MEMBER BLOG TAG: jan castro
| Wednesday, May 5, 2010 10:04AM | | | | Reading Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" | Tags: James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, Jan Castro
| | | | Jan Castro’s Blog on “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin
Set in Paris, “Giovanni’s Room” is James Baldwin’s haunting early novel about a blonde American youth, David, who hides his homosexuality from his fiancé, from the boy he loves, and partly from himself. The interiority of the novel is striking. David tells the story, yet his name is mentioned only toward the end by the other American, Hella. Her name suggests both “hell” and the whole Hellenistic culture leading to Western civilization, in which women did not often play active roles in public life. In some cases, their roles as wives and mothers were masks for their spouses’ homosexual liaisons or alliances.
The narrative thread intermixes past events and a continuous present; the reader knows early on... | | | | | |
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