Introduction

Abstract

I was a polite, slightly timid, first-time visitor then, yet I was also dying to open that box. I would not dare do it, however, which I now admit with some regret (I just brushed my hand against it), for I behaved as if I were in a museum, no matter that the house was far from being one (and will never become one, having since been lost to developers). I also yearned to pick up and feel the weight of the blue-green ceramic ashtray in the middle of the table that may have belonged to Baldwin. I could not be sure of that, of course, but still had to resist a power ful temptation to ask, maybe even beg, to take it with me. (Imagine having that fetish in my study!) Or that plain wooden whistle or, if not, perhaps the white and red kitchen towel lying next to it in a casual grouping on the table. Just one small token. .. something material to hold on to, to bring back from my visit. That temptation shamed me, but while in its grip I realized, too, that I could not bring myself to take anything unless it was given freely. But there was no one to grant me that wish, just shadows, imagined voices, and golden dust motes. An impor tant discovery I did not register in that moment, not until some years later, was that I had been caught up in a power ful and collective Baldwin-related sensation (if not affectation) that would travel through time and space. I was merely a pre de ces sor to, or perhaps also appeared after, some others who had come, and would continue coming, to the site of Baldwin's house to find that material something that reading his work alone could not provide. Those of us who were lucky and privileged enough to be able to make it to St. Paul-de-Vence were gripped by that same power ful need or longing to save something material from the site. 2 All of us-scholars, intellectuals, writers, readers, and simply those who love Baldwin-not only searched for a physical keepsake, but also yearned to fulfill a dream of being somehow connected to the writer in ways that go beyond the literary magic that takes place on the pages of his texts. On some level, we must all believe that the precious matter of that par tic u lar black life, which ended in that house in 1987, could somehow be sal vaged and preserved, especially in light of so few remnants of his existence, and the con spic u ous absence of a writer's house-museum devoted to him in his home country. 3 A few years ago, Baldwin's great-niece, Kali-Ma Nazarene, a talented photographer, traveled to the house and took haunting black-and-white pictures after it had been emptied of furniture, books, and all but a few broken chairs. Her trip to France had been set in motion by a dream in which the writer appeared to her and asked her to "meet me in Paris in two weeks, I can't stand it here." 4 Others, like Douglas Field, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, have written about the undeniable pull of this par tic u lar