertion that his success proves that Black Americans are not excluded from the American Dream, they just need to stop being sorry for themselves and work hard. The novel replies to that false claim by illustrating just how vicious and oppressive White America’s racism really is and what intolerably unfair odds have been overcome by those rare cases of exceptional achievement