I first conceived this project with a hazy sequel in mind: it would begin with James Baldwin, with an analogous focus on the vicissitudes of his career and of his reputation, and would end on the high note of Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize win. Along the way it would deal with LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, of especial interest because of the way he migrated aesthetically from intimate familiarity with (white) modernism (most evident in The System of Dante’s Hell) to a more exclusively “black aesthetic” and helped found the Black Arts movement. The Black Arts movement and the surge of African American women’s writing in the 1970s would have framed studies of the careers of, say, Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker. And the rise of Morrison to a national treasure and internationally esteemed author would make for a closing literary success story with few parallels in American literary history.