Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin

“A room for two, please (but which two?)”

In Giovanni’s Room, the majestic James Baldwin tells a tale of a tragic love triangle, projecting his own sexual conflict onto a flawed protagonist in post-War Paris.

At almost thirty years old, David pushes credulity as an expat bohemian.  His father, who sends him money, thinks he should come back home to America and get on with his life.  David’s fiancée, Hella Lincoln (she is the only character with a surname), a brainy, spirited woman who comes from a well-to-do family in Minneapolis, has gone to Spain to figure out if she wants to marry David.  During her absence, David falls into instalove with an Italian barman named Giovanni and moves into his squalid space for a steamy Paris summer.  Baldwin foreshadows Giovanni’s downfall from the exposition, and the book becomes an extended unspooling of doom.

David’s flaw stems from the fact that he cannot bring himself to tell either of his lovers about the other.  If he had he done so, you get the sense that both paramours might have agreed to, if not a ménage, then at least some kind of “arrangement,” if such a compromise would have meant keeping David.  David could have avoided inflicting emotional devastation to those who care for him.  However, he can only lie to others since he lies to himself.  He proves himself a Hamlet of the heart, unable to choose the preferred gender of his affections, whose apartment to live in.

Thus, we come to the controlling metaphor of the novel.  David moves into not just Giovanni’s room, but his Room.  What does such a space mean in a libertine France that nevertheless maintains the difference between same-sex desire versus same-sex identity?  From a contemporary LBGTQ+ perspective, we project categories back in time, expecting to find an anachronistic gay space that does not yet exist.  A “room of one’s own” for disruptive sexualities will not come until Stonewall in 1969, and gay marriage in America wins legality in 2015 (until the current revanchist U.S. Supreme Court majority repeals it, that is).  In contrast, the word “gay” in the 1950s means “happy.”  Non-heterosexual categories were not then present for those with same-sex desires to claim.  As Virginia Woolf’s argument implies, a prospective tenant of identity must have access to rooms that are available to let in the first place.

Rooms also represent the book’s relationships themselves.  David tries multiple ones, with varying valences.  Intimacy with Hella represents to David “a familiar, darkened room in which I fumbled to find the light.”  On the other hand, he describes Giovanni’s room as “filthy.”  Gay love in de Gaulleist Paris implies vice, if not pathology, tropes David cannot shake off.  Giovanni wants to share a room with David as a domestic setting, which David sees through the eyes of his contemporaries as a degenerate parody—a heteronormative marriage en travesti.  Hella wants to install herself in any room David chooses, since as a woman in a patriarchal society, being with a man constitutes the only way for her to have an identity. Unable to choose, David stumbles from room to room, making a mess of all of them.

Baldwin isn’t the only observer to employ rooms as metaphors.  In addition to Woolf, choreographer Anna Sokolow made her signature dance work, “Rooms” (1955) a year before Baldwin’s book, in which she rooms as a way of expressing alienation in a repressive cityscape.  Likewise, choreographer Mats Ek created “Apartment” (2013), which investigates relationships using spatial metaphors.

Baldwin’s choice of time period proves inspired.  At this point, I’ve overdosed a bit on the 1920s Lost Generation, who after a while come across as advantaged Americans playing the part of starving artists, until they get bored.  The Cold War 1950s, on the other hand, involves more somber issues.  Black luminaries have enjoyed more freedom in Europe than in America as far back as Josephine Baker. By post-War Paris, Baldwin was able to interact with the likes of jazz legend Miles Davis, for instance, or his own mentor, Richard Wright, while enjoying more tolerance than he could find in the US.  All the while, the latent threat of Communist accusations hovered over artists of color (e.g., Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Loraine Hansberry, etc.), with real consequences.  The Hemmingway generation comes across in comparison more like a costume party.

I appreciate the genius of Baldwin’s phantasmagoric Go Tell it on the Mountain after having had more time to let it sit.  I like Giovanni’s Room better, though, because it explores additional layers—Go Tell it on the Mountain fixates on religion from beginning to end.  Moreover, white readers often essentialize writers of color, assuming that because black authors experience a more intensive reckoning with race within a biased society, that’s all they think about.  Actually, we don’t hear much about David’s racial markers, other than that he’s an athletic blonde.  In reading Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin’s internal conflicts over sexuality almost feel more personal than his writings on race, which are themselves classics.

For that matter, Giovanni’s Room troubles the binary choice between “gay” and “straight.”  David seems capable of affection for both men and woman, and at one point cheats on both of his lovers by having a one-night stand with a female acquaintance he’s not attracted to in order to find out if he can do it (he can).  For his part, Giovanni loved his wife back in Italy.  Straight folks tend to find the concept of bisexuality more threatening than homosexuality, because a continuum model suggests that everyone could be capable of same-sex intimacy to some degree. Conversely, gay individuals may not feel like they are “allowed” to feel attraction to different genders, whereas sometimes they do.

Having now read two of Baldwin’s signature works (Another Country is on the reading list), his creative nonfiction continues to hold the more special place for me.  Baldwin can’t seem to shake the essayist habit either, as in the middle of his novels he lets slip brilliant pensées. For instance, while staring at a sailor on the street, David reflects that, “perhaps home is not a place but an irrevocable condition.”  These sorts of Baldwinisms stop me in my tracks, as with each one my world shifts.

I do find myself having a shrinking tolerance for writer tics.  Once you notice words like “begin to” (start to, began to…) and “suddenly,” you will begin to suddenly see them everywhere, and they will begin to become annoying suddenly, and you suddenly begin editing them out of your subvocalizations as you begin to find them, suddenly.  Habit words (let’s include “even” in the category) aren’t “bad,” per se.  The problem comes from the fact that, once their roots become established, they appear on Every.  Single.  Page.  Multiple times.  Baldwin isn’t unique in this tendency.  In fact, since most writers overuse unnecessary words, I wonder how much of their imposition comes from editors rather than authors. Also, the passive voice constructions, etc., seem part of Baldwin’s signature sui generis “Paris Review” style.                                 

Regardless, I’m thrilled to have made the time to read this classic.  The novel comes from the hands of a master of his craft.  In the best tradition of literature, Baldwin writes Giovanni’s Room not to articulate what he feels, but to find out how he feels.  The inner turmoil proves compelling.  The story structure is perfect.  The characters feel real.  Thank goodness a wider variety of rooms have become available since then, to accommodate more varied inhabitants of love.