The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series 3: Correspondence, Volume 1: 1842-1852 Book

I enjoy this book for its utility but not much else: this is a breezy walk-through of Malcolm X's life judiciously preened from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one of the most kickass books I've read. If ever anyone needed a well-paced adrenaline shot to refresh one's self of the legacy Malcolm left, by all means Baldwin's screen adaptation of the masterpiece is a sufficiently deft work. However, it is possible that Baldwin's prudent reverence for Malcolm X has led him into a tightly conservative treatment of the source material, in some ways oftentimes muting his own aesthetic to serve the greater point of Malcolm's life and message. I have no qualms with Baldwin's self-erasure insofar as it still yielded a faithful transfer of material from one medium to another, but I'm so used to Baldwin being able to imbue it with much more. This can in part also be due to being aware of his limitations in a medium unfamiliar to him.

One Day When I Was Lost is also probably best read as a companion to a double-threat of Baldwin's other non-fiction: he speaks at length about how challenging the experience of writing the screenplay was in (if I recall correctly) The Devil Finds Work and has written beautifully about Malcolm X, often being accused of echoing him in The Fire Next Time among other works. I felt I was shadowboxing with the script because I had spent a lot of time trying to summon its context within Baldwin's life and non-fiction. At the same time, I can't quite recommend reading this script "cold," or rather, without already being familiar with Baldwin's superior work.

In some ways my assessment of the book is caught in a bind: I felt very aware of my own attachment to Malcolm X's autobiography and my attachment to Baldwin's gifts as a writer even when writing about this screenplay itself. Yet it eluded me somehow. What arises from the source itself is a competent rendition of the autobiography. Baldwin's choices as a director - his choice to connect flashbacks or liberally use voice-overs - can often lead to some heavy-handed juxtapositions and pat metaphors, but again, this may only appear so on the page but might be effective in translation. (I'm still skeptical.) Baldwin has always had a great ear for dialogue, so there are no surprises there.

One Day When I Was Lost reads like a perfectly able work by someone who is perfectly able to do what he can in a medium that is out of his wheelhouse. The self-awareness does come through in his steadfast refusal to omit, or reinvent for expediency's sake. This could be due to his reverence for the subject or the awareness of his unfamiliarity with this craft. Either way, this leads to a conundrum about how well we must regard the subject material before we can assess our tolerance for taking liberties with his life for entertainment value. I like that the screenplay's not meant to entertain necessarily, but it's also no surprise that it wasn't made.