Giovanni's Room Book Review

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James Baldwin, "Giovanni's Room"

Giovanni's Room is, on closer examination, a more unusual novel than it appears at first glance: its author, James Baldwin, is routinely counted among the greatest African-American novelists, and yet if one were asked to read the book blind and guess who wrote it, one would scarcely imagine the author to be African-American. The lion's share of the novel is set in Europe, and in a cast which includes a hulking blond protagonist and various American and European supporting characters, there is not a single African-American depicted. But Giovanni's Room avoids the thorny topic of race only to address an (arguably) even thornier topic in the year of its publication -- 1956 -- which is male homosexuality. As the book begins, though, it is not immediately evident that this is even going to be the topic, as David (the aforementioned hulking blond protagonist) is dealing with Hella, a European woman to whom he has recently proposed, yet he is feeling adrift as Hella departs for the U.S.A.

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: as David (who narrates the novel) puts it: "I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to."(p. 4) In other words, David senses that a conventional marriage to a woman will make him more grounded and less deracinated than pursuing the more transitory relationships of the homosexual demimonde.

The presentational manner in which David first meets Giovanni gives us the sense that Giovanni is "striking a pose" in a feminine manner, as David describes him working as a bartender in a gay bar: "Giovanni placed himself before me again and began wiping the bar with a damp cloth"(p. 34) This gay bar is owned by a man named Guillaume,….....

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