“Time could not be bought. The only coin time accepted was life. ” – James Baldwin
The passage of time has always been a subject of interest to humanity; people have always tried to grapple with its finite nature. In attempts to alleviate the terrifying reality of continuously propelling forward, incapable of returning to the past, ancient mythologies personified time as deities, making the menacing force more digestible. Rather than mythologize time, we have now altogether avoided it. All over social media, we see people romanticizing and recreating trends from the past, such as the re-emergence of the Y2K style, 90s street fashion, and, most recently, an obsession with 2016 pop culture. This fixation with replicating the past has become a way out of reckoning with reality. Our attempts to relive the past simply become a tacky recreation of these eras, as memory can never truly be faithful to the past.
I became concerningly preoccupied with this idea of time at 2:32 a.m. in the Mary Lyons lounge, when I was doing last-minute reading for my English class. In James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” time is a central force simultaneously opposing the characters while also paralyzing them with the anticipation of its progression. The novel’s characters wish to extend time in order to prepare the best defense for the protagonist’s fiancé, Fonny, who has been falsely accused of sexual assault. While the characters desperately want more time to gather evidence, Baldwin highlights how dreadful it is to wait for the inevitable. Everyone understands a trial will take place, and a verdict will be declared. The feeling of waiting for time to unravel, ignorant of what it has in store for you, is maddening.
Baldwin perfectly encapsulates this feeling within the quote above: time, as an entity, cannot be controlled. “Time could not be bought.” No matter how much money, status, or connections one has, you cannot make time go faster or slower. Baldwin proceeds to write, “The only coin time accepted was life.” It is precisely this sentence that makes the excerpt so great. Time takes from people. In the case of Fonny, every second that passes is another moment lost where he could be with his fiancée, Tish, supporting her through her pregnancy. He will never be able to see his fiancée and find out that she is pregnant; he will never be able to support her through her morning sickness, and he will never feel the first kick of his child. Time is stealing Fonny’s life. This is where the tragedy lies. There is nothing that Fonny can do to experience these moments, because time has taken them. All he has are his memories of the past, but those memories will never capture the reality of those moments. Time has taken that.
Time within “If Beale Street Could Talk” is not merely foundational to the plot of the novel; it is instrumental to the structure of the book. The novel is not divided into chapters; rather, it is simply broken into two parts, the first being 176 pages and the second only containing seventeen pages. The narrative within “If Beale Street Could Talk” is fluid and does not follow a rigid chronological structure. Contributing to the fluidity of the text, Baldwin writes the novel in the first-person perspective, following the character Tish. The novel begins with Tish revealing that her fiancé, Fonny, is in jail. As the novel unfolds, the nature of his imprisonment slowly begins to be revealed. Since the novel takes the first-person perspective, the reader is limited to Tish’s experience. We never truly dive into the perspective of the woman who accused Fonny, because the narrative structure does not allow it. The readers will always be ignorant of the events of that night. Baldwin, through this configuration, emphasizes the agonizing feeling of uncertainty that comes with waiting. This is exacerbated by the verdict of the case remaining a mystery. Baldwin makes it so that, similar to the characters, we must exist not knowing what time has in store for Fonny.
Reading “If Beale Street Could Talk” in my sleep-deprived state, I began to truly appreciate the genius of Baldwin’s novels. Every word is deliberate and deepens his work. While Tish’s mother is in Puerto Rico trying to prove the innocence of Fonny, she visits a club and hears a Ray Charles song, “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” I, admittedly, am not familiar with Ray Charles’s music, but I became very curious as to why Baldwin chose this song specifically. I played the song and found it to be both melancholic and heartbreaking. It follows a person who cannot move on from his past lover. The narrator is stuck, desiring to return to the past when he and his former lover were still together.
Those happy hours (Those happy hours)
That we once knew (That we once knew)
Though long ago (Though long ago)
Still make me blue (Still make me blue)
They say that time (They say that time)
Heals a broken heart (Heals a broken heart)
But time has stood still (Time has stood still)
Since we’ve been apart (Since we’ve been apart)
— Ray Charles, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
He cannot stop thinking about the past, but he can never truly return to it. Time is not healing him; it is torturing him. He is stuck reminiscing about the past while life goes on. He is beginning to lose opportunities to meet people, experience new love, and live because he can not move out of his memories. These memories he clings to so desperately will never truly capture the beauty and intimacy he experienced in the reality of those moments. Time has taken that. Just like time has stolen from Fonny and Tish.
In an age where we constantly document our lives and aestheticize the past through social media, “If Beale Street Could Talk” serves as a reminder of how futile it is to try to control time. No matter how much we long to return to the past, we simply cannot. Life is fleeting, and time will always move forward. Grappling with this terrifying reality is key to living deliberately. We have been given the opportunity to live, and while we have it, we must use it to its fullest potential, rather than fruitlessly obsessing over something out of our control.
