William J. Maxwell has published James Baldwin: The FBI file, a large-format presentation including some 250 pages drawn from the latest version of the dossier (currently at 1,884 pages with, however, many duplicates; more material might yet come to light, from local Bureau offices or other agencies). It includes scattered reports on Baldwin’s movements around the world, records of “pretext phone calls” made by agents for the purposes of soliciting information by deceit (posing as an “auto salesman” or a “member of a peace organization”, among other things), snoopers’ accounts of public meetings and private encounters, articles by and about Baldwin clipped from press sources, as well as oddities such as letters of complaint about his books or media statements, written to Hoover by concerned citizens. In seventy brief chapters, some of them under a page long, Maxwell offers wry and often witty interpretation of the documents that follow. (The efforts of his file-seeking predecessor are graciously acknowledged.) Both in this book and in his substantial treatment of the wider topic, F. B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s ghostreaders framed African American literature (reviewed in the TLS of May 29, 2015), Maxwell’s work is intended to show that Black Writers Matter – or that they used to, especially during the period in which Hoover held office as Director of the FBI (1924–72).
Maxwell begins with the assertion that there is a “Born-again Baldwin”, just as there is a born-again, Michael Brown-inspired Civil Rights movement, which “ain’t your grandparents’ Civil Rights movement”, as asserted by Tef Poe, “the St. Louis rapper and Ferguson protest regular”. As Maxwell puts it, Baldwin “often looks like today’s most vital and most cherished new African American author”. The impression that Baldwin “has returned to pre-eminence, unbowed and unwrinkled, reflects his special ubiquity in the imagination of Black Lives Matter”, Maxwell says. One leading activist told him: “Jimmy is everywhere”. Baldwin, Maxwell writes, “reigns as the movement’s literary conscience, touchstone, and pinup, its go-to ideal of the writer in arms . . . . It’s Baldwin’s good name and impassioned queer fatherhood that aspiring movement intellectuals invoke in Twitter handles such as #SonofBaldwin . . . ”.