Baldwin's third novel opens with Rufus Scott, a gifted Black jazz drummer in Greenwich Village, spiraling into despair and suicide, then follows the circle he leaves behind — his sister Ida, his friend Vivaldo, the married Cass and Richard, and the actor Eric, returned from France. Moving between New York and Paris, the novel takes up race, sexuality, art, and the cost of American innocence with a frankness that made it a landmark of 1962.
Author: James Baldwin · Original publisher: Dial Press (New York), 1962
