Remembering Jimmy: contemporary writers reflect on their personal encounters with the man, the mentor, the novelist, the essayist.

E. LYNN HARRIS, the author of eight novels and a best selling memoir. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted (Doubleday, July 2003):

"I was mesmerized by his books. He was a brilliant writer, just in terms of his nonfiction. I reviewed a collection he did years ago, and it was all so right on. He was honest and thought provoking."

DIANE MCKINNEY-WHETSTONE, whose latest novel is Leaving Cecil Street (William Morrow, April 2004):

"I read him in high school when I was first introduced to black writers, and it was like my coming of age. Probably the place that influenced me the most was Go Tell It on the Mountain. It was a tremendous influence because here was a writer portraying Harlem, but any black community really, without backing off from the brutality, but also with a tremendous sense of compassion with which he dealt with the characters. It affected me on a very deep level. I used it as bar for my work, not to back off from what's brutal and disturbing but to have a measure of compassion for the characters when I'm writing them. Even when they're doing horrible things."

WALTER MOSLEY, whose latest work is Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins Mystery (Little. Brown and Company, July 2004):

"I met him twice when I was a little kid ... I went to a church school, and he carne to different churches. I he minister was a big supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and black artists and [Baldwin] carne to us. I remember at the end of our table was a stack of his books like The Fire Next Time. I wasn't old enough to read it, but I think I was impressed just that he created this book, that somebody would do such a thing. When I was in high school in Los Angeles, James Baldwin came to our school and gave a talk. t was in a group that asked him to come to the school. It was in 1968 or 1969. I remember his face and his voice, and he was wonderful.

He was a unique thinker and a powerful thinker. He'd be addressing the world in a unique and positive way now. He loved being alive, being black. Whatever he would have done would have been wonderful."

SONIA SANCHEZ, poet, playwright and author of Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, January 1999):

"I remember he wrote an article in The New York Times in 1979 asking 'If black English isn't a language, tell me what it is.' Language is the most vivid and crucial key to identity. What would America be without the words and language that black folks brought? He classified, as he always did, the position here in America on language, on race, on culture, on the country.

"He was a brilliant essayist.... He taught us with his words, his language, his presence, to become sanctified through this language that we use. And we give it out to the world."

Sanchez recalls meeting Baldwin at a hotel in Atlanta. He was reporting and writing a piece on the Atlanta child murders, and she was a judge for a play festival: 'I walked in and there was an editor from Playboy. I'd been judging plays all day long. The editor asked me to tell Mr. Baldwin that he had to send the article up to her room, so I went where Jimmy was holding court, making merry, and talking, He was the elder statesperson, and we were listening with such joy. He was sitting with people at around twelve-firteen and didn't get up till five in the morning,"

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, author of numerous novels, and most recently Hoop Roots (Mariner Books, February 2003):

'I knew Jimmy. He was one of the reasons I went to the University of Massachusetts [to teach], and I looked forward to having him as a colleague, He was just a beautiful man and an extraordinary conversationalist and in his own way a party animal. He only taught part-time my first year, then he went to France. And then he died.

"He left a vary, very powerful legacy to anybody who picks up a pen, black or white, And he was obviously a world-class writer. The thing he did that was extraordinary was to find a language that combined the Old Testament King James Bible and African American speech and the language of sermons in the church which he put together in an unusual way. He was one of the last writers to speak to the conscience of the American people. No one's been able to do so since."

Arlene McKanic is a writer in Jamaica, Queens, New York.