Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
passionate, gripping, muddled, February 13, 2002
In my opinion the first third of the novel contains some of the best writing in contemporary American literature: urgent, and gripping. This is the story of Rufus, a Black jazz musician living in New York City. Once this tightly written character makes his exit, however, the novel loses its momentum.Baldwin does not create a gradual buildup of tension and emotion. Instead he leaps almost immediately into a bellowing peak and stays there all the way through the conclusion, an ungraceful pace that brings to mind a recording by Celine Dion or Michael Bolton. This is a novel that could easily have descended into kitschy melodrama, and it's a tribute to Baldwin's talent as a writer that he somehow weaves enough subtlety and complexity into the characters and events to maintain some sort of balance. Some themes are reoccurring: knowing and seeing vs. willful blindness, friendship vs. betrayal, art as a profession vs. art for its own sake, and the impassable chasm of the racial divide. Other themes are less clear, especially when it comes to love. All of the characters in Another Country burn bright, and they love in a way that is all-consuming. No one writes love and sex like James Baldwin, and these scenes make an impact. The contradiction comes in the casual disregard for fidelity that these same characters show. Is Baldwin making the point that love, when so passionately felt, is an overwhelming burden that chases the lovers into other arms? Is it that we as humans are afraid of happiness and that we seek to destroy situations in which we truly would be happy? Is it that love is a weak bond next to the relentless persecution of the outer world? Looking at the characters and their actions, none of these explanations seem to stick; the reader simply ends up feeling jerked around, in that the emotions and passions narrated in the thoughts of the characters are so very often directly contradicted by the same character's actions in the very next scene. The one theme that seems to clearly emerge is one of victimization. Baldwin paints a world in which no one is responsible for their own actions, and all of the characters see themselves headed towards their destruction. The characters feel helpless to steer their own fates, even to control their own violent and destructive actions (towards themselves and others). This isn't just a self-fulfilling prophecy - they don't destroy themselves simply because they believe themselves destined to fail; Baldwin actually seems to create a world in which no one can win. This conclusion struck me not only as bleak, but as a bit wrong-headed. Another Country has a five star opening and a three star follow-up. There are passages of brilliance throughout the book, but I finished this wishing that Rufus's story had been told as a novella or a short story, and that the exploits of the other characters in the last two thirds of the book were left to the imagination of the reader.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
JB looks at diversity from several angles- insightful., June 13, 1998
By A Customer
I felt after reading this book almost as if I had just finished viewing a round table discussion about racial conflict, class conflict, and bisexuality all wrapped in one. I am blessed to have known such rich and visionary literature. This is a very insightful book. Baldwin comes at his subject matter fired up, yet without extreme bias. His pendulum is shifty, and raises quizzical emotions from the reader. Baldwin tackles issues of mammoth social and political porportion with profound insight. I had heard that this book was an insider's look at Homophobia in the late 50's and early 60's- I had heard wrong. This book is a study of diversity, acceptance, and love. It forces the reader to probe the age old query- Is it really possible to be in love with two people at the same time? I can only conclude that juggling 2 or more lovers, like some of these characters do, must be like walking into a pit of fire- the endeavors are certain to scar you, and change your view of love and the world for ever. I think at least one of the characters is in love with the existential high of being wanted and being a lover, more than being eternally and unconditionally loved in general. It forces one to really question norms and prohibitons, how fickle and momentary they actually are- how we change our own prohibitions to suit us personally.This book is a profoundly courageous exhibit of power, rage, societal pressure and persuasion, desperation, and violence. It is not a book that corrupts an OPEN mind, yet a glimpse at all of the corruptive evils that still exist in the U.S. after nearly forty years. It is a glimpse at the journey toward capturing the "brass ring" in one's life, the writing probes the question: Is all of the pain and suffering really worth it? Baldwin leaves this reader feeling that the lessons learned along the way in one's coming of age echo far more deeply into the cavern of one's soul, than obtaining the brass ring itself. This is a profound, ground shattering breakthrou! gh in writing for ANY era. His writing will never go out of style for the intelligent and savvy literary thinker---- An open mind is an estuary, abundantly seeking the richest minerals that the tide has to offer! Read this vividly moving tale with a blind fold, and seek to learn from it.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
vivid and amazing, August 12, 2000
This is a fascinating, vivid, and amazing book, about relationships between people. Not an easy read, and not a pretty picture of Greenwich Village and its inhabitants (prostitution, infidelity, drug abuse, suicide are among the issues), but an extremely effective and emotionally haunting one. It explores gender, race, and sexuality from a sympathetic and humanistic viewpoint, and has the power to shock even today, forty years after it was written.
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