Giovanni's Room

I read this book in my twenties, but managed to completely erase any memory of it. It isn't just that I didn't remember the plot: I didn't even retain a vague impression of what it was like for me to read it. This time around, my mind was blown. Perhaps even more blown because I read the book before and after going to see the play that has been showing at the ITA.

I don't want to draw a point by point comparison, because that will feel like I'm dissing the play, which is a perfectly enjoyable adaptation, with some very hot dances. The main issue may be that, if one looks only at the plot, the book is a crazy over-the-top gay melodrama. But, Baldwin being Baldwin, it manages to also be a very nuanced book about masculinity, sexuality and inequalities - in the best, non-didactic possible way. The notion of 'being out' is refracted through the different characters. The wealthy older men in the book, Jacques and Guillame, can afford to be 'out', but pay a high price, despised by everyone, including David and Giovanni. They are also creepy af. Giovanni is out enough to admit he is in a desperate sort of love with David, but his courage seems to be born out of loneliness and alienation. There is nothing 'gay' about him. He despises the effeminate men preying on boys in the bars, and prefers to take refuge in his room. As a poor Italian migrant Giovanni is clearly racialised in David's eyes, not quite Black, but not white either, and class and race arguably are as much of an obstacle to this doomed love. And doomed it certainly is, relentlessly so. Every sentence is beautiful and terrible.