NO NAME IN THE STREET

New York: The Dial Press, 1972. Fine in near fine jacket.. First edition of Baldwin's fourth nonfiction book, a personal, philosophical, and political memoir. NO NAME covers from his childhood in Harlem to his life and work in the postwar '40s; to the turn of the McCarthyite '50s into the turbulent '60s, "when many of my friends vanished into the hills, or into anarchies called communes, or into orgone boxes." Included are the years when Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and others he knew and loved died brutal deaths, and the decade, along with the mythic self-delusion of the American people, "who are at present among the most dishonorable and violent people in the world," collapsed in on itself. By 1972, familiarity with Baldwin's rhetorical style had bred contempt among many critics once happy to be enlightened, now furious to be reminded. This reaction itself, Mel Watkins observed, "may very well be a more serious indictment against ourselves, a palpable indication of our own moral degeneration. Only if an eloquent appeal for morality is irrelevant in the seventies, is James Baldwin anachronistic." One of his best. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original textured cream cloth boards, spine and front board lettered in blue. In original unclipped ($5.95) black typographic dust jacket with design by Bob Korn, photo of Baldwin by Bob Adelman to rear panel. Greyish-blue endpapers. [10], 107, [1] pages. Jacket with shallow edgewear.