Baldwin’s intense identification with movement figures nearly destroyed him

Evidence

This kind of work was extraordinarily personal for him. The ups and the downs, the refusals and the deaths, were felt in the marrow of his bones, and he worked hard to figure out how to get it all on the page. Bayard Rustin said of Baldwin, “People sometimes didn’t understand Jimmy’s intense identification with people in the Movement. He often came off a platform after speaking trembling with emotion. It’s a wonder to me such intensity didn’t wear out that frail body long ago.” It almost did. No Name was the book that announced his survival. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Physical survival as precondition for writing the after times — grounds the biography-as-argument method.