David is an American boy, who has reached the age, but not quite the self sufficiency, of adulthood. He is living in a country home in the south of France. It is late evening, he is drunk, the countryside is still with the stillness that only countrysides have, and his soul is in torment. He narrates us the story of his doomed affair with Giovanni, an Italian immigrant, in Paris.
The story is short, but the wounds it left on his insides are enduring. For us, the readers, there is nothing to learn but this. Human beings are frail creatures. Made of tissues and bones, which cut and bruise easily. With souls that get scarred by the very people and their faiths that are meant to protect them. And, a happiness felt in the bones is more real than any artificial construct of it.
David left Giovanni, his friend, his lover, his soulmate perhaps, alone precisely when Giovanni needed him the most. Giovanni had just been kicked out of his low paying but sustaining bartender job, after he rebuffed the sexual advances of his predatory boss. The boss felt compelled to humiliate Giovanni, accusing him of theft and ingratitude publicly before firing him. Giovanni came back crying into the arms of his reluctant lover in the small room, which was the abode of these two penniless immigrants in Paris.
Giovanni sees David as the last hope in a hopeless world, and the only recourse in a "dirty world" filled with "dirty bodies". David feels the burden of his salvation acutely, and resists with his full might. He wallows in the guilt of Giovanni's profane touch, a man's touch, and loathes the desire he feels towards him. Giovanni sees a future full of hope and happiness. David sees an impossible future without the accoutrements of the American, and admittedly most of modern world's, version of family happiness that he has grown to long for - a woman to go back home to, babies to rear, continuity of the family name. Above all, he risks losing his manhood in his own eyes.
So, David does what he has to do, and deserts Giovanni for Hella, his on and off mistress and fiancé, just back to Paris after "discovering" herself in Spain. And it destroys the lives of these three inter-connected lovers irrevocably.
Giovanni's room is a compressed masterpiece of repressed sexuality and desire. James Baldwin, black, gay, American, evokes the city of Paris in dark, wonderful hues. And he makes all his characters come alive with seering intensity. We see them making mistakes, and committing worst of follies, but we still empathise with their actions and only pity them. Because he makes us see the internal logic of their motives, however warped it may be. No one has written about shame, guilt and fear about one's own sexuality with the interiority that Baldwin does. This novella remains as refreshing and relevant as it was half a century back when it was published.
The story is short, but the wounds it left on his insides are enduring. For us, the readers, there is nothing to learn but this. Human beings are frail creatures. Made of tissues and bones, which cut and bruise easily. With souls that get scarred by the very people and their faiths that are meant to protect them. And, a happiness felt in the bones is more real than any artificial construct of it.
David left Giovanni, his friend, his lover, his soulmate perhaps, alone precisely when Giovanni needed him the most. Giovanni had just been kicked out of his low paying but sustaining bartender job, after he rebuffed the sexual advances of his predatory boss. The boss felt compelled to humiliate Giovanni, accusing him of theft and ingratitude publicly before firing him. Giovanni came back crying into the arms of his reluctant lover in the small room, which was the abode of these two penniless immigrants in Paris.
Giovanni sees David as the last hope in a hopeless world, and the only recourse in a "dirty world" filled with "dirty bodies". David feels the burden of his salvation acutely, and resists with his full might. He wallows in the guilt of Giovanni's profane touch, a man's touch, and loathes the desire he feels towards him. Giovanni sees a future full of hope and happiness. David sees an impossible future without the accoutrements of the American, and admittedly most of modern world's, version of family happiness that he has grown to long for - a woman to go back home to, babies to rear, continuity of the family name. Above all, he risks losing his manhood in his own eyes.
So, David does what he has to do, and deserts Giovanni for Hella, his on and off mistress and fiancé, just back to Paris after "discovering" herself in Spain. And it destroys the lives of these three inter-connected lovers irrevocably.
Giovanni's room is a compressed masterpiece of repressed sexuality and desire. James Baldwin, black, gay, American, evokes the city of Paris in dark, wonderful hues. And he makes all his characters come alive with seering intensity. We see them making mistakes, and committing worst of follies, but we still empathise with their actions and only pity them. Because he makes us see the internal logic of their motives, however warped it may be. No one has written about shame, guilt and fear about one's own sexuality with the interiority that Baldwin does. This novella remains as refreshing and relevant as it was half a century back when it was published.
