- Tags:: #📚Books - Author:: [[James Baldwin]] - Genre:: [[Classics]],[[Fiction]],[[Queer]] - Source date:: [[1956-01-01]] - Audience score:: 8.68 - Link:: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38462.Giovanni_s_Room - ISBN:: 9780141186351 - Added to vault date:: [[2026-09-11]] - Finished date:: [[2026-09-11]] - Liked:: 7 - Cover:: <img src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501485157i/38462.jpg" width="100"> ## Why did I want to read it? [[Samabooks]] basically. ## What did I get out of it? Me ha gustado pero siento que me han dado otra especie de [[Paris-Austerlitz]] (con ligeras variaciones de la historia). Otra vez un maricón terrible como persona como protagonista, que se ennovia con un tío que le gusta como aventurilla pero a la que la otra persona se muestra débil/vulnerable y tiene que mostrar responsabilidad afectiva, le corta el rollo (en este caso, porque este hombre pues no tenía asumida su homosexualidad). Que si, que "es que veo que estaría muy enamorao pero no vamos a tener futuro", pero como bien le dice Giovanni, "tu no sabes lo que es querer, solo quieres tu pulcritud". Por supuesto pues tiene novia también a la que también le jode la vida. ### Highlights The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. finding herself there, alone, began to wonder, perhaps, if a lifetime of drinking and watching men was exactly what she wanted. People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted. I would have touched him to wake him up but something stopped me. I was suddenly afraid. Perhaps it was because he looked so innocent lying there, with such perfect trust; perhaps it was because he was so much smaller than me; my own body suddenly seemed gross and crushing and the desire which was rising in me seemed monstrous. But, above all, I was suddenly afraid. It was borne in on me: But Joey is a boy, I saw suddenly the power in his thighs, in his arms, and in his loosely curled fists. The power and the promise and the mystery of that body made me suddenly afraid. That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came, in which I would lose my manhood. was very nasty to Joey. And the sadder this made him, the nastier I became. He was one of those people who, quick to laugh, are slow to anger; so that their anger, when it comes, is all the more impressive, seeming to leap from some unsuspected crevice like a fire which will bring the whole house down. Sometimes there was company and I was often allowed to watch them drink their cocktails. Then my father was at his best, boyish and expansive, moving about through the crowded room with a glass in his hand, refilling people’s drinks, laughing a lot, handling all the men as though they were his brothers, and flirting with the women. Or no, not flirting with them, strutting like a cock before them. The incident with Joey had shaken me profoundly and its effect was to make me secretive and cruel. I could not discuss what had happened to me with anyone, I could not even admit it to myself; and, while I never thought about it, it remained, nevertheless, at the bottom of my mind, as still and as awful as a decomposing corpse. And it changed, it thickened, it soured the atmosphere of my mind. **Note:** I've never experienced this self-denial. Once I was out of the house, of course, it became much easier to deal with him and he never had any reason to feel shut out of my life for I was always able, when talking about it, to tell him what he wished to hear. And we got on quite well, really, for the vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in which I myself most desperately needed to believe. For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. **Note:** On agency. I don't agree, of course, but it's a powerful thought. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. Even constant motion, of course, does not prevent an occasional mysterious drag, a drop, like an airplane hitting an air pocket. And there were a number of those, all drunken, all sordid, ‘To choose!’ cried Giovanni, turning his face away from me and speaking, it appeared, to an invisible ally who had been eavesdropping on this conversation all along. ‘To choose! He turned to me again. ‘Ah, you are really an American. J’adore votre enthousiasme!’ ‘what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?’ ‘Well,’ I said, feeling myself being led by Giovanni into deep and dangerous water, ‘I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel.’ ‘In order to make sure!’ He turned again to that invisible ally and laughed again. I was beginning, perhaps, to find his phantom a little unnerving but the sound of his laughter in that airless tunnel was the most incredible sound. ‘It’s clear that you are a true philosopher.’ He pointed a finger at my heart. ‘And when you have waited—has it made you sure?’ Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford, and you are not that young any more.’ ‘Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty—they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.’ ‘Somebody,’ said Jacques, ‘your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour—and in the oddest places!—for the lack of it.’ soon it was too late to do anything but moan. It made them feel their poverty again, through the narcotics of chatter, and dreams of conquest, and mutual contempt. The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places? With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots. I scarcely know how to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room. I did not really stay there very long—we met before the spring began and I left there during the summer—but it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea-change there. **Note:** Reminds me a lot to [[Paris-Austerlitz]] But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstances or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief. I do not know how I knew this, but I knew it at once; perhaps I knew it because I wanted to live. I understood why Giovanni had wanted me and had brought me to his last retreat. I was to destroy this room and give to Giovanni a new and better life. I invented in myself a kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work. I threw out the paper, the bottles, the fantastic accumulation of trash, I examined the contents of the innumerable boxes and suitcases, and disposed of them. But I am not a housewife— The trouble is that I love myself too much. And so I’ve decided to let two try it, this business of loving me, I mean, and see how that works out. It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come. ‘Maybe you’ll be lonely again,’ she said, finally. ‘I guess I won’t mind if you come looking for me.’ She wore the strangest smile I had ever seen. It was pained and vindictive and humiliated I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. Yet it was true, I recalled, turning away from the river down the long street home, I wanted children. I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unquestioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. He began to cry. I held him. And, while I felt his anguish entering into me, like acid in his sweat, and felt that my heart would burst for him, I also wondered, with an unwilling, unbelieving contempt, why I had ever thought him strong. **Note:** Otra persona egoísta y terrible ‘And will you bring me home again?’ he asked. ‘Yes. I’ll bring you home again.’ ‘Je t’aime, tu sais?’ ‘Je le sais, mon vieux.’ I wonder if he knows that the approaching morning is the last morning of his life. (For the prisoner, usually, does not know: the lawyer knows and tells the family or friends but does not tell the prisoner.) The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it. I had a terrible trip, I hate trains, I wish I’d flown but I’ve been in one Spanish airplane and I swore never, never again. It rattled, my dear, in the middle of the air just like a model T Ford—it had probably been a model T Ford at one time—and I just sat there, praying and drinking brandy. I was sure I’d never see land again.’ not until she herself had come to a decision did she begin to be afraid that I might also have arrived at a decision, opposite to hers. Perhaps she had kept me dangling too long. She was by nature forthright and impatient; she suffered when things were not clear; yet she forced herself to wait for some word or sign from me and held the reins of her strong desire tightly in her hands. ‘For a woman,’ she said, ‘I think a man is always a stranger. And there’s something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.’ When Giovanni spoke his voice was thick with fury and relief and unshed tears. ‘Where have you been?’ he cried. ‘I thought you were dead! I thought you had been knocked down by a car or thrown into the river—what have you been doing all these days?’ I was able, oddly enough, to smile. And I was astonished at my calm. ‘Giovanni,’ I said, ‘I want you to meet my fiancée. Mlle Hella. Monsieur Giovanni.’ ‘I have never reached you,’ said Giovanni. ‘You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me but I know that you have never told me the truth— Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.’ I do not know what I felt for Giovanni. I felt nothing for Giovanni. I felt terror and pity and a rising lust. ‘Giovanni,’ I said, helplessly, ‘be careful. Please be careful.’ He gave me an ironical smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You should have given me that advice the night we met.’ The wind of my life was blowing me away. I turned from him, unlocked the door. The weary exhale of his breath seemed to ruffle my hair and brush my brow like the very wind of madness. I walked down the short corridor, expecting every instant to hear his voice behind me, passed through the vestibule, passed the loge of the still sleeping concierge, into the morning streets. And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry. We no longer seemed to see things to point out to each other. ‘David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. What’s the good of an American who isn’t happy? Happiness was all we had.’ The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope and I take the blue envelope which Jacques has sent me and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me.