"The Rockpile" was first published in Going to Meet the Man(1965), a short-story collection that has received mixed reviews. In 1965, in the Saturday Review, Daniel Stern praised the collection, calling the short stories "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." On the other hand, in his 1965 New Republic review, Joseph Featherstone says that the collection is "problematic" and notes, "There are no resolutions here, no new departures." Likewise, in 1966, in Partisan Review, Stephen Donadio says that the stories "add nothing to Mr. Baldwin's stature, nor do they diminish it by much." However, a decade later, in 1975, in his review for Studies in Short Fiction, William Peden calls the book "the most important single short story collection" since the Harlem Renaissance, referring to...