For many years the work that James Baldwin produced in his late career was critically devalued as a great tailing-off in quality from the extraordinary writing he produced from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. A wide range of critics and scholars complained that novels such as Just Above My Head and nonfiction work like The Evidence of Things Unseen suffered from excessive personal bitterness and ideological rigidity that deflated the rich complexity of his best writing. Others felt that Baldwin had lost touch with the main currents of late twentieth-century American life and was simply repeating themes from previous books. In recent years, however, there has been a revival of interest in Baldwin. African American Review published a special number on Baldwin in their Winter 2013 issue and the James Baldwin Review was established a year later. A series of important book-length studies followed in quick succession, including Douglas Field’s All These Strangers (2015), Ed Pavlić’s Who Can Afford to Improvise?: James Baldwin and Black Music (2016) and Michele Elam’s edited collection The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin (2015). Baldwin’s uncollected essays, The Cross of Redemption, was published in 2010 and Raoul Peck’s celebrated Oscar-nominated documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, had a successful run at the box office before airing on PBS, broadening the base of interest in Baldwin to include new audiences. YouTube has also made available many interviews with him from the 1950s and ’60s. James Vogel and Magdalena Zaborowska make strong contributions to this remarkable renaissance of Baldwin studies by carefully examining the work he produced in the last decades of his life. Vogel argues convincingly that Baldwin in the 1980s “felt reinvigorated” (10) and was “profoundly engaged” (138) in important cultural issues that resonate powerfully to the present day. Zaborowska, likewise, regards Baldwin’s late works as rooted in a “fierce creativity” (39), which enabled him to pursue exciting, fresh directions that resulted in new work of the highest quality. Zaborowska points out that by the 1980s Baldwin fell “out of favor with American cultural elites on both sides of the proverbial color line” (19) and this resulted in his being unfairly labeled and dismissed. Meanwhile, Vogel makes a strong case that Baldwin’s writing in the Reagan era was “razor-sharp” (2) and remains “both vital and urgent” (18) for us today. Demonstrating that Baldwin is “one of the most prescient observers of the post-civil rights landscape” (2), Vogel astutely analyzes particular late works in terms of political, social, and cultural issues that resonate to the present. As a result, he regards Baldwin as “not only “relevant but also prophetic” (114). For example, Vogel connects The Welcome Table not only to the AIDS epidemic that raged in the 1980s but also to the contemporary LGBTQ movement. Baldwin’s last published essay, “To Crush the Serpent,” is examined as a revealing analysis of the religious right that continues to play such a destructive role in American politics. As Vogel observes, “Born-again Christianity not only shaped the 1980s[,] it changed America in ways that are still being felt today” (96). The Evidence of Things Unseen, which he views as Baldwin’s “most overlooked book” (115), probes the child killings that terrified Atlanta in the 1980s, but it can also be seen as a “prophetic” (114)

中文翻译：

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詹姆斯鲍德温和 1980 年代：见证里根时代，约瑟夫沃格尔，和：我和我的房子：詹姆斯鲍德温在法国的最后十年，玛格达莱娜 J. 扎博罗斯卡

多年来，詹姆斯·鲍德温 (James Baldwin) 在他职业生涯后期创作的作品被严重贬值，因为他从 1940 年代末到 1960 年代末创作的非凡作品质量大幅下降。广泛的评论家和学者抱怨说，像《我的头顶》这样的小说和像《看不见的东西的证据》这样的非虚构作品饱受过度的个人痛苦和意识形态僵化的困扰，这削弱了他最好的作品丰富的复杂性。其他人则认为鲍德温与 20 世纪后期美国生活的主流失去了联系，只是在重复以前书中的主题。然而，近年来，人们对鲍德温的兴趣重新抬头。非裔美国人评论在其 2013 年冬季刊中发表了关于鲍德温的特刊，一年后成立了詹姆斯鲍德温评论。一系列重要的书籍长度研究接踵而至，包括道格拉斯·菲尔德的《所有这些陌生人》（2015 年）、埃德·帕夫利奇的《谁能负担得起即兴创作？：詹姆斯·鲍德温和黑人音乐》（2016 年）以及米歇尔·埃拉姆编辑的《剑桥之友詹姆斯》鲍德温 (2015)。鲍德温未收录的散文《救赎的十字架》于 2010 年出版，拉乌尔·派克著名的奥斯卡提名纪录片《我不是你的黑人》在 PBS 播出前取得了成功的票房，扩大了对鲍德温的兴趣基础，包括新观众。YouTube 还提供了许多 1950 年代和 60 年代对他的采访。James Vogel 和 Magdalena Zaborowska 通过仔细研究鲍德温生命最后几十年的作品，为鲍德温研究的这一非凡复兴做出了重大贡献。沃格尔令人信服地认为，1980 年代的鲍德温“感觉重新焕发活力”（10）并且“深深地参与”（138）重要的文化问题，这些问题在今天引起了强烈的共鸣。同样，扎博罗斯卡认为鲍德温的晚期作品植根于“强烈的创造力”（39），这使他能够追求令人兴奋的新鲜方向，从而产生最高质量的新作品。Zaborowska 指出，到 1980 年代，鲍德温“在众所周知的肤色界线两边都失去了美国文化精英的青睐”（19），这导致他被不公平地贴上标签和被解雇。与此同时，沃格尔有力地证明了鲍德温在里根时代的写作“犀利”（2），对我们今天来说仍然“既重要又紧迫”（18）。证明鲍德温是“后民权格局中最有先见之明的观察者之一”(2)，沃格尔从与当下产生共鸣的政治、社会和文化问题的角度，敏锐地分析了特定的晚期作品。因此，他认为鲍德温“不仅是“相关的，而且是预言性的”（114）。例如，Vogel 不仅将 The Welcome Table 与 1980 年代肆虐的艾滋病流行病联系起来，还将其与当代 LGBTQ 运动联系起来。鲍德温最后发表的文章“粉碎毒蛇”被视为对宗教权利的揭示性分析，宗教权利继续在美国政治中发挥着如此破坏性的作用。正如沃格尔所观察到的，“重生的基督教不仅塑造了 1980 年代[，]它以今天仍然可以感受到的方式改变了美国”（96）。未见之物的证据，他认为是鲍德温的“最被忽视的书”（115），探讨了 1980 年代让亚特兰大感到恐惧的儿童杀戮事件，