Giovanni's Room: James Baldwin (Penguin Great Loves) Paperback – 2 Aug. 2007

Maybe the best of Baldwin's fiction, this great and very sad book. Completely, amazingly cool/detached about being gay/bisexual in the 1950s, leaving him to paint instead a portrait of a rather cruel young man, always keeping so apart from those he loves, seeing everything but not committing...the formality of his prose is breathtaking, and so different from the overheated Beat writers who'll follow him soon.

The book is great, thought it’s quite a small little book, the writing is tiny, keep that in mind if you have bad eyesight.

Call Me By Your Name meets Tender is the Night in Giovanni’s Room, which follows David, an American living in Paris, and his relationship with the bartender Giovanni. From the comparative texts, I have chosen you will be able to tell that I adored this novel from the first line until the last. It also reminded me a lot of Brandon Taylor’s Real Life which I did not enjoy at the time, but after reading this and seeing similarities between the two I would like to give it a second chance. Baldwin deftly handles themes of gender, of what it means to be a man, and how it intersects with sexuality. The theme of alienation and isolation permeated every fascet of the novel, from the physical of Giovanni's room to the feeling of being, as F. Scott Fitzgerald puts it 'both within and without'. Even serving in the role of the narrator, David is both a part of what happens and just an observer, which is fascinating to see. At under 200 pages, the book is masterful in its ability to deliver a complete story, alongside these complex themes. It's the sort of book that is so brilliant it is difficult to review, other than to repeat how much I adore this book and urge you to read it.

James Baldwin's short novel "Giovanni's Room". It's about a young man struggling with his sexuality. Published in the 50s, and set in France.Although I am straight, and have never been remotely interested in men...I have a sympathy for anyone going through any kind of emotional turmoil.David, the narrator, has a sentience which is impossible to me, and every moment would be painful if I was that aware of my feelings...but it's Baldwin's psychological clarity which is the punch of the book. Its USP.David finds himself, loses himself, and breaks the continuity with his old life and American destiny in a grubby little room belonging to the charismatic Giovanni. In France, homosexuality was permissible, unlike in the UK, but people's dalliances and relationships were mostly clandestine and hidden away from the respectable veneer of society. Young men, knowing their life could never be accepted in the mainstream, find themselves at the mercy of poorly paid jobs, with no future. And many rely on the patronage of wealthy men, who prey on them in the shadows of Paris.That Baldwin was a black man, living in Paris, is notable. But despite the obvious struggles Baldwin must have faced in America and France with his ethnicity, there isn't a trace of that in the book. But there is an intensity to sexual politics. And the character of David's girlfriend, Hella, is drawn with sympathetic attention to her own struggles, both as a woman...and as someone who realises the person she loves, she didn't really know at all.

I just started reading and it’s okay so far but I don’t really like the structure because the book is small, the words are small and really close together so I keep re-reading lines and confusing myself. It might just be a me problem and my eyesight but idk.. anyway here’s a comparison of the book with my iPhone 12 Pro Max phone case

It takes place in Paris in the 1950s. And, surprisingly, we consider the contemporary French writer Patrick Modiano: the streets of Paris, cafes, bars, inactivity, wandering of a young man – about twenty years- his attendance with people older than him. We also think, Hung forces, to Jean Genet, but the feelings and writing feelings are not the same, far from it. It is also believed to any part of the anxlo Saxon literature including U.S. where young people come in continental Europe, usually South or even North Africa, in principle to be formed of life, but more specifically, to forget,be lost or destroyed, in alcohol and sex. Do, I think of Paul Bowles. But the universe is lightes by some exotic points.« Giovanni's room », I read it because it is regarded as an essential book genre literature. The problem of David, coming from the United States in Paris : he cannot say to his family and he cannnot thinh, himself, that’s a man he loves. He pretends to hesitate between man and a woman or women. But he can not stand, either, to love a woman or women. So it seems to me that the problem of David is deeper than the sexual kind. To borrow a phrase from Donald Winnicott, it is , for him, impossible to "be." And I would say that in a perverse way, he focused its inability to "be" on another he sends to death. But that’s not so simple.Indeed, if it is, rarely, about desire, it is never, never about pleasure. The sexual act appears as a comforting, calming anxiety, protection, leak, but never as a pleasure. The desire is present, as well as alcohol, which is flowing throughout the book, and much more than sex, but more like an escape from reality or one’ s self that as an accomplishment. Just made the first move of its realization, even before David is assailed by thoughts of guilt, disgust with himself or another man or woman ; he nevers lets him touched by sensations of pleasure. Everything is bathed in an atmosphere where everything is only falsehood or lie. Giovanni's Room is a filthy hovel in ruins : David’s inner world ?Then, of course, all this goes back to a distant childhood. And very beautiful and just this scene of early adolescence: he wakes up a first night with a friend and he is shocked by the sight of this fellow, still almost a child, still asleep, naked, fragile, near form him. This emotion, it is unbearable. And in this sense the universe of writing is, here, absolutely different from that of Jean Genet. Jean Genet fetch the rarest purest words to celebrate the body that moves, that dazzles him. Here, however, the emotion body has no place, must not be. And it seems to me that this is the key to David’s relationship with Giovanni, Hella and Sue.I liked the construction of the book: its back and forth between different periods in the life of David. And we know very quickly, even before David's ever met him, what will be the outcome for Giovanni, but no one knows how or why. This creates a tension. But throughout the last third of the book, everything is consumed: the guilt of David, his distaste for Hella itself. It remains for him to imagine in detail the last moments of Giovanni. Makes you wonder if there is not, there,finally, a sadistic pleasure, the only one…I did not like the amount of dialogue: in this world where everything is wrong, they talk a lot, and a lot to hide or lie, not to say that they desire, not to say that they love, they do not love anymore, not to say that disgust is between them. As if they were talking not to feel. The dialogues flow as numerous as the alcohol glasses. This universe of the book is bathed in a murky atmosphere, even if from beginning to the end, the light of spring, summer and fall has smiled to Paris.By the way, in 1938, Jean Paul Sartres had published "Nausea".