| Title | Giovanni’s Room |
| Author | James Baldwin |
| Publisher | Dial Press, N.Y |
| Type | Gay novel, Literature, Romantic drama |
| Year of Publication | 1956 |
| Language | English |
| File Format | |
| Number of Pages | 159 |
| Rating | Click to rate this post! [Total: 1 Average: 5] |
Giovanni’s Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar.
Giovanni’s Room is notable for bringing complex representations of homosexuality and bisexuality to a reading public with empathy and art, thereby fostering broader public discourse on issues related to same-sex desire.
Table of Contents
Giovanni’s Room Summary
Baldwin’s haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality and a classic in gay literature. In a 1950s Paris filled with ex-pats and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to suppress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he imagines. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls in love with an Italian waiter and is confused and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.
By examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revealed in his vision.
Giovanni’s Room Review
A young American man is involved with a woman and a man.. Baldwin writes on these matters with unusual candor and yet with such dignity and intensity.
About The Author of The Book James Baldwin
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 14, Baldwin became a preacher at the small Fireside Pentecostal Church in Harlem. In the early 1940s, he transferred his faith from religion to literature. Critics, however, note the impassioned cadences of Black churches are still evident in his writing. Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, is a partially autobiographical account of his youth. His essay collections Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time were influential in informing a largely white audience.
From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the USA to lecture or teach. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in New York City. His novels include Giovanni’s Room, about a white American expatriate who must come to terms with his homosexuality, and Another Country, about racial and gay sexual tensions among New York intellectuals. His inclusion of gay themes resulted in a lot of savage criticism from the Black community. Eldridge Cleaver, of the Black Panthers, stated Baldwin’s writing displayed an “agonizing, total hatred of blacks.” Baldwin’s play, Blues for Mister Charlie, was produced in 1964. Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone provided powerful descriptions of American racism. As an openly gay man, he became increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against lesbian and gay people.
On November 30, 1987, Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.
Giovanni’s Room PDF
Giovanni’s Room Quotes
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.
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.
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.
Tell me, he said, “What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?
