Giovanni's Room: James Baldwin

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“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.” Thus begins this riveting tale of David and Giovanni and Hella. “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin swept me off from the very first line and I couldn’t keep the book down until I finished it. Here’s the summary from the book jacket –

“David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David’s fiancée returns, and, denying his true nature, David rejects Giovanni for a ‘safe’ future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy.”

Now let me tell you at the outset that this book cannot be seen from a reductionist approach, which relegates the story as a ‘gay romance.’ It is anything but. It takes brilliance and a gifted hand to write about love for another human being without debasing it with societal labels. This is exactly what Baldwin achieves. He sketches his characters in all their human glory. David is perhaps the protagonist but he gains color from the supporting cast of Giovanni and Hella.

Baldwin’s deep and uncanny understanding of a man who is fearful of his own sexual orientation is displayed through some very lyrical prose. David’s conflicting emotions, denials and guilt are extremely touching and yet frustrating. But my heart went out to Giovanni, an intense man yet a lost puppy who craves David’s attention. His life is painful before and after he meets David and sadly it does not improve for him in the future either. Hella too, is much in love with David, as much as Giovanni, and wants a life with him. David seeks her out as his escape route, to avoid facing his true feelings, thus building a veneer of happiness in a ‘normal’ life of marriage and kids.

What is absolutely dazzling about this book is that it imbricates issues of sexuality with that of race and morality. Baldwin was a black writer but he took the twin bold steps of writing about a subject largely tabooed even today and built his book with not a single black character in it. As expected, Giovanni’s Room created quite a stir when it came out. Baldwin’s first publisher, in fact, was reluctant to publish the book saying that he replace the white characters with blacks. Baldwin refused and went to a smaller publisher.

I also got a walking tour of 1950s Paris in all its sordidness, its alleyways filled with drunks early in the morning, its pavements littered with rotting vegetables and main roads with trundling trams. As David walks along these roads, he is constantly contemplating the road that he must take, both emotionally as well as physically. Should he acknowledge his feelings? Should he go back to Giovanni’s Room rather than to Hella’s hotel suite? Both roads stretch before him, beckoning. He must decide. But do not vacillate whether to read the book and find out where David ends up. It will not disappoint. This I promise.

Verdict: Truly a masterpiece

Rating: 5/5