Books: New World Cacophony

ANOTHER COUNTRY (436 pp.)—James Baldwin—Dial Press ($5.95).

James Baldwin is one of the brashest, brightest, most promising young writers in America. A New York Negro whose early novels won him a series of money grants to live and work in Europe away from race pressure, he discovered that despite everything, he had more in common with Americans—even white Southerners—than with Europeans. He came back five years ago to face again what it is to be a Negro in the U.S.

Since then, as a lecturer and essayist (Nobody Knows My Name), he has proved himself willing to step on anybody's toes—black or...