James Campbell

James Campbell is the author of Exiled in Paris and This Is the Beat Generation. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and has worked at the Times Literary Supplement in London for many years.

James Baldwin was one of the most incisive and influential American writers of the twentieth century. Active in the civil rights movement of the sixties, open at all times about his homosexuality, Baldwin was celebrated for eloquent analyses of social unrest in his collections of essays and for daring portrayals of sexuality and interracial relationships in his fiction. James Campbell knew James Baldwin for the last ten years of Baldwin’s life. For Talking at the Gates, Campbell interviewed many of Baldwin’s friends and professional associates and examined several hundred pages of correspondence. He was the first biographer to obtain access to the large file that the FBI and other agencies compiled on the writer.Talking at the Gates looks at Baldwin’s turbulent relationships withNorman Mailer, Richard Wright, Marlon Brando, Martin Luther KingJr., and others, all of whom have their place in this elegantly written, candid, and original account. In a specially written introduction, Campbell discusses recent developments in Baldwin’s reputation and his return to a position he occupied in the early 1960s. This new edition also contains an interview with Norman Mailer about Baldwin, which Campbell conducted in 1987. It is published here for the first time.