The Fire Next Time
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. The Dial Press, 1963 (Book Club Ed.). Hardbound. Author photo by Mottke Weissman. 'Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them,' Baldwin writes in 'Down at the Cross', the second of two essays in this enduringly influential book of the civil rights era, 'time reveals the foundations on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.' At the age of 14, while struggling with his sexuality, Baldwin briefly turned to Christianity and spent some time preaching, an experience he reflects on in this essay; the pulpit helped teach him that he had a gift for words, and by the time he graduated from high school, his yearbook motto was, 'Fame is the spur and—ouch!' This edition features a jacket typical of 'Big Look Book' innovator Paul Bacon, known for his use of negative space and large, bold titling type, as seen in his iconic first editions of both Catch-22 and Portnoy's Complaint.
