“Mountain,” Baldwin said, “is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.” Go Tell It on the Mountain, originally published in 1953, is Baldwin’s first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery one Saturday in March of 1935 of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle toward self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
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While only being just barely over 220 pages long, this novel certainly has a family saga feel to it! It's also definitely one of those books that falls on my "multiple readings likely required to catch everything" list. No problem there though, because the writing here is stunning! Even when he talks about the most mundane, everyday moments, Baldwin's superb word choice just makes you want to wrap up in these stories, grim as they may be sometimes. The poet Langston Hughes had this to say of Baldwin:
He is thought-provoking, tantalizing, irritating, abusing and amusing. And he uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing,,,the thought becomes poetry and the poetry illuminates the thought.
Go Tell It On The Mountain marks my first experience of reading Baldwin and I could not have described it better than Hughes. :-)
This short novel is broken down into three parts. Part 1 introduces the reader to John and his brother Roy living in Harlem, NYC. John is the son expected to follow in his father's footsteps of being a pastor, while not much is really expected of older brother Roy. Much of the story here is on John, as he asks himself if a life with the church is really what he wants. The reader also sees the somewhat strained relationship John has with his parents, his father outwardly a respected church figure but secretly a spouse abuser, John's mother appearing as a bit of a pushover / doormat type. But as the story progresses, we learn there's quite a bit more to the story than you might imagine.
But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.
Part 2... well, Part two has three segments on its own. I'll call them 2.1 / 2.2., etc. Okay, so 2.1 is essentially the story of John's Aunt Florence (sister to John's father), her past and present and how all those pivotal moments throughout her life brought her to be a key figure in John's life in present time. Part 2.2 then looks at the life of Gabriel, John's father; the fragile, nearly severed at times bond between Gabriel & Florence, as well as how Gabriel went from a life of shady activity and constant bad life choices to that of respected church figure. The reader also learns the history of Gabriel's life with first wife Deborah (not John's mother). Parts of the story here reminded me a bit of the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah & Hagar. Part 2.3 gets into how Gabriel and second wife Elizabeth (John's mother) got together, as well as looks back on Elizabeth's life before she came to know Gabriel.
And when he took her to the Museum of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they were almost certain to be the only black people, and he guided her through the halls, which never ceased in her imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then she saw another life in him. It never ceased to frighten her, this passion he brought to something she could not understand...She did not know why he adored things that were so long dead; what sustenance they gave him, what secrets he hoped to wrest from them. But she understood, at least, that they did give him a kind of bitter nourishment, and that the secrets they held for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened her because she felt that he was reaching for the moon and that he would, therefore, be dashed down against the rocks; but she did not say any of this. She only listened, and in her heart she prayed for him.
Part 3 is a sort of wrapup, in a way. It brings together all the characters the reader has come to know to one church service in present time where final questions and thoughts are hashed out and addressed and final "say your peace" moments are aired out. It takes all this family history you've read about up to this point and finally connects all the dots to make this amazing & rich family tapestry that I think most any reader will find relatable on some level. John talks about a nightmare that has left him a changed man and Gabriel is forced to answer for some of his past wrongs.
It's not just the writing itself -- lines like "the waters of anguish riding the world" -- that grabs you in this book, but also the themes. So many powerful themes! One of the strongest being the idea of how even one small choice not thoroughly thought through can have the potential to have massive repercussions that can ruin numerous lives in the quietest of ways. I guess that's the stamp of great writing on this novel -- in some ways the story is pretty straightforward, yet in other ways it's deep and resonate even in the everyday-ness of it all. Though it's a short read, I recommend savoring this one and really getting to know all the characters & their struggles. Relate and commiserate with them!
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Potenial Trigger Warning: There is mention of a suicide in this novel.
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