SOURCE: "The Fire Last Time," in New Republic, Vol. 206, No. 22, June 1, 1992, pp. 37-43.

In the following essay, Gates traces the course of Baldwin's thought and importance throughout his career.

"I am not in paradise," James Baldwin assured readers of the Black Scholar in 1973. "It rains down here too." Maybe it did. But it seemed like paradise to me. In 1973 I was 22 years old, an eager young black American journalist doing a story for Time, visiting Baldwin at his home just outside the tiny, ancient walled village of St. Paul de Vence, nestled in the alpine foothills that rise from the Mediterranean Sea. The air carried the smells of wild thyme and pine and centuries-old olive trees. The light of the region, prized by painters and vacationers, at once intensifies and subdues the colors, so that the terra-cotta tile roofs of the buildings are by turns rosy pink, rust...