Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

This is a dense and fascinating story, as much a reflection on racism in America as it is the story of a man’s life and illusions. The title phrase does not seem to appear in the text, and when I began I wondered what it’s meaning was. By the end, it seems to me that it’s a comment on the life of the central character, who works through his life to overcome the racist society he lives in, but finally finds that the success train has left before he ever got to the station. He was never going to be on it, no matter how much he rose in his art.
The scenes of Leo’s young life in Harlem show the impact of racism on his family, especially on his father. The threat of violence from the police and the fear of violence from white people show more shapes Leo’s existence. This becomes even more intense when he spends a summer at a small-town theatre camp together with a white woman friend. Nevertheless, he wants to fight against the racism and make his own future.
In some ways, Leo’s character could be a stand-in for Baldwin, a successful Black man who challenges racism and has to continually defend his choices. He has friends and allies, but being a public figure calling for justice is stressful and leads to the heart attack that makes him pause and re-examine his life. The apparent futility of his life work eventually draws him toward armed resistance. I’m not sure if that was the conclusion that Baldwin came to personally, but it is where he leaves his central character.
The story is also about Leo’s relationship with his older brother, Caleb. Leo loves and admires Caleb, a natural leader who responds with rage to the racism they grew up with in Harlem. Leo is devastated when Caleb is wrongly imprisoned for theft by racist police (and corrupted Black criminals). Caleb later becomes a preacher, swallows his rage and challenges Leo’s anger and radicalism. Is this a suggestion that Black leaders can work within the church to create a separate world? Or that the church provides a haven for defeated Black men? Leo wants to kill the white people who have damaged his brother, but he has to painfully reject his brother’s reactionary passivity and fight the racism that dominates all of their lives. By succeeding in the theatre, Leo wants to inspire other black people to overcome the racism they face. At one point, though, he sees a parallel between the church and the theatre, and by the end his success seems as limited as his brother's. In a scene near the end of the novel, he has lunch with the family of his closest friend, a white woman from Tennessee. In her family, he finds just a thin layer of politeness and liberalism covering a deep racism.
In some respects, this could be a depressing story, given the way that racism remains in contemporary society since Baldwin wrote it over 50 years ago. Somehow it isn’t depressing, at least not to me. Baldwin’s characters fight a terrible, devastating struggle, but they continue to fight, and they are ready to escalate if they have to. Baldwin suggests that they won’t stop until they succeed. The alternative is to succumb to insubstantial beliefs that are deadening. Baldwin portrays Leo’ rage and the social conditions that drive it, and makes the reader feel it too, along with the fear and despair that go along with it.
And perhaps the tone is also raised by the beautiful prose that Baldwin writes with. In every paragraph I could hear the cultured voice that he used in his public debates and talks. It’s such a pleasure to hear the language that it made me slow down to read each sentence in my head. This is not a book that I wanted to to skim through quickly. show less

46. [51017::Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone] by [[James Baldwin]]
published: 1968
format: 484 page Vintage paperback
acquired: September
read: Sep 6 – Oct 3 (9 days reading, scattered)
time reading: 14 hr 3 min, 1.7 min/page
rating: 4½

My Litsy review:
"I got more and more into this kind of sensitive look at a life from the Harlem streets to fame. It‘s a long slow book, and very intimate. Loneliness takes many forms."

As the cover indicates, this is somewhat centered on an interracial relationship, one that began during WWII when Leo Proudhammer was teenager. But while that might have a been a draw of some kind in 1968, it's not what the book leaves us thinking about. Leo welcomes us to his book as he's having a heart attack that show more began on stage while he was performing with Barbara, his white long-time partner. There are some oddities in his world, and in his perspective, in his relationship to his own stardom as his doctors and nurses fawn over him. There is no sense of personal empowerment or the kind of confidence you might expect in someone so successful. "You are news. Whatever you do is news. But it does not take long to realize, at least assuming one wishes to live, that to be news is really to be nothing." And then he looks back and begins to tell his story, growing up in Harlem, watching his revered older brother go to prison, practically divorcing his loving family to go into show business. The stress, dedication, wild life of being an actor without any income New York City, working all night, rehearsing all day, doing the crazy things we can do when we're young.

Baldwin was a tender writer, and all his characters capture your affection, even if it's slowly drawn out, as here. I picked this up three times, and put it down twice, I didn't mind reading, and I didn't mind letting it sit. And when I picked it up again, I got right back into the flow, the poverty, and off-relationships, all of them. Leo Proudhammer is, of course, another Baldwin alter ego. He has a tough background, an ingrained sense of racism, he's bisexual with unusual choices of attachment, and, perhaps, very lonely, partially in a self-inflicted kind of way. "Everyone wishes to be loved, but, in the event, nearly no one can bear it." That loneliness is what I felt strongly as I finished and put the book down. It's there from opening, from the way Barbara and the rest of the cast respond to his heart attack. But it seems to hit hard at the end. When I finished, the book left me with a weight I wasn't fully aware was accumulating. It hung around, all of it.

2019
https://www.librarything.com/topic/306026#6940458 show less

Tell me how James Baldwin manages to write so sweetly and angrily, but without bitterness. The plot is simple: Leo, a successful actor, has a heart attack, and the book is his reminiscence of his life up to this point, his reflections on his family, his struggles becoming an actor, and his relationships with two people he loves - Barbara, a fellow actor, and Christopher, an activist. Baldwin explores issues of race, vocation, art, and friendship.

Published in 1968, the book was panned by a New York Times critic, but I found it a moving tale of a man's struggle for integrity within the limits set by forces outside his control.

For 30 pages, James Baldwin completely captivated me: the description of actor Leo Proudhammer's heart attack, on stage, and what happens immediately after, is haunting. But then a series of flashbacks starts that gradually clarify who Leo actually is and what has colored his life until then. His relationship with (ex)girlfriend Barbara is especially intriguing, until you realize that Leo is an African American (raised in Harlem and scarred by poverty, segregation and discrimination) and Barbara is a privileged white person. After 100 pages Jerry appears in the story, also white, and clearly gay. But then the book has already degenerated into a succession of scenes set in the actor's milieu, endless dialogues with no apparent connecting show more thread, and a Leo who is constantly analyzing himself. I must confess that I gave up just before half way (so I won’t rate this). Baldwin had a superior style, no doubt, the social issues he addresses are highly relevant, and the evocation of how a special person (Leo in this case) deals with feelings and situations is intriguing. But in this book, he's drowned the storyline in too much meandering introspection, like in an elongated, theatrical monologue. No, this didn't resonate. My bad? show less

This was the one remaining Baldwin novel that I had not yet read. How refreshing to return to his work. This, to me, is what a novel is...journeying through a person's life. Understanding there are real, meaningful things at stake. And, of course, Baldwin's prose and insights:

I had become accustomed to the smile which masked a guilty awareness. Americans are always lying to themselves about that kinsman they call the Negro, and they are always lying to him, and I had grown accustomed to the tone which sought your complicity in the unadmitted crime.

I am sorry that I have no more of his novels to read (for the first time)....

Made my top 20. James Baldwin was an amazing writer.

Truly great.