Journal Entry 1 by tranq1 from Tampa, Florida USA on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

First published in 1953 when James Baldwin was nearly 30, Go Tell It on the Mountain is a young man's novel, as tightly coiled as a new spring, yet tempered by a maturing man's confidence and empathy. It's not a long book, and its action spans but a single day--yet the author packs in enough emotion, detail, and intimate revelation to make his story feel like a mid-20th-century epic. Using as a frame the spiritual and moral awakening of 14-year-old John Grimes during a Saturday night service in a Harlem storefront church, Baldwin lays bare the secrets of a tormented black family during the depression. John's parents, praying beside him, both wrestle with the ghosts of their sinful pasts--Gabriel, a preacher of towering hypocrisy, fathered an illegitimate child during his first marriage down South and refused to recognize his doomed bastard son; Elizabeth fell in love with a charming, free-spirited young man, followed him to New York, became pregnant with his son, and lost him before she could reveal her condition.

Baldwin lays down the terrible symmetries of these two blighted lives as the ironic context for John's dark night of the soul. When day dawns, John believes himself saved, but his creator makes it clear that this salvation arises as much from blindness as revelation: "He was filled with a joy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, though he would not trace them on this new day of his life, were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not yet discovered."

Though it was hailed at publication for its groundbreaking use of black idiom, what is most striking about Go Tell It on the Mountain today is its structure and its scope. In peeling back the layers of these damaged lives, Baldwin dramatizes the story of the great black migration from rural South to urban North. "Behind them was the darkness," Baldwin writes of Gabriel and Elizabeth's lost generation, "nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" This is Baldwin's music--a music in which rhapsody is rooted anguish--and there is none finer in American literature. 

Journal Entry 2 by tranq1 at to a bookcrosser in sent by mail, A Bookring -- Controlled Releases on Thursday, May 15, 2008

Released 4 yrs ago (5/15/2008 UTC) at to a bookcrosser in sent by mail, A Bookring -- Controlled Releases

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Sent to arugh48187 for the 1001 book VBB on bookobsessed.com. 

Journal Entry 3 by arugh48187 from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on Thursday, May 22, 2008

Received this one in my mailbox yesterday. Thanks for sharing. 

Journal Entry 4 by arugh48187 from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on Friday, June 05, 2009

Offered up in the 1001+ VBB at www.bookobsessed.com. 

Journal Entry 5 by arugh48187 from Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on Thursday, February 18, 2010

This was just an okay read. I kind of liked how the story was told. Telling the story of John's parents within the story of John was very well done. I did get a little confused about who his father was married to and for how long, but by the end I had it figured out. 

Journal Entry 6 by arugh48187 at Apple Valley, Minnesota USA on Thursday, February 18, 2010

Released 2 yrs ago (2/18/2010 UTC) at Apple Valley, Minnesota USA

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed off to perfect-circle who selected it out the 1001+ VBB. Happy Reading! 

Journal Entry 7 by perfect-circle from Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear United Kingdom on Monday, March 01, 2010

Arrived safely, thanks very much! 

Journal Entry 8 by perfect-circle at Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear United Kingdom on Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I liked the placing of the parents' story within John's story and the imagery was very good. Wasn't the worst 1001 book I've read but not the best either I'm afraid. 

Journal Entry 9 by garibaldisghost at Nottingham, Nottinghamshire United Kingdom on Saturday, October 01, 2011

Safely arrived, ta.