REVIEW OF GIOVANNI'S ROOM (1956) BY JAMES BALDWIN
"Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person’s body, of another person’s smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened; I am sure he was frightened too, and we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love."
Baldwin focuses throughout the novel on love, sexual thirst, hunger, and desperation. It's evident in David and Giovanni's relationship. Giovanni loves David but David is unsure. His position is constantly shifting, he is in love with Giovanni but is terrified of this. It defies the acceptable social norms he has been taught.
"I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought, it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again."
Giovanni's room that he rents comes to represent a lot to David. Sometimes it is a prison in its constant construction and unfinished state. Sometimes it represents a future. Often it is likened to being undersea, keeping David trapped in a slow moving world, magnified by the crushing weight of David's desires and uncertainties. All the while, he awaits the return of Hella (who does return in the book). We sense a measure of dread here.
"It was hard work, it was insane work, but I did not have the energy or the heart to stop him. In a way he was doing it for me, to prove his love for me. He wanted me to stay in the room with him. Perhaps he was trying, with his own strength, to push back the encroaching walls, without, however, having the walls fall down."
It is clear from Hella's absence as she
travels through Spain that the relationship between them is not as
explosive as the one between Giovanni and David.They are often walking through Paris together, spending all day with one another, fighting and loving with overwrought passion.Their relationship is definitely not what would be considered healthy, they are both codependent. You can tell throughout the book that it is full of problems, brimming with tensions all the time. I don't want to glorify this. It's true. It wouldn't have lasted very long in a sustainable way. It may have ended in death. It may have ended in violence. But damn, did it make for good writing.
"We stared at each other across a narrow space that was full of danger, that almost seemed to roar, like flame. “Come,” he said. I dropped my brick and went to him. In a moment I heard his fall. And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder."
Baldwin conveys an extreme depth of emotion. This book is as much about isolation and otherness as it is about love. David is an American expat, not fitting in Paris but since he has left home, unsure of what home he has to go back to. It will never be the same. As they are isolated, two foreigners in France in Giovanni's room, the lovers are also isolated by their sexual orientation. They are isolated by cultural norms to which they do not adhere. Social alienation is a theme that James Baldwin was no stranger to. Having experienced not only racism as a barrier to his entry to the writing profession (being a Black man in the United States and in Europe) he also was constrained by his own sexual identity. He writes from a very personal spot. You can't ignore it when you read the book, the strength of the alienation, the feeling of being othered permeates the text. As does the desire to have a place in the world, to take out that which others.
"I long to make this prophecy come true. I long to crack that mirror and be free. I look at my sex, my troubling sex, and wonder how it can be redeemed, how I can save it from the knife. The journey to the grave is already begun, the journey to corruption is, always, already, half over. Yet, the key to my salvation, which cannot save my body, is hidden in my flesh."
Baldwin also writes about David's struggle with masculinity and ideas of gender norms. He plays with both female and male identity in both serious and humorous ways. Hella is David's female ideal, and David is what could be described as the 1950's ideal of the American man. He is white, blond, educated, and fit. Hella is adventerous, from a good family in the midwest, and also beautiful. Together they are the ideal of a bygone (thank god) era. She is willing to give up everything for him, as any good woman should.
“David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll wear my hair long, I’ll give up cigarettes, I’ll throw away the books.” She tried to smile; my heart turned over. “Just let me be a woman, take me. It’s what I want. It’s all I want. I don’t care about anything else.”
There is so much more I could address with respect to Giovanni's Room. There's a reason why it's on curricula, the subject of reading guides, and student papers. This is just a brief overview but I urge you to read it. I've fallen stupidly in love with this book.
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