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Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then-our friends are not able to finish their stories. (Virginia Woolf 39)
Critics of Another Country have been eager to see in the novel the promise of a transparent sexual utopia grounded in a healing unveiling of a serenely accepted identity. Whether in terms homophobic or racist, or anti-homophobic or anti-racist (rarely, though more often with the former than with the latter, do the poles of either of these oppositions come together), critics have dwelt on a transcendence defined as a coming to terms with one's identity. This transcendence relies on the transparency of revelation in the text and the assertion of this transparency's liberatory potential, regardless of whether or not such liberation is a term of approbation. Such a reading allows "race" and sexuality to disappear from critical view; more precisely, it allows critics to cast them as mere obstructions littering the path of a surpassing transcendence, usually cast in terms of art. Thus, to some critics, Baldwin (or, alternatively, his characters) comes to terms with his identity, and this self-acceptance and self-knowledge lead him (or his characters) to a fuller and more mature development as an artist; the achieved transcendence and clarity then shed the obstructing specificities of sexuality and "race" in the blinding splendor of a universalized artistic insight. To others, Baldwin does not achieve such clarification because he is waylaid by the obstructions: His racial or sexual obsessions or politicized dogmatism smothers his true artistic self. Even those arguments explicitly focused on questions of "race" or sexuality-or on their relation-often do not escape the structuring pull of a privileged transcendence that casts either one, the other, or both as unfortunate obstructions that might, with majestic artistic clarification, be surpassed. Thus, for many concerned with "race," Baldwin's focus on sexuality obfuscates (or, alternatively, movingly metaphorizes) questions of "race."1 Sexuality, like "race" in certain accounts, appears as an obstruction to be overcome, a blockage in the path to artistic transcendence, even if this transcendence includes a fuller understanding of "race" and racial identity.
In Emmanuel Nelson's reading of Baldwin, sexuality is, in several contradictory ways, an obstruction to be overcome. His essay "The Novels of James Baldwin: Struggles of SelfAcceptance" divides Baldwin's corpus...