Giovanni as a bartender: Alcohol’s role in the novel

In the very first few pages we, the readers are introduced to Giovanni, but only through the narrator. We are only informed of his presence through the mystical and erotic hold he has over the narrator. Immediately we want to know more and we don’t have to wait long. In the second chapter Jaques and David make an appearance at a bar in France. It is here they wind up meeting the man, Giovanni. In this scene he plays the role of the barman, a fitting role for a novel that revolves around alcohol so much. In the pages prior the two are actually discussing Giovanni’s death in which the narrator ponders about memories and the garden of eden. Baldwin writes: “life only offers the choices of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both” (25). In this quote the biggest theme touched upon is memory and in this novel, memory and alcoholism are entirely conflated. We are entirely uncertain which one David considers himself to do: remember or forget. Perhaps it does not matter, but I would venture to say that David is only able to forget and it is through alcohol that he chooses to forget the garden and Giovanni becomes the facilitator of this forgetting. In the first scene we meet him Giovanni serves drinks to Jaques and David, unwittingly perpetuating his own role as forgetter. There is a remark David makes a few pages later on 27 about the apparently flirtatious acts he committed while drunk and claims that his memory “was, happily, very dim” due to the alcohol he was drinking. The conversation continues to have echoes of memory but in a much larger way. This time it is cultural remembrance in reference to France’s culture vs. America’s culture. Each will evolve differently claims David. Yet as we’ve already been introduced to a skeptical view on memory through previous conversations, and since the conversation is taking place as David gets increasing drunk, it begs us to ask whether these larger ideas of cultural remembrance are accurate at all, just the same way David’s memories are not entirely reliable.