The book came to me along with the summer's meager trickle of new offerings, at a time when publishers seem to be lying low, waiting to spring their really important fall lists on the world: Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown. Though it came with a benediction by Irving Howe, I put it aside, thinking it was just another book by an angry young Negro.

There is no doubt that Negroes have much to be angry about, and I am all for anger, righteous or otherwise. Not hate, but anger. There is room for dialogue in that emotion. It gets things moving; someone answers with shock; someone applauds; something happens. Nevertheless, I am growing more than a little tired of the persistent and somewhat high-pitched anger of James Baldwin and his imitators (my ears are ringing), even of the too restrained and too fraught-with-love anger of...