Colm To�b�n's personal account of encountering James Baldwin's work, published in Baldwin's centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm T�ib�n first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year at an Irish university and was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He had even considered entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. Inspired by James Baldwin's novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, T�ib�n found a writer who would be a lifelong companion and exemplar. As he says in On James Baldwin, "appropriating the heritage of English prose, Baldwin was adapting and using not only a style but also system of thinking . . . to suggest that the way towards truth was slippery, ambiguous, and easily undermined. In order to state something that was true, you had to approach it from an angle. . . . His thought was subtle, ironic, but also engaged and passionate. When he needed to, he could write a plain, sharp sentence, or he could produce a high-toned effect, or he could end a long sentence with a ringing sound." On James Baldwin is a magnificent contemporary author's tribute to one of his most consequential literary progenitors.