DISCLAIMER: while i have spoiler tagged some things, the entirety of my review could probably be seen as spoiler-y. probably skip this one if you haven’t read giovanni’s room and want to avoid spoiler-y discussion of it.

i had been looking forward to reading this book for a very long time, and it in no way disappointed. i read it in one day, but in slight fits and starts, mostly to write down passages that were particularly moving to me (i collected 35), or just to take a breath and compose myself. i found myself, towards the end, pausing simply to cry for a moment. there is an obvious, tangible sense of tragedy and doom in this novel. you know how it will end but you don’t look away. you know how it will end but you find yourself wishing for some miracle, that things will resolve themselves.

there is an incredible enormity to this novel. how could baldwin possibly have poured all of it into a mere 159 pages? there are no punches pulled. every sentence is precise. baldwin had a near-complete mastery of the english language. every word, you sense, is specially chosen for maximum meaning and effect. this is not a light book by any means. it is incredibly lonely, even though the narrator, david, spends almost all of his time talking to someone. he is lonely internally, shackled to himself and his idea of masculinity, manhood, and sexuality. he is so afraid to love, to be open, to be truthful, that he closes himself off, and

is left with nothing.

here, i am struggling to put my thoughts into words. whatever i say could not possibly do justice to the sheer beauty and excellence of this novel. i can scarcely even begin to imagine how to talk about it without feeling like i’m sullying it somehow, with my floundering, inept attempt at a review. sure, i may be pedastalling this book a bit, but to me, it is genuinely worthy of it. i can barely think for want of vomiting, my feelings so heavy and all-encompassing. while reading, i broke to have dinner at some point, and briefly deferred coming back to this book because i knew i had to come back into the mindset i had earlier cultivated. that is, incredibly melancholy and reflective. i love difficult and challenging and upsetting works precisely because they have such an effect on you as a reader. i love feeling emotionally drained by something. it’s proof that something has touched me, of art. surely there is little higher praise to any artist than to know that they have moved their audience emotionally.

anyway, enough of me… but one last thing: reading this felt like being ripped open and laid bare. it was exposing. you are placed so firmly in the narrator’s mind that his shame becomes your shame. you spend the entire time knowing that he is sabotaging himself at every juncture because of his inability to accept himself as he is. with giovanni, he wants to have his cake (happiness) and eat it too (living the life expected of him). the novel is full of contradictions, of duplicity, of mirrors, of having two feet in different worlds.

of course, the main preoccupation of this novel is sexuality and internalised homophobia and of social isolation/alienation. there is also the construction of shame and identity. david - the narrator, who is almost never referred to by name, as if even this is a stripping of his identity, or an enforcement of his insularity - has a fierce desire to be the all-american man’s man, like his father, or at least his understanding of his father. he knows that he is not, because he sees what he regards as rottenness in him - an attraction to men, which is a threat to his manhood. he does not necessarily attempt to disavow himself of his homosexuality (and here, the specifics of his sexuality can be debated, but i interpreted him as a gay man, and that is how i will refer to him), but neither can he bring himself to look it in the eye. he knows who he is, what he wants, he just does not allow himself to even entertain the idea of it becoming reality. but he is weak, and fallible, and human, just like the rest of us, and he falls in love with giovanni anyway. it is incredible to see such self-denial on the page as in this book. david has caged himself in so thoroughly that though he can see the sky through the bars, he makes no move to leave. he has a complete inability to live fully and freely. he is isolated in his head - from who he is and who he wants to be. he is isolated from the people around him - he is constantly looking for reds (co-conspirators and disapprovers alike) under the bed because he is unable to face himself. he is isolated from his environment - he is an american in paris, unmoored and adrift, with no feeling of home or belonging anywhere. giovanni’s room thus truly becomes the core of the book - here is a space in which david is safe. it is small and dirty and shabby and isolated, but it houses his love. david attempts to run from the world, to bury himself in giovanni’s room and exist somewhere apart from everywhere else. giovanni seeks shelter here as well, with david, and they live, briefly, in their bubble. giovanni wants to make it work forever, but david can never commit himself to authenticity. giovanni’s room is a sanctuary, it is where david is invited to be his true self, but this is something he cannot access due to years of self-deception and manipulation.

how difficult it is to be human. we could say so many things to david - do this, do that, throw caution to the wind, stay with giovanni, but david is written to be human. he is complex, incredibly so, and sympathetically unsympathetic. baldwin’s greatest message, and warning, to the reader is that fear dams love. things - feelings, ideas - curdle within us when we let them fester. if you are afraid to love you cannot be open. and why is that the way we are? why is happiness so difficult to achieve? what makes us happy? we look at david and we say you are a black hole! you are so starved of love you have none to offer anyone else! though of course, we know this is untrue. david has love, but his ability to externalise it has been so twisted by what we call ‘toxic masculinity’, and his notion that he is beholden to what society wants from him. he wants to settle down with hella and have children because that is what is expected of him.

he does not want this at all.

another thing: the horror of closetedness. david experiences everything through this lens. he believes in the myths of life. he is terrified of being found out, and canvasses others so that he may either present himself ‘appropriately’ or he can judge them for being just like him. every character in the novel is a mirror of some aspect of him. giovanni, for example, opens something up for david. he challenges him, by showing him what opening himself up to love and embracing his authentic self can look like. giovanni is the prospect of david’s happiness, personified. in a similar vein, hella does not truly exist for much of the novel.

until she arrives back in paris, she mostly only exists as the paragon of heterosexual respectability. it doesn’t really matter who she is, because she is a contrasting barometer. then, suddenly, she is real, and david realises he cannot live in two worlds, and he needs to pick one. suddenly, hella has personality, and immediacy.

jacques is, like he says to david at the beginning, what david could turn into, should he continue to deny himself.

he is, of course, most probably right. there is very little hope that david can return to ‘normalcy’ after the events of the book. he is doomed to the sad life he sneered at; to be trapped in the hell of his own making.

david is a projection to please others. he regards everyone with suspicion, and if not suspicion, the assumption that they can see right through him. it is not that he necessarily feels fraudulent - rather, he fears that there is some pink, gooey centre of him that betrays him to passersby, one that he cannot see but is immediately obvious to others. he fears that this is a betrayal of his manhood, and without his manhood, he is nothing, because that is what he has dedicated himself to. he wants to explore aspects of himself, but without repercussion. he does not succeed in escaping repercussion, and it is difficult to ascertain just how much he has changed and grown over the course of the book, apart from perhaps putting a name to some things;

he eventually admits to loving giovanni, and to having fabricated a relationship with hella to fulfil his fantasies of ‘normalcy’. but, his behaviour itself barely changes.

something i found very interesting to track throughout the book was instances in which david acted childishly. he has a childish attitude to his own attraction to men, and seems to be subconsciously recreating his boyhood relationship with joey, with giovanni. just an interesting thread, one which speaks to a larger conversation on how our childhoods shape us into adulthood, and how david never grows past his adolescent sexuality, where he felt his first shame. i think shame is the feeling that stains us the most. it does not come off easily in the wash, and it often takes a lifetime to overcome our shames. it is so depressing to see it reflected back at us in the form of david. his shame has engulfed him.

i think i have said what i wanted to say, but there is no dearth of things to say about this book. it is so enormous to me that i think i will continue to unpick it for a long time to come. it has such incredibly beautiful, expertly-crafted prose, with such a depth and (ironically) honesty to it. i would say i wish i had read it sooner, but i think where i am in life right now is the perfect time to have read it. i hope this book touches all who read it like it touched me.

Gutting. I’ve just finished Giovanni’s Room for the first time and that was the most fully-formed thought I had about it for several minutes.

Internalized homophobia can really fuck you up. Don’t let it?

Kicking myself for waiting so long to read Baldwin. Such tragedy described in such beautiful words. Absolutely brilliant pose. Baldwin’s ability to place you at the scene is magnificent to witness. You can almost feel the anguish and sorrow of the characters. Everything is so believable it hurts. Love the Macbeth reference. Everything about this is perfect. A literary masterpiece! Excited to explore more of Baldwin’s work. 

Just a gorgeous book, I found the prose delicious and really liked all the French. 

I loved the initial description of David and Giovanni meeting, and I found that entire sequence so beautiful and almost magical. all the characterisation was so real and divisive. David is unlikeable from the start and yet it is impossible to not want to follow his plight and struggles despite resenting not necessarily his actions, as he does seem to act in a respectable manner, but his inner motivations and dialogue, in particular his self-manifested revulsion for Giovanni, and false desire for Hella. this was so interesting to read and consider. I also enjoyed toward the end Hella's feminist talking points and her lack of personhood out with David's protection, which is then devolved later on - I found this to be an interesting perspective not often taken in this sort of exploratory literature, a feminist discussion of the impacts on the women caught in these loveless marriages, unknowingly covering for men undergoing intense struggle with their sexuality and place in the world

 

Matt Bomer narrating the sad gays .. amazing. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read this and it’s no less tragic & lovely. David sucks so bad but ugh he’s so darn human. I understand it’s a reflection of the time but the misogyny / treatment of women here from pretty much every character is not my fave at all. Feel like I might have a lot more to say on that later but for now, that’s it. Using as a familiar title to get in a groove of reading all of Baldwin’s novels this year, & it was a banger.