Can you imagine what this might feel like? Think of something about yourself that maybe your family or your society doesn't approve of, something that perhaps makes you feel deeply ashamed. Now imagine that tomorrow morning you wake up and that thing is on every news channel; it is on the front of every paper; you come downstairs and your parents can't even meet your eyes.
Imagine how you would feel, what you would say, and what you would you do. Now maybe you're thinking, "This is stupid. Nothing embarrasses me. Maybe nothing leaps to mind. Who knows? But what's interesting is that David would give the exact same answer. David is so ashamed of his sexuality that he can't even admit that he is ashamed.
He goes to Paris, claiming that he is searching for himself, when in reality he is fleeing from himself. In his case, the result is tragedy because the lies that he tells to himself inevitably become lies that he tells to other people.
As one reads Giovanni's Room , it's hard not to recognize something of David in oneself. William Faulkner is rumored to have said, "We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid. Perhaps the message is less dramatic, but it is also subtler and more personal and more poignant: "We have to start teaching ourselves not to be ashamed.
Baldwin Interview Baldwin talks a little about his growing up and what it meant to be black in the United States. First Edition Book Cover Not the most cheerful cover in the world. He ability to articulate the struggle to be a man in a world where both black men and gay men were considered 2nd class if lucky citizens taught me. He is the reason I read or at least one of the reasons good fiction. It transports me into the experience of the other. His writing is a gift.
The emotions of this novel are expressed as if Baldwin's heart was set aflame in Par "for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. The emotions of this novel are expressed as if Baldwin's heart was set aflame in Paris. In Giovanni's room, Baldwin carves his pain and his struggle with fire into the oppressive clouds of the Parisian night. I sort of knew what I was wading into reading Giovanni's Room.
I knew Baldwin was gay and this was considered both a great novel AND a great piece of gay fiction. It is hard to imagine, however, Baldwin ever wanting to be dropped into ANY corner, locked into any room. Yes, the man was certainly all those, but he was also so much more.
I don't want to come across as presumptuous, but I think Baldwin would reject the idea that this is a gay novel. I think Baldwin is expressing the anguish and the pain felt by ALL those who are denied for whatever reason the ability to freely love.
The closet is far too dark, far too cold, far too confining, and does not allow for the other. Baldwin is teaching that we NEED the other to be human. Baldwin's novels are essentially that. They transcend race, sexuality, gender. They are about the need to be recognized, loved, and free.
It reminds me, someone who has been prodigiously privileged because of my race white , sexuality straight , gender cis about the pain others go through just to catch a moment of things I take for granted every day.
View all 19 comments. Aug 29, Lisa rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-to-read-before-you-die. Is there a way to escape the doom of society if you are not a rich, white, heterosexual, married man having "clean sex" with your own "lawful" wife with the purpose of producing a new generation of rich, white, heterosexual, married men?
Even the wife of this single category of human who is allowed shameless, guiltfree pleasure may not be free from shame and guilt. She may feel guilty for enjoying too much or too little what is expected of her as a marital duty.
But at least she will have the sa Is there a way to escape the doom of society if you are not a rich, white, heterosexual, married man having "clean sex" with your own "lawful" wife with the purpose of producing a new generation of rich, white, heterosexual, married men? But at least she will have the safety network of society to protect her when the nausea strikes. For all other human beings, not able to collect privileges like pearls on a string, not able to guide their desire towards conventional patriarchal rules, they are doomed to lose as soon as they enter the game.
Giovanni knew and acted. David decided to block out knowledge and pretend there was nothing the matter. One died, the other lived.
Both were doomed. Reading James Baldwin is like being infused with powerful sentences describing the abyss of patriarchy looming over individual lives. It is like going through the Purgatorio in Dante's Divina Commedia and ending up not in Heaven, but in Hell afterwards. The purity of life as imagined by the happy few who can actually "feel" according to the "moral" compass of patriarchy is hell on earth for all those who have to stay there without being able to live the part they act.
What could have saved David and Giovanni? Unpoisoning their minds maybe, if that is possible? Taking away layer after layer of self-hatred and carefully implanted shame, until they'd be able to look at themselves in the mirror and see a happy, gay man and be proud? Is that entirely possible, even today? I don't know. I know it is not entirely possible for women, even in the most modern of societies, to break the rules of patriarchy without some loss of status, loss of respect, loss of financial security, loss of professional development.
I imagine it would be the same for any person not enjoying the complete protection of privilege. For Giovanni it would never have been possible at the time and in the place where he moved. The only saving grace is that he found a storyteller to carry his voice beyond the finale. Love, love, love this short novel. Read it! View all 7 comments. I like this more than the three stars would indicate. The melodrama was a problem for me. The plot is simple and brilliantly done.
David is confused, as his friend Jacques at one point remarks. For he has met the beautiful, the irresistible Giovan I like this more than the three stars would indicate. For he has met the beautiful, the irresistible Giovanni. During their renovations, they remove bags of bricks from the room and scatter these in the neighborhood. Now Hella is returning from Spain where she has gone briefly to think about whether she wants to marry David. Giovanni, driven mad by lost love, will be guillotined for a grisly crime.
The prose wavers between a kind of operatic hysteria and passages that are sonorous if not haunting. Clear the room everyone.
This would make a lovely opera. Is there a Rossini among us? View all 4 comments. Mar 18, Samra Yusuf rated it really liked it Shelves: gay-romance. We are certainly not assigned for whom to love and how much. Love is not "homosexual love" or "same sex love" - it's just love, and people are not gay, or lesbians or straight, they are just humans. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl.
View all 33 comments. I am in awe of James Baldwin's seamless way with words. His writing shakes me to my very core, I feel so vividly all the emotions described, the contradicting war within the world and within the self between hot, flaming fire and ice cold water, between fervent heat and stone cold detachment.
The motif of water and the ocean and its metaphorical association with time, Giovanni's room itself, the inescapable self and claustrophobia particularly struck me- I feel overwhelmed and shaken by this tra I am in awe of James Baldwin's seamless way with words. The motif of water and the ocean and its metaphorical association with time, Giovanni's room itself, the inescapable self and claustrophobia particularly struck me- I feel overwhelmed and shaken by this tragic, beautiful, poignant and haunting novel.
There is so much of literary and aesthetic worth to be explored in this book and also so much to be said about human psychology and consciousness, about the dangers of lying to oneself and hurting others, the dangers of self-hatred and lack of acceptance. I long to read another of Baldwin's books. I was completely captivated, drawn in and submerged by such seductive, visceral, melancholic prose- never have I felt such a tug at my emotions than the pull that was engendered in me and on my heart by this novel, though my life does not relate to the tale.
My heart is currently in a million little pieces! Words to describe this book: Tragic, Profound, Devastating, Poignant, Harrowing, and many other melancholy words!
James Baldwin illustrates vast and deep emotions in the most succinct writing! He conveys boundless themes without overpowering them with an access of words. This sharp precision adds even more gravity to the topics explored in this story. Every word of this book has a purpose! My personal favorite aspect of this novel is found in the My heart is currently in a million little pieces! My personal favorite aspect of this novel is found in the title.
Giovanni's room as a setting, is so much more than just a setting. It is an incredibly clever symbol of the characters and their relationship with one another. It represents how they feel, what they feel, their relationship in general, lust, love, and about a million other things! I have only one word for that David loves men and hates himself for it.
Whenever he succumbs to a young man's charms, he trembles with fear at the prospect of being discovered, thinks of the lewd jokes and offensive words that accompany people of his kind, and fears playing them. To be reassured, the young American leaves for Paris. Sheltered from the crowd and familiar eyes, he can frequent gay circles in relative tranquillity.
However, this tranquillity does not push him to assert himself, not even in these closed circles. On the contrary, he proclaims to whoever wants to hear him that he loves women, and the few adventures he has don't count. Besides, he has a girlfriend, and he just proposed to her if that is not proof! She left for Spain alone to take stock before answering does not seem to disturb him too much.
During this absence, David meets Giovanni, an immigrant from Italy. In Giovanni's room, cut off from the outside world, a small bubble of pure love can exist with curtains still drawn. Outside, David cannot bear the brunt of this relationship.
Added to this is a prostitutional relationship that does not contribute to softening resentment because only the very rich, or the downgraded, can be immune from prosecution. We also pity Giovanni, for whom love seems so easy and the weight of the gaze of others so light. Until the end, he will believe in the victory of feelings over the obligation of conformity, ready, even, to sacrifice a large part of her lover's life for the company of decent people.
For that, David would have to stop running from what he has been running away from all his life. And the game is far from over. Then the door is before him.
There is darkness all around him, there is silence in him. Then the door opens and he stands alone, the whole world falling away from him. And the brief corner of the sky seems to be shrieking, though he does not hear a sound. Then the earth tilts, he is thrown forward on his face in darkness, and his journey begins. Sometimes you read a book and you suddenly find yourself hijacked by a form of spellbinding intensity that spews from a participant narrator.
You're pulled into the room, Giovanni's Room, and you soon find yourself emotionally involved with David's mental battle. You may not even like David, or like the way he treats people his fiancee and his lover , and yet, you're with him, rooting for him during his most piercing revelations. You even have sympathy for his dilemmas and meanders. But why is this?
Blame Baldwin. Blame it on his hypnotic lyricism and pure poignancy that entraps the reader. Blame it on his story of self-conflict and melancholy, of reflection and remorse, of truth and lies and anything that embeds itself within the fabric of a life marred by deceit.
Blame it on the forthrightness of a narrator whose words you follow intently: I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. In the beginning, our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day.
Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues.
The story starts in the present tense, with David our narrator reflecting on his life with Giovanni, his male lover. The story starts and you immediately sense that something has gone wrong, that you are at the cusp of what seems to be romantic tragedy, because David is embittered with remorse, regret and self-loathe: "people are too various to be treated so lightly.
I am too various to be trusted. He feels responsible for Giovanni's fate as he narrates Giovanni is in prison , and he feels responsible for breaking his fiancee's Hella heart. David has come a long way, from New York to Paris, to avoid the conflict taking place within him. He is a gay man who wants to have a wife and a family. He is a gay man who wants to be accepted by society. He is a motherless gay son who wants to be accepted by his father: A cavern opened in my mind, black, full of rumor, suggestion, of half-heard, half-forgotten, half-understood stories, full of dirty words.
I thought I saw my future in that cavern. I was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me.
David's story of self-actualization is told in such a way that makes it relatable; to think of this vast world of ever-changing spectrum and to wonder wherein one can really find oneself.
In this case, an American in Paris, a gay man in a conservative society, a young man figuring out his sexuality - the mistakes that accompany such awakenings. Reading this book, I was reminded of the sort of picture I yearned for in The Picture of Dorian Gray , and while the setting, mood, and even some themes are reminiscent of The American by Henry James, what Baldwin does better is introduce characters only as they move the story forward, as a result, you see these characters more clearly.
I can only imagine why this masterly written novel did not get more publicity, but the answer I come up with saddens me, for this is a transcendent piece of art that seems to be one of Baldwin's more poignant pieces. When one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds oneself pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors. View all 38 comments.
Shelves: american , before-you-die , , novella , literary-fiction. An American in Paris, David is escaping from the conventional expectations he feels from his father, and pretty much everyone else in greater society.
In Paris, he feels freer to live and love more honestly. But even in Paris, he and Giovanni are trapped in a shabby room with sightless windows, lest "You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car.
But even in Paris, he and Giovanni are trapped in a shabby room with sightless windows, lest anyone see them together. It is suffocating, dingy, and he longs desperately to get OUT of this room, away from his self-loathing, out where he can be 'normal'.
Out, where his girlfriend Hella waits for him, with the potential for a traditional, acceptable life that has all the perfect shapes, and the appropriate pronouns. David doesn't realise that the suffocating closet he lives in has nothing whatsoever to do with Giovanni's room.
His self-made prison goes with him like a shell on a turtle. It is always there, and is constructed completely from fear and repression. It is so much a part of David that it won't be removed. It will shield him from societal rejection, yes, but it also bars freedom, love, connection with another human, the ability for others to really know him. It's evident from the first page that James Baldwin is a beautiful writer, who wrote about things that he knew about, personally.
He faced awful disadvantages being not only a black man in midth-century, but a black, gay man. And how interesting that he decided to write a book featuring two gay, white characters.
By doing that, he aptly demonstrates that being a gay guy in was a hell that even racial privilege couldn't avoid. There's some odd, dare I say misogynistic-y stuff floating around here, which is a bit disappointing. Lines like this: "Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? And that dirty. But women as a group? My disappointment was evened out somewhat by the character of Hella, who is intelligent, honest, and laments being dependent on a man.
This book addresses the specifics of living and loving out loud, using the example of being homosexual in an unaccepting world. But I think it translates well in a general way to all those who live secretively, whatever that secret may be.
It speaks to those whose identity is so private, they feel painful isolation, to those whose fear has grown out of proportion, their need to conceal overshadowing the potential for happiness. This is the great tragedy at the heart of this book, and for those who live this reality. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? View all 34 comments.
This book is so damn heartbreaking This is the first James Baldwin book that I have ever read and Once I started reading this small book, I just couldn't stop myself and I ended up reading it in one sitting. I love how the characters were so realistically developed. I would say this one is a classic for a reason. The story is set in the s in Paris where one character staying away from home falls for a bartender.
Things get comp This book is so damn heartbreaking Things get complicated as this character is caught in between his morals and beliefs, decides to marry woman ultimately. But the consequences of all this leading to a tragic ending and heartbreaks. The story deals with sexual identity and several social issues, most importantly how the gay community was looked upon those days. Sadly, such issues are still prevailing. I would say the best parts are the dialogues between the woman and the main character towards the end of the book.
So many quotable lines! Jun 28, Paul rated it it was amazing Shelves: lgbt. Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt.
Baldwin treats complex relationships with some warmth and no easy or comfortable answers. There is debate as to whether Baldwin is focussing on bisexuality, but you have to look at the context and the sense that the two main characters are on a journey of self discovery with varying degrees of acceptance.
The t Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt. The two main protagonists are David and Giovanni. David is an American currently living in Paris. He has a girlfriend, also an American, who is spending some time in Spain. David goes out for a drink with a gay acquaintance and meets Giovanni who is working in a bar.
He had entered the cavern—and, to his surprise, it was large and well-lit, warm with the glow of candles and lamps. The cavern was allure itself, dark and stark from the outside, comfortable and cozy within, at least for a bit. And to enter that maw was more than just to accept his queerness.
He still grappled with layers of shame, yet even that was a little more bearable there. France was not perfect. Baldwin was jailed, brought to court, and then, by luck, acquitted, but when he returned to his room, he was told to pay immediately or vacate the premises. It seemed a final, cruel slap in the face. By chance, the pipe burst. One of our greatest writers was saved, it turned out, by the shoddiness of his Parisian lodging. Despite this early incident, France seemed somewhat progressive in comparison to the prejudice and puritanism of America.
Baldwin fell back into a stride of sorts. Baldwin suspected this was partly due to the Swiss painter being more attracted to women; he also blamed himself, due to his lifelong belief that he was hideous. Baldwin would continually pursue unavailable or only partly-reciprocating males: straight men, queer guys who did not fully want him, a bisexual painter married to a woman. If France proffered him love, it also bathed him in a peculiar shade of loneliness he understood, given the solitude he had sought as a boy and the pervading isolation created by American anti-blackness.
David, indeed, is one of the most remarkable self-denying, self-hating gay characters in literature, a man who transforms the queerness he cannot accept into a toxic misogyny. He is a paradigm of toxicity and repression. David especially despises effeminacy in men—again, largely out of his paranoid fear of being outed as gay.
In one scene, he becomes paranoid that a stranger passing by might have thought him effete. Instead, he wishes to be like a sailor he witnesses one day, who appears almost as a divine vision to him of masculinity.
David is unable to be attracted solely to women, and abhors this; therefore, he decides, with perverse logic, that he must abominate anything related to femininity as an idea. His misogyny is a sad expression of his already frustrating internalized homophobia. His most potent venom is reserved for trans and gender-non-conforming people. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not—so grotesquely—resemble human beings.
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