Giovanni's Room (1956) - James Baldwin

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

James Baldwin took quite a few risks with his second novel. In contrast to his first novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, which took place entirely in the context of an African American church in Harlem, Giovanni’s Room takes place entirely in Europe and all of the main characters are white. The book also deals very explicitly with both homosexuality and bisexuality with, again, almost all of the main characters being one or both of those and almost the entire book taking place in what we would now call “queer spaces.” Baldwin’s American publisher, Knopf, reportedly told him that he should burn the book rather than publishing it. According to Baldwin, they told him, “This new book will ruin your career, because you’re not writing about the same things and in the same manner as you were before.” That phrasing, however, seems almost specifically designed to excite Baldwin and really any great artist. The book was well received at the time and, I think, has only grown in its reputation since.

The narrator of the story is white, blonde, American and his name is David. In case you couldn’t tell, he’s an icon of masculinity and all of its most beautiful strengths. He’s also bisexual and he hates himself for it more than anyone else ever could. He’s a deeply broken man, crippled by the shame he feels over his past dalliances into homosexuality and the deeply toxic relationship he had with his hyper-masculine father. David is engaged to a woman, and her name is Hella after, one supposes, the Goddess of Death. She has left him in Paris for a time on his own, and he has found himself drawn into the world of a small gay bar and it is there that he meets Giovanni, the bartender. The two young men will fall into an often awkward and uncomfortable sexual affair and through this affair, their characters will be vivisected in harsh detail until we feel that we understand them too well, that we have seen too far into their deep wounds and their gnarled scar tissue. The book delves deeply into some of the supporting characters as well. Jacques is an aging bon vivant who preys on young men by using his wealth to seduce them into relationships with him. Once Hella returns to Paris, Baldwin breathes enough life into her to make her feel like a real character, not just a plot device. At one point in the novel, David, in a panic to reassert his masculinity after his affair with Giovanni has reached new heights, picks up a woman named Sue in a bar in order to have sex with her and, though she’s only in a couple of scenes, she comes to life as a troubled character, unfairly drawn into David’s world through no fault of her own.

The book is ultimately a tragedy of men undone by their fatal flaws. David’s fatal flaw is his deep self-loathing and, while it’s easy to create a character with self-loathing, it’s not easy to write them well and Baldwin has done maybe as good a job as has ever been done with the archetype. To say the book is tragic perhaps doesn’t explicate it well enough; the book is also just crushingly sad and the ending is utterly bleak. It’s also a book that’s unbelievably thematically rich. Even as the characters feel achingly human, the themes that the book stirs up are gripping. It’s a book that I feel I could read again and again and notice something new every time. That’s how deep it feels, how rich. And the book is, if not quite a novella, a shockingly short novel. The Penguin Modern Classics edition clocks in at almost exactly 150 pages, which makes the entire thing all the more incredible an achievement. Of the four Baldwin novels I’ve read, I think Giovanni’s Room is the best, the richest, the most emotionally moving. If I had some small reservations about Go Tell It On the Mountain, I have absolutely none about Giovanni’s Room. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece of literature, one of the greatest novels of its time or any other. 4 stars.

tl;dr – boasting incredibly rich themes and multi-layered characters, this short novel about the queer experience of a self-loathing American expat packs a devastating emotional punch. 4 stars.

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Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953) - James Baldwin

God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn't get over Him; so low you couldn't get under Him; so wide you couldn't get around Him; but must come in at the door.

And she, she knew today that door; a living, wrathful gate. She knew through what fires the soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. 

James Baldwin’s first novel revolves around a black family in 1930s Harlem and, most especially, around the teenage boy of that family, John. He’s a young man bedeviled by his violent and erratic stepfather, the pastor of a storefront church, and torn between his own personal faith and his burgeoning homosexuality. Baldwin was himself raised by a violent minister stepfather and was himself gay, so it’s very easy to read this as an autobiographical novel. I think that sells it a bit short though because Baldwin is already a writer that is in real command of his craft and, while it does draw on details of Baldwin’s childhood and young adulthood, the characters are so richly drawn in their perspectives that there’s much more at work here.

The entire novel takes place over a 24-hour period as the family prepares for an overnight prayer meeting at the church and then, as the prayer meeting commences, through the prayers of the various characters we are taken through their lives and made to really understand them on deep and powerful levels. And by the time the prayer meeting is over, John has been “slain in the Spirit” and when he wakes from his spiritual ecstasy, he is a changed man in many ways. Perhaps he is finally a man in the first place. This book is multi-layered and challenging and it’s more than just a screed against religion or a demonization of even the most challenging and toxic of its characters. Even Gabriel, the abusive stepfather, is given a surprising amount of character development via flashbacks and if he never becomes a character we can really excuse, we feel like we can understand him in some way. Maybe it’s because of the deep layering of the characters that people are so divided on whether this book is largely an indictment of religion or largely a celebration of it. I tend to land on the indictment side of things, but some of the readings that emphasize the positivity of the ending are compelling and moving to me as well. It’s all part of Baldwin’s genius, even in his very first novel, that the book leaves you with so many things whirling around inside your head. Issues of religion, sexuality and race aren’t simple and Baldwin never approaches them as if they are.

I had some very minor issues with this book when I read it, most of them kind of very minimal versions of the typical “first novel” problems. I particularly found the final third which takes place during John’s spiritual trance, to not work as well as I wished it did. But I’ve turned around on some of that in the time since I initially read it and, in particular, my opinion on the very final scene has completely flipped. At the time, I thought it was rather anti-climactic; now I think it’s an incredibly powerful moment that I really haven’t been able to stop thinking about. So, ultimately, I don’t think I can even muster the energy to care about the few minor missteps I may (or may not) have seen here. Go Tell It On the Mountain is an astonishing novel by any standards, especially for a debut, and Baldwin remains one of America’s greatest writers. 4 stars.

tl;dr – Baldwin’s first novel explores religion, sexuality and race in that order and is a real knock-out; deeply layered characters, gorgeous writing and obvious passion make this one a masterpiece. 4 stars.

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