Told on the night before Giovanni's execution, David, an American, attempts to ease his guilt and arrange his confused emotions by relating his months in Paris and his time spent in Giovanni's room.
A few months previously, wishing to "moor" himself to something, he proposes to his girlfriend, Hella, a fellow American. She travels to Spain to decide, and during the months that she is gone David begins a relationship with the Italian bartender Giovanni. Whereas David is afraid of his desire for men, Giovanni fully embraces his sexuality, and falls quickly in love with David.
They live together in Giovanni's room, which is dirty and has painted-over windows. Giovanni works hard to clean it and add shelves to the far wall, and David understands that his presence is supposed to make it a home. The room is both protective isolation and a prison to David, who gradually becomes disgusted with the Italian even as they engage in a passionate affair.
Hella eventually decides that she will marry David and returns from Spain. David instantly abandons Giovanni to seek comfort in conforming to social norms, although he admits to the reader that he is not in love with Hella, was probably never in love with her, and doubts Hella was ever in love with him.
After David left him, Giovanni becomes hysterical, killing his former employer and hiding under a bridge for a week before being arrested. Wracked with guilt, David has an affair with a sailor, and Hella leaves him. The book ends with David travelling to Paris for Giovanni’s execution.
James Baldwin published this book against his publisher’s wishes. He was told that his audience was solely African-American, and since every character in the book is white (and also since the book dealt with bisexuality and homosexuality), publishing it (in the 1950’s) could alienate his audience. But he went through with the publication, and gave us a classic. Baldwin’s writing style takes a little getting used to, especially since David switches between relating the past and narrating the present, and also there’s French everywhere in the dialogue and hopefully there weren’t secrets or something imbedded in the French because guess who can’t speak/read French (hint: me), but I would say that that is the only (minor) negative. David’s struggle to love and accept others’ love for him is heartbreaking, as is the effect of his turmoil on the people around him.
This book is so powerful and deals with so many themes that I feel a little unqualified to review it. I encourage you all to read it at some point in your lives. If you have read it, I would love to discuss it with you because I am blown away by this book. I don’t know what else to say. Read it. And if you need another reason to read it, February is Black History Month. Even though all the characters are white, there are shared themes such as fear of and hatred and violence towards the Other. Furthermore, there was a large African American expatriate community in France, which Baldwin was a part of. Though Baldwin lived a large part of his life as an expatriate and in the end, died in France, he became involved with the civil rights movement, and wrote on the racial tensions in America.
If you have any questions about Baldwin sources, contact Nicole Dominiak -- she wrote a Seminar paper on him.
Some other reviews you might enjoy:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-giovanni.html (from 1956, when Giovanni’s Room was published)
You should watch the debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley at the Cambridge Union. It's about race more than anything else, but it gets at this idea of otherness you mentioned, and it's a nice feeling to watch Buckley lose.
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