"(What's the difference between a spokesman and a witness?) A spokesman assumes that he is speaking for others. I never assumed that I never assumed that I could. Fannie Lou Hamer, for example, could speak very eloquently for herself. What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear was that what the Republic was doing to that woman, it was also doing to itself. No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society. (Are there any white writers you would describe as witnesses?) Dostoyevsky, Dickens, James, Proust."
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Horror authorsNovelists from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesCritics from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
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1984 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_James
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Henry James
Henry James, OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
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