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Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin

4.28 · Rating details · 90,553 ratings · 8,492 reviews

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live ...more

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Paperback, 159 pages

Published June 2000 by Penguin (first published 1956)

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Mar 09, 2014 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Jeffrey by: John Irving

Shelves: 1950s, african-american

”He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying moralities. And you--you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met ...more

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Apr 11, 2021 chai ♡ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hall-of-fame, classics, bipoc-rep, lgbtq-trans-side, lgbtq-achillean, lgbtq-rep

This book unraveled me so completely. I feel like my whole body is strung out from the sheer, inexorable weight of this story. Giovanni's Room has one of the rawest, most wounding and open-chested portraits of what it is like to burn with the fires of self-loathing as a result of internalized queerphobia, and to wrestle, every day, from the webbing of a shame that stains, indelibly, everything you love. It’s all stuff I’ve told myself before, and made myself believe, and to see actual words wra ...more

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Mar 14, 2013 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, ur-so-gay

God, Giovanni's Room is heart-breaking. I've been avoiding reviewing it, a bit, because it boils so much to the surface. No summary or review could do this book total justice. What Baldwin achieves is a desperate account of two gay-or-bisexual men struggling with their sexuality, their society, and most importantly their identities: identities which are at once masculine and yet deprived of that masculinity by their complicity with a society that doesn't understand them. Baldwin's artistry is fo God, Giovanni's Room is heart-breaking. I've been avoiding reviewing it, a bit, because it boils so much to the surface. No summary or review could do this book total justice. What Baldwin achieves is a desperate account of two gay-or-bisexual men struggling with their sexuality, their society, and most importantly their identities: identities which are at once masculine and yet deprived of that masculinity by their complicity with a society that doesn't understand them. Baldwin's artistry is formulating a novel about same-sex love that isn't an absurdly supportive utopia nor a bland coming-out story (see: all LGBT literature, most of which is aimed at young adults, and is stylistically reflective of that audience). Giovanni's Room is the dusk to E.M. Forster's dawn in Maurice.

Baldwin's real achievement is to make his story universal. The love between Giovanni and David is not a "homosexual love" or "same sex love" - it's just love, and Baldwin tells us that is all love needs to be to be real. Perhaps it is the effect of reading Barthes that I find myself disdainful towards the self-bulwarking of gay "otherness" - newspaper stories which send the overt message of "gays can do it too!" actually serve to reinforce that gays are something other than normal. Those stories do not change the perception that "gays cannot" but rather reinforce it by providing the exception to the rule. "A little 'confessed' evil saves one from acknowledging a lot of hidden evil'" By admitting the small prejudice, you allow the larger prejudices to grow disproportionately. Baldwin refuses to let his novel be about gay men in love, and instead makes it about two people in love. The closest comparison I can find in my literary repertory is The Age of Innocence, which I think is an apt sister novel to Baldwin's. Restrained by a rigged society and his engagement to the fair Hella, David must give up his true passion for Giovanni. But it is so much the worse ending for Giovanni than Ellen Olenska: while Ellen lives a supposedly fulfilling life in Paris, Giovanni rapidly descends to corruption, self-loathing, and death:
"If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody."
David's role in Giovanni's life is not that of a passive lover, he and Giovanni share something real, a true kinship which David cannot feel for Hella and which Giovanni cannot bear to lose.

I find significance in the names of the three lovers, David, Hella, and Giovanni. David is from the Hebrew for beloved, and he is mutually beloved by Hella and Giovanni, though he largely resents those loves, first Hella's then Giovanni's. He feels as burdened by their loves as he does by the constraints of appearances and by society, and so he can never be truly happy, he can never truly relish in the love of another, because he cannot bear to the the object of affection, only the subject. David is profoundly selfish, and profoundly evasive to the attention he receives. He paradoxically wants love but cannot bear the responsibilities that go with it. In the Bible, David is much loved by God, but his sexual transgressions with Bathsheba bring hate and misfortune to him. Baldwin's David likewise betrays Hella, and the war between his compunction and his survival instinct ruin what life remains for him: Giovanni is gone, Hella is gone, what remains of his life is a homelessness (if, in fact, home is where the heart is) and an emptiness. He is inconsolably lost: he is haunted by the past that remains inside him, but also by the past which has escaped him:
People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.
David manages to be doubly the madman.

Hella, derived from "Helga," though with the unavoidable echo of "Hell," means, ironically, "blessed." What is she blessed with? She is naive and insecure, she is alternatively too timid and too bold to find love with David. She chooses a long engagement and spends that time alone in Spain rather than in Paris with David. Hella reminds me very much of James' "innocents abroad" - and for that reason I find her being blessed only by way of her avoiding the ultimate corruption of David's black heart. Her blessing seems to her like a curse, but ultimately we feel she is far better off alone than she would be had she tied the know with our narrator, a man so confused and self-loathing he is incapable of loving anyone. For David, he knows that life with Hella would be a "Hell" to him, it would be to chain him to something less than love, something like friendship, but which would block him forever from his true passion. His love for Giovanni has made love for Hella impossible, and marriage to her would be a constant reminder of what he has lost.

Giovanni is a derivative from the Hebrew for "God's Gift" - and he is a blessing to David. Giovanni shows David what love is capable of being, what it means to find love and solace in another human on this Earth. But David cannot accept this gift. He grows hateful of it. It is not love or deference for Hella which makes David give up Giovanni, but his own blindness and self-hatred. He is not deserving of Giovanni's love, and it makes us hateful to ourselves, even the most selfish of us, to receive something in the name of our merits when we have not lived up to those merits. Those undeserved gifts are a constant reminder of our inadequacies and instead of raising us up they tear us asunder from the inside-out. Giovanni is the gift of real freedom, the freedom of choice - the gift that God bestowed on man. "For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom." David cannot bear the responsibility of choice: particularly the choice between a precarious bliss with Giovanni and an assured unhappiness with Hella. ...more

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Aug 22, 2018 Candi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, classics-shelf

"I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room."

At the end of July, I spent a short but glorious time in 1950s Paris in Giovanni’s room. And I want to tell you about my incredible experience, but I can’t quite figure out how to go about it. Having been left in the thrall of James Baldwin’s achingly exquisite prose, I have been left speechless. I can’t do the book justice. Y "I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room."

At the end of July, I spent a short but glorious time in 1950s Paris in Giovanni’s room. And I want to tell you about my incredible experience, but I can’t quite figure out how to go about it. Having been left in the thrall of James Baldwin’s achingly exquisite prose, I have been left speechless. I can’t do the book justice. Yet, I want to convince you to read this book if you have not, because you would surely be missing out on some of the best writing in the literary world if you pass it by.

David is an American who has escaped to Paris in an attempt to ‘find himself.’ We hear this story directly from David’s first-person narration, allowing us to have a very intimate relationship and struggling with him in his deepest conflicts and darkest secrets. Reflecting back over time he says, "I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But, again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France." You don’t have to be ‘like’ David, a young man struggling with his sexuality as he falls for Giovanni, a passionate young man who offers to share his room with David. Nor do you have to ‘click with’ David – he’s not necessarily a likeable guy. Nevertheless, Baldwin’s gift is to make you identify in some way with his characters and to rejoice in their fleeting moments of pleasure, feel their raw pain, and empathize with their deepest regrets. You see, David also has a woman in his life. He constantly agonizes over his true desires and his sense of convention. Hella offers him an opportunity for what he considers stability.

"I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. I wanted a woman to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, where I could always be renewed. It had been so once; it had almost been so once. I could make it so again, I could make it real. It only demanded a short, hard strength for me to become myself again."

Throughout the entire novel, there is a feeling of melancholy, the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner. David, Giovanni and Hella all get swept up in this fatal web that David has created by his self-denial, self-loathing and dishonesty. Giovanni’s room seemed to be a symbol for that claustrophobic sensation of anything that closes you in and keeps your true self locked away and hidden. How to escape the room? Both Giovanni and David are in need of rescue but in different ways. Hella, too, needs to be saved. She had also ‘escaped’ from America to Paris and then on to Spain in search of freedom, a feeling of liberation. My heart ached for her as well. "I began to realize it in Spain—that I wasn’t free, that I couldn’t be free until I was attached—no, committed—to someone."

This was my very first experience with reading James Baldwin. It won’t be my last. Just a couple of days after finishing this book I was on a short trip and all I could think about was searching out a used bookstore and scouring the shelves for anything by this brilliant man! If you have ever felt isolated, confined by convention, in search of loving someone freely, or burdened by regret, then this book is for you. I dare say that encompasses nearly everyone.

"But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life." ...more

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May 28, 2020 Jim Fonseca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, france, gay-theme

CONTAINS SPOILERS

A great novel. The word “ferocious” comes to mind when I think of the intensity of several keys scenes in the novel where the main character, a gay man in Paris, struggles to turn against his gay orientation and tries to find happiness with a woman he has pledged to marry. The novel, published in 1956, is considered a classic of gay literature. Several key scenes that vividly impart to the reader that intensity of feeling are when he leaves his male lover, when his female lover ...more

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Jan 05, 2015 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, recs

A lyrical work of fiction about the failure of love, Giovanni's Room retraces the missteps that led an impassioned affair between two men away from the promise of happiness toward catastrophic ruin. The first-person narrator's ever-present despair casts a melancholic shadow over the events he recollects, even those that might at first appear to be pleasant. A sense of deep regret pervades all of the novel. From the start, the reader and narrator share an understanding of the story's devastating ...more

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Aug 04, 2021 emma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, reviewed, lgbt-plus, literary-fiction, recommend, owned, diverse, non-ya, 4-stars, authors-of-color

This book contains this passage:

"And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it - it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. Bu ...more

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Jul 12, 2020 Nataliya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reads

“Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear […] By then anguish and fear had become the surface on which we slipped and slid, losing balance, dignity, and pride.”

It’s a terrible thing to be driven by fear and shame. To be caught in the web of self-loathing, mistrust, denial, untruths; in the eternal struggle between desire and guilt; a neverending existential crisis that becomes your entire existence. The fight between what is perceived as normal, what is expected from you — and that what is seen as abhorrent, deviant, repulsive.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves, as Stephen King once said.

“And, at the risk of losing forever your so remarkably candid friendship, let me tell you something. Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.”

David, a twenty-something American man sometime in the 1950s, is idling around in Paris, where he traveled to “find himself”, running away from his long-suppressed unacceptable to him sexual feelings towards men, his sexual encounter with a friend in his teens forcibly relegated to the back rooms of his memory, with shame driving him towards secure comfort of what’s societally acceptable and familiarly expected from him.

“I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me.”

David is cold, cruel and immensely judgmental. He is terrified of situations that leave him exposed and vulnerable, that make him, in his perception, “lose [his] manhood” by stepping into the scary unfamiliar unknown. The fear leads to self-contempt which ultimately is destructive not just for him but those around him as well. He thinks himself above his gay acquaintances, despises then by finding security in his carefully cultivated straight masculinity, and yet with the strange calculated cruelty exploits his attractiveness to them. Until one day he meets Giovanni and his carefully constructed pretend world is threatening to fall apart.

“I watched him as he moved. And then I watched their faces, watching him. And then I was afraid. I knew that they were watching, had been watching both of us. They knew that they had witnessed a beginning and now they would not cease to watch until they saw the end.”

Given a choice between accepting himself and his desires and conforming to his view of what life should be, David runs. Before even getting comfortable in Giovanni’s room - both physical and metaphorical entity - he is looking for a way out, an escape, a reprieve which never comes. Not even running away from Paris helps - because you cannot fun away from yourself by changing addresses.

“Those evenings were bitter. Giovanni knew that I was going to leave him, but he did not dare accuse me for fear of being corroborated. I did not dare to tell him. Hella was on her way back from Spain and my father had agreed to send me money, which I was not going to use to help Giovanni, who had done so much to help me. I was going to use it to escape his room.”

It is a story of strained and doomed love in a grim world of a Paris underbelly of sorts - the gay Parisian scene that we see filtered through David’s eyes is far from the artistic bohemian world but rather the dark, dangerous and sad web of casual encounters, desperate transactional sex, loveless loneliness, shady almost-inhuman in David’s eyes¹ (early on, he refers to a gay character as “it”) and frequently despicable characters. It is not a counterculture by choice - it is a counterculture formed by merciless rejection. This is what David sees and fears and detests and strives to escape from into the bright and shiny “normal” world full of comfortable familiarity.

¹ A chilling, terrifying peek into David’s thoughts aimed at dehumanizing who he sees as “other”:

“I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not—so grotesquely—resemble human beings.”

Yes, it is terrible to be driven by fear and shame and lies. And no surprise that it is paralyzing and suffocating and claustrophobically oppressive - the feelings David contemptuously chooses to transfer to Giovanni and his squalid cramped room instead of seeing it within his own caged heart.

But what’s immoral - as Giovanni lets David know and David reluctantly starts to grasp - is not the physical acts but living life without love. (“I wanted to find a girl, any girl at all.”) David himself casually engages in coldly using a female acquaintance for sex only to prop his faltering sense of masculinity - “But I was thinking that what I did with Giovanni could not possibly be more immoral that what I was about to do with Sue.”

This is a book that blends beautiful and disgusting in David’s eyes. The alluring and grotesque are just a heartbeat apart, constantly clashing, constantly fighting. What wins is shame, constant shame, constant horrifying self-loathing and self-disgust that torment David and break him while forming a restrictive claustrophobic cage around him, just like Giovanni’s room that he came to loathe and fear.

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”

David chooses to clutch at what he perceives to be safe masculinity while denying the uncomfortable, less conventional parts of his self. And he is not alone. His fiancée Hella does the same - blindly dives into what she openly sees as acceptable femininity, determinedly and gleefully abandoning the qualities that did not fit with the mid-century American female ideal.

“The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni anymore. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places?

With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.”

It’s a book of pain and loneliness and crushingly suffocating oppression of fear and shame. It’s unsettling and troubling and yet strangely beautiful. It is a book about terrible people doing terrible things, and nobody is exempt from human awfulness - and a piercing glimpse into the darkest depths of imperfect souls.

It deserves every word of praise that’s been heaped on in the last sixty-plus years.

5 heartbreaking uncomfortable stars.
————

“Ah!” cried Giovanni. “Don’t you know when you have made a friend?”
I knew I must look foolish and that my question was foolish too: “So soon?”
“Why no,” he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, “we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until closing time. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until tomorrow, only that means that you must come in here tomorrow and perhaps you have something else to do.”

...more

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Aug 22, 2020 jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

‘i scarcely know how to describe that room. it became, in a way, every room i had ever been in and every room i find myself in hereafter will remind me of giovannis room.’

simply beautiful. simply heartbreaking. simply real.

this would probably be a 3 star read if it hadnt been for moments of such elegant prose. i love, love, love the way JB describes human emotions and feelings, particularly love and affection. but the overall narrative, which reminds me very much of the type of storytelling ...more

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Apr 27, 2021 Richard (on hiatus) rated it really liked it

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin was a bold and controversial read for many in 1956, when it was first published.
The protagonist is David, a young American, living in Paris and struggling with his sexuality. He’s in a relationship with Hella, but she’s away for a time travelling in Spain.
Through a small group of cafe acquaintances, most of whom David treats with barely hidden contempt, he meets Giovanni, a young Italian bartender. David’s lonely, threadbare life becomes exciting and dangerous. ...more

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Jan 04, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbt-themes, african-american-lit, fiction, romance, classics

Wow...I read only one review of this book...which was soooo good....
I immediately bought a used copy....yet, I don't think 'any' review prepares a reader for what they are about to experience.

I have two words: Morally Mystifying!!!!

THANK YOU *Lizzy*. I stayed....and I 'was' granted this masterpiece. ...more

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Feb 18, 2014 Dolors rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those who love in fear

Recommended to Dolors by: Many goodreaders

Shelves: best-ever, read-in-2015

It is under the foreign sky of Paris, where identity is protected by anonymity and the most darkest secrets do not transcend the limits of a room, that David, an American young man, is forced to face the convoluted layers of the true nature of his identity. Told in the first-person narrator, Giovanni's Room bewilders the reader because of the perturbing sensitivity with which Baldwin portrays an extremely delicate predicament; that of listening to the self-deprecating inner voices that corrode t It is under the foreign sky of Paris, where identity is protected by anonymity and the most darkest secrets do not transcend the limits of a room, that David, an American young man, is forced to face the convoluted layers of the true nature of his identity. Told in the first-person narrator, Giovanni's Room bewilders the reader because of the perturbing sensitivity with which Baldwin portrays an extremely delicate predicament; that of listening to the self-deprecating inner voices that corrode the consciousness of those who deny their true selves for the sake of indoctrinated conventionalism and a false sense of security.

Desire, repression and an imposed sense of duty present a battle of sorts that is embodied in the deadly love triangle formed by David, his betrothed Hella and his lover Giovanni, who, unlike David, accepts his homosexuality as his only reality. Frightened by the consequences of acknowledging his strong feelings for Giovanni, David enters a spiral of self-deception that drags Hella down to the gutters of an atavistic marriage that complies with the rigid social structures of the American way of life that doesn't contemplate love between equals. Deep down, David's dilemma runs deeper than his stubborn denial for the sake of appearances, his moral struggle discloses a man who doesn't want to dispense with the inborn social status associated to gender.

This book is an obscure, passionate and explicit defiance against racial and gender bias discrimination. Baldwin's deliberate choice to construct a story in which all the characters are white and to bestow thematic relevance to homosexuality is a public denouncement of the preestablished canons promoted by a comfortable majority that sets the boundaries of a mainstream value system.

The image of the empty room with its crumbling walls and a tousled bed is spine-chilling in its validity because it cuts across the apology for the homosexual rights. It is also a universal metaphor that symbolizes that part of ourselves that we desperately want to escape from in a blind struggle against our deepest fears, against the foibles that we agonize over to conceal at all costs, against the irrepressible need for acceptance, even if that means to sacrifice those we love the most, even if that means to sentence ourselves to live of inessential memories and become the ghostly shadow of our past desires.

Beautiful and terrible, ”Giovanni’s Room” is in the end a painful and bitingly honest introspection into the infernos of the nature of humankind, for as David turns his back and leaves the room again and again, we fool ourselves into believing that had we been in his place, we would have acted differently, would have had courage to be fair, would have been more sincere with ourselves and our needs and those of our beloveds.
Wouldn’t we?

“Until I die there will be moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth’s witches, when his face will come before me, the face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils.”
...more

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Oct 25, 2012 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourite-authors, favorites, african-american, james-baldwin

I wasn't sure any Baldwin book would surpass his Go Tell is to the Mountain, which I loved, but this one was even better and an immediate favourite. This story was wonderfully-written and explored a gay storyline which I have never encountered in African-American writing from Baldwin's era.Supposedly quite a few prolific African-American writers were not such big fans of Baldwin due to this reason.

This story is set in Paris and is about an American man, David, who is in love with both a man, Gio ...more

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Aug 19, 2020 Luís rated it really liked it

Shelves: g-classics, g-queer-lgbt, united-states, 2020-readings, read-in-english, g-romance, e-4

David loves men and hates himself for it. Whenever he succumbs to a young man's charms, he trembles with fear at the prospect of being discovered, thinks of the lewd jokes and offensive words that accompany people of his kind, and fears playing them. To be reassured, the young American leaves for Paris. He can frequent gay circles in relative tranquillity, sheltered from the crowd and familiar eyes.

However, this tranquillity does not push him to assert himself, not even in these closed circles. David loves men and hates himself for it. Whenever he succumbs to a young man's charms, he trembles with fear at the prospect of being discovered, thinks of the lewd jokes and offensive words that accompany people of his kind, and fears playing them. To be reassured, the young American leaves for Paris. He can frequent gay circles in relative tranquillity, sheltered from the crowd and familiar eyes.

However, this tranquillity does not push him to assert himself, not even in these closed circles. On the contrary, he proclaims to whoever wants to hear him that he loves women, and the few adventures don't count. Besides, he has a girlfriend, and he just proposed to her, if that is not proof! She left for Spain alone to take stock before answering does not seem to disturb him too much.

During this absence, David meets Giovanni, an immigrant from Italy. Giovanni is the opposite of her new lover: he gives himself 100% to this new relationship without fear of looks or prejudice. In Giovanni's room, cut off from the outside world, a small bubble of pure love can exist with curtains still drawn. Outside, David cannot bear the brunt of this relationship. "You want to leave Giovanni because, with him, you stink." You want to despise Giovanni because he's not afraid of the stench of love. "

The atmosphere of this book is very oppressive: in the description of the gay environment of the post-war period already and the leaden cover of moral condemnation to endure; self-hatred is omnipresent, as is hatred of the other, which has helped bring you down once again. Added to this is a prostitutional relationship that does not contribute to softening resentment because only the very rich, or the downgraded, can be immune from prosecution.

We also pity Giovanni, for whom love seems so easy and the weight of the gaze of others so light. Until the end, he will believe in the victory of feelings over the obligation of conformity, ready even to sacrifice a large part of her lover's life for the company of decent people. For that, David would have to stop running what he has been running away. And the game is far from over. ...more

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Dec 08, 2016 Donna Ho Shing rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Here's what I'm going to do: buy all Baldwin's books, every single one and just read them all. Back to back to back to back... What a genius this man is. What impeccable, perfect writing. How can a story contained in just 159 pages pack such a punch? HOW?!

Let the record show that on this day James Baldwin officially, OFFICIALLY became my favorite writer (2nd only to Toni Morrison at whose feet I humbly bow, perpetually). ...more

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Feb 17, 2020 Andy Marr rated it really liked it

A grim tale of human relations, told by one of the most unpleasant protagonists I've ever encountered. The story left me drained and angry, but it's an important book, and an exceptional read. ...more

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Oct 28, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-2014

Love, love, love, love, love this. Baldwin, be mine! This is such a gorgeously written little novel. I can't conceive of how Baldwin fit so much sheer emotion into around 150 pages. Baldwin is practically unknown here in Ireland and it's such an injustice. I want everyone to read this and be in awe of the sheer brilliance of it. (Fans of Isherwood would love this btw) ...more

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Sep 21, 2017 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, aere-perennius

"for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom."
- James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

description

Baldwin is everything. He ability to articulate the struggle to be a man in a world where both black men and gay men were considered 2nd class (if lucky) citizens taught me. He is the reason I read (or at least one of the reasons) good fiction. It transports me into the experience of the other. His writing is a gift. The emotions of this novel are expressed as if Baldwin's heart was set aflame in Par ...more

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Sep 24, 2018 William2 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, gay-homosex, us, fiction, france

I like this more than the three stars would indicate. The melodrama was a problem for me. The plot is simple and brilliantly done. David the American doesn’t want to admit he has homosexual impulses. His fiancée, Hella, doesn’t know he’s gay because David doesn’t know it. David is confused, as his friend Jacques at one point remarks. He’s experiencing major cognitive dissonance, simultaneously knowing something and acting as if it weren’t so. For he has met the beautiful, the irresistible Giovan ...more

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Aug 29, 2020 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

Is there a way to escape the doom of society if you are not a rich, white, heterosexual, married man having "clean sex" with your own "lawful" wife with the purpose of producing a new generation of rich, white, heterosexual, married men?

Even the wife of this single category of human who is allowed shameless, guiltfree pleasure may not be free from shame and guilt. She may feel guilty for enjoying too much or too little what is expected of her as a marital duty. But at least she will have the sa Is there a way to escape the doom of society if you are not a rich, white, heterosexual, married man having "clean sex" with your own "lawful" wife with the purpose of producing a new generation of rich, white, heterosexual, married men?

Even the wife of this single category of human who is allowed shameless, guiltfree pleasure may not be free from shame and guilt. She may feel guilty for enjoying too much or too little what is expected of her as a marital duty. But at least she will have the safety network of society to protect her when the nausea strikes. For all other human beings, not able to collect privileges like pearls on a string, not able to guide their desire towards conventional patriarchal rules, they are doomed to lose as soon as they enter the game.

Giovanni knew and acted. David decided to block out knowledge and pretend there was nothing the matter. One died, the other lived. Both were doomed.

Reading James Baldwin is like being infused with powerful sentences describing the abyss of patriarchy looming over individual lives. It is like going through the Purgatorio in Dante's Divina Commedia and ending up not in Heaven, but in Hell afterwards. The purity of life as imagined by the happy few who can actually "feel" according to the "moral" compass of patriarchy is hell on earth for all those who have to stay there without being able to live the part they act.

What could have saved David and Giovanni? Unpoisoning their minds maybe, if that is possible?

Taking away layer after layer of self-hatred and carefully implanted shame, until they'd be able to look at themselves in the mirror and see a happy, gay man and be proud? Is that entirely possible, even today? I don't know. I know it is not entirely possible for women, even in the most modern of societies, to break the rules of patriarchy without some loss of status, loss of respect, loss of financial security, loss of professional development. I imagine it would be the same for any person not enjoying the complete protection of privilege. For Giovanni it would never have been possible at the time and in the place where he moved.

The only saving grace is that he found a storyteller to carry his voice beyond the finale.

Love, love, love this short novel. Read it! ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Samra Yusuf rated it really liked it

Shelves: gay-romance

The only true freedom we’ve ever savored is the freedom of thought, since the dawn of history, or the time before, we are born with a manual to function properly, and it goes without saying, some of us who stop functioning by the book, are ostracized as lepers or worse, Freedom comes with a price always, and with markers so many, indoctrinated conventionalism must minding her business outside the pants of people, but here the opposite is true, the vanilla business of dogmas seem to be much arden The only true freedom we’ve ever savored is the freedom of thought, since the dawn of history, or the time before, we are born with a manual to function properly, and it goes without saying, some of us who stop functioning by the book, are ostracized as lepers or worse, Freedom comes with a price always, and with markers so many, indoctrinated conventionalism must minding her business outside the pants of people, but here the opposite is true, the vanilla business of dogmas seem to be much ardent in the dissection of humanity on the grounds of their inside pants preferences. We are certainly not assigned for whom to love and how much. Love is not "homosexual love" or "same sex love" - it's just love, and people are not gay, or lesbians or straight, they are just humans.
Our narrator is such one human, living the life of anonymity, and a growing frustration that beds him every night, novel creates an intricate portrait of David’s sexual awakening, and the deterrents that prevent him from achieving a stable romantic and sexual relationship with another man, the kind of love one lives in the brief moments of busting life, the kind of love one breaths at the dark hours of night and is asphyxiated at the daybreak, the kind of love that brings shame to one’s name, and the kind of love that maddens the senses when overdone..
"If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody."
Giovanni’s room is a safer haven for the love that is offensive beyond those walls, the dark and messy confines of the room suffocates David but Giovanni finds solace in, the place littered with every kind of worldly trash, is the celestial heaven for the later, as he views in David a true embodiment of love, the kind of love that can be nurtured for ages to come, and be watered on the soul of heart and never dies a natural death, as for David,
“What kind of life can we have in this room?–this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about–isn’t it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That’s what you want. That’s what you mean and that’s all you mean when you say you love me. (142)”
The words unsaid wound us more, than the said can ever do, Giovanni could’ve been happy all his life till the way to execution, if he only had known, he was loved,too!.. ...more

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Sep 26, 2015 Iris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, own, favorites

I am in awe of James Baldwin's seamless way with words. His writing shakes me to my very core, I feel so vividly all the emotions described, the contradicting war within the world and within the self between hot, flaming fire and ice cold water, between fervent heat and stone cold detachment. The motif of water and the ocean and its metaphorical association with time, Giovanni's room itself, the inescapable self and claustrophobia particularly struck me- I feel overwhelmed and shaken by this tra ...more

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Mar 22, 2021 Carolyn Marie Castagna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-i-ve-read

My heart is currently in a million little pieces!

Words to describe this book: Tragic, Profound, Devastating, Poignant, Harrowing, and many other melancholy words!

James Baldwin illustrates vast and deep emotions in the most succinct writing! He conveys boundless themes without overpowering them with an access of words. This sharp precision adds even more gravity to the topics explored in this story. Every word of this book has a purpose!

My personal favorite aspect of this novel is found in the ...more

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Mar 06, 2018 Robin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: constricted hearts who live in fear

Shelves: novella, literary-fiction, 1001-before-you-die, american, 2018

"You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car."

This insightful observation is made by Giovanni, to his lover David. An American in Paris, David is escaping from the conventional expectations he feels from his father, and pretty much everyone else in greater society. In Paris, he feels freer to live and love more honestly. But even in Paris, he and Giovanni are trapped in a shabby room with sightless windows, lest "You do, sometimes, remind me of the kind of man who is tempted to put himself in prison in order to avoid being hit by a car."

This insightful observation is made by Giovanni, to his lover David. An American in Paris, David is escaping from the conventional expectations he feels from his father, and pretty much everyone else in greater society. In Paris, he feels freer to live and love more honestly. But even in Paris, he and Giovanni are trapped in a shabby room with sightless windows, lest anyone see them together. It is suffocating, dingy, and he longs desperately to get OUT of this room, away from his self-loathing, out where he can be 'normal'. Out, where his girlfriend Hella waits for him, with the potential for a traditional, acceptable life that has all the perfect shapes, and the appropriate pronouns.

David doesn't realise that the suffocating closet he lives in has nothing whatsoever to do with Giovanni's room. His self-made prison goes with him like a shell on a turtle. It is always there, and is constructed completely from fear and repression. It is so much a part of David that it won't be removed. It will shield him from societal rejection, yes, but it also bars freedom, love, connection with another human, the ability for others to really know him.

"And no matter what I was doing, another me sat in my belly, absolutely cold with terror over the question of my life."

This little novella is tight, packed with claustrophobic doom. It has an American-in-Europe charm to it reminiscent of Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's evident from the first page that James Baldwin is a beautiful writer, who wrote about things that he knew about, personally. He faced awful disadvantages being not only a black man in mid-20th-century, but a black, gay man. And how interesting that he decided to write a book featuring two gay, white characters. By doing that, he aptly demonstrates that being a gay guy in 1956 was a hell that even racial privilege couldn't avoid.

There's some odd, (dare I say) misogynistic-y stuff floating around here, which is a bit disappointing. Lines like this: "Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? - and they can be that shallow. And that dirty." I guess they can be, anyone can be tempting, treacherous, shallow and/or dirty. But women as a group? My disappointment was evened out somewhat by the character of Hella, who is intelligent, honest, and laments being dependent on a man.

This book addresses the specifics of living and loving out loud, using the example of being homosexual in an unaccepting world. But I think it translates well in a general way to all those who live secretively, whatever that secret may be. It speaks to those whose identity is so private, they feel painful isolation, to those whose fear has grown out of proportion, their need to conceal overshadowing the potential for happiness. This is the great tragedy at the heart of this book, and for those who live this reality.

"...love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?" ...more

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Jul 02, 2020 Reading_ Tamishly rated it really liked it

This book is so damn heartbreaking...

This is the first James Baldwin book that I have ever read and... my first impression was that he was such an amazing writer!

Once I started reading this small book, I just couldn't stop myself and I ended up reading it in one sitting.

I love how the characters were so realistically developed. I would say this one is a classic for a reason.

The story is set in the 1950s in Paris where one character staying away from home falls for a bartender. Things get comp ...more

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Jan 13, 2015 Cheryl added it · review of another edition

Shelves: french-oeuvre, vintage, mesmerizing, the-psyche, afro-american, fav-authors, europe

Then the door is before him. There is darkness all around him, there is silence in him. Then the door opens and he stands alone, the whole world falling away from him. And the brief corner of the sky seems to be shrieking, though he does not hear a sound. Then the earth tilts, he is thrown forward on his face in darkness, and his journey begins.

Sometimes you read a book and you suddenly find yourself hijacked by a form of spellbinding intensity that spews from a participant narrator.
Then the door is before him. There is darkness all around him, there is silence in him. Then the door opens and he stands alone, the whole world falling away from him. And the brief corner of the sky seems to be shrieking, though he does not hear a sound. Then the earth tilts, he is thrown forward on his face in darkness, and his journey begins.

Sometimes you read a book and you suddenly find yourself hijacked by a form of spellbinding intensity that spews from a participant narrator. You're pulled into the room, Giovanni's Room, and you soon find yourself emotionally involved with David's mental battle. You may not even like David, or like the way he treats people (his fiancee and his lover ), and yet, you're with him, rooting for him during his most piercing revelations. You even have sympathy for his dilemmas and meanders. But why is this?

Blame Baldwin. Blame it on his hypnotic lyricism and pure poignancy that entraps the reader. Blame it on his story of self-conflict and melancholy, of reflection and remorse, of truth and lies and anything that embeds itself within the fabric of a life marred by deceit. Blame it on the forthrightness of a narrator whose words you follow intently:

I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning, our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day. Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues.

The story starts in the present tense, with David (our narrator) reflecting on his life with Giovanni, his male lover. The story starts and you immediately sense that something has gone wrong, that you are at the cusp of what seems to be romantic tragedy, because David is embittered with remorse, regret and self-loathe: "people are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted." And then the story veers to the past tense, when David tells us the story from Giovanni's Room, a setting that was once the center of his life. He feels responsible for Giovanni's fate (as he narrates Giovanni is in prison), and he feels responsible for breaking his fiancee's(Hella) heart.

David has come a long way, from New York to Paris, to avoid the conflict taking place within him. He is a gay man who wants to have a wife and a family. He is a gay man who wants to be accepted by society. He is a motherless gay son who wants to be accepted by his father:

A cavern opened in my mind, black, full of rumor, suggestion, of half-heard, half-forgotten, half-understood stories, full of dirty words. I thought I saw my future in that cavern. I was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me.

David's story of self-actualization is told in such a way that makes it relatable; to think of this vast world of ever-changing spectrum and to wonder wherein one can really find oneself. In this case, an American in Paris, a gay man in a conservative society, a young man figuring out his sexuality - the mistakes that accompany such awakenings.

Reading this book, I was reminded of the sort of picture I yearned for in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and while the setting, mood, and even some themes are reminiscent of The American by Henry James, what Baldwin does better is introduce characters only as they move the story forward, as a result, you see these characters more clearly. I can only imagine why this masterly written novel did not get more publicity, but the answer I come up with saddens me, for this is a transcendent piece of art that seems to be one of Baldwin's more poignant pieces.

When one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds oneself pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors.
...more

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Jun 28, 2014 Paul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbt

Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt. Baldwin treats complex relationships with some warmth and no easy or comfortable answers. There is debate as to whether Baldwin is focussing on bisexuality, but you have to look at the context and the sense that the two main characters are on a journey of self discovery with varying degrees of acceptance.
The t Often touted as a classic of gay literature, and I think quite rightly; this is a heartbreaking analysis of love, attachment and the struggle between what society expects and what is felt. Baldwin treats complex relationships with some warmth and no easy or comfortable answers. There is debate as to whether Baldwin is focussing on bisexuality, but you have to look at the context and the sense that the two main characters are on a journey of self discovery with varying degrees of acceptance.
The two main protagonists are David and Giovanni. David is an American currently living in Paris. He has a girlfriend, also an American, who is spending some time in Spain. David goes out for a drink with a gay acquaintance and meets Giovanni who is working in a bar. A passionate affair ensues, focussed on the room where Giovanni lives and where David spends much of his time. This idyllic, but doomed state of affairs continues until David’s girlfriend returns from Spain and decisions have to be made. Some of the novel is told in flashback and so the reader already knows the denouement; the point is the journey; the how. Considering this was written and set in the 1950s, it is a brave book with a clear battle between different value sets and a debate about what love is and isn’t. I wonder whether like Death in Venice we are looking at the Apollo/Dionysius split. Giovanni representing the passionate and unreasoning: David representing Apollo, more reserved, cerebral with the repression of emotion and denial of feeling. David feels like almost a detached observer of his own life. He has a very brief sexual relationship with a girl he meets, knowing it means more to her and knowing that for him it means very little. He detaches himself and is at a distance from his involvement and there is no care or concern for the needs, wants and feeling of the other. David does this with all those he relates to. He cannot accept his own self and this makes him very dangerous and damaging to others. To an extent, all the characters settle for what they don’t seem to be.
You could say that love doesn’t conquer all, but I’m not sure this is really about love at all; apart from Giovanni, who is destroyed by betrayal. It is about society’s expectations and about battles with identity and roles. A great novel creates debate, uncertainty and differing opinions and this is a great novel.
...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

In James Baldwin’s words:

They said I was a Negro writer and I would reach a very special audience. . . . And I would be dead if I alienated that audience. That, in effect, nobody would accept that book—coming from me. . . . My agent told me to burn it…. [the publishers] told me, ‘This new book will ruin your career, … and we won’t publish this book as a favor to you.’

Fair enough, James Baldwin wanted to avoid being pigeonholed as a black writer. So made his protagonist here white. So here we ha In James Baldwin’s words:

They said I was a Negro writer and I would reach a very special audience. . . . And I would be dead if I alienated that audience. That, in effect, nobody would accept that book—coming from me. . . . My agent told me to burn it…. [the publishers] told me, ‘This new book will ruin your career, … and we won’t publish this book as a favor to you.’

Fair enough, James Baldwin wanted to avoid being pigeonholed as a black writer. So made his protagonist here white. So here we have a black writer presenting a gay love story about white people. And this book was published in the mid fifties. I mean, wow. That’s fearless. That’s reckless.

If you look at the constellation of five star reviews and general critical opinion Giovanni’s Room is a resounding success. I can see why – this is a novel about a (white) American guy in Paris who’s proposed marriage to a woman who’s gone off for a few weeks to think about it (she has her issues too) and in the meantime he’s swept giddily into a love affair with a very handsome Italian waiter, with whom he ends up living, in the famous room, whilst horrifiedly waiting for The Fiancée to return, at which point he has to figure out what to do. Giovanni has wonderful pecs but can that justify a life of skulking and self-loathing and gradually turning into a porky middle aged fairy which is what, apparently, your fate is if you’re a gay man?

Because according to our first person narrator, Americans are like this, French people are like that, men are like this, women are like that (he and his pals generalize like crazy), and gay men are either like this or like that, there’s nothing in between. So gay men are either middle aged, flabby wealthy fairies (his word) or “knife-thin” waiters and rent boys. One or the other. So many generalisations about so many people amidst this intense prose. Baldwin’s great control of place and atmosphere and melodramatic breathlessness pretty much successfully rushes you past all this dubious sexual politics which hardly any reviews mention.

This book therefore gets like a million points for being a gay love story and exposing some gay men’s strong desire to stay in the closet and (I think) in the end saying that if you deny your own nature you’ll be left with less than nothing. But jeez, you could pull all kinds of quotes from here which gay-bashers would just love. It was really uncomfortable reading at times, for a whole number of reasons.

Recommended : for Baldwin’s tremendous style and because this will really mess your mind. ...more

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Jun 12, 2021 Prerna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, lgbtq, read-again-and-again-and-again, desire, cover-porn, philosophical-fiction

Forget The Sun Also Rises (which, in my humble opinion, is highly overrated anyway!) This needs to be the quintessential American fiction set in Paris. The delicate cadence of Baldwin's prose had me swooning.

Giovanni's Room examines the unbearable quality of freedom. The writing is so so visceral in its expressions of desire. Love here has a dual existence: it is liberating while also being burdened with regretful shame. And what is felt at a moment seems as random as the tossing of a coin - you ...more

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Mar 03, 2018 Bianca (Busy etc) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: male-author, us-author, literary-fiction, lgbtiq, 2018

A few months ago, I was blown away by the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which featured James Baldwin. I only heard of Baldwin a few years prior, via other GR friends' reviews of his books. I had his books on my TBR list, but they were there with six hundred other books ...
Anyway, that documentary pushed me to seek some of his books.

It didn't occur to me when watching the documentary that Baldwin was gay. The poor man, being black and gay, during a very reprehensible period in US history. No A few months ago, I was blown away by the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which featured James Baldwin. I only heard of Baldwin a few years prior, via other GR friends' reviews of his books. I had his books on my TBR list, but they were there with six hundred other books ...
Anyway, that documentary pushed me to seek some of his books.

It didn't occur to me when watching the documentary that Baldwin was gay. The poor man, being black and gay, during a very reprehensible period in US history. Not only he had to fight against the white people, against the system because of his race, he had to hide and fight his own community's homophobia. No wonder he escaped to France for a while.

Anyway, I had to remind myself that Giovanni's Room is not autobiographical, although it must have drawn inspiration from his personal experiences. I plan to read a bit more about Balwin and this novel.

As I was reading Giovanni's Room I had to remind myself several times that the main character, David, an American in Paris, was a white man. David is in the closet and is ashamed by his one time encounter with a male friend. As the only child of a nice man, he feels it's his duty to be the "right" way. It's not only that, it's the 1950s and earlier, homosexuality is illegal. Paris though is more relaxed. While the cat was away, in this case, Hetta, David's fiancee, he has a dalliance with Giovanni, a beautiful and passionate Italian bartender, whom he met in a gay bar. The two have a passionate affair for a little while, even sharing Giovanni's small room. Giovanni's small, cluttered, dirty room is a metaphor of sorts for David's complex feelings, especially when he knows the time is approaching when he has to make a decision - to have a respectable life that includes a wife and kids or to give in to his preferences?

It's important to remember that this was published in 1959. That's quite a feat in itself. The fact that it was written by a black man, way before the Civil movement, makes this novel even more significant.

Baldwin's writing is beautifully lyrical and packaged tightly. You can sense the doubt and dread, the fear, the self-loathing.
None of the male characters is likeable, that includes David himself.

This is a very sad novel, albeit one beautifully written. ...more

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About James Baldwin

James Baldwin

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and '60s. He was the eldest of nine children; his stepfather was a minister. At age ...more

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“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” — 1353 likes

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.” — 417 likes

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