It’s a spectacular irony that Go Set a Watchman and Between the World and Me are published on the same day. One upends half a century of admiration for Atticus Finch by suggesting that Southern whites who seemed heroic in the early years of the Civil Rights struggle were tainted by racism. The other makes the case that America is built on racial suppression, that slavery and plunder define the country — that American blacks are, in essence, born in jail. One book is fiction, a footnote to literature. The other is perhaps the most important book of the year.
“Between the World and Me” was to be published in October. Then Charleston happened. And Baltimore. And Charleston again. Toni Morrison embraced the book: “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.” And now, months early and right on time, here it is.