Customer Reviews

Giovanni's Room (Twentieth Century Classics) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Now and then it is healthy and rewarding AND enlightening to revisit some of the books in our libraries that are time-tested, durable pinnacles of literature. Such is the case of opening the cover of James Baldwin's inimitable, cherished novel GIOVANNI'S ROOM. Baldwin died in Paris in 1987 after gifting us with great novels and strong social commmentary. It is only fitting to return to the Paris of this wonderfully rich novel when the need to reflect on how writers of stature had the courage to begin the genre of novels dealing with same sex relationships in a manner of pure literature.

GIOVANNI'S ROOM is a fluid, nonlinear exploration of alienation: the narrator is living in Paris (having escaped the US with the smilingly shallow American image descried by Parisians), heads toward a "comfortably normal courtship/engagement" with a very normal fellow American girl also living in Paris/Spain, and quite by accident encounters his repressed sexual self when he meets Giovanni, an expatriated Italian. The subcultures Baldwin details are palpably present on every page - many characters seem like enemies until their roles in the journey of these two men unfold and clarify. The title of the book is well chosen: Giovanni's room which he shares with David our narrator is claustrophobic, unkempt, dour, and threatening - an apt description of the mental environment this stumbling act of finding a new type of love creates. Baldwin lets us know from the start that we are entering a doomed affair of the heart and it is this atmospheric, eloquently written memoir that adds to the sense of the inevitable isolation that makes this a great novel.

Enough cannot be said about the beauty of Baldwin's prose, the richness of his terse description of the city of Paris, his uncanny ability to paint characters that are wholly three-dimensional. This book merits frequent re-visits. It is a rare vintage wine.

James Baldwin's _Giovanni's Room_ (1956) is a challenging work of literature that explores a summer in the life of an expatriate named David who is living in Paris after World War II. David must come to terms with his own contradictory desires. David's life in Paris in the 1950s--where homosexuality, while not illegal, is stigmatized--affords him a certain amount of space to discover what he wants and what he can accept. His dilemma, on the surface, can be stated simply: he is passionately in love with a young Italian man, Giovanni, yet he is also engaged to Hella, an American woman with whom he can live, on the surface, a "socially acceptable" life. On a deeper level, the novel is a study of the loneliness that comes with an absence of self-acceptance.

David shares many characteristics with Ernest Hemingway's young, expatriate anti-hero Jake Barnes in _The Sun Also Rises_. In David, Baldwin has created a character who remains, ostensibly, detached from the world, which lends to his anti-hero a veneer of invincibility and hard assurance. There are a number of passages, especially intimate scenes, described from a mechanical third-person point of view. Giovanni at one point asks David, "Do you know how you feel? Do you feel? What do you feel?" to which David replies, "I feel nothing now, nothing." David's inability or unwillingness to be honest about his feelings, however, undermines his relationships with others and his sense of self, and ultimately leaves him profoundly alone.

The novel suggests, more hopefully, that the loss of innocence, if accepted, can be the beginning of a journey that leads to knowledge. The novel takes place as a flashback over the course of one evening in a rented house in the south of France before David will take a train back to Paris the next morning. Drinking by himself in the large, empty house and looking at a window, David recalls this statement from an acquaintance named Jacques: "Nobody can stay in the Garden of Eden." This is an idea which frames the novel and perhaps offers David one way to understand his life.

A few final notes: The final paragraph of the novel is incredible, suggesting how actions, despite our most earnest hopes when we have erred, stay with us. All of the descriptions of Giovanni's room are artistic and reflect David's psychology. The novel portrays a cruel side of Paris (a characteristic, I think, which all large cities share to some degree), where lives on the margins are often bought and sold, and where there can be a calculated indifference to suffering.

This is a riveting work of literature that has many levels of meaning.

James Baldwin is, without a doubt, one of the most eloquent and talented authors that I have ever been exposed to. In his novel, Giovannis Room, Baldwin explores the struggle between a man and his sexuality. Torn between his feelings for another man and another woman, we are taken through Davids journey of joy, love, anger, pain, and confusion. Through secrets and lies, the story unfolds, teaching that there are no excuses when it comes to real love.
This is by far one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Each sentence leaves you with a good taste in your mouth. Baldwins passion and power in writing is proved clearly all throughout the book. His word choice and sentence development is absolutely wonderfully printed, that each page simply flows one after the other. His ability to develop and express each characters thoughts keeps the reader wholly engaged; feeling attached to their personal dilemmas. At the end of the book, you are left with the feeling of complete satisfaction. Although this is a story of a gay mans struggle, it is a story that affects everyone regardless his or hers sexuality. Everyone who has ever been found in a conflict with themselves will discover that this book will touch the hearts, leaving the longing to come in touch with their true self. Anyone who has been caught between desire and morality will relate and find that this book captures the genuine feelings of that difficult and tense struggle.

Foremost, Giovanni's Room is beautifully written. Baldwin writes incredibly well.

It would be a mistake to see this book as singularly about homosexuality (and to either read it, or not, because of that alone). Baldwin explores universal problems using a specific character and context.

What's most impressive is the way he describes, and then captures the consequences, of the moral dilemma. Though the context is homosexuality, I think similar conflict happens all too often, especially in relationships. You think you should be one thing or feel one way, and everything in your social, religious, intellectual voice tells you're right - except how you deep down feel. Baldwin has this one line about how hard it is to say "yes" to life. In that passage, I think he refers to how hard it is to reject your conventional self and embrace your deep down feelings. And this conflict could be about anything.

Then, too, Baldwin shows how, the stronger you love someone who provokes such internal conflict, the stronger your own self-hatred and hatred for that person. How terrible to most want to hurt the person you most love.

This is without a doubt one of the best literary works I have ever read! "Giovanni's Room" is all about a young American expatriate named David who finds himself torn between his fiancee Hella and an Italian bartender named Giovanni. They carry on a love affair but when Hella returns from a trip in Spain, everything starts spiraling out of control in a whirlwind of powerful and excruciating emotion. James Baldwin does an excellent job of presenting this passionate yet painful story in the form of a narrative. The character development is superb, so much so that one believes the characters really do exist. This is a poignant and compelling story that will definitely leave an impression on you. Reading this novel, one really experiences the pleasure, the pain, the loneliness and the suffering these characters experience and endure. This is a powerful work of literary art that gives the readers insight into the emotions that come with being in love and the struggle to find one's identity amidst confusion and self-loathing. The story takes place in 1950's Paris and you'll really feel like you're there as James Baldwin's writing is so descriptive you'll be able to see all the little nuances and minute details. "Giovanni's Room" is a solid testament to James Baldwin's remarkable talent and profound insight. This story would make an excellent addition to any library! Also a great place to start if you're just discovering the genius of James Baldwin. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

James Baldwin's novel is a timeless, classic work. Everytime I read this novel I find new things and I fall in love with the book all over again. It is my favorite novel, period. For me the Paris that Baldwin writes about is not that far away from contemporary gay society. It is amazing how much has changed for the community while men (although not all) have remain mostly the same. There are certain parts of this book that will always remain with me, the shift in the narrative from present day to past memory, cental character, David's experimentation and later rejection of his friend Joey, David's first meeting with Giovanni, and the white, paint smeared window in Giovanni's room that separated two men in love from world that was not yet beginning to understand. In closing, I can't say enough how much I recommend this novel.

Giovanni's Room is my first taste of James Baldwin's brilliance. In less than 200 pages it transports the reader to 1950s France and tells of a complex love triangle between two men, one Italian and one American, and an American woman (who is 'off stage' most of the time touring Spain). What elevates Giovanni's Room beyond the realm of a soap opera or trite gay fiction are its brilliant prose (Mr Baldwin seemingly cannot write a bad sentence), terrific characterizations (especially of the troubled Giovanni and his pathetic 'friends'), and its ability to capture the atmosphere of Americans living in 1950s Paris (..it reminds me of Patricia Highsmith's latter 'Ripley' mystery novels). The book is sad and uncompromisingly honest.

Bottom line: WAY beyond sterotypical gay fiction. Giovanni's Room is by any standard fine literature. Compulsory.

"Giovanni's Room", set in Paris of the 1950's, is a memorable study of a tormented soul of a young American, David. Narrated in the first person singular, this novel is deep and dark, making the reader feel the David's emotions and passions.

David, who moved to France like many young Americans after the World War II, to pursue the freedom within the artistic atmosphere and the traditions of the Old World, found in fact the side of himself he did not expect to uncover.

Starting the story at the point of total exhaustion, on the verge of madness, just about to leave the South of France for Paris again (and then, perhaps, finally to return to the States - although the ending is open in this respect) David recollects his relationship with Giovanni, an Italian barman whom he met on the night while searching for money to pay his hotel bill (or for another accommodation). When Hella, David's girlfriend, travels in Spain trying to organize her thoughts far from David and get to know herself better in solitude, David decides to ask Jacques, a man he knew casually, for money. Jacques invites him for dinner and then they end up going for a couple of drinks to the gay bar. Jacques is a friend of the owner, Guillaume, and they abandon themselves in a conversation, although Jacques clearly fancies the young barman. When two older men leave them alone, David and Giovanni immediately feel attracted to each other and by the morning they go together to Giovanni's room, where David subsequently moves. Guillaume, who gave Giovanni the job in hope to win the boy's heart, is very jealous; Jacques is also a bit upset, but both of them hope that the relationship won't last.

Well... the relationship does not last, and this is the information revealed at the very beginning of the novel. David is, all in all, a disagreeable character (another novel in which the main character is not likeable, yet evoking sympathy in the reader because of his complexity and misery, and certainly possessing some charm, which he uses without scruples), who acts egoistically and opportunistically, but also according to convention. By being selfish and cruel to those who love him, he destroys not only them, but also himself. He cannot accept his love for Giovanni, because he fights his gay tendencies (he cannot even think about himself as gay and always tries to distinguish himself from "old fairies" like Guillaume and Jacques), but when he finally gives in, it is too late to rescue the relationship. Here lies, for me, the universal message in the story: what happens if by our own silliness, mistake, carelessness, or hard-headedness, whatever, we lose the love of our life and, worse, have an utterly destructive influence on him or her?

Giovanni is a great character, he is a complete opposite of David - he follows his instincts to the point of abandoning himself in them, at the same time doing it completely unconsciously - he is convinced that he acts very rationally and has reasonable plans for the future. When David leaves him upon Hella's return to Paris, Giovanni loses all the grip onto reality and that leads to the tragedy.

Hella, the only significant female character in the novel (except marginal, although complex, Sue, who is another person in the collection of people used by David) is also very interesting - basically, David treats her exactly the same as he treats Giovanni, but she is much more down-to earth and with typical American self- control manages to get back on her feet.

The story takes place in Paris, the protagonist breathes the existentialis atmosphere, wandering in the narrow, old streets during the night. His desperation does not prevent him from perceiving the beauty of the city, but at the same time the city adds to his melancholy. In a different setting the story would undoubtedly be different, and so the novel seamlessly connects its time, place and plot.

James Baldwin created a remarkable novel, full of introspective, universal questions that never get outdated. He managed to write about the problems, which at his time were rather hidden and unspoken. Very subtle prose and concise form round up the list of "Giovanni's Room's" qualities. This is the first book by this author I have read and I will definitely try more.

Picked up the book in a shop in Paris. Did not know or care what the race of the author was. The conflicts that he illustrated in the book, the disappointments and the frustrations, they were all mine. This is the best book of its genre I have ever read, and I recommend it for anyone who feels internal bigotry and self-loathing.

in this book. i am neither male nor gay, yet i identified with the main character. baldwin shows what it is like to leave america for europe looking for something, only to discover that you can neither find what you are looking for nor return home. his style is sparse, like hemingway, and like hemingway you can tell he knows what it is like to be an expat. this book touched me and i give it to everyone i know who is searching...