This is a good year for another vacation built around a music theme, as Memphis celebrates a half-century of soul. The Mississippi River city is also known for blues, rock 'n' roll and the home of Elvis Presley.Click into Memphis Celebrates Soul _ http://www.memphissoul50.com/ _...

In the following essay, Hakutani traces the protagonist's search for love and salvation in If Beale Street Could Talk, and contrasts Baldwin's optimistic view in this novel with the pessimism of other African-American writers, including Richard Wright.

To consider the latest novel by James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk …, is to re-evaluate more than a decade of Baldwin-watching. My response to his work has shifted from admiration of the arrogance of the early essays to rejection of the Old Testament predictability of the later fiction. Admittedly, the rejection of Baldwin's logic as a spokesman reflected a growing disenchantment with specific strategies of the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin's early work neatly fit that time, in ...