Fridays Forgotten Books, January 27, 2017

Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin

A few weeks back, I think it was Paul Auster on BY THE BOOKS in the NYT, named James Baldwin as one of the most talented American writers. Asked to name the books on his nightstand: Just two — the Library of America editions of James Baldwin’s “Collected Essays” and “Early Novels and Stories.” Here's what Auster said. "Until recently, I hadn’t read any Baldwin since high school (a long time ago, given that I graduated in 1965), and because the novel I was working on was mostly set in the ’50s and ’60s, I dutifully plunged in to have another look. Duty quickly turned into pleasure, awe, and admiration. Baldwin is a remarkable writer on both fronts, fiction and nonfiction, and I would rank him among America’s 20th-century greats. Not just for his boldness and courage, not just for his enormous emotional range (from boiling anger to the most exquisite tenderness), but for the quality of the writing itself, the chiseled grace of his sentences. Baldwin’s prose is what I would call “classical American,” in the same sense that Thoreau is classical, and at his best I believe Baldwin is fully equal to Thoreau at his best. Oddly enough, I finished reading the two books more than a year ago, but they’re still on my night stand. I can’t say why — I just like having them there. They comfort me.

And this is a terrific synopsis of what I found in my first Baldwin novel, Giovanni's Room. It is the story of a young man who's fighting off his natural inclination to accept himself as gay. He has a girl he has been treating quite badly because he has no desire for her. And he also has a boy, Giovanni, who he is also treating badly because he doesn't want to desire him.  This book looks at a few weeks he spends in Paris, mostly in Giovanni's room. Giovanni is a bartender whose heart is breaking at the narrator's hand. 
This was an easy book to read because the writing is so gorgeous, but a hard book to read when you remember what being gay was like in 1958. In the end, this book seems to be about shame. When society makes something natural a shameful thing, it does us a great injustice. I hope we are not returning to this. But I fear we are.

Sergio Angelini, FROZEN CHARLOTTE, Alex Bell
Yvette Banek, ESCAPE, Philip Macdonald
Joe Barone, THE WOMAN WALKED INTO THE SEA, Mark Douglas Home
Les Blatt, KEEPER OF THE KEYS, Earl Der Biggers
Brian Busby, THE DUSTY BOOKCASE
Bill Crider, FILE ON A MISSING REDHEAD, Lou Cameron
Martin Edwards, WHO'S CALLING? Helen McCloy
Richard Horton, CHAMPION'S CHOICE, John R. Tunis
Jerry House, MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! Harry Harrison
George Kelley, COLLECTED MILLAR 
Margot Kinberg, WHAT REMAINS BEHIND, Dorothy Fowler 
Rob Kitchin, TALKING TO THE DEAD, Harry Bingham 
Kate Laity, PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ON THE DOOR, Patricia Highsmith
B.V. Lawson, SHROUD OF CANVAS, Isobel Mary Lambot
Evan Lewis,  KING KONG V. TARZAN, Will Murray 
Steve Lewis, PERISH TWICE, Robert Parker
Todd Mason, THE DEVIL HIS DUE edited by Douglas Hill, UNTHREATENED BY THE MORNING LIGHT by Karl Edward Wagner

J.F. Norris, THE GREENSONE GRIFFINS, Glaydy Mitchell
Matthew Paust. EMOTION AS MEANING, Keith M. Opdahl
James Reasoner, KI-GOR AND THE SECRET LEGIONS OF SIMBA,  John Peter Drummond
Gerard Saylor, CRIMINAL: LAWLESS, Brubaker and Phillips
Kerrie Smith, A CALAMITOUS CHINESE KILLING, Shamini Flint 
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, TRIAL BY FURY, Craig Rice
TomCat, THE BLONDE DIED DANCING, Kelly Roos
TracyK, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Philip K. Dick