Giovanni's Room

Review

I first read Giovanni’s Room four years ago. I remember gripping it tightly the whole time, bent over and racing through it. Not 200 pages, Baldwin moves through the story so incisively that it really does feel like the drop of a guillotine.

I do not remember detesting David, our narrator, so much on my first read. Depressed moody people may be able to relate to either being or wanting to be in an empty home with a big bottle of wine and looking moodily out of windows (certain I can), but David does begin to feel like an alien. In his early experience with Joey, he vanishes out of insecurity and fear. That’s understandable—coming of age, a much different era than we’re in now. Even in our current era, I can remember first realizing I’d fallen for a boy in one of my high school classes, and that was terrifying.

With Giovanni, something much colder takes place. David finds him beautiful, there is clearly lust (which, unfortunately, we don’t get quite enough of, but let’s attribute that to time—there is more straight sex than queer here), and David enjoys being with him. But I think there is something a little worrying:

And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow towards him, as a river rushes when ice breaks up.

(page 83, emphasis mine.)

When it is so crystalized, the realizing moment of love is an incredible clarity. I am not sure there is any better feeling than recognizing that you can make someone you love laugh, or make them recognize that they feel good when they’re with you. Maybe if they recognize it themselves and point it out; that is pretty good. But when David contemplates this, what he feels attachment to is not necessarily Giovanni’s beautiful face or the sound of his voice, but the power that he has over Giovanni, the power to elicit those things. Possibly I am too focused on this one word, power. In another book, with a character that behaved differently, I would be inclined to ignore it as just a way of saying, “I loved how I could make him feel and laugh,” which is perfectly pleasant. But David does not behave warmly towards Giovanni, not really.

In his thought, he expresses conflict, confusion, maybe regret. But at no point does he ever treat Giovanni as a person, and none of the conflict or anxiety in any way materializes in behavior. “Now she would be coming back and my life with Giovanni would be finished. It would be something that had happened to me once” (page 94). Ten pages after realizing his great love for Giovanni, he is dispassionate in the love’s approaching end. On finding Giovanni in a state of crisis, David does nothing but think of how messy the room is, how annoyed he is to be dealing with everything.

He doesn’t say anything to Giovanni, he disappears without a word. David behaves hatefully towards him.

Later, when he does finally appear in Giovanni’s room to draw things to some formal close—as if they were emotionless fuckbuddies—all he has for Giovanni is his own insecurity and self-hatred:

“Yes” I said, wearily, “I can have a life with her.” I stood up. I was shaking. “What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about—isn’t it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That’s what you want. That’s what you mean and that’s all you mean when you say you love me. You say I want to kill you. What do you think you’ve been doing to me?”

(page 142.)

Each and every thing David lays at Giovanni’s feet is his own insecurity and self-contempt. Giovanni never talks about feeling strong, never talks about wanting to be some big laborer, has no sense at all of wanting to coop David up like a canary. Giovanni’s retort is what it should be, if he wanted a girl, he’d have one.

In the end, all he has for Giovanni is dread at seeing him around the quarter (page 147, “And from time to time, around the quarter, I ran into Giovanni. I dreaded seeing him. . .”). In the weeks that Giovanni is imprisoned, we see David abscond from his fiancé to bounce around on a sailor. The lives of each person that feel love towards him, he ruins. Does he feel anything?

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

(page 158)

It is difficult for me to accept that David loved Giovanni. I cannot imagine loving someone that is being executed and having such a dissociated reaction. I am actually quite sure that if I could do nothing about it, I wouldn’t be able to allow myself to outlive him. I don’t hate myself any more than David does himself. At the start of the novel, Baldwin writes that people believing themselves to be strong-willed are experts at self-deception. David has caged himself with masculinity and perception and fear, and this cage is a dissociative shield. He says of Joey, all he had to do would be to protest, and he’d have stayed. Decades later he thinks of Giovanni as he walks away that he wants to turn around and go back, but that with each step it becomes more and more impossible. He calls his mind an anaesthetized wound. And so, in some ways, perhaps David’s death pre-dates Giovanni, maybe David never lived at all, outside of that moment of Giovanni’s laughter.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.

(page 112.)

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Notes

• p5 - Perhaps this is why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But 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 with the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
• p9 - I knew the excuse did not fool Joey; but he did not know how to protest or insist; he did not know that this was all he needed to have done. Then I, who had seen him that summer nearly every day till then, no longer went to see him. He did not come to see me. I would have been very happy to see him if he had, but the manner of my leave-taking had begun a constriction, which neither of us knew how to arrest.
• p20 - People who believe that 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.
• p30 - “Anyway, I’m sure he sleeps with girls. They always do, you know.”
• p37-38 - “. . .We can become friends then. Or we can wait until tomorrow, only that means that you must come in here tomorrow and perhaps you have something else to do. . . . 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?” ¶ “Well,” I said, feeling myself being led by Giovanni into deep and dangerous water, “I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel.” ¶ “In order to make sure!” He turned again to that invisible ally and laughed again. . . . “It’s clear that you are a true philosopher.” He pointed a finger at my heart. “And when you have waited—has it made you sure?”
• p42 - Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth’s witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils. . . . I will see Giovanni again, as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head.
• p56 “You think,” [Giovanni] persisted, “that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.” ¶ “Why are they—shameful?” I asked him. ¶ “Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug into a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
  • TB: How the fuck does Baldwin give such poetry to sex with strangers? Jealous.
• p83 - And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow towards him, as a river rushes when ice breaks up.
• p94 - Now she would be coming back and my life with Giovanni would be finished. It would be something that had happened to me once—it would be something that happened to many men once.
• p100 - TB: Long paragraph describing David and Sue’s sex, which is almost entirely David’s interior thought and it is a great piece of writing for an uncomfortable sex scene and an uncomfortable sex.
• p102 - “Maybe you’ll be lonely again,” she said, finally. “I guess I won’t mind if you come looking for me.” She wore the strangest smile I had ever seen. It was pained and vindictive and humiliated, but she inexpertly smeared across this grimace a bright, girlish gaiety—as rigid as the skeleton beneath her flabby body.
  • TB: on this read, really noticing how much I detest David.
• p109-110 - “Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker,” said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, “and so you can stand less and less.” Then, looking up at me, “No. The worst thing happened to me long ago and my life has been awful since that day. You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
• p112 - No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.
• p116 - “One of these days,” [Giovanni] said. “Everything bad will happen—one of these days.” ¶ “Why is it bad?” ¶ He smiled, “Why, you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.” He played with my thumb and grinned. “N’est-ce pas?”
• p137 - “If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
• p141 - “You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?”
• p142 - “Yes” I said, wearily, “I can have a life with her.” I stood up. I was shaking. “What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about—isn’t it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That’s what you want. That’s what you mean and that’s all you mean when you say you love me. You say I want to kill you. What do you think you’ve been doing to me?”
  • TB: David describes here everything in which he feels insecure, and everything he will subject some woman to. He is so insecure as to barely exist in anything but anger, with these words. He is all threatened and no love, here. I hate him.
• p144 - “Au revoir, mon cher.”
• p145 - And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind has become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry.
• p147 - And from time to time, around the quarter, I ran into Giovanni. I dreaded seeing him, not only because he was almost always with Jacques, but also because, though he was often rather better dressed, he did not look well.
• p158 - Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.