Setting Giovanni’s Room in Baldwin’s Past

As many writers will admit, their lives have a massive effect on their written work. One can see this clearly in Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room. An article from The New Yorker discusses the similarities between Baldwin’s life and his novel. The article first notes that “at the age of twenty-four, Baldwin moved to Paris, where he would soon meet and fall in love with a young Swiss”. This event can be seen paralleled in the novel as David both moves to Paris to escape his life in America and falls in love with another traveler, in the novel this being Giovanni from Italy. The article also notes that much of the story line came from Baldwin’s own experiences in Paris. The New Yorker quotes an interview with Baldwin from the 1980’s in which he states that he used some people he met in Paris as models for the characters in his story. Baldwin is quoted as saying ‘‘We all met in a bar, there was a blond French guy sitting at a table, he bought us drinks. And, two or three days later, I saw his face in the headlines of a Paris paper. He had been arrested and was later guillotined . . . I saw him in the headlines, which reminded me that I was already working on him without knowing it”. Here, we can see the parallels between this french man that Baldwin met and the plot of Giovanni. At the moment it is unclear how this story will end, however, I find the death of Giovanni inevitable. While these parallels are clear, they do not serve as a form of autobiographical content in Baldwin’s novel. 

Despite being a homosexual, African-American author Baldwin claims that neither of these topics are front and center in his novel. For one, none of the main characters in Giovanni’s room are black. Baldwin states that this is because he felt that “[he] certainly could not possibly have—not at that point in my life—handled the other great weight, the ‘Negro problem.’ The sexual-moral light was a hard thing to deal with. I could not handle both propositions in the same book. There was no room for it”. Baldwin also states that Giovanni’s room is “not so much about homosexuality, it is what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody”. I find it extremely interesting that despite race and gender being such controversial topics, Baldwin does not use them to create a story about anything other than the human experience. His story lies, not in what homosexual love is like, but rather what the fear of love can cause.

While I was previously aware that Baldwin was homosexual and spent some time in Paris I was not aware of how many similarities there were between him and his characters. I am interested in seeing where this story goes, and hope to learn more about how Baldwin’s experiences influenced his writings. I understand that his other novel, Go Tell it To The Mountain, focuses the African-American experience in Harlem. I plan to read that novel latter on, as I have really been captured by Baldwin’s style of writing, and hope to look into the parallels between Baldwin and that novel.

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