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When James Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta child murders

74 points| prismatic | 5 years ago |newyorker.com

17 comments

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[+] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
Baldwin was really a fascinating person. He traveled quite a bit around Europe, too, and wrote some of his most known work in Istanbul, which I always found an interesting juxtaposition to the way he is usually portrayed. I agree with his thought that’s it’s easier to view America from the outside. IIRC Fitzgerald wrote most of Gatsby while in France, which seems to confirm the idea. It’s a shame Baldwin isn’t more well-known.

https://www.theguideistanbul.com/james-baldwin/

[+] Quequau|5 years ago|reply
It has also been my experience that it’s easier to view America from the outside. Though I find this excruciatingly painful to convey to folks that I know who have never lived any where else.
[+] acqq|5 years ago|reply
Thanks. This explains a lot:

"The city became his on-and-off home throughout much of the 1960s." "Life was safer and easier: unlike in the US, he didn’t have to worry about being harassed by the police or being refused service at restaurants. “"

[+] jonny_eh|5 years ago|reply
Same case featured in season 2 of Mindhunters on Netflix.
[+] echelon|5 years ago|reply
I was incredibly disappointed they didn't film in Atlanta. Though most of the season takes place in the Atlanta metro, it's very obviously filmed elsewhere. None of the filming locations actually resemble Atlanta. As an Atlanta resident, I found it uncanny and jarring.

It's doubly strange considering Atlanta has generous film subsidies and tax breaks, making it one of the nation's top filming locations. They might have saved money shooting here. Stranger Things and a host of other Netflix shows are based here.

I don't normally nitpick about something like this, but it frequently took me out of the story.

[+] lsiebert|5 years ago|reply
Mindhunter not Mindhunters fyi
[+] dajohnson89|5 years ago|reply
For anyone interested in learning more about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary about him that was nominated for an oscar back in 2017.
[+] scandox|5 years ago|reply
One of my favourite quotes from The Evidence of Things Not Seen:

"The dream of safety can reach culmination or climax only in the nightmare orgasm of genocide."

There's a preamble to it, but it's an incredibly powerful idea to me. We live in a radically unsafe universe and our death is inevitable. Safety is a delusion.