“To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”
At the age of 32, Baldwin completed one of his most outspoken autobiographical pieces that has yet to disappear from view. Giovanni’s Room is not to remain solely a testament of sexual rites and disparities, it is also a dramatized crisis at the helm of self delusion and highlights the importance of the art of seduction. James Baldwin’s work has always dealt with the euphoric state of love and exile. The story follows the path of David, an American man exploring his sexual relationships with men, and women, while residing in Paris.
The unpredictable aspects of desire is presented through an ambiguous story, one impenetrable. A story about bisexuality, while further addressing the manner of how desire barges its way into our lives, promising a new identity. Baldwin’s enigmatic prose is both nourishing and unpredictable. David, our narrator, describes unsparingly his observations and is entrapped by regret. He repents for his sins. Yet with vivid evocations, he becomes an observer of intimacy, delivering a terror, a wisdom, a human characterization not yet exposed to an audience of the 1950’s.
It could be said that I have a soft spot for Giovanni’s Room, as it was the first piece I’d ever read by Baldwin. But I have to admit to you this, it is his best work, whether or not you read it first or after picking up his other works; read it when you first wake, bring it with you to the protest, when you need a friend who understands —as a witness to his humble testimony: James Baldwin, you have figured the rapture, and spoken for those of us who had yet to realize the words we must surrender to; his mind, out his mouth, JAMES! —this wondrous and profound being, he has your heart under a spell. It is the spell of a truth so revealing, and we cannot put it down, the book, it is impossible to let go, no not just yet. We must keep reading.
“There opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots...His touch could never fail to make me feel desire; yet his hot, sweet breath also made me want to vomit.”
Autumn, in most regions, is a time when we reflect. The year is almost over, and we come to wonder about what is next, what book we may get lost in just before the next change of the season. If you are an avid reader, especially of the vulnerable type of literature, you are most likely already aware that there is but one book which truly envelopes the human science. Giovanni’s Room – by James Baldwin, this is the stand-alone novella which comes to mind, when I think about stories of endurance, pleasure, and many other indescribable feelings. If it weren’t for this book, as a teenager I may have never come to realize that this was what we should have been reading in school. Not Orwell. Not Salinger, nor Bradbury - fuck the lot of them. The public school system deprived children of reading what would better guided them through the decades to come. I was only lucky, as I stole my copy of the shelves of a wretched old hoarder, back when my parents used to manage apartment buildings in the Valley. I liked the title, Giovanni’s Room, and I hoped that I would get to visit this place in real life one day. And, I did, in a sense; behind the trash bins at the apartment complex was where a particular young girl, a little older than myself, would meet me, to make out, with the roaches and the horseflies at our ankles. Yellow jelly sandals, was what she wore. I never told my parents. They would have been mortified to find their daughter, dressed as a boy, fooling around with the pool cleaner’s daughter. But I do believe James would have understood.