Going to Meet the Man, Baldwin's first collection of short stories, is closer in spirit, tone, and achievement to his best critical work than it is to his "sensational" fiction. These are stories beautifully made to frame genuine experience in a lyrical language. They are, for the most part, free from the intellectual sin of confusing the Negro's (and/or the white man's) tragedy with the homosexual's psychic deformity. They sing with truth dug out from pain….
The stories in Going to Meet the Man demonstrate with stunning effect that James Baldwin has no need of racial or sexual special pleading. Free of these, at his best he is a rare creature.
Daniel Stern, "A Special Corner on Truth," in Saturday Review (© 1965 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XLVIII, No. 45, November 6, 1965, p. 32.
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