Reading the 20th Century discussion
This topic is about
Giovanni’s Room
Buddy Reads
>
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (June 2024)
Mod
Once I got into the story itself, I was less convinced. It is very well written but it was just not what I wanted to be reading at the moment. It’s a library copy so has to be returned fairly quickly. I am not sure whether I will pick it up again or not. Then again, I can always return it and get it out another time if the rest of you tempt me in with your praise and positivity.
I've started this and am enjoying it. It's the second Baldwin novel I've read, after Go Tell it on the Mountain years ago.It is also for me a library book I have to return in two weeks, so it will get priority reading over the other two books I'm actively reading at the moment, both of which I own.
Mod
But I know that even if you started Devil in a Blue Dress first you would finish both before I finish!
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
Why is this called controversial in the blurb (see opening post)? Is it because the narrator is a white man?
Mod
Who else is planning to read this?
I'm about halfway through and just marvelling at Baldwin's ability to capture the mysteries of attraction, desire and love, and also how we limit them. I've highlighted so much that if it were a physical book the paper would be soggy.
Mod
Mod
I'm going to start this soon, bit pushed for time atm. R. C. btw okay if we start the Mosley a little later in the month? I thought I had a copy but can't find it, so have to order one.
Mod
I've finished. Wonderful writing and wonderful novel, although not in every respect. (I don't think he nailed it on being an American in Europe or on being a woman.). Still, he was only in his early thirties when he wrote it.Thinking about the line at the beginning, "I am too various to be trusted."
Mod
Interested to hear why you don't think Baldwin gets it on women?
One of my questions is that this is widely feted as a gay novel - but is it?
Roman Clodia wrote: "Interested to hear why you don't think Baldwin gets it on women?One of my questions is that this is widely feted as a gay novel - but is it??
..."
I'll refer you in response to your first question to two longish statements Hella makes, one about what she wants as a woman and one about what she feels from David. 'What a woman wants' is not Baldwin's area of interest here, and I would have preferred that Hella's comments were written with a narrower scope, so that they were just about 'what Hella wants'. Maybe that's how I should have read them. But I won't say more yet.
I'm not sure what a gay novel is. There is certainly plenty about finding oneself, struggling with same sex attraction and with how to make a life with a same sex partner. There is less here about living as a gay man. But what is wonderful about the novel and makes it more than a gay novel is that the pain David feels and causes in others is linked to the universal experience of self-denial, mystifying one's feelings and choosing a partner to meet family or societal expectations. His portrayal of David's uncertainties and struggles is marvellous and the language is so subtle and evocative.
Mod
Ah, ok, I haven't got to Hella's statement yet but if it's her making a broadcast on behalf of all women then I may well agree.
Yes, that's absolutely my feeling, that pigeon-holing this as a gay (men's) novel is doing this a disservice as it's narrowing it rather than broadening what it's doing. I think it's illuminating on internalised homophobia and anything 'unconventional' to US opinions of the time but it seems to me to be so much more that a gay novel. Though, I'm very conscious, that I say that as a straight woman. Would love to hear a dissenting opinion on this aspect!
Mod
Mod
'... he said you were just an American boy, after all, doing things in France which you would not dare to do at home'
It seems like Baldwin is deliberately tapping into a long history in literature of the relationship between America and Europe, 'new' world vs. 'old' world, innocence vs. experience: Henry James, Edith Wharton, Fitzgerald, but also later writers like Graham Greene's The Quiet American and Patricia Highsmith.
Yes, absolutely. I suppose that’s one thing I objected to. He is very courageous about making his own way in other areas and but he is sticking to the familiar trope in this one!
Mod
Of course, America is a vast country and it's hard, and a bit nonsensical, to make generalized assertions about nebulous concepts like 'national character' but I have myself been struck at times by things that feel distinctively 'American'.
We mentioned before, I think, the continued formal use of 'God bless America' in political discourse which I think even Canadians don't use.
Not really making a point here, just musing aloud.
Mod
"It's cold," she said, "out here in the Old World."
"Well, it's pretty cold out there in the New One, too," I said.
Mod
I can see now that what I'd been edging towards is the use of symbolic geographies in the book: the valences of what it means to different characters to be in 'Giovanni's room' and the way 'America' means in Hella's mind ('Please. I want to go home. I want to get married. I want to start having kids.'). For her, Europe means a loss of innocence. It's more complicated for David.
I think it just struck me how sensitive and nuanced his portrayal of identity, feeling and sexuality were. The points about American culture and women were little more than stereotypes. I do like the idea of symbolic geographies, but these easily edge back into stereotypes. And I would have accepted this more if these were more clearly David's subjective perceptions rather than general to all the characters.I think the complexity David begins to experience in Paris reflect more maturity and being away from home (regardless of which side of the Atlantic he would find himself) than an accurate reflection of American versus European culture. I know nothing about French and Italian attitudes toward homosexuality in the 50's, but what I know of England hardly sounds much more enlightened than New York at that time and I suspect France and Italy were much the same, with islands of freedom in a sea of of intolerance.
Mod
I'd also say that this, and many of those earlier books, tend to specifically be about Paris, not necessarily France, Italy, Britain or Europe as a whole - you're certainly right about only islands of tolerance. But I'm thinking here of the Paris of Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald etc. which is certainly earlier than this book but which Baldwin seems to be alluding to - he's also quite specific about locales and districts where these cafés and bars are set.
I'm less sure about David as a mature character in any sense. He feels like a deeply self-loathing character due to his internalised homophobia who, if he had a choice, wants to be straight. There's a specific way in which Baldwin states this is a 'death of the heart' experience and that he'll never love again. He's so alienated from himself: that harrowing scene at the end (view spoiler)
I also didn't have any issue with Hella: she's speaking for herself and also conventions on womanhood and 'what women want'. She's a voice of what would generally be 'normality' when this book was published in a text which is decidedly queer.
Anyway, I really loved it! As you can tell, this appealed to both my head and heart - and Baldwin's writing is incandescent.
Roman Clodia wrote: "Is that because there's some truth in the trope, though {ducks}? Maybe not so much now with mass media and the internet but this was published about seventy years ago. Of course, America is a vas..."
I haven't started Baldwin yet because I have a Thomas Bernhard from ILL and it's due on Tuesday. However, speaking as an American, I definitely agree that it's a vast country, with many threads to its culture. These often both intersect and contradict. For instance, on the "God Bless America" formality in political discourse. It makes me and most of the people I know cringe, though all of us have different reasons. In my case, I'm pretty serious about my Christian faith, and do not like to see it profaned by nationalism of any kind, much less prescriptive utterances like this. Some of my friends share this concern. Others dislike it because they are of different faiths, and understand that this phrase does not mean "[May your own deity] bless America" but "A particular concept of the Christian God should/must bless America". And a few of the people I know who find it objectionable do so because as atheists they do not believe in a god of any sort. I'm sure there are plenty of other objections--my point isn't to list them all, but to mention that most of the people I know best, and all the ones I respect, find this phrase completely objectionable. And yet, it has become a requirement for anyone who holds or aspires to obtain elected office. (I think that it was less rigidly required before 9/11, which is yet another reason it is highly offensive.) Yet I also know a number of people who unquestioningly accept this requirement as their due. They tend to align with white Christian nationalism, but some of them simply are either choosing not to examine the assumptions that underpin their idea of "American", or are having the kind of not-worth-living life in which they are not aware that there are assumptions, or that they should be examined.
In no way do I mean to deny the idea that there is something distinctively "American" about American life, culture, and politics!
Mod
Mod
Mod
I think one of the great achievements of Baldwin is to take these political and cultural issues and make them absolutely personal and emotive in the book. I'm still feeling a bit blown away by it!
Roman Clodia wrote: "On the question of why this book is deemed controversial, Greg has posted some helpful and illuminating comments on my review if anyone is interested."Agreed. The exchange is well worth reading.
Roman Clodia wrote: "Does anyone have other Baldwin recommendations? I've read If Beale Street Could Talk."I loved Another Country.
Daniela wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "Does anyone have other Baldwin recommendations? I've read If Beale Street Could Talk."I loved Another Country."
Me too--my second favorite Baldwin next to Giovanni's Room.
Mod
But I've gone for Going to Meet the Man which is a book of short stories: I'm keen to read more Baldwin immediately but have a lot of stuff I'm committed to reading, so stories can be snuck in.
G wrote: "Roman Clodia wrote: "Is that because there's some truth in the trope, though {ducks}? Maybe not so much now with mass media and the internet but this was published about seventy years ago. Of cou..."
I just view the phrase as patriotic claptrap. I can't stand how so many ball parks sing it at the 7th inning or they sing it at football games or whatever. It just repulses me. Irving Berlin wrote the song as an immigrant and it meant something to him.
As a PK I just never really thought about the invoking of the deity.
Mod
The issues in the ULG are still current (colonialism, violence, power, war, exploitation, masculinity) but I somehow struggled to take the book seriously. Whereas Giovanni's Room doesn't feel dated at all - any thoughts on this?
I finally have the attention to give to this. I'm listening to the audio, read by Dan Butler, and have just finished Part I. Has anyone else noticed a resemblance to The Great Gatsby? Because I am listening and not reading the print version, I keep hearing what seem to be echoes of Fitzgerald's style, as well as some similarities in the narrative pattern. I cannot tell if this is an artifact of the reader's narration or if it's present in the text. Thoughts?
Mod
Glad that you're reopening the discussion here.
Roman Clodia wrote: "The issues in the ULG are still current (colonialism, violence, power, war, exploitation, masculinity) but I somehow struggled to take the book seriously. Whereas Giovanni's Room doesn't feel dated at all - any thoughts on this?"I wonder if reading other books by ULG would give a different impression. I'm by no means a ULG expert but I don't think The Word for World is Forest is known as her most nuanced work.
I also wonder if there's a difference in the audience each was writing to. ULG was writing more toward readers of sci-fi and fantasy.
There's also a sense that Baldwin was also ahead of his time. I think ULG was probably of her time.
Mod
Yes, I'm the first person to hold up my hand and say that I'm not a sci-fi reader - I read this with my work book group and had a fascinating discussion about some of these issues.
By contrast, I cited Handmaid's Tale which was written in the 1980s, was deeply embedded in the politics of its time and yet still, I'd say, speaks to us today.
I don't really know what people mean when they talk of a writer being 'ahead of his time' - I'm not sure that's actually possible: if you're not part of your time, then where are you? Baldwin may have been part of a progressive minority but he surely wasn't alone in his thinking and writing. But this is a pet hate of mine! I think the point I'm making is that any time is full of a spectrum of ideas and positions.
I would say though that I'm blown away by Baldwin's writing and can't believe it's taken me so long to get to him - why haven't more people told me I need to read him?!
I almost deleted "ahead of his time" before I posted. It's a fair point. All I meant was that he speaks to us today - which is a bit reductive when we are asking why that is.Baldwin is someone who is often quoted (both in text and video), but I feel like I need to read him with more sustained focus.
Mod
Baldwin really is exceptional though - I rushed out to buy three more books of his on the back of this one.
What else did you pick up from Baldwin? I think his nonfiction is read at least as much as his fiction these days.
Mod
Also got Another Country and Go Tell It on the Mountain neither of which I've read yet. I've heard great things about his non-fiction too.
I think everyone knows I tend to favour women writers but Baldwin is exceptional - I'd have given him a Nobel Prize!
Just jumping in to say that for me, while all of Baldwin's work is stellar, nothing quite compares to Giovanni's Room. I've read both Another Country and Go Tell It on the Mountain and loved both--Another Country possibly a little more. I haven't read Going to Meet the Man yet, except for Sonny's Blues--so good.But how ridiculous for me to even consider ranking them. Every one is not to be missed!
Mod
Roman Clodia wrote: "High five, Kathleen! In Going to Meet the Man there's a story featuring the characters from Go Tell it in the Mountain - I loved it as a standalone before I even realized it was revisiting the novel."Oh--I didn't know! Will look forward to that one. :-)
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
L'Étranger (other topics)Another Country (other topics)
Go Tell It on the Mountain (other topics)
Going to Meet the Man (other topics)
Giovanni’s Room (other topics)
More...
Giovanni’s Room (1956)
by
James Baldwin
All are welcome to join in
Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.
Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.