Giovanni’s Room
by James Baldwin
Not that into it so far, but it's short and I'm trying to power through. All the characters are loathsome and tortured, which is not a High Literary Convention I enjoy, or an outlook on life that I share.
Funny to read this at the same time I'm in the middle of Quentin Crisp's [b:The Naked Civil Servant|86062|The Naked Civil Servant|Quentin Crisp|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309209765s/86062.jpg|1121627]: the viewpoint character (does he have a name? I never remember people's names) is on the other side of the gender divide and on the other side of the Channel, but you can see the same dynamics.
I'm (perhaps naturally) more of a Crisp partisan.
(7 June 2016)
Finished it last night---more thoughts later. The other characters call David on his "everything is horrible and everyone is disgusting" outlook, which I appreciated.
I'm also very annoyed with all the (mostly straight) reviewers who talk about how this shows that love is just love, no matter the genders, it wasn't really about being gay because it transcends the genders of the main characters.... Fuck you, it's about a queer man making everyone around him miserable-to-suicidal because he's deathly fucking terrified of anyone finding out that he's queer. He scrambles to stay on top of other people's love and affection and friendship like a drowning fisherman, heedless of what he's doing to them. That's what homophobia does. It's ugly and stupid and deadly. And it's definitely not about straight people's love.
(23 June 2016)