posted on 15 Jun 2018

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

In 1948, an angry James Baldwin decided to leave America and headed for the city of disillusioned fellow ex-patriot writers and would-be writers, Paris. Baldwin left his native New York in protest against the racism that was structural to his and the lives of so many of his contemporaries. But he also needed to leave because of his growing awareness that he was gay – being black and gay in late Forties America was not likely to be good for your physical or mental health.

Baldwin’s self-exile would last for the majority of the rest of his life and his books, novels and essays, would always be influenced by the three dominant issues in his life – being black, being gay or bi-sexual and being an American exile. Baldwin always resisted being pigeon-holed by any one of these identities and insisted on his right to be a complex writer rather than a symbol of any particular minority group. But it is certainly the case that his second novel, published in 1956 when he was 32 years old, is fully informed by these three facets of his identity.

Giovanni’s Room is frequently cited by men who have struggled to come to terms with their sexuality as a defining, epiphanal novel that helps them understand and articulate what they had been going through. As a heterosexual man it’s easy to see why the book, which speaks so straightforwardly and yet so ambivalently about the turmoil of living with a sexuality that transgresses the social norms, should be so meaningful. But it would be a mistake to think that the issue of sexual identity is the only, or perhaps even the main, subject of the novel.

The book is deceptively simple but cunningly complex at one and the same time. Baldwin’s ability to use a structure in which we are forewarned of the outcome while at the same time holding sense of narrative tension is highly skilful and his sentences which feel easy and almost informal are masterpieces of careful construction – I gather Baldwin was quite a fan of Henry James and, if that was the case, this prose is certainly informed by the ‘master’.

David, the central character of the book, is also a complicated mix – he’s clearly some part Baldwin but he’s also white. In fact this is one of very few books in which Baldwin writes through the persona of a white man (I gather he thought making David black and gay would be just too much to cope with). The story opens with David about to return to Paris, with his ex-girlfriend Hella returning to American and with Giovanni about to be executed. The rest of the book plays out this scenario with just the occasional bit of time swapping between then and now at strategic moments in the text.

David, however, isn’t offered to us as a hero to admire – quite the opposite in fact. He’s conflicted, hurtful and filled with a visceral self-loathing that spills over into his relationships with everyone else. David has come to Paris effectively on the run from himself. He’s had a gay encounter at home that has unsettled him and made him confused about his sexual preferences and his identity as a man. Partly in order to convince himself that his ‘gayness’ is transient, he clings to a relationship with a young woman called Hella who is also from the States but who has gone off to Spain travelling in order to think about whether she and David should marry – although she is unaware of his attraction to men.

David finds himself in financial difficulties and calls on the help and support of Jacques, a gay man, and through him meets Giovanni, a barman in a gay bar run by a predatory proprietor called Guillaume. Giovanni and David are instantly attracted to each other and while Giovanni is handsome and confident with his identity, David is full of shame and despair. He does, however, move in to live in Giovanni’s room, a small rather squalid place on the outskirts of Paris and this room becomes a metaphor for David’s confused sense of both liberation and imprisonment.

Unable to resolve the conflicts in his personality – he knows he’s gay but he desperately doesn’t want to be - David pins all his hopes on Hella’s return to set him free. By this time Giovanni is desperately in love with David but we know that David can only see this through the confused prism of lust and disgust. Inevitably then, he leaves Giovanni when Hella reappears from Spain and this triggers the events that will result in a murder that will send Giovanni to the guillotine.

Hella will however inevitably discover that David is gay (or at least bisexual) by finding him in a liaison with a sailor in the south of France and leave him to return to America. David can do nothing but contemplate his own guilt and the horror of Giovanni’s execution.

I mentioned earlier that Baldwin’s writing is heavily influenced by his status as an exiled American and this is a theme that is constantly running through this book. The contrast between the morally uptight American psyche and the more liberal European world view is constantly being referred to. And David doesn’t just hate himself for his confused sexuality, he hates America for having made him this way.

I first read this book when I was in my early twenties and time has done its job in making me forget just what a masterpiece this is. That’s not to say it’s without its flaws – sometimes David’s anguish is so extreme you just want to harrumph with frustration – but it’s a formidable piece of writing and one which I’m sure will still be relevant to a modern readership that thinks of itself as somehow living in more liberal, ‘enlightened’ times.

Terry Potter

June 2018