Speakers or headsets will have to be turned up to listen to Jesse L. Martin's low, slow reading of Baldwin's classic long essay on racism and African-American identity. Martin seeks to be respectful of Baldwin, but he ends up rendering the meaning and the force of his work relatively inert. Pausing in poorly selected places, placing emphasis where little should be placed, Martin does not convey the precision and anger of Baldwin's prose. Instead, Baldwin's book becomes Great Literature, to be intoned and honored, but not truly grasped. Readers with an interest in Baldwin's work will be far better served by reading his prose to themselves than having Martin read it to them. A Vintage paperback. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Recently deceased, Baldwin lived a considerable portion of his life abroad, to extend himself as a writer and to alleviate the stifling effects of life as a black man in the U.S. Also an excellent fiction writer, Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time as a long polemical essay on the black person's search for identity of self and race in American society. His vociferous spirit is couched in luxurious prose.