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# 2024-08-16 - Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin | |
Recently i read Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin, and | |
wanted to read more of his writing. | |
gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2024-07-09-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain-by-… | |
More recently i read Giovanni's Room while camping. In my perspective | |
the book is about self-sabotage all around. Setting aside the | |
ancestral momentum, the legal and social restrictions, and the | |
internalized homophobia, it still seemed to me that David, Giovanni, | |
and Hella were each getting in the way of their own happiness. They | |
lived in a hell partially of their own creation. | |
This brings to mind a comment i read about queer characters in old | |
books. Until recently, queer protagonists were doomed to unhappy | |
outcomes, even in literature written by queer authors. I sensed this | |
when I read The Well of Loneliness by Radclyff Hall. | |
gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2019-09-27-the-well-of-loneliness-by-radc… | |
Another thought is that David and Giovanni spent a period living | |
together sharing very cramped quarters. Not only was it physically | |
chaotic, it was also psychologically smothering, especially after | |
Giovanni lost his job and started hanging out with David 24/7. This | |
meshes with the statistic i've been told that most marriages that | |
fail, will fail within the first 2 years. It's a major change in | |
my book to transition from living along to living as a couple. | |
I enjoyed the depth and warm cynicism in this book. What follows | |
are interesting quotes. | |
... nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. ... | |
people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and | |
their friends, any more than they can invent their parents. Life | |
gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to | |
say Yes to life. | |
And yet--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. | |
... I am--or I was--one of those people who pride themselves on their | |
willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. | |
This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who | |
believe they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can | |
only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in | |
self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all--a | |
real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of | |
more things than can be named--but elaborate systems of evasion, of | |
illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be | |
what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, | |
made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no | |
room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I | |
succeeded very well--by not looking at the universe, by not looking | |
at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. | |
What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I | |
wearied of the motion, wearied of the joyless seas of alcohol, wearied | |
of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships, | |
wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied | |
of the work which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. | |
Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. ... I think | |
now that if I 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. | |
* * * | |
... though voices deep within me boomed, For shame! For shame! that I | |
should be so abruptly entangled with a boy; what was strange was that | |
this was but one tiny aspect of the dreadful human tangle, occurring | |
everywhere, without end, forever. | |
* * * | |
This was after Giovanni had lost his job and we walked around in the | |
evenings. Those evenings were bitter. Giovanni knew I was going to | |
leave him but he did not dare accuse me for fear of being | |
corroborated. I did not dare 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. | |
* * * | |
Even at my most candid, even when I tried hardest to give myself to | |
him as he gave himself to me, I was holding something back. I did | |
not, for example, really tell him about Hella until after I had been | |
living in the room a month. I told him about her then because her | |
letters had begun to sound as though she would be coming back to | |
Paris very soon. | |
* * * | |
The beast [of homosexuality] which Giovanni had awakened in me would | |
never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni | |
anymore. And I would 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. | |
* * * | |
But it was not the room's disorder which was frightening; it was the | |
fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder one | |
realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For | |
this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was | |
a matter of punishment and grief. I do not know how I knew this, but | |
I knew it at once... | |
I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his | |
last retreat. I was to destroy this room and to give Giovanni a new | |
and better life. This life could only be my own, which, in order to | |
transform Giovanni's, must first become a part of Giovanni's room. | |
In the beginning, because the motives which led me to Giovanni's room | |
were so mixed; had so little to do with his hopes and desires and | |
were so deeply a part of my own desperation, I invented in myself a | |
kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to | |
work. I threw out the paper, the bottles, the fantastic accumulation | |
of trash, I examined the contents of the innumerable boxes and | |
suitcases and disposed of them. But I am not a housewife... | |
* * * | |
[Giovanni to David:] | |
"I do not know what I would do if you left me." For the first time I | |
felt the suggestion of a threat in his voice--or I put it in there. | |
"I have been alone so long--I do not think I would be able to live if | |
I had to be alone again." | |
* * * | |
I was the only person on God's cold, green earth who cared about him, | |
who knew his speech and silence, knew his arms, and did not carry a | |
knife. The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could | |
not endure it. | |
* * * | |
Such a scandal always threatens, before its reverberations cease, to | |
rock the very foundations of the state. It is necessary to find an | |
explanation, a solution, and a victim [scapegoat] with the utmost | |
speed. Most of the men picked up in connection with this crime were | |
not picked up on suspicion of murder. [They were picked up o | |
suspicion of being gay, because the murdered man was gay.] | |
Until the case was closed they [the men who hired male prostitutes] | |
could not be certain which way to jump, whether to cry out that they | |
were martyrs, or remain what, at heart, of course, they were, simple | |
citizens, bitter against outrage and anxious to see justice done and | |
the health of the state preserved. | |
It was fortunate, therefore, that Giovanni was a foreigner. As | |
though by some magnificently tacit agreement, with every day that he | |
was at large, the press became more vituperative against him... | |
author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Giovanni's_Room | |
LOC: PS3552.A45 G5 | |
tags: book,fiction,queer | |
book | |
fiction | |
queer | |