Go Tell it on the Mountain (Penguin Modern Classics)

I got this book for a college class. I personally didn't like the book but i'm sure someone else would. It wasn't in the best condition, but considering the age of the book is kinda understanding. The shipping was on time as well.

This is an excellent semi autobiographical novel about an African American young man living in New York. He deals with his family, society, and church.

The novel itself combines ethic dialogue with very artistic narrative. I felt that some of the narrative was drawn by bible stories. There is a passage near the end of the novel that reminded me of The Book of Ezekiel and The Book of Revelation. Many of the characters in the book had biblical names. One such character is Deborah and I felt there was some commonalities between the two "Deborah's".

I liked this novel very much. I attempt to read African American Literature on an ongoing basis, but not to the exclusion of their literature. With that in mind I have read numerous works both of fiction and non fiction of African American Literature. In terms to novels, fiction, I would currently place this second as my personal favorite, behind "An Autobiography Of An Ex Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson. I am very glad I read this novel. Thank You...

James Baldwin's first novel, published in 1953, is written in the third person but we quickly discard all novelistic technicalities and experience this remarkable story of adolescence through the senses of its 14 year old protagonist. Baldwin's writing has an immediacy and lyricism that blunts its hard-edges of ever-present racism - which although rarely overt is always lurking like a storm in the distance - and its first confused stirrings of a sexuality that is radically different than its time and place will ever sanction. With religion as yet another powerful presence, this tale of a brilliant young man struggling to create his identity despite the powerful restrictive forces arrayed against him, has the universal resonance of all great literature. Go Tell it on the Mountain has even greater impact because of its relative shortness. The novel's impact is heightened because of its tightly focused vision.

Baldwin, like many great American writers before him, chose exile in Paris as a means of escape from stultifying conformity as well as an even more unique struggle for sexual and racial freedom. His need for freedom is the ever-present force that drives this novel. We cannot read it without an awareness of the profound course of action that its author eventually undertook in order to experience some semblance of personal liberty. That realization adds the impact of something like a powerful manifesto to this beautifully nuanced first novel.

Like all of the Everyman's Library editions, this one is attractive and sturdy. It is printed (in BEMBO I believe) on exceptionally thick paper with a particularly striking, deep crimson cloth cover and a protective dust cover, making this an heirloom edition at a bargain price. As is also usual with Everyman's Editions, there is an informative introduction, a multi-genre chronology and a silk ribbon as a place-holder. In all respects, this is a worthy celebration of a great writer's first novel. It is a novel that is transcendent in message and importance, as it marks the birth of a clearly defined movement for freedom whose maturity was still at least a decade in the future. One of the beauties of Go Tell it on the Mountain is that it occupies a unique space in American cultural identity: both as a great novel as well as marking the approximate birth of a sociological phenomenon whose powerful forces are still unfolding and whose ends are still not in sight. That adds uniqueness as one of the attributes that sets this novel apart. If you haven't read it yet, I strongly recommend that you do so, This Everyman's Library edition is attractively priced for its fine qualities.

It has been a wonderful year for African-American storytelling. The Sellout, Negroland and Between the World and Me are all impressive. A satire that makes you laugh out loud but also stings like a slap; a memoir about loss and gain; a father's angry, loving letter to a son about the real, ongoing perils of being black--a clear-eyed look at what has not changed. Black life is discounted in our society. As powerful and as impactful as each of these modern works is, none come close to the beauty and brilliance James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain.

Few authors can tackle great and small themes with Baldwin's deftness and eloquence. Yes, this is the story of a people but also of persons. Individuals who each carry their personal burdens and tragedies into a society that seems determined to diminish or keep them down. They are preyed upon but also prey upon each others--a sister waits to bring a brother down; a husband abuses a wife and son for sins he too has committed; wives drive husbands away because they resent both their need and his imperfections. It is a morass few could extricate themselves from, but Baldwin does with deftness.

More than 60 years ago, Baldwin was speaking truth to power. In a book where white characters are practically nonexistant, white authority is so pervasive, it is felt every day by everyone. Each character knows white people are more than indifferent to their suffering, they are its progenitor. Racism breaks black men and wears down black women. A viewpoint so hard and cold would seemingly lead only to despair. But in Go Tell It On The Mountain, Truth is tempered by Love. John Grimes, the 14 year old boy who struggles with the hatred of and for his step-father his saved when he realizes he will not be religious in a traditional sense--but he will follow Christ's example: he will struggle against injustice; he will speak and live the truth; but he will not become like his enemies. He will not hate those who hate him.

This is a brilliant book; epic and personal. The story of ordinary people, majestically told. Essential reading.

Before James Baldwin became one of the leading essayists of the Civil Rights movement, he wrote the novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” The novel was part-autobiographical, as Baldwin was an ordained minister who grew up under the supervision of a severe, religious, stepfather. Baldwin also had a powerful religious conversion at the age of 14.

Christianity is entwined with the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s because the leaders came from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: including men such as Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth. The Biblical cadences in Baldwin’s book are directly comparable to the rhythm of songs and speeches of the Civil Rights movement. Several scenes in the novel have parallels with stories from the Bible.

The powerful story is told in three parts. In the first part, fourteen-year-old John Grimes is having a personal crisis. ‘Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up,’ begins the novel--but John had some doubts, and his role models didn’t seem that holy.

The second part, The Prayer of the Saints, peals back dimensions of the three main adult characters of the novel--Aunt Florence, Gabriel Grimes, and Elizabeth. These dimensions are opened through flashbacks of the main adult characters at the tarry session.

The overriding emotion of the novel is anger. There is no sense of humor, no jokes, little comic sense of relief. The character with the most carefree attitude in the story, Frank, has a small role, and he only serves to make one of the main characters bitter about life. You might find that the religious overtones are overwhelming and the story too depressing to read, depending upon your frame of mind. I couldn’t read this novel the first time I tried to do so, but a year later the story seemed to read itself.

Anger even seeps into Christianity. Sometimes the Church offers inspiration and guidance; at other times, it forces repression and hypocrisy on its “Saints,” as well as its members.

The third part of the novel, the conclusion, is almost an afterthought to the process that it takes to get there. But you can’t skip it, because you have to know whether the contents of the explosive letter are divulged, and to what degree. Nor should you skip this novel, even if you, like me, could not read it the first time around. Come back to it another time and it may just read itself for you like it did for me.

Stark and fluid and melodic by turns, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is the profound and wrenching story of the physical and emotional journeys of 14-year-old John, his Aunt Florence, his father, and his mother. If you read it as a teen or young adult, you likely will find it even more powerful a second time through.

In this book, originally published in his 29th year, James Baldwin crafted passages that throb across the decades with a terrible beauty, informed by privation, prejudice, and inner strength. First printed 63 years ago, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is as taut and magnetic now as it must have been back in 1953, more than a decade before the March on Washington and the enactment of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

This beautifully typeset and hardbound edition is notable for its inclusion of a beautiful introduction by Edwidge Danticat and a chronology that juxtaposes events in Baldwin's life with historical events and "literary context" (writings published by his contemporaries).

There is much to commend in Danticat's introduction. It is one of the best I've read in any book -- pithy, direct, and specific. However, exactly because it is so well done, would have preferred it as an afterword. If you have not read this story, I suggest you venture straight into Baldwin's whirlwind, and after you have digested it, read Danticat's introduction for affirmation of your impressions and added context for several stylistic points.

Although production values of this edition are high, note that the point size is rather small.

James Baldwin's first novel was published before he reached the age of 30 and yet it seems almost preternaturally mature and complex and the work of someone who has ruminated over these issues for many more than three decades. It is an autobiographical novel, as so many first novels are, and yet it avoids the limitations of a young author's narcissism and gets into much older characters' heads just as skillfully as it rests within the fourteen year-old protagonist's.

Most of the surface story takes place on John Grimes' fourteenth birthday at a pivotal spiritual 'threshing floor' prayer meeting at his father's Harlem church. The first section appears to be a conventional 'coming of age' story on its surface and on that level it succeeds immensely but it is also a very compact distillation of all the issues that an adolescent black boy in Harlem in the mid-1930's would experience. He has always felt isolated and set apart from the rest of his family, primarily because of the stern religious power of his father. He has never seen his father smile at him and very little at other people for that matter. He has received no affection or tenderness from him, only physical punishment and solemn pronouncements of the moral obligations of living a Christian life. He loves his mother but feels that she is too weak-willed to challenge her husband. He is restless and inquisitive and intellectually and emotionally hungry, yet at fourteen he still feels the pressure of his upbringing to be 'in the spirit' of his church, to get swept up in the rapturous prayer states of the elders or 'saints' of the church and the weight of judgment inflicted on him by his father. He also admires an older boy, Elisha, who is a model Christian who even so was brought up in front of the congregation along with the girl with whom he was simply being friendly as a preemptive strike against the Devil's assault into their hearts. This was John's father's doing and he shamed publicly the two adolescents who had not yet harbored lustful thoughts for each other as if they had already committed egregious sins. The congregation approved of this nipping of sin in the bud before it could even bear fruit. Elisha and his friend, though shamed, were extremely grateful for this action, seemingly symptomatic of this church. John's fascination with Elisha contains an erotic undercurrent; their playful wrestling seems to be the most satisfying physical contact with Elisha that he can receive.

After the first section we have three subsequent sections titled, 'Florence's Prayer,' 'Gabriel's Prayer' and 'Elizabeth's Prayer'. Though these are labeled prayers they don't all contain actual prayers although they all occur during the evening prayer service. Each contains extensive flashbacks. Florence is Gabriel's older sister, who has resented him since they were children. She considered him the favored child, despite the fact that he was selfish and indulged in promiscuous sex and alcohol consumption before his conversion. She knows secrets about his past behavior (including a bastard son from an earlier alliance while being married to his first, barren wife) and is holding it as blackmail against him. She doesn't ordinarily attend church service but she is here on this night, partly because she wants to 'set her house in order' before she dies of a terminal illness.

The second section is Gabriel's and we see his version of how he came to be converted and why he married his first wife. He had a dream which he interpreted as the Lord's prophecy that he would have a holy lineage and that the bloodline of righteousness must continue. The first wife was barren whereas he had an affair with a woman who moved to Chicago after telling him she was pregnant. She had told him that if he would not leave his wife he must bear some financial responsibility. He stole money from his wife to send her to have the baby and give it away. She died in childbirth and her body was brought back, along with her baby, her to be buried, him to be raised by another family. Gabriel watched him grow up and later learned that he was killed in a knife fight. The first wife died childless and he originally grew friendly with his current wife, Elizabeth, who had worked with his sister, as an attempt to bring this fallen woman (she already had the baby John by a first alliance) to a state of grace, then to marry her and raise her son as his own. This did not happen. He feels he has been promised a continuation of a royal line. As John is not his biological son but a reminder of the first, abandoned son, he cannot forgive John and places his hopes on the first son Elizabeth bears him, the young hell-raiser Roy. John is unaware of this fact through the end of the novel, wondering why his father hates him.

The third section, Elizabeth's, presents her background and the relationship she had with the father of John, who killed himself after being convicted of a crime he did not commit, without knowledge that she was carrying his son. Gabriel, as we have seen in the first section, has been an intolerant, tyrannical fundamentalist authoritarian who slaps his wife and fights with his sister after she has attempted to intervene. Elizabeth sees in John her only remainder of her first love.

The next section, 'The Threshing-Floor' is an extended spiritual crisis for John. He is struck by the spirit, as so many of the saints in the church had hoped, falls to the floor, and undergoes a hallucinogenic spiritual struggle. Intimations of the Biblical John of 'Revelations' intrude in his consciousness as he sees fires coming down from Heaven to purge away Man's wickedness. Yet this holy intervention seems hardly unequivocally benevolent. These spiritual labor pains contain very disturbing images and passages such as the following:
'He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his weeping had begun; he would rage again, said the shifting air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed; he would be in darkness again, in fire again, now that he had seen the fire and the darkness…where joy was, there strength followed; where strength was, sorrow came—forever? Forever and forever, said the arm of Elisha, heavy on his shoulder.'
As he emerged from this altered state, traumatized by this spiritual beating, the ladies of the service reinforce his rebirth in the Lord. He agrees with their affirmation, yet he still seems dazed. His verbal proclamation that he is saved is unsatisfactory to his still scowling father, who says he must live it. Even at the end, after a kiss of benediction on his forehead from Elisha, he smiles at his father, who fails to reciprocate. The spiritual victory seems to remind him with every rapturous reflection that much struggle lies ahead, ending in ambivalence.

As many readers may have noticed, the names Elisha, Gabriel and John all contain Biblical allusions. Biblical imagery permeates this novel and familiarity with the Old Testament and how this kind of African American church interprets it enhances understanding of the symbology of these people's faith. This is as integral to an understanding of 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' as Irish Catholicism is to James Joyce's similar coming of age novel, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. The viewpoints of John's stepfather, mother and aunt take us out of the young James Baldwin surrogate character's mind and, by learning their backstory, we can acquire an understanding of how they have evolved, even the extremely unsympathetic Gabriel. Just as religion permeates this novel, so does the African American treatment by a dominant white society. This is the fabric of their lives and our understanding of these characters' plight is expanded to a greater understanding of the people who participated in the Great Migration at the heart of the 20th century. It is an outstanding, assured and confident debut novel for a young writer with a breadth of perception and wisdom that illuminated a world that many in the literary world knew little about at mid-century. At such a young age, Baldwin knew that the top of the testimonial mountain is as fiery as the depths below.

Go Tell It on the Mountain followed Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as twin sparkling debut novels from black American writers in the early 1950s. Like Invisible Man (and like Richard Wright's earlier Black Boy), Mountain is heavily autobiographical and, to my mind, the best of the three because of the strength of its plot, the vividness of its characters and setting, the perfect concision of its narrative arc and the colorful biblical imagery author James Baldwin deploys throughout as a natural outgrowth of character and setting (in fact, James Baldwin could teach veteran writer John Steinbeck a thing or two about how to use biblical imagery effectively as Steinbeck's own East of Eden, published shortly before Mountain, was much more ham handed in its evocation of the Old Testament in its narrative).

Mountain focuses initially on John Grimes, a boy growing up in Harlem in the 1930s who turns 14 at the start of the book. The immediate action occurs over the period of just that one day, John's birthday, but there are extensive flashbacks that tell the back stories of John's father, mother and aunt. What emerges from all this is a picture of just how much the battle between secular hedonism and fundamentalist religion dominated black American lives in this period as few other courses were open to blacks due to the oppression of legal and cultural discrimination, both in the South and in supposedly more liberal New York City.

I loved how Baldwin evokes biblical tales of fathers and sons in his depiction of the relationship between John's father Gabriel and his sons. The relationship of Gabriel and John's brother Roy, for instance, very much recalls the relationship of King David and his son Absalom. The diurnal narrative frame perfectly constricts the action in the present in a way that allows each character's different sides to emerge in vividly describes scenes of family conflict, while the flashbacks fill in the story and answer the natural questions. There are a number of revelations in these flashbacks that I won't spoil for anyone coming to this marvelous novel fresh but they are wonderfully apt.

A must read for anyone interested in the best of American literature in the mid 20th century.

This is a beautiful edition of James Baldwin's classic coming of age story that moved me when I read it as a teenager and impacted me on an entirely different level some 30 plus years later. Sometimes when I revisit classic works such as this I find that I have forgotten the sheer power of truly beautiful writing. This is a truly moving, complex story that I would recommend for any reader of literary fiction looking for both a deeply personal story of discovery and a profound examination of society and religion and how they shape our views and actions.

This story is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. This is a finely bound, keepsake edition that would be a wonderful gift for anyone forming a library of great American literature. Well worth the price and well worth your time to revisit this classic.

I thought the book was an "American Classic", but it left me cold. It started OK, but just got progressively worse. The end was the worst. I would not recommend this book to anyone as I would not like them to think that I read it.

Oddly, the thing that most struck me about Go Tell it on the Mountain was how similar I found it tonally to that middle section of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where Stephen Dedalus sits through a sermon that slowly turns hallucinatory. Frankly, by the end of the novel my most pressing wish was to sits the two Jameses down at a table, put a bottle of whisky in front of them, and then turn the conversation to the topic of God.

Aside from that, I found myself a bit underwhelmed by Mountain. The language is undeniably gorgeous, and Baldwin wields it skillfully to depict and subvert hypocrisies, but by and large the novel is an exploration of character wherein very little actually happens. That's just not my thing, no matter how beautifully executed. Go Tell it on the Mountain is justly renowned as offering a brilliant portrait of the black experience in Harlem; just remember that portraits, no matter how faithful, tend to be a bit static.

One of the side events of the 2008 American presidential elections, the one that resulted in the election of the first black president, was the widespread exposure of the role of the black church as a central social, political and religious institution in the black community, for good or evil. That centrality, the subject matter of black writer James Baldwin's first novel back in the early 1950s and from there carried back by him to his youth in the 1930s, is longstanding. Moreover, the black church and its activist clergy, despite it long role as adhesive, healer, protector and face of the black community is not an unambiguous legacy as Baldwin, very wickedly, and profoundly demonstrates here.

Baldwin uses the old tried and true novelistic devise of using a two-tier plot structure to delve into the lives, the loves, the likes and lies of two generations of a black family, a family that although it found itself in the North, in the black metropolis of Harlem, had deep and continuing roots in the old worn-out land of the South that most of the characters fled, willingly or unwillingly, at some point. The first tier discusses the present status of most of the main figures, including the transparently autobiographical John and his "father", Gabriel, a born-again Christian preacher, a character not unknown in the black community. The second takes place through personal recollections in a store front, primitive Christian church, also not an unknown phenomenon in the black community, or the white one for that matter.

The details of the various relationships of the very mixed clan can best be appreciated by the reader. What I would note here, as I have noted elsewhere when discussing James Baldwin's work, is his ear for the various voices of the black community even though he himself seemed, by the facts of his biography to have been fairly removed from the mainstream of the black community. He clearly knows "religion" and the role it plays in the community. Also of the teutonic struggle between the old ways of the de jure segregated South and the de facto segregated North. While I am more devoted to the works of Langston Hughes as an exemplar of black literary blues, James too knows that condition. James can sing those chords. And the late Norman Mailer was not wrong when he noted that his contemporary, Baldwin, in 1950s America was "one of our few writers". I will say amen to that.

This was my second reading of James Baldwin's initial novel, first read 40 some years ago, and it rang even more powerful the second time around. Baldwin is the essential chronicler of the Black American experience, in all its anguish. The novel was first published in 1953, and was primarily set in mid-Depression Harlem, with flashbacks to the rural southern antecedents of the main characters, reaching all the way back to the days of slavery. It was Florence, who must have been approaching 60, whose mother was a slave and who "lost two children to the auction block." Baldwin only briefly sketches Florence's mother, but this slender fact seemed to explain so much of the tragic and often dysfunctional family life of the descendents of those families which had been forcibly broken up.

Religion is a major theme in the novel; that particular raucous, tambourine shaking, speaking-in-tongues spirituality espoused in store-front churches that set out the folding chairs before the service. It sure does help to know the Bible to understand many of the references. If I found any weakness in the novel, and perhaps it is a personal weakness instead, it was the lengthy passages of pure "preachin'", but I persevered, knowing that it really did give the flavor of an authentic experience. Baldwin depicts a world of good and evil, with the church as the vehicle to salvation, but he is also relentless in describing the hypocritical lives of the preachers, especially Gabriel, who "falls" and falls again. Although the church is featured as the one solid bedrock that can help anchor family life, I agree with another reviewer who points out that the anchor impeded Black economic development by promising the otherworldliness of "pie in the sky," which distracted the believers from taking actions that would remedy the injustices that society imposed, as the legacy of slavery lingered.

The novel unfolds around John, the 14 year old son of Elizabeth, who is married to Gabriel. Florence is Gabriel's older sister. In part I of the book, the stage is set; all the characters are introduced, and the drama centers around the knifing of John's younger brother, Roy. In this section we learn that John is illegitimate, and that Gabriel loves his own son, Roy, more, and has pinned his hopes of salvation on him. Yet it is Roy that seems to have the "mark of the devil" on him, no doubt reflecting the same mark on his father. It is in the second part, by far the largest portion of the book, that Baldwin tells the story, each in a separate chapter, of the three principal adults: Gabriel, Florence, and Elizabeth. These portraits are dazzling, and Baldwin has immense narrative power, revealing one aspect of their lives in a sentence or two, and then several pages later explaining how this occurred. The women "who have born the weight of men," no doubt literally and metaphorically, come off the better, and the stronger. Gabriel's hypocrisy is not as all-encompassing as, say, Elmer Gantry, for he does truly struggle with the demons within. All the characters did indeed have the steep side of the mountain to climb.

There are many scenes whose depiction can take your breath away. One that I found particularly strong was a down south revival, with 20 or more preachers. The night is when the young Gabriel makes his mark as a preacher. Afterwards, the preachers partake of a banquet. They are seated separately, upstairs, the women serve them. They tell ribald jokes, and even ridicule one of their servers who had been gang-raped by whites. That woman would become Gabriel's first wife, but the insights he might have gathered from his fellow preacher's conduct did not endure.

For those who have a copy of the collection of photographs entitled "The Family of Man," it is impossible for me to look at the picture on page 129, the black woman laying on the bedcovers, the black man sitting on the edge, each in deep middle age, obviously talking about "their troubles," without thinking that this is a picture of Gabriel and Elizabeth Grimes.

Finally, in terms of foreshadowing, one wonders when Baldwin wrote this book if he anticipated his own fate. Florence's husband dies, and is buried in France, during what was once called "The Great War.". Baldwin could no longer stomach the anguish that he depicted, eventually seeking solace in France. He is buried high on the hill, at St. Paul de Vance, overlooking the Mediterranean. A wonderful 5-star plus read, especially again.

James Baldwin often said that for his first novel he had to grapple with his childhood in Harlem and his memory of his abusive stepfather if he were ever to write anything else; the novel that appeared in 1953 was so stellar and accomplished that critics expected to get more of the same from him (and were stunned when his next effort, GIOVANNI'S ROOM, instead was about gay white men in Europe). There are few major debut novels that are grimmer, but that are also more resonant and more powerful.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN forms itself around young John Grimes's ability to come into his own voice (a Pentecostalist's speaking in tongues on the "threshing floor" of his family's church), and how that moment was preceded by the tremendous and shattering efforts of his adopted father and aunt to come Northwards, where their lives were not much better than in the South, but which had more promise, and of his mother to form a home for herself. The structure of the novel (which breaks down in the middle into "prayers," or narratives, of his parents and aunt) owes much to Faulkner, but Baldwin's voice is like no one else before him; this is one of the greatest of all novels of the Black Northern migration of the twentieth century.

This is being published at the same time as James Balwin's GIOVANNI'S ROOM, which was one of the most shocking novels of the Twentieth Century with its graphic depiction of a man falling into a homosexual affair. But for all the controversy that book caused, it did not change the fact that Baldwin's finest novel was GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. At the end of the 20th Century, when the Modern Library rated the 100 best English language novels, this splendid novel made #39 on the list. I personally think this was the finest African-American novel of the century, better than Wright's NATIVE SON, better than Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN.

The great joy of this coming out on Everyman's is that the novel gets the royal treatment. Everyman's produces the finest novels in the world today. They are absolutely gorgeous, with their board wrapped in cloth covers and the intensely creamy, nonreflective, acid free paper. You can find better books, like the gorgeous productions by the Folio Society, but those are not mass produced. I like Everyman's better than the Library of America. I find the books to be wonderfully inviting. They look great and they feel right in your hand.

I would love to see Everyman follow up the release of these two novels by releasing a volume of his nonfiction. People know his novels today, but many don't remember what a great essayist he was. Hopefully we'll get that in the future.

Sometimes, when you finish a book, you look up and take a deep breath and say, "Wow." This is one such novel.

The descriptive and intricate prose is woven so tightly and consciously that Baldwin amazingly delivers prose masterfully without having to use complex language - this book will never send you to the dictionary. Some courtier designers need fine fabric to make quality attire. This designer can take rags and sew them into gowns with only his sewing skills - Baldwin is an artist of words.

Overlapping the life stories of John's mother (Elizabeth) and stepfather (Gabriel), together with Gabriel's alienated sister (Florence) against the backdrop of John's 14th birthday, reveals to us the soul and character of the individuals and how their torments and incredible journeys affect and play upon John's coming-of-age manhood rite - which in this case is an out-of-body experience/revelation to the Lord before the congregation at Gabriel's church.

John's 14th birthday will and should never be forgotten by he or the congregation. And, we readers, who are delivered into the secret realms of the tortured pasts of Elizabeth, Gabriel and Florence, can better appreciate and, in turn, should better remember the moment the young John emerges as a man.

In the end, as a less-than-religious person, I asked myself whether Baldwin's constant references to the Bible (the story of Noah and Ham plays a large part in the end in contrast to the tortured relationship between Gabriel and John) and religious revival experience of John are meant to employ others to follow their lead, or to dispel their self-proclaimed truths because of the contradictions between religion and the religious which we have been permitted to learn about in Gabriel and others. But, I would have to conclude that Baldwin leaves that decision to you - but allows you to make the decision knowingly or after having learned about how what Gabriel preaches is not synonymous with what Gabriel lives.

I would give this 6 stars if I could. Few books have touched me as much as this book has.

For me, the central problem of James Baldwin's beautiful and poetic account of growing up in a religious, African American family is the ending. The question is this: does Baldwin take this ending to be merely a description of what sometimes happens or is he implying this is what should happen?

Throughout the novel, religion is seen as a force that stagnates, lies to and weakens the characters. However, by the end, it has become a force that the main character thinks will help him get through all the trials he still must face. It hasn't solved anything. In fact, nothing has been solved at all. We've been merely given a view of all that's come before and how those past events will probably shape the future. For example, John still has to face his unloving step-father - even though he is still unaware that the man isn't his biological father. How knowing he was "saved" will help him is hard to imagine.

The most heart-breaking incident in the book is what happens to John's real father. Though pathos abounds in this book, that is the incident that truly hurts the most.

Throughout, the writing is poetic and precise. Baldwin certainly matured in works like "Giovanni's Room" and developed his themes of homosexuality - a thread hinted at here but left unresolved like all the book's themes.

The problem is just that we're left with so much unfinished. It's almost like Baldwin stopped writing the book in the middle. It seems he wants the import of John's religious experience to make everything else at least bearable. However, how this is to be accomplished in light of such darkness is hard to imagine or even if something else might be more desirable. Moreover, is Baldwin suggesting that all the negatives of religion he has been cataloguing throughout the book are somehow justified?

In any case, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" is a gorgeous book about very ugly things. Good luck sorting out that ending.

Gimme that old time religion---thats the story. Much of the action takes place in the Harlem section of NY City. The people in this book live their religion. The plot involves the older generation trying to bring the young people to Jesus. This is exactly the kind of religion that unbelievers run from-----FAST. Baldwin writes well and I think he has painted a true picture of the black churches during this period of the early 2t0h century. Their services were loud, emotional and inspirational. Gabriel is a preacher and the father of 4 children. He rules his family with prayer and his belt. His children hate him and he is literally pushing his children out of the door and out of the church. These people live in a unforgiving world and they call upon God for help. All of the book is religion, desperate people are calling out to God. I know this is a classic, but I got bored with the story about half way through. Much of the 1st half takes place in the south and in church. Then our main characters move to Harlem. The redeeming feature is that we have just enough sin to keep the story moving.

This was my second time reading this masterpiece;the first time in the early 70s. I don't remember what I thought about it then, though I remember it leaving an impression. The writing then and moreso now is writing at its best from a master in my opinion. Yes it is complex, convoluted, disturbing at times but for me it flowed. Not everyone can write fire and brimstone, sin and redemption in literary terms. I am in awe of his genius.
During one night at a prayer service, four individuals stories are told. John, on this day has just turned fourteen years old and is trying to make sense of his life. Gentle, intelligent, he wanted so much to please the man who he thought of as his father. He had potential to expand his life beyond the limitations in front of him. Gabriel, wretched, tortured soul, a man who refused to take responsibility for his actions. Saved, sanctified and fill with the Holy Ghost, his mistreatment of his first wife, Deborah, his discard lover, Esther, his present wife Elizabeth and his son John is what kept him from being the minister that he was in his youth before he fell from grace. Elizabeth, proud and determined, she wanted John to have the same love from Gabriel that he gave to his other "natural" sons. A woman who accepted her circumstances; she has lost her first true love, Richard and was resigned to accepting Gabriel's hand in marriage to redeem her sin. Florence, too proud for her own good Bitter, resentful of her brother Gabriel and now perhaps facing death, she has lived a live of unfulfilled dreams.
Where we they all stand after they haved poured their hearts and souls on the alter? Secrets, dreams, hopes are revealed. Told in a language of complexity full of allegories, symbolism, Bible similies, it is no wonder it is taught in universities around the country. I am on a quest to read re-read Baldwin's books that I have read and read others that I have not. Nobody does it better.

There are many "mountains" that we all face in our lives. There are hidden parts of ourselves that are never revealed, even to those closest to us. Many of the characters in Baldwin's "Go tell it on the mountain" have similar secrets that are revealed only to the readers, as we gain insight into their innermost thoughts.

The setting is Harlem, New York. The story opens with John, a young boy of fourteen who is at that age of great confusion in his life. He has a wild brother Roy, who is always getting in trouble, and eventually ends up getting stabbed. He has an abusive, self righteous father, Gabriel, a kind mother, Elizabeth, a boisterous aunt, Florence, and a spiritual role model named Elisha.

John wanders the city in the first part of the novel, trying to come to grips with what he wants in life and who he wants to be. His family is very religious, and soon after his brother Roy is stabbed, they end up at their church one night. John, his mother, his father, Elisha, his aunt and two other sisters join together in prayer and worship. During this praising the book shifts focus first to Florence, who is deep in prayer and meditation, and we are carried back into her past. We learn of her failed marriage, her rocky relationship with her mother, and her inside hatred of her brother, which is John' father Gabriel. After we hear her thoughts and her story, the direction shifts focus to John's father, Gabriel. Gabriel ponders on his destructive life. In the early stages of his life Gabriel was deeply involved in sin until one day he is "born again" and becomes a preacher. We learn about how he marries a woman he does not love, commits adultery, and eventually remarries John's mother. All through this process of his flashbacks we learn the cruel hypocrite that he really is. The focus next shifts to John's mother, Elizabeth. We learn of her sorrow and heartbreak in dealing with the murder of John's real father. We learn of the struggle of her to live with her husband Gabriel, and his rejection of John. Gabriel gives John the title "bastard son", and cannot accept him.

The story ends with a climax just as it began, as we are inside the head of John. As the praying and singing is going on, he is overtaken with emotion. He battles his inclination towards evil, and good tries desperately to enter into his hard heart. The final sequence is a poetic, magical scene of words. John conquers the battle inside of him in a desperate attempt to become "born again."

I love this book; it is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read. The language is beautiful, Baldwin has masterful storytelling prose; he has great influence and power as an American writer. I never read a book that can deal with so many issues like slaver, racism, and abuse without being heavy handed, or ever staying from the powerful theme of the novel.

I can't say enough about "Go tell it on the mountain." It does everything right, and it does everything well. It is a flawless novel in every single aspect. Emotional, poetic, breathtaking, heartbreaking, vivid use of metaphors and language. The most powerful element in this novel is the human element. We care about the characters struggles, their victories, and their character. It is about real life, and the time period is described perfectly. I was never bored, always moved, and constantly in awe during the entire reading experience. Colossal in its vision, yet simple and unflinching in it's message. Brutally honest and never contrived into doing anything that deviates from the central core of the novel. This is one of the few novels I have read that does not fall short in any aspect of storytelling. "Go tell it to the mountain" will remain with you long after other classics fade into oblivion.

Grade: A

Absolute genius epic sage of a black family 1900-1950 about how good & bad vie within each of us, secular & religious alike. Intelligent, compassionate, & bold. Writing is amazing. Audiobook narrator does it wonderful justice...

James Baldwin created a masterful first novel in Go Tell It On The Mountain. I loved his smooth flow from character to character, era to era, place to place. We are given young John's story through his family, one person at a time, and it is through them that we understand the complexity of where he is. Physically, it's Harlem, as the son of Southern parents who have seen only hard times in both the South and the North. Emotionally, John is bouncing back and forth between a life of religious fanaticism and a life of unbound freedom.

Religion is a central force in the book, especially the disappointment and shame of sin. The hypocrite stepfather Gabriel is the darkest force, and the author's knack for showing the complexity of this character and the harm he exacts on so many other lives is perhaps the crowning achievement of the novel. Gabriel's may not be the ugliest or rarest of sins, but they completely devastate his life and the lives of those around him. Gabriel doesn't learn though and he might be regressing all the way back to the debauchery of his own youth. In hints throughout the story and at the end especially, we see John discovering the courage to escape the hypocracy and injustice of his upbringing, and to create for himself a new life of opportunity and promise. It isn't a long book, and I think it was meant to leave you wanting more. But in it's structure and incredible language, this is a very unique and powerful novel that deserves more recognition.

The great truth of the Christian faith is that you are accepted just as you are... flaws and all.
Many of the great narratives in the bible include flawed but teachable people. From: Adam to Abraham to Jacob to King David, God inspired the writing of these accounts to show us he uses people just as they are and he does the work not us.
This is just the case in James Baldwin's story, Go Tell it on the Mountain.
The main character is John, a young boy just turned 14 struggling to develop his identity and to get to know God.
During the course of the story we see his family history revealed and get to know the truth that his mother and step father are very imperfect people but redeemed nonetheless.
That is what John must come to terms with. Baldwin's rendering of this internal spiritual stuggle is masterful.
The way that Baldwin reveals the truth of the family little by little is extremely well done. This story is short and packed with punch. It is a moving and thought provoking book.

This book is definitely a classic, and ever so sad that we've made such little progress in race relations. I wasn't able to follow all of the biblical references which made it hard to follow at times.

It's funny, the reviewer below me also first read this back in the 70's - as did I. I started out the unofficial beginning of this Fall by re-reading the "classics." Some are actual classics, and others are Lit i have left over from college and high school. Not sure where this one fits in.

I just finished this book, and feel it's one of the best books i ever read. It's not an "easy read." You do have to get ready to understand the jumping back and forth to different eras. But once you do, it's worth the effort to read - totally.

Just a wonderful book and story, and fantastically written. I'm in awe of it. I love finishing a book that really leaves you saying "wow."

1. Succintness-- Overall, the book was sufficiently succint. The descriptions of certain things rambled on, such as the dirt in the kitchen being in "delirious communion" with dirt someplace else. The author's attempt at being cerebral seemed a bit...... labored.

2. Themes-- He doesn't spare any of his hostility toward the church, which has not been *all* bad in the black community.

3. This book is a great example of characterization. The reader is almost left with more questions going out that coming in. For example: What is evil? John was not certain of his holiness at the beginning of the book, but after his experience on the threshing-floor decided to join it. This is after we have found out about all the misdeeds of several of the members present at the service. So are we to conclude that John is just as disturbed as the others? Or are we to conclude that some characters were really better than we thought they were after all the details about the relationships come to light?

The author went a bit too far trying to find profound descriptions and metaphors. The book would have been much lighter and easier reading without them.

I hadn't picked up a fiction book in a number of years. This book reminds me why: It is so difficult to speculate as to the author's lines of reasoning when people describe abstractions. At least in a book about some real historical subject, less is left to the imagination.

I liked this book much more than anticipated. My initial expectation was a nicely written and overly poetic jumble about religion and identity crisis, probably a little too sentimental.
Half right--Go Tell It On the Mountain is a powerful study of boyhood and parental expectation as well as the glories and the horror of religious conviction. It's more of a song, really, with dense, rhythmic prose that sings its song in a ramble that comes across almost like preaching. The effect is intended I would imagine, and produces results that are frequently stirring.
This book transcends any mundane consideration of justice or political justification and breathes out a far more individualistically human story. A very quick read--

If you are a reader of fluff literature only, then GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN will not appeal to you at all. This book marks a journey, and not just a journey for its main character, 14-year-old John Grimes. It is also a journey for the author. Baldwin said before he could write anything else, he had to write GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. The Odyssey that John Grimes embarks on towards manhood, towards his religious development, and yes, towards his own sexuality, is mirrored very succinctly within the life of Baldwin. Anyone who reads this as purely a religious conversion is missing the point. In my opinion, this novel is less about John's discovery of God, and more about his discovery of himself.

Baldwin uses his own unique style that I found to be very immersive. I could relate to each of the characters in my own way, nonetheless, Baldwin fills in the rest of the gaps with his writing. The reading itself I found to be average in terms of difficulty. Baldwin uses an African-American oriented dialect such as, "done passed on" (Baldwin p.105) and "That's the way the young folks is" (Baldwin p.83) that I feel really completes the story and creates the immersive effect.

The book uses many biblical illusions that I was not familiar with at all. This can put a person who may not know the bible quite as well to be at a disadvantage when it comes to interpreting the text and understanding the full meaning that Baldwin intended. I just felt that I could not fully connect with the characters, thus the three stars. However, with a good knowledge of the bible, I feel this book would be worthy of 4.5 to 5 stars.

What started out as an interesting history of black migration from the south to Harlem, turned into a fire and brimstone story of religious following through fear and intimidation. There was no love, forgiveness, kindness or understanding from each other or the god they worshiped. The last third of the book was so filled with the histrionics of a "salvation" that I was tempted to stop reading.

There is a treasure trove of excellent critical literature about Baldwin's masterpiece. Though time and distance have only improved my very high estimation of the book's value and importance, I can't see how brief comments in a short review could add much of use to the abundant solid corpus of critical commentary.

My review is thus a review of this edition. This is a fairly inexpensive decent quality hardback with a good, readable introduction. I am happy to be able to replace my old paperback volume with this one, and look forward to adding it to my pile of 'summer must read' (or re-read) books.

Reality can be a difficult thing to bear. Even those of us that can afford to sit in our plushy chairs and scratch our proverbial backs of creativity by means of writing reviews that ultimately wind up doing nothing more than contributing to this capitalist system and simultaneously stroking our puny egos can admit that there are some--and by some I mean countless--things in life that can bring us grief and send us spiraling down into the pits of depression and madness. Of course, this is all limited to our own specific systematic frameworks. Imagine how it must be for someone that doesn't have a warm home to live in or even a family to support them. Indeed, I've never heard of any third-world teenagers cut their wrists because their significant other of two and a half weeks decided to cut things off. Concepts of "problems" and strife are indeed very malleable according to what is or isn't available to us.

Baldwin, in what is widely considered his best work, presents us (and more specifically his audience of the time) with the problems of a people who in the time in which the novel takes place had a systematic framework of trouble that was far "below" the standards of the referential framework of concern of the average American at the time. And what's more, he presented the public with these images in a time when these people (these people being poor African-Americans) didn't have a distinctive voice to elucidate the tears and pain of their world. Indeed, Baldwin managed to take what many readers of this book would look at today as caricatures and carve them into catalysts of understanding and sometimes even tears.

This novel is split into three sections. The first section is told through the eyes of a child who has unfortunately fallen victim to fate and was born as a poor, gay black male in America. In addition, place him into the most dysfunctional family this side of the Mississippi (or so the reader would think; I'm sure many black families were the same way but only by necessity) and you have an amazingly sympathetic character. It doesn't take long for any reader with half of a heart want to take this poor boy into their arms and hold him tightly while showering him with tears. You also grow to despise the characters--most notably the father figure--that bring such anguish upon such an innocent soul.

However, we are then presented with the second section: The Prayer of the Saints. In this section, we get background information on three of the principal adult characters in the aforementioned section and we soon learn: these people were unfortunate victims of circumstance as well. Like our protagonist, these characters were born into less than ideal family circumstances. However, they share our protagonist's racial and social burden that he has yet to confront personally. All three of these characters face these things and have their ups and downs which ultimately wind up forging them into the figures that you meet in the first chapter. When these prayers have been completed, you are simply unable to look at the characters in the same manner again. See what wonders a little dialogue and honesty can bring to you? However, the average American instead opts to stay detached from these figures and forever shove them into the position of caricature, which ultimately winds up leading vulnerable figures like our protagonist down a road of anger and hatred.

The final section, however, shows some hope of salvation. Though, it is a very ambiguous conclusion. I won't tell you what happens but it spirals into a realm of mysticism and surrealism that this reviewer personally found surprising. However, this is where this strong novel becomes a little weaker. While I can see it working within the context of the story, this surrealism isn't as stimulating as what one could find in say, the stream-of-consciousness exhibited by Faulkner, Pound or any of their perspective contemporaries. However, it is not Baldwin's prerogative to challenge the traditional notions of art. Instead, he simply opts to present us with a world that few ever get to see and great job.