Writers Speak; Lecture by James Baldwin on the Writer's Responsibility

Welcome to write or speak. Writers speak is a series of seven programmes featuring prominent Massachusetts writers. The series is a program of the Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This program features James Baldwin one of America's finest writers. The moderator is writer Julius Lester. This is the sixth program in a seven part series called Writers on writers and social responsibility in which writers address issues involving the writer literature and social responsibility. This series gives the writers and the general public the opportunity to exchange and share ideas and feelings about the social responsibility of the writer and

to help facilitate such a dialogue. Each writer was asked to build his or her presentation around a series of questions. Some of these were. Should the writer create far a public that is be responsible to the public. RS The writer's sole responsibility to be true to his or her art and worldview. Who do you write for. Why do you write. Do the demands of writing give the writers special status or privilege. Who is your public and what is the writer's role in society. Tonight's speaker is very simply one of the best and most important American writers of our time. With the publication of his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain in 1953 James Baldwin was recognized as a new and vital presence in literature. And this year the 30th anniversary of his first book that assessment is more true than ever.

As a playwright novelist essayist and poet James Baldwin has remained true to an inner vision of truth while simultaneously being a forceful public voice and America's on ending race wars. His most recent novel just above my head is extraordinary proof of his continuing flowering as a writer. He has just completed a manuscript about the Atlanta child murders and his beginning work on a book about Medgar Evers. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and he also has recently had a book of poetry published in England. James Baldwin is a writer from whom one can learn much about what it means to be human. And no writer has written so consistently and so well about the necessities and meanings of love. And I would like to share with you a passage from The Fire Next Time published in 1963. What do white Americans do not face when they regard a negro is the fact that

life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because the Earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets and one day for each of us the sun will go down for the last last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble the human trouble is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives will imprison ourselves in totems taboo crosses blood sacrifices steeples mosques races armies flags and nations in order to deny the fact of death which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death ought to decide indeed to earn one's death by confronting with passion. The conundrum of life one is responsible to life.

It is a small beacon in that terrifying doctrine from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as notably as possible for the sake of those who are coming after us. But why do Americans do not believe in death. And this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them. And this is also the presence of the Negro in this country can bring about its destruction. It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant birth struggle and death are constant and so is love. Though we may not always think so and I apprehend the nature of change to be able and willing to change. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being. Our state of grace not in the infantile American sense of

being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. We were fortunate and indeed honored to have with us tonight a writer and a human being of the highest order. Would you welcome please. You're involved. Thank you all. I'm going to kind of improvise the questions presented to the actual hypothetical writer. I really almost unanswerable all when you try to answer them you find yourself involved with another question. That's part of the trouble of being a writer. Which part of the trouble of being a human being is actually part of the trouble of being a society since society believes in and says and doesn't like

questions of your gender that in a moment I'll become you once wrote that the writer should be the voice of the dispossessed which is true enough as far as it goes. In any case commute statement has always worried me a little bit because I lived in Paris and not because I knew the man but because I lived in Paris during the time of the Algerian French conflict. A kind of civil war. And in a way can you statement in the light of what was happening in France before. Before and I never before when the Algerian conflict began or erupted more precisely always right me because it seemed to me that he did not himself equal what he was saying. That is if

it was a responsibility of the writer to speak for the dispossessed. I thought when I was living in France and watching this that time you let in on an Orion would certainly have known that the Algerian conflict was much more complex than the French generals or the French Prez. The French people wanted to believe and it struck me with great force that I mean we talked about liberty in the case of Europeans and the existential right to be wrong but only talk about justice in the case of Algeria. And you'd certainly have known that whatever the Algerians were fighting the French for it was not for yet another installment of French justice. That was not the point. He was on able and I'm using him as and perhaps unfairly as an

example. He was unable to see the dispossessed the home he claimed he had the necessity and the responsibility to speak. It was then that I began to realize something about the sense of reality which unites what we will call the white world. The doctrine of white supremacy which has the power to intimidate any possible witness for the dispossessed. Now having said all that I now go out on my own and I think that when I answer the question about the writer's relationship to political ideology it is dangerous and it's unavoidable. First of all in this country in this century. But above all in this country no one really quite knows what up to the political idiology is and

a political ideology is under serious political reality. If one believes the press if one believes a television set of America there is an idiology which is far as we know is called communist It's a casual word only when I can use all leftist and presumably that's political and presumably it differs entirely from whatever it is that we in the West claim to have or not have. And a writer tries to deal with these terms which by the way are in any case dealing with him. I realize a very long time ago as somebody pointed out to me in the days when I thought that art was possible for art's sake. So when pointed out to me that where I was I might not be interested in politics. Politics was fascinated by me.

There would be no way around that as long as I was bred in my body. When we speak of the right and the left we really do. It's an echo of a room in Paris around before the time of the French Revolution when various delegates were seated on the right in the middle on the left and these in time became representatives of various shades of politically ology the vocabulary which we use to describe the divergence is between us come from a moment long ago a contested moment until today concerning a revolution which on the basis of the evidence no one of the

America understands and everyone of the angle repudiate. No it's true and we don't know what we're talking about. I want to write a time to deal with this. When I suggest standing here before you are on the page that we're not learn anything about anybody on sorted out about a political ideology when we have labeled it leftist. The right conservative. This indicates I think a little bit of the difficulty. One has a right or has when trying to deal with political ideologies which always have to be simplified into slogans. It is a terribly difficult thing to say. That is the battle between the slogan it is some Arabs in the battle

in the battle between the slogan and the right or the right is trouble it's compounded because it is not so much that a writer's responsibility to speak for the dispossessed or to speak for those who cannot speak or any of that kind of removal. The real anguish is that the writer is produced by comes out of everybody the people who put him and the people who produced and produced him because they needed him. They have produced him because he is their only witness in terms of language. Their only book in terms of language against the anonymity of the state and the anonymity of the state is created by all of us you and me. The reason that Plato wanted no

poets in his Republic is because a writer is by definition of the piece. He has to be. He has to make you ask yourself make you realize that you are always asking yourself questions that you don't know how to face. I would like to believe what I'm told about Western history or about history to cool history in short but I know better what I want to convey here is not so much that I know that you all of you know better and I know you know better because you produced me this connects you see as a series of Chinese boxes I got involved in here with the minority writer and a minority writer is what precisely.

I looked at the word and I asked myself a minority writer according to the language we trapped for the moment is was by definition a writer. Concerns are more or less tangential to the concerns of what we call the mainstream in American life and indeed in Western life there is mainstream and. You better get into it if you ain't in the mainstream. You are a minority writer if not a female. They're not really trying to be sardonic they want you to think about the terms language and know that the principal language he's terms. For example it is a real question whether or not the fate of a rabbit in John Updike's trilogy

really obsesses most of the civilized world really has anything to do with the lives actually lead that is out of the world's history. In the real world it is disastrous I think to suppose. That most of the world that world outside which is not white and by the way when I say it is not white I mean it's black. I mean it's very colored I mean it's something the American imagination and the Western imagination cannot imagine doesn't dare imagine. But the concerns have been described brutally or note brutally as the American middle class and not the concerns of the world and cannot be the concerns of the future. What am I saying.

It seems to me that part of the question facing the Western world has to do with epicure divorce between the artist and the people who would use the obvious divorce which occurs in every single level beginning with the difficulty that the almost sheer impossibility of being a writer at all in a country and a culture. So complete the American title. It is not really a joke. You make a joke of it later when you have a young and you are not being entirely a fool. I thought to realize that if you're going to live at all if you're going to see if you're not going to go on you're not going to betray everything

then you're going to be. You don't have to be a writer. I don't think it's something anybody chooses. I don't think that it is so special a condition as the Western world makes it. But what does happen and above all in this country is when you need to make the first steps in yourself to being reconciled to being a writer. You have also the very same moment the very same gesture taking upon yourselves a necessity of being a maverick so that people say when you use you start scribbling he will ask you when you young and innocent don't know no better than how to answer the way I answered for example was you asked me what do you do. I say I'm a writer and you all say to

me Yeah but what do you do. Finally if you get past all that people stop saying you finally get a job. How do you say I have a job that's very important. It is compounded of course in this country by the realities of sects and the moral choices every one of the society is supposed to make. So many want to know what was the status of an American writer and the truth about it is that he status is a little lower. It's true that a joke. Then a competent garage mechanic people will not take it seriously at least on one level they don't take it seriously. They don't take it serious enough to try to act on what they know. They know they

don't take it serious enough to try to do dad risking their identities. But that is what it comes to what we think we are controlled as far more than who we really are and that's why that's why the writer is always in the way in such trouble and one of our own I'm trying to really be honest with all of these questions down. You know I'm sort of halfway through. No I'm not joking really it is a difficult assignment because the next question is how do you perceive your public. And that's a real question all of these are real questions by the way. I'm joking about things I'm a little frightened. More than that. How do you perceive your public is a very curious question. I can say it is exactly a 20th century question but it does come

it is one of the results. The language which one is forced to deal with is one of the results of the industrial revolution. I put it that way because before then to some point before then the question was nothing and nothing to do with one's public. It concerned one's own and one's audience. And one's audience is a very different thing than one's public. An artist by beginning to work begins to create his audience. I can't really describe that further than that. There's an audience waiting for him or her. Which can only begin to be activated when he or she begins to work. The artist may create an audience which he will feel an audience which will never hear him but he may never

have a public a public exist in the time of the artist's time almost by definition and audience is in some sense timeless in the same sense that the artist hopes his work will be timeless. A public reacts to a personality. And God knows we should know that in this country by now and personalities come and go like fast food. The trick for an artist is to trust his audience and to know that his audience trust him and he cannot cheat that invisible one or two multitudes of people between him him her and that audience. There is an unspoken bond unspoken promise

not to betray. To try to tell the truth. And every artist knows that it is impossible to tell the truth. It is a tremendous word and it shimmers like a butterfly and it goes like that it comes like that. You can't tell the truth but you have to trust it. You have to know. But you don't know. You have to know that every time you have found an answer to a question you're really down. Another question is because time is what it is and the answer for me may not be the answer to my nephew. The answer for a boy born in my time and place

will not apply to a boy born in Brazil of a boy born in China. And that is why one has to try to deal with the truth or let the trees deal with you was only with that humility they begin to have the courage really to learn to love each other. Which is really if you really want to think about it now and not speaking so much as I write about spoilers. But I'm a writer we're supposed to love each other. Writers are supposed to know that and that is what makes them so dangerous. I used to watch people when I was very young I was fascinated by people that's fascinated by words and the reasons I cannot possibly really decipher it meant to me as a way of finding out who I am not so much you know who I was certainly but where I was first. It was almost like a game. You know I can still remember

some of the things I described like the 1933 Plymouth which had knee action we'll say the cause of that that spring which gave the card the action we have to draw. Cause why I don't know. Sailboats make up stories by the deacons and the brothers and sisters in the church described in this way and that way. Read everything that quite indiscriminately just I just read in my circumstances it will relieve my future. It was not very likely that a boy like me and even the black white history of this country and also as far as I knew would ever come right out. But I was lucky in my family really. I was lucky.

In short the luck of the world I want. It was the only thing I could do. It was perhaps what I'd been born to do this all was always what really in some way in this very rational age frightens and anybody you know anybody who says that maybe that's what I was born to do does run the risk of seeming to be mischievous irresponsible. One of those people never read Freud. But I can hardly put it any other way. I don't like to describe you know I was I was in many ways if you like poverty stricken I was a poverty stricken in that way there was a lot around me to look at to deal with to to be terrified of to learn from. Coming back now to the question of the quote unquote minority writer people I knew the people I grew up with the people in the church people in the street people in jail. If you look at suicide

people tended to junkyards the alternative junkies. People turn into cops. People end up at the post office. You'll end up you know 14 year old girl with a baby and the father nowhere to be found. The music the tambourine the blues nothing in all of that nothing at all that impressed me as being at all minor. It seemed to me then and I know it now levelled at what was happening all around me every day every hour. David in no way whatever from what Charles Dickens was telling me about his friends in England. Generations before I was blown didn't seem to me that

anything happening around me was different than what Tolstoy was talking about or Dostoyevsky. All in Shakespeare it seemed to me that all this was a part of life that all this is a part of some universal one some universal challenge some universal danger. It was much much later in my life really that the question of Carlow began to afflict when my friend my Angela call my smallest mind. I got into trouble really backing on the assumption that there was no real difference between Prescott and the cause and me. None at all. I would have split a pawnbroker's head with an axe almost any other Saturday. The pawnbroker lived on the corner. Everything we

own was there. As a result of the very well as all of that cast of characters. It was only later that people told me that you can't you know. But he was white or black. But they told me too late. By the time they told me I was already beyond hope. When I was doing does he have skin. He reconciled me to he made me feel as I see this. I'm not the first person to suffer this way. It happened to somebody else it would happen to somebody else than I can bear it could happen to somebody else. And it's true if it happened somebody else I'm not alone. But it was my country which insisted

that what happened to me was very different than what happened Oliver Twist. This is my country which insisted that I was a minority writer having no connection with the civilised culture that I had historically and actually had to settle. Not so much for second best or second rate but was supposed to accept my master's version of my experience. He knew more about my experience than I did I was expected to take his version of my experience and write it down and give it back to him. And thus I would enter the mainstream and become I would still be a minority writer of course but at least I would have a civilised point of view.

I am not joking. And furthermore I've been around a while and I wish I could tell you that but I'm a guy who has suggested as change but it hasn't. Finally a writer's responsibility is to his time and place and there is a way around that. One doesn't wish to examine too closely the connection between commerce. And morality. Not only are not in danger the reality is fearfully compromised and the people in danger who what every writer perhaps would like to activate on the part of his audience and these present days are part of his public is the daring

jackdaw to question because finally. The nation which produces the art as people which produce the artistes are responsible to two things they're responsible first of all to themselves. There was sponsible for the country in which they find themselves which is as a result when I direct result of the responsibility one takes what other or the fan to take responsibility for it. It is time in this country to overhaul a great many things to question everything and that and the hour is late. I'm not absolutely certain you know but we can afford this apathy. I'm not certain you know living in wait for someone else to do it in the next century. Most of you said before me I'll be much much younger in 17 years which is when the next century begins than I am now.

And I'm only 59 and I live here too. But we're talking about the writers sponsibility but all our responsibility we have first of all take upon ourselves the responsibility of making sure there is a next century. It is not the age we can blow up the world. It seems to me that one has to then reexamine the language the assumptions and the morality which has led us to this place. I refuse to believe I refuse to believe that we cannot do better than that that we are not better than that.

I refuse to believe they were going to be manipulated into oblivion by some of the most literate people in the history of the world. That is our responsibility and if we get past this point and I am certain somehow that we will then we can on another day begin to get the question of what's the use of a writer. That's what the question really means. And perhaps you realize that his calling may be to be the moral custodian. Of the always evolving human race. Thank you.

We enter now the question and response period. I want to ask you one which is that one of the things that has fascinated me about your life and career is that you have you are a writer and you're also a spokesman going back to 20 years ago this year. 963 with publication of our next time. And I have been fascinated by it and monitoring of the ability to at least from my perception the spokesman never in gorj the writer as it were and you walk the kind of tight rope it seems to me between being a writer and being a spokesman.

Could you talk about that a little bit. Yeah I like that shot. It was a type of 70s. It was it was a like kind of ready answer the question is what happened. I came back in Paris to go to Little Rock. There's more to it than that. I was in Paris working when I was working on a book. But I knew that was coming. I knew that I was coming back here and it was beneath me to stand out. It was beneath me to read about it in the paper because I have family here. You know I didn't come back to be a spokesman. I came back to be a witness and you know know what was happening. And I became a spokesman by accident really but it was very frightening. But I

learned that I could face what I learned in those years that the people in the deep south needed someone to carry the news out. And I found out that I could do that. I've been in the magazine long enough not to be frightened by magazine editors and when they said to me it's not for your readers you don't mean that it's of your advertisers. And furthermore I didn't try to live in England so I could always say well you want to publish after London does it. Oh before I had a certain that a nuisance value. And I think that's what happened. And I was never in a way at war with it. I was simply frightened about it because being on the platform for example talking. Oh I think I know something is one thing but I have to be here and have to be there as a matter of mine as a kind of responsibility. And it scared me because

the effort of being a writer isn't exactly antithetical to what you have to sit down by yourself and realize you don't know anything. But so far so good. We have a question over here. Yes and your view of the writer as moral custodian. I was I was wondering how you respond how you would respond to charges of self-righteousness and the conflict between self-righteousness and righteousness by by criticism given to us created by criticism I think. Well I don't say that morality is a Hindu of being self-righteous. And again we are on top of the language. I'm Jim and I talk when I talk about morality I'm not talking about any church or any member of Congress.

I am talking about what I can see of of the ads that are the necessity of the human being to treat other people as human. That is all I mean by morality. I'm not choosing one church over another. I'm not attempting to blackmail anyone. I hope I'm not self righteous but I do think it is the highest duty of a man or a woman to become a moral human being. Question your do you make compromises with from what you call the world of commerce as opposed to your world of art. How the economy has come is every time I pay my rent. If that is your question but you don't compromise in what you write about for as opposed to what people might want you to write about it. Well you can't really do that really. You know that if you do that

you can't you can't really do that and you can drive you know you have you know you can. But you can't really do that. What is your vision of the world where the writers are the legislators. What is my vision of the work of the writers of the legislators. I don't think you know I don't make any grandiose claims will being a writer. I could I could run a gas station you know. I think that's a reference to Joyce's quote of our writers are they artist of the unacknowledged legislators of the world. It's a grandiose statement and there's a level to which I can see. The truth of it. But I'm going to live by that. You know I don't think I do that I'll break that down I certainly cannot you know disseminated this romantic view and an inflated view of the role of an artist. I think that an artist teaches you some of the footage of me

lead you back to reality again. You make you see a lot of the first time something you've been seeing all your life. And in that sense a lot is very very powerful. But he is not really useful in that he's no statesman thinks he is in the halls of power. You see a legislator's point of view has got to be public by definition. A lot of point of view is always private. You don't see what I mean though do you. Well I think that the social responsibility of the artist writer is to be the leader of the world I think you know who. You know being a writer is you know it is difficult enough. God has responsibilities first of all to become an artist and that is not an isolated endeavor that is I mean that he is not he has no social responsibility the only way he can execute that

responsibility is by learning to do the best what he can do best. I cannot give you a blueprint. I'm not a politician I'm not a legislator and I could give you a blueprint if I had one I wouldn't give it to you because if you don't figure out how to do it yourself it will not be done. It is you the people who have to be the leaders this is the this is this is where you missed my point. Yes. I'm really wondering about the battle that the artist has in identifying him or herself as an artist and where that battle should be whether it's with the self or with the society. And my question is do you feel that a writer should be valued over an item they can. You have the right it should be valued over not a mechanic that is not exactly what I meant to say that I was talking about. No I don't and I don't but I

was talking about the presumptions of this so-called classless society. You know I was talking really have suggested trying to suggest something a little slit. I was gonna suggest really the loneliness of the mechanics and the lows of the ride. You know there's something both in policy positions. That's what I was trying to say. You speak about writers as moral custodians and moralists and also that they have a social responsibility. And it seems obvious that when you write that you have something that you want to say that you feel something is right or that something's wrong. Do you feel that through your writing that you've changed anything. No I don't think I change anything no not at all. I wish I was a yes no I don't I don't mean by people reading a post or two that are they have elevated their consciousness in some way or that they've that you've achieved something by getting them to read what you have to say I know what you mean and I know if you're asking me is that a question I can easily answer with

I'll say that I think I've changed a thing. No I don't think so. But then again I wouldn't and I think I'll never know. But if the change is coming in you. You know that's what it's about. You see what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Yeah well you see I won't know that but you have to know that you have to know that and I have to trust it. You see what I mean. To the left I would like to ask you and one of your books I believe you mentioned a statement saying that the world was white but it will never be white again I can't recall the book. But what did you mean by that. Specifically what I meant by that was almost I said let's see I think that's that's that's the Swiss village that's strange a village I think I'm pretty sure that's right. And I said I was saying that comparing the village when I was in the village where I was in a black man before. And it's coming out of the hands of my skin to see it rubbed off and try to do the things that I have which I don't like.

But I find it has in between the village which I myself they really had never seen a black man before and the place in which I was you know karma came in place which I was born where they had seen me for 400 years and I so was trying to suggest the innocence of that village was not possible for Americans in any way whatever. And that's the world America was facing. I would never be white again. Thank you. Yes I was wondering if could you give us some advice to young artists who are afraid of what they want to be but are afraid they may not be what they want to be. They cannot become what they want to be. Why did you join the club.

I'm not really joking and I hope you never change. You see what I mean. Thank you. OK. Mr. Baldwin How does a novelist are the writer as the moral custodian right about using grace without sounding righteous. Well first of all I'm not sure when I hear the question. I'm not quite sure you can do it. I'm not quite sure I believe. I see so clearly the division between Grace and sin. I think there may be more difficult and more private you know mysterious matter than the language would lead us to believe we're all sacred. We're all doomed. You see what I mean. I don't

prostitute in a state of grace. I know some holy people who are in a state of sin to put it mildly. To the left. Well you kind of left me with a bit of a problem. You said that people who were your audience in other words people who produced you had two responsibilities. You said they were responsible for themselves and you said they were responsible for or they should try some I guess be responsible for their country not I don't know what you mean by that. You know I know that's my problem. You know but you said that before but how do you do what do you mean by that. What do you mean by that country. I mean I can see it caring about I can see as an individual being responsible for my car payments and responsible for my money you know or my heart. But

as an individual being responsible for my country you know that leaves it open to you know some people can be very harsh or cruel. I mean you know I you know was responsible for his country. You know what I said he took an attitude of responsibility over his country Hitler that was in his mind Song Words. No that is not quite it was not quite what I had in mind. No no no no what I said I think about myself and my own direct eye to see who's responsible for one's country and I thought that I was grandiose but know one way or another you are in any case you either know it or you don't know it.

In the case in my own case I was making a claim coming out of my under siege speaking as the grandson of a Slave which is what I am and I say responsible to my country because I didn't want to be driven out of it because my father's father's father's father's paid for it. And whatever happens in this country affects me there's no way for me to escape it. You know that is what I mean and I think that's true and that's in principle true of everybody you know and when you say he was responsible for his country you shouldn't turn the crown over it out yourself where everybody else was. You see what I mean. All I'm really saying is you cannot sign a separate peace. You see what I mean. You know I said you cannot sign a separate peace. If I am in trouble you are too. Well it seems that if you say that to me the first thing I think of doing would be going out and joining an organization where I feel like that's a cop out why I don't know who is responsible.

You are you are at the moment. Well all I can be responsible is for what I have the wisdom to keep on keeping on. You know that's exactly what it all anyone can do. Joining me I know you're not but I'm I'm saying that you know an average mind that's what popped into my head I should join the you know. Well but then the problem is ok if if I join the nuclear freeze and I don't give a damn about what happens to the person next door to me you know then what kind of a person I'm not. And that's the. Well you seem to be getting the point. OK I have this crisp question written down. I've been preoccupied with what it means to be writing in thinking under threat of nuclear annihilation. There was a time when I told myself I was writing thinking. Even living in order to redeem my past make of my life a work of

art and creatively usher in the future. And I'm having a hard time holding onto the sense of purpose in the face of annihilation of the human race. And I want to know. How do you hold on to your sense of purpose. I find it very hard to answer because it's a much older than you vs.. So it's not really when he's already a question I could say you know and it would be true that the world which is coming which which belongs to you I believe in that I believe in you. I don't see how my generation can play it any other way. I think one has to be concerned. I think we are responsible for the world which we are leaving you. You see what I mean. Heaps of faces all I can tell you you that you have after you really don't know it but we have the power to do something about it. You cannot pretend. We cannot pretend we don't we cannot there is no this is not the moment it is back

in the box. I'd like to ask you a question about humility and heroism. It seems as though throughout the course of your lecture and subsequent questions that people have been using the phrase moral custodian an awful lot and it seems to connote an action of cleaning up so to speak but yet it seems to me in the works of us that I've read in study that those characters that are heroic were the most noble don't aspire to have to any positions of leadership. They're not they don't actively or deliberately try to change anything with the clean anything or anybody up there or nobility It seems to me seems to be just in a basic human dignity whether it's embodied in suffering or generosity or the act of love. And if those are the kinds of people whether man or woman and any type of character that comprises your heroes. How's that affected you as a writer

being private and sharing your private thoughts and having to be public and. Maybe not always in a position to exercise or to show up to show those kinds of qualities or be given the chance to show those qualities that your heroes have I think I hear your question when I see more of the story was because I was with long eyes let alone future. Maybe the story was I exactly what I want. Stewart said witness which rather than a clear over the word moral but I did not mean any sect religion or any particular book of the Bible. And in talking about what I can see actually and I start with as big as a writer as the possibilities of reality. The sacredness of the human being is one with the

talking. And which is out of that center I think out of ones what one believes of one sense is what would in some way knows about human life about oneself and about the other and the ways in which we are all connected I'm talking about that and every art is in one way or another. You know it's because you write about it but I could be good I could be a poser is every artist do the work of an artist. MC is principle above all to bear witness to that which is an irreducible truth and in some way invariant by bearing witness allow help all of us to execute our responsibility toward each other and toward something much more than that too. It's all connected I can't be. It's difficult to be clear about it but you know what I mean. I just make it perhaps more clear in my mind. So you would say that for that connection to be possible it has to start on a personal level. Yes start with oneself. Yeah that's what I'm saying.

Thank you thank you. Take one last question. If the artist is. It's supposed to look after us or morally. Well when I got heard you say in which artists are more accustomed already and somehow privy to information other people don't have or only know you're somehow better that was the feeling I don't know I don't mean that at all. I said custodian of I could as I said stupid and I said moral law is a right it's a rise and I was always in trouble and every society never heard of it because not because he's not because he hates the people and not because you think he's better than they are but because he challenges something in them to do something they know they can do and don't want to do. I'm fraid to do because it will make them lonely there will be they will be a Nesselrode. This is what it is all about then what is an enemy of the people about for example because it was better than the people in that town who are afraid to declare a plague because they would

lose money. But it's all about what is because it was gammon about it not because he thought it was better than the Spaniards were being bombed out of existence by the rest of us. Right. But in the act of painting an echo which you kept with him which you kept in France but not allowed to go to Spain. And when Franco was dead that is being that is a close ally can come too. What I mean by being a moral custodian does not mean that because I thought he was bad it does mean that I think I'm better. It means that it means that I have to try to bear witness to what I know you know that were not and that were not so they're not the right I wouldn't be in trouble. Now that I know something different. It's because I know exactly what you know and you know I know it. You see what I mean. Does it take an artist to do that. That depends on you. Thank you very

much goodnight. You've been listening to writers speak featuring James Baldwin one of America's finest writers. This is the sixth in a series of seven radio programs each of which will present a prominent Massachusetts writer writer speak is presented by the Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This program is made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts foundation for humanities and public policy which is a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities executive producers Susan Brown and Julius Lester. Producer Patricia Meyerson engineers Scott backroom and art steel tape editing assistance Judith Gold thank you for listening.