Sensational ... It delivers ... Touching ... Boggs handles all of this with a commanding, sure-footed authority and comprehensiveness, subtle and solemn at once, that dazzles and awes. The churn and swirl of Baldwin’s life is rendered emotionally rational as Boggs expertly details how Baldwin’s personal life pervades his work.
Lively and vigorously researched ... Boggs makes a strong case for [Baldwin's later novels] as successful formal experiments in which Baldwin once again transmuted the storms of his personal life into eloquent indictments of systemic racism ... Even-handed and critically rigorous biography ... Boggs has dug much deeper than his predecessors ... Superlative, and it should become the new gold standard for Baldwin studies.
Though it is principally concerned with Baldwin’s personal life, [Baldwin] is good at showing how the life seeps into the fiction; political events receive less attention ... Boggs’s biography makes a hugely important contribution, because it takes us to the heart of Baldwin’s message—the fear of love—and shows how urgent that problem was for him ... Boggs sometimes strains to detect homoeroticism in Baldwin’s relations with men he was friendly with ... On the whole, though, he sticks to the facts and avoids sensationalism.
Lucid, propulsive, compassionate and deeply researched ... Boggs comes about as close as anyone has to wrapping his arms around Baldwin, embracing him, if you will, in his entirety.
Magisterial ... Thorough and thoughtful ... Without doubt the most significant account of Baldwin’s life since David Leeming’s biography of the author thirty years ago, Baldwin: A Love Story is a triumphant work of scholarship and issues a robust challenge to a new generation of readers to confront the man they have claimed as their prophet.
Magisterial ... Boggs offers fresh insights throughout his final section ... He serves up a feast of gossip and speculation, which succeeds brilliantly as narrative, less so as morality tale. Boggs targets our nation’s myths and hypocrisy with dead-eyed accuracy, yet keeps aloof from his protagonist’s dalliances with vulnerable young men ... He bathes Baldwin in a halo of light while stopping shy of hagiography ... A fiery, fiercely researched biography worthy of an American genius, an indictment of enduring racism and 'homosocial panic.' Boggs teases out the aura of the divine that suffused Baldwin’s oeuvre ... Boggs’ achievement is that he allows us to make up our own minds.
Boggs’ book is the first major biography of the writer to focus on his most intimate male relationships, both romantic and platonic ... In Boggs’ hands, Baldwin’s life story feels complete.
Moving ... Most importantly, Boggs is out to counter the story of Baldwin’s writing life as one of decline in his later years. He wants him to end not in disappointment or irrelevance but with the Legion of Honor ... He sees Baldwin’s novels as achievements comparable to his essays. Therefore he is always on the side of Baldwin’s intentions ... Boggs keeps up with Baldwin’s political commitments, his chaotic private life, and his professional battles, meetings, hopes, defeats ... Boggs gives detailed accounts of the off-Broadway and Broadway productions of his plays ... His biography by its very fullness makes the case for the publication of [Baldwin’s letters and journals] on their own.
As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, James Baldwin is unavoidable in ways that mid- to late-twentieth-century literary contemporaries such as Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer are, simply put, not.
Boggs’s biography demonstrates the centrality of love to all aspects of Baldwin’s life ... Boggs is able to shed new light on love’s centrality to Baldwin throughout his life ... Boggs uncovers the impact of these private loving relationships on the man, his words, and his politics.
Boggs takes James Baldwin’s life to be structured by the work of love ... Boggs positions himself as a champion of Baldwin. Whenever Baldwin’s behavior seems questionable, Boggs offers context to make it seem more reasonable ... There is an elephant in the room. In addition to the four great loves of Baldwin’s life, Boggs mentions in passing the steady stream of teenagers whom Baldwin slept with at every stage of his life.
This superb biography is more than worthy of its larger-than-life subject ... Eloquent ... At once erotic and erudite ...
Having mastered his subject, Boggs movingly presents Baldwin as the avatar of Black queer literary history and breathes new life into the genre with a volume that will enrich scholarship for the LGBTQ+ community.
Boggs’ descriptions of Baldwin and his life are beautiful and incisive ... Suggests that we can endure suffering and bear witness to the pain of our world because Baldwin lived and wrote and loved.
Based on extensive interviews with many Baldwin associates and family members, this is an emotionally rich and complex look at a writer who exemplifies the impossibility of separating the personal from the political.
Thorough ... Boggs shows Baldwin's impact, not only as a novelist and essayist of breathtaking power but also as a crucial voice in the Civil Rights movement ... An unrivaled homage to James Baldwin, a complex creative figure who changed American literature and thoughts about race in the 20th-century and beyond.
Rests on a particularly ingenious and fruitful framing ... The book is simultaneously a description of the life of the artist, and an exegesis of his writing as reflected in Baldwin’s life ... The sourcing is heavily weighted toward Baldwin’s own papers and therefore skews toward his version of events, which leaves it open to some of Baldwin’s own self-mythologizing ... But this sympathy and skew toward its subject takes nothing from the pleasure of reading the book nor the insights Boggs delivers.
Standout ... The author’s rigorous research...makes for an impressive portrait of Baldwin’s life and work. It’s a fascinating and original window into the private world of one of America’s greatest writers.
