Baldwin and Stein

James Baldwin and Sol Stein’s correspondence to each other, discovered in boxes after 35 years in a basement are now being published in a new book called… Native Sons.

Dear Sol:
. . . I stick to my house, to my typewriter, go out shopping late every afternoon, watch the population of this small town — which is also watching me — have a drink, come home, eat, work some more, go to bed. Beautifully dull, beautifully exhausting. No one ever comes to see me, for I’m too far away for a casual visit. I don’t have any phone. Don’t even drink very much, for I don’t like solitary drinking. Go to Paris tomorrow to pick up my mail. And I hope that I can manage to keep this up throughout the summer. If I do, I’ll come home with a novel — which, at this moment, is going quite well. . . .
Love, Jimmy