INSCRIBED BY JAMES BALDWIN

BALDWIN, James. The Devil Finds Work. New York: Dial, 1976. Octavo, original red paper boards, original dust jacket. $2300.

First edition of Baldwin's provocative look at cinema—"one of the most powerful examples ever of how writing about art can, itself, be art"—inscribed by him on the dedication page, "Peace, James Baldwin."

The Devil Finds Work is "one of the most powerful examples ever of how writing about art can, itself, be art… It's a memoir of Baldwin's life watching, or influenced by, or next to cinema. It's a critique of the racial politics of American (and European) film… The themes of race, film, and truth circle around one another throughout the essay's hundred pages, as Baldwin attempts to reconcile the cinema he loves, which represents the country he loves, with its duplicity and faithlessness. Yet, for all its pessimism, The Devil Finds Work doesn't feel despairing or bleak. On the contrary, it's one of the most inspirational pieces of writing I've read. In part, that's because of the moments of value or meaning that Baldwin finds amid the dross—an image of Sidney Poitier's face in the Defiant Ones, which in its dignity and beauty shatters the rest of the film, or 'Joan Crawford's straight, narrow, and lonely back,' in the first film Baldwin remembers… But more even than such isolated images, what makes the essay sing, and not sadly or in bitterness, is its sheer power of description, and its audacity in treating self, society, and art as a whole, to be argued with and lived with and loved all at once" (Atlantic). "First printing" stated on copyright page.

A few short closed tears, very mild toning to dust jacket. A nearly fine inscribed copy.