The life of C. L. R. James provides the ultimate challenge for the biographer. Born in Trinidad in 1901 and an important part of that country’s early literary strivings, James went on to become a celebrated cricket correspondent in England, an important figure in English radicalism of the 1930s, a member of the international executive committee of Leon Trotsky’s Fourth International, a major historian of the black experience, an influential figure in the underworld of sectarian left-wing politics in the United States, a nationalist politician in Trinidad, a respected Marxist theoretician, an expert on Shakespeare, an “eminence grise” (in the words of Paul Buhle) of the pan-African movement, and a mentor for revolutionaries, intellectuals, and politicians in many countries. To write James’s biography is to master the extraordinary range of geographical, political, and academic arenas in which he paraded his gifts.
Paul Buhle has made a brave pioneering foray into this difficult task, being mindful to disclaim any “pretence to a definitive statement” (p. 1). Buhle has been a Jamesian scholar and “disciple” (p. 173) for many years. He has edited and authored earlier works on James and interviewed him on several occasions. Buhle considers his work primarily an “intellectual biography,” though “by necessity a political and cultural portrait” (p. 1) as well. The book is broadly chronological, though the unavoidable attempt at a multifaceted study causes some structural problems. Each chronological section centers on an examination of James’s writings for the period, together with extensive background information on the various milieus within which James operated. At times this extensive contextual information is very helpful, as in discussions of the English working-class environment of the 1930s and the demise of James’s Detroit-based sectarian group after his deportation from the United States in the early 1950s. At times, however, it becomes dense and unclear, partly because of the nature of James’s own career. In the United States, for example, James moved in and out of a bewildering array of political groupings based on doctrinal disputes around such questions as the nature of the Soviet state and his insistence on the independent validity of the African-American struggle.
Despite intermittent flashes of clarity, Buhle does not quite manage to make this difficult material readily coherent to the average reader. In the Trinidad sections of the book, his probable lack of familiarity expresses itself through the occasional facile generalization. His personal access to James and his use of some unpublished sources have provided some interesting new tidbits, especially on James’s private life. Yet references are sometimes nonexistent at critical moments, such as Buhle’s claim that James “soon” regretted heckling Marcus Garvey in London (p. 56). On balance the book is a useful introduction to the multifaceted James, and worth reading.
