Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

 

Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

An American man named David is on an extended stay in 1950s Paris, unwilling to return home to his widowed father who is desperately trying to get him to do so and refusing to send any sort of significant financial support. His father wonders what it is he is doing in Paris?

What David is doing is hanging out in gay bars and restaurants, pretending he is not gay and looking down on those who so obviously are. All the while, he is lusting after one man or another when, in a bar owned by a man named Guillaume, he meets a new bartender working there named Giovanni. Giovanni is a beautiful Italian man with whom David pretends not to notice and then quickly comes to be enamored with. The two begin to spend time together and Giovanni falls quickly in love with David, who is still afraid to be who he knows he truly is. Instead, David holds himself distant and longs for his friend Hella to return from Spain to save him from what he perceives as his depravities. When she returns he asks her tomarry him and he abandons Giovanni, who now depends on him for sustenance in every way. Giovanni, now destitute does an unthinkable act and is sentenced to death. David despairs, still hiding, until he can no longer keep his true nature from surfacing. In the end, he ruins most of the lives he's touched in Paris, including his own in some way.

This book was beautifully written. The prose is spare but elegant. I couldn't help but dislike David. He is the worst kind of homophobe: that which is gay himself and afraid to give all of himself to the one man who wants to share everything with him. He is so afraid throughout this whole book that he turns his fear into hate, just like the heteros he is hiding himself from. It is a tragic story well told.

I give Giovanni's Room an enthusiastic 4 stars.