To the Editor:
I find myself very much in sympathy with James Baldwin’s approach to the five “protest novels” reviewed in the April issue of COMMENTARY.
His formulation of the problem in terms of two questions—Are these novels satisfying as art? or, failing that, Do they represent accurate sociology?—is valid, and, one would suppose, obvious enough. But the importance of these questions becomes clearer when we remember that the criteria they advance were somewhat less than universally applied to such novels as Kingsblood Royal and Gentleman’s Agreement. . . .
Emile Capouya
Forest Hills, New York
_____________