Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin, 1958 Date Read: 8/23/22

Summary: David is an American man living in Paris in the 1950s. He is gay but doesn't want to be. He has a girlfriend whom he claims he wants to marry. She goes on holiday for a few months. During the time she is gone, David meets Giovanni. Giovanni falls in love with David, while David apparently is only in love with himself. They live together and have a relationship for several months.

One day, Hella (the girlfriend/fiancé) returns. David abandons Giovanni. Just walks the fuck out, leaving Giovanni with no money and no food. Just poof. Giovanni expressly states he was ready to have the police drag the Seine, he was that worried.

So now David is living his best life in a nice hotel with Hella and Giovanni can't afford to eat. So he turns out. He ends up in a situation where he is forced to do things with a person he can't stand, and then that person humiliates him. Giovanni loses it and kills the guy,

David must have been raised Catholic or something because he absolutely revels in guilt. He's fucking made of guilt. Guilt City. Cares more about Giovanni at this point than he ever did while living with and fucking the guy. Ends up emotionally abandoning Hella, then really abandoning her to go fuck a sailor he meets in a gay bar. Giovanni gets executed. Hella goes home to Minnesota.

My thoughts: I hated this novel. David is a miserable, selfish, nasty person. I get it, being gay wasn't acceptable in the US at that time. But he's not in the US. And my summary didn't mention that he'd loved and abandoned another guy before Giovanni. He says many times that he's emotionally numb, he doesn't feel things, etc. He needs therapy, not gay bars.

I know internalized homophobia is a thing, I've seen it firsthand (trust me). But there's hating being gay, and having relationships with men that you then abandon because you hate being gay. One is a choice, and one isn't. One hurts other people, one doesn't.

I kinda just wanted to smack this guy. Which I guess is a tribute to Baldwin's writing skills.

Length: 169 pages

ReReadablity: my blood pressure couldn't take it

Classic: I think in some ways. It is good for LGBTQIA people to know what life was like for the gays that came before them. What all the fight was really for, and how fortunate they are now.