You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] in the new book, James Baldwin escape from america, we have plenty of copies up front, so we do encourage you to pick up a copy or two or three so we can stay in this neighborhood as a community space. [laughter] okay. Im going to do this very elegantly. So, first, let me introduce our panelists. Carol weinstein is the mother of taan yell Baldwin Daniel baldwin, also on the panel, and was a partner of david whom she met in 1964. Later, jimmy would refer to her as his sister out of law, and when jimmy bought the house in st. Paul [inaudible conversations] thank you, david and carol first visited jimmy there together in 1977 from amsterdam where they were living at the time. They drove there to celebrate his buying the house. Carol also visited in 1974 and then again several summers from 1975 into the 80s with daniel. She and daniel also made nostalgic visits several years later after jimmy died, and daniel visited his father david there as well when he became very ill. Carol was a very active participant in the afternoon sessions with the Welcome Table where the author sought criticisms of his work and completed in the early hours. Daniel fondly recalls his uncle jimmy walking hand in hand with him up to the town center visiting many villages in the area and sometimes carrying him, being taken on sightseeing tours to paris, swimming in the pool, and to the ocean in the monte carlo along with being taught chess and astounded at finding baldwins books in many strange languages for him in the house. Carols a longtime patron of book culture and hails from brooklyn, new york, and has managed to travel and work extensively across the globe during her lengthy career. Currently as chief learner of her sole consultancy learning works, she provides Consulting Services in diversity, inclusion and human resources, learning and development and leadership management across the workplace. Shes also associate professor for graduate programs, and her proud best accomplishment is her son daniel, and his greatest accomplishment, her two grandchildren. Daniel, the nephew of james and son of david and carol, father of graham and poppy, husband of china is a professional Audio Engineering consultant and sometimes visual artist who resides in providence, rhode island. From traveling with his mom since he was born in new york city and having lived in a few other places, he has had the benefit of seeing much of the world, although now he enjoys a much quieter life in providence. Okay. [laughter] thank you. Also joining us is nicholas de delbanco to, and he comments on the frequency of time spent talking at jimmys table. He has published some 29 books of fiction and nonfiction, his most recent novel is the years. His latest nonfiction is the art of youth. Delbanco was director of the mfa program and the Hopwood Awards Program at the university of michigan, and he is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of english language and littture at the university of michigan but now lives just with around the block from our store on 114th. [laughter] so all these new yorkers together, come together as a result of their association with this project done by jules farber who attended rutgers in new New Brunswick with where he received a bachelors degree in journalism, he wrote for various american and foreign publications and was awarded the silent prize by the minister of Foreign Affairs for the best articles published in the American Press about the netherlands. Farber wrote and published in english and dutch editions, and he has written three more books published in french and english, but his most recent project has been this collection, again, James Baldwin escape from america. So a quick round of applause for our panelists and for jules [applause] and im going to go ahead and turn it over to them. [inaudible] oh, youre right. One last note. Unfortunately, george wein was not able to join us tonight for the panel. He was very disappointed, but he was not feeling up to it. He turns 91 on monday, and he had a flu shot earlier this week and had a bad reaction to it, so he stayed home. But he wanted us to know how disappointed he was and that he really loved Jimmy Baldwin and was looking forward to reminiscing with the others about him. Again, thank you, jules. Take it away. [applause] [inaudible conversations] i dont know if its better if i sit or stand. Can everybody hear me . [inaudible] is that better . Okay. Maybe ill stand. The first thing people ask me when they hear about the book is why did you do this book about baldwin. There have been enough books and literary commentary and so forth. And i did it because of an accidental finding, discovery of a photograph of james, or jimmy as they called him, at the hotel in [inaudible] and a famous hotel, many of you probably know it. The whole hollywood crowd goes there during the cannes film festival, and years earlier picasso and chagal and everybody came there, and they sort of traded artwork for meals. And the inside of the Hotel Restaurant is full of these wonderful things. I thought it was because i loved James Baldwins work from the time i was in high school and read many of his books, i thought itd be interesting to find out why other People Like Us we lived in amsterdam, as you heard from cody, for a number of years, and laider we moved to provence, and we made it a ritual to go down every summer to see the, have lunch there, to see the wonderful [speaking in native tongue] which has a great Art Collection and to enjoy. Its a very unique, special ambience there. And i thought it would be nice for my next book finish the last one was about fayson, and others were about the popes, jew and provence, and one was a big photo book, sort of a cocktail table size about cats photographed by the worlds greatest photographers. So this was sortf a challenge to see what could i do thats different about baldwin. And i found out that this period that he was in st. Paul provence which was from 19701987 has been written about very little. Everybody knows about the period in new york and other places, but this and then i thought maybe a fresh approach might be lets find out people who came to visit him there and how they shaped his life there, like carol and daniel and nicholas and a lot of famous people like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and angela davis and all those people. So i set off, and it took me more than four years, and it might be a reflection of my slow writing to get this book together. And i got on the phone very brazen like and called everybody and said perhaps you would like to help reminisce about everybody, to the last man, was happy to cooperate. Nobody said im too busy or whatever. Some of these people i met i was able to interview or visit here in new york, people like david laming who, unfortunately, couldnt come today because hes now living in connecticut and hes traveling. But david lemming and other people like that who spent a lot of time with baldwin at home. And thats what besides those, i was always interested in the everyday contacts he had with the people in provence because thats not the most obvious place for a new yorker from harlem to come live. Its a very allwhite, conservative, Agrarian Community that had never seen a black man in their lives, and they thought he was kind of a revolutionary. And the police had a car parked outside his door which everybody said, oh, youre fantasizing, but it was really there which came out in later publications. So he had a hard time. He said it was just like being in new york and harlem. There was a lot of an antagonis. But due to his broad, bigtoothed smile, he won over the people. Everybody who walked in the street, he said, hey, joe, come back and have a drink with me, and lets stop here, and he correct me if im wrong, carol, because she knew him very well, of course. So this was a part of it. Book concerned with why did baldwin go to [inaudible] he was feeling depressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of all the assassinations in america, because of the resistance to his work with the as an activist. The other young black writers were condemning him. He was having problems on all sides. He felt so he fled to paris again for the second time, and there he, with a selfinduced breakdown, probably mental, he got into the American Hospital just outside of paris. And after treatment they, someone said why dont you go to san paul. You know people there, for your convalescence. So he went, and he was greeted there, again, in this hotel which became his second home, by simone [inaudible] he knew simone from the student riots in the 60s. He was there at that time. And he watched television with her and drank a lot of booze til all hours of the night. They had a very simone and he both lived in the hotel in separate rooms. So he was in simones room for all these encounters. And she said you have to stay here, and ill help you find a place to live. And the place that they, that she came up with was a very elegant 17th century [inaudible] a big home. Virtual virtually about one kilometer from the heart of the city but really very elegant. The only problem was that the owner was someone who hated blacks. She came from algeria where they were dispossessed during the algerian war from a very rich family, even though she was only 2 years old, and she kept this hatred for anybody black. But simone and the woman opener of the hotel owner of the hotel convinced her to do it. So what did she do . She built a big brick thing blocking her doors, her part of the house. Well, actually, she put an armoire there, a big wardrobe and so he could never come into her space. But slowly, slowly, slowly through the years she learned to love him. And she wanted him to have the house. And all her forlorn years of loneliness and so forth, she passed on to him. And she wanted so he kept buying rooms in the house, but he didnt have money to pay for them. So he gave her ious. And on her death bed in the village, she had them pinned to her nightgown leaving instructions, he cant get the house til he pays. [laughter] so, and that became a court case for 20 years between the cleaning woman who was supposedly distant family and claimed that she was entitled to have it. And all these remote relatives who appeared from nowhere. So for 20 years the house stood empty. It was pilaried by people who stole shutters off the building, there was rain coming in, but nobody until it was finally settled and this cleaning woman got the house finally and sold it. And now its in the news again because the present owner wants to build 20 villas on this beautiful property, and the Monuments Committee didnt do anything to protect it. And hes already knock down two wings of the house, and no one knows whats going to happen. But thats in the news now. [inaudible] i prepared this, and then i havent even been looking at it. Sorry. One of the things in this the book explores life with jimmy and with over 70 interviews, and as i said, it took me four years because the essence of the book is to try to get to know his life through the people who came there. And besides the famous people like maya angelou and those people, there were everyday people, everyday locals who were very close to him. His doctor, after he retired, was there every night for dinner. His mailman, who was a very young boy at the time, used to come because he was the only one in san paul who read any english, and he had to take down the telegrams which came in by morse code or something word by word by word or and then bring it. And he said, he told me, he said, i came when i was 15 or 16, and he would always greet me with a big kiss. He said, im not gay, but he was like a grandma to me. [laughter] he used that word. And i always got invited in for a drink, and he was living in this tense situation at that moment, was being fold even in america when he followed even in america when he went back to teach, when he went to new york. The fbi was on his tail organized by j. Edgar hoover. [inaudible] its been confirmed now. Everybody was saying this is only and he called him a black homosexual communist, and he had to be, he had to be followed. He was not a communist. I think j. Edgar hoover should have come out of the closet at that moment. [laughter] people like the Rolling Stones guitarist bill weimann was a good friend of his, and theres a picture of him in the book. The pictures trace his earliest dales with carol days with carol right up to his burial here in new york at st. John divine, at the cathedral. I think while taking distance from america, he retained a love hate relationship. He always felt very american. He said i cant be an expatriot, thats only for expate rat, thats only for white people because i have a lot of baggage with the Family History and dont forget i was the grandson of a slave. So he always felt this doublesided relationship. And he finally became, as he called himself, he always said im a small, ugly, gay black american, as he liked to describe himself. But he was finally accepted as one of us in the community. And one of the wonderful things just going back to the picture for one minute is i asked the waiter in the hotel why is there a photo of James Baldwin here . I understand picasso because he came and all the others. And he said because he was like a son to the family roux who owned the hotel, and the grandmother of the present generation said we want you to be part of the family, and you come eat with us and stay with us and so forth. Even though he had his own home. And this went on with her daughter and with the present generation. They saw him as a sibling, as a brother. And they supported him. And, of course, with simones backing and the family roux which are the most important in up to because of their establishment, helped him become known and accepted by the people. He remained a displaced American Writer using black english which Toni Morrison confirmed in one of her writings, that she learned a lot of that from him, that he didnt and he never wrote anything, he never wrote anything that gave indication that he was living in france. It was always as if he was in america and doing his usual essays and writing and so forth. And the only thing he was writing when he died was called the Welcome Table, because he called the dining room outdoor and indoor the Welcome Table. And people who came he had guests day and night, and he didnt have the money for it. He was getting huge advances from the publishers, and it was spent before the check was card practically. Cashed practically. This went on and on and on until it really became a problem after his death from money he had gotten from a major publisher and, of course, it couldnt be paid back. But heft writing this book, this play, the Welcome Table, but he died before it was finished. Aside from that, everything he ever did was america, americanoriented. I think, i hope that answers the question why i did it. I was fascinated by baldwin being in this Little French village, by the people who came. Everybody, i felt all kinds of people, one of his lovers that fled to the caribbean after he died because of the relationship, all kinds of people, local, the mailman, the chauffers, the cafe owners, everybody came. I did not find anybody who had a disparaging word about him. He was very popular there and very successful, and i think its wonderful that such a book could be produced with all the good evidence and all the nice people on the panel. Nicholas, who lives nearby, as you heard, who was there all the time. I remember from his book that his wife was keeping notes about when they were there, and they were this at lunch and dinner or dipper and lunch or dinner and lunch or breakfast and lunch. He had to have a lot of people around him all the time, but people he liked. He was very close to the Artistic Community and to the writers that were there, nicholas and a few others. And i think that more or less tells the story of the book, and i hope you enjoy it. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] i think we would like to call on carol now to tell in her words her relationship with jimmy and through her partner david, and her frequent and early visits staying in the house, being with him, hearing the writing that he read to her and to several other people at the breakfast at the lunch table because he got up very late. He worked all night, drank a lot of whiskey and then produced this fiction or essays. And then he would ask several very Close Friends and his secretary and his family to please tell me what do you think. So please, carol, maybe you can thank you very much, jules. Well, i met David Baldwin in 1964 in the east village at a party. I was living in the area, and we met at a party at the home of an attorney that worked for jimmy. And then it was up or down from there depending on how you look at it. [laughter] but it ended up being literally the next threequarters of my life in terms of amazing experiences and things that i treasure. So david was at that time in rehearsal for blues for mr. Charlie which which, i dont know, did anybody in the audience see it . Well, a lot of people left because they couldnt handle it. It was quite a play. Actually, a wonderful work of jimmys that has never received the proper due, as much of his work. But i was at a performance at the antitheater every night amphitheater every night, and then it closed and went to london for a little while, and then it ended. And there have been resurgences of the play. In fact, it was done recently what daniel lives, in providence, rhode island, at the trinity Repertory Theater which was exciting to see after all these years. Its a wonderful play to read, its an important play, and too many people said it was polemic and