Thread by @herandrews

The best thing written about James Baldwin is the essay "Jimmy" by Otto Friedrich (1929-1995), a German-American journalist who knew Baldwin in Paris. Baldwin was the best man at his wedding. The piece is brutal. amazon.com/Grave-Alice-B-…

Apparently the young James Baldwin spent a lot of time talking about his novel but not producing much. He never paid for anything and casually appropriated other people's possessions—like this girl's typewriter.

When Friedrich criticized him for never producing anything, Jimmy called him a hack. "Better a hack writer than a nonwriting talker.”

In 1950, as a favor to Jimmy, on a visit to New York City Friedrich took Baldwin's mother out to dinner. In return, she invited him and his fiance to her house for dinner, where they met Jimmy's relatives and ate spare ribs and potato pie in her Harlem kitchen.

In time Friedrich & Baldwin grew apart. Attempts to contact Baldwin through his agent were ignored. Jimmy did once accept an invitation to dinner at Friedrich's house in Long Island but canceled last minute, infuriating Mrs Friedrich, who had been laboring in the kitchen all day.

They met one more time, many years later. In 1977, Friedrich was working at TIME magazine. Baldwin came in to do a kind of racial sensitivity lunch for the editors.

"Perhaps the best way to explain is to tell you that I have been in your kitchens. My mother was a cleaning woman, you see, and sometimes when I was child she would take me with her. So I have seen your kitchens, you know, but you have never seen mine."

"I could not help thinking, 'No, Jimmy, that isn't true. I'm the one who has been in your kitchen, eating spare ribs and potato pie, and you know nothing about mine.' But I knew my place and said nothing like that."