No more water,

the fire next time!



This notion of apocalypse closes one of the most harrowing and crucial documents of the 20th century, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

and

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace--not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

The Fire Next Time,
by James Baldwin (Dial Press, 1963)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 9