James Baldwin and the Heavenly City

<DIV>Behind James Baldwin&rsquo;s uncanny ability to evoke a nation&rsquo;s crisis and potential hope lies his use of religious language to describe social and sexual transformation. The first study of its kind, <I>James Baldwin and the Heavenly City</I> shows that Baldwin&rsquo;s novels use biblical ideas in partly but not fully secularized ways to express the possible human attainment of a new life embodying a real but undefinable holiness. Focusing on Baldwin&rsquo;s six novels, along with essays, stories, and drama, the book first shows Baldwin&rsquo;s method of recasting biblical and African American prophetic traditions to reveal their liberating core. It then examines several key themes: the prophet&rsquo;s selection, seen in Baldwin&rsquo;s debut novel, <I>Go Tell It on the Mountain</I>; the three linked ideas of prophetic art, the &ldquo;apocalyptic body,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;apocalyptic city,&rdquo; as presented in all his novels; and the polarity between prophecy and doubt, the subject of his last novel, <I>Just Above My Head</I>. This important work provides new readings of Baldwin&rsquo;s novels, reassesses his once-neglected later fiction, and shows Gospel music&rsquo;s centrality (with blues) in his fictional imagination.<BR /> &#160;</DIV>