Poetry Session – Feb 20, 2026

 

Ten of us participated in a session that featured poets, all of whom had been recited before with the exception of Bruce Springsteen, a singer-songwriter who penned the lyrics of a contemporary protest song.

Arundhaty gave us an ekphrastic anti-war poem by Mary Oliver that takes off on a painting of blue horses by Franz Marc.

I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses

what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply

find it impossible to believe.

Devika chose a cryptic poem by Emily Dickinson in which she seems to dare God to take away a beloved person she has known. 

Significance that each has lived

The other to detect

Discovery not God himself

Could now annihilate

Geetha recited the ‘dub’ poet Benjamin Zephaniah who performs on stage, reciting poems mostly to reggae rhythms. 

Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops

De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots

Dis poetry is designed fe rantin

Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,

Joe was upset by the menacing way in which US Immigration authorities used military-style kidnaps to strike fear into the hearts of non-whites in America. It was so antithetical to the tenets of freedom of life and liberty enshrined in the US Constitution that it horrified many Americans; Bruce Springsteen gave voice to the horror in the song, The Streets of Minneapolis.

Now they say they're here to uphold the law

But they trample on our rights

If your skin is black or brown, my friend

You can be questioned or deported on sight

KumKum read a ’tiny’ 10-line poem by Louise Glück that ends abruptly with the cry

I want you.

Joe mentioned that when he read Louise Glück, he bought her volume of Poems 1962-2012. After reading almost the whole collection he chose a few that he could make sense of. But later he had a dream conversation with the poet in verse which is reported in the text below.

Pamela liked Mary Oliver’s poetry for its simplicity and freedom from constraints; reassuringly the poet states –

I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.

I’m just chattering.

Priya took on Rabindranath Tagore. There are more distinct blog posts on KRG’s website on him than on any other poet – the posts were to celebrate his 150th Birth anniversary in 2011. The eighth such post contains a song that  pulls at the heartstrings, no matter how many times one hears it. That a poet could express such a yearning for a person, indirectly, is a miracle. In Hemanta Mukherjee’s baritone voce it takes on the life Tagore meant to infuse into the words. Listen here to the song Tumi Ki Kebali Chabi. The translation is Joe’s. Has any poet expressed the source of his muse better? –

kabir antharer tumi kabi

you are the poet within the poet

Saras took up Robert Service in an anti-war poem he wrote on the eve of WWI:

Rumours of world-war are rife,

Armageddon draweth near.

If your carcase you would save,

Hear, oh hear, the dreadful drum!

Fly to forest, cower in cave . . .

Brother, heed the wrath to come!

Shoba’s choice of England’s great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was characterised by an elegiac poem which he derived from that fifteenth-century classic of English, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur. It contains the famous quote:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways

Thomo chose the first Duino Elegy of Rilke, which begins an intensely religious, mystical group of poems that employs the symbolism of angels and salvation. It begins:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?

He began the cycle of elegies in 1912 in the castle of Duino in Italy and completed it 10 years later in the smaller castle of Château de Muzot in the Swiss Valais. A castle composing poet, our Rilke was.

The Garden Party And Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield – Jan 26, 2026

 

The Garden Party first edition 1922

During the reading and discussions several points came up repeatedly. These have been gathered together below as a prologue to the readings themselves.

1. Class Divide

Why does class divide play such a major role in Mansfield's short stories? She used her writing to critically expose the rigid social hierarchies and their associated prejudices during the early 20th-century society. Her stories are deeply influenced by her own upbringing in a wealthy New Zealand family that resided on the edge of a poor district, and served as a mirror to the inequalities she observed in both colonial New Zealand and London. 

Mansfield often highlights the selfishness of the upper class, showing how they maintain their luxurious lifestyles through the labor of the working class while remaining indifferent to the latter's suffering. She might have been a Marxist in a different era. George Orwell, Edith Wharton, and D.H. Lawrence, were famous for exploring the class divide in Britain and America.

Class consciousness was indoctrinated into children, causing them to treat peers as inferior based on their socioeconomic status. This too Mansfield decided was worth exposing – how children are brought up in wealthy households to disdain the working classes. 

The enlightenment of  Laura in The Garden Party, who emancipates herself  from the class consciousness she was born into is an exemplary moment that Mansfield wants to convey to her readers: you can overcome prejudice if you think with your heart as well as your mind.

2. The short story form as inferior

The short story is often unjustly considered an inferior genre compared to the novel, largely due to its brevity and focus on a single, intense moment rather than expansive, complex narratives. The brevity imposes limitations in character development, and narrative, and make it appear less substantial. But masters of the short story know it requires immense precision, skill and focus. 

True it is a slice of life rather than the whole loaf, and if the short story makes a point, it is a sharp point not a whole massive structure that has to be unravelled slowly to discover its essence.

Writing a short story is challenging because it requires maximum impact with minimal words. Every sentence must serve a specific purpose, either developing the plot or revealing the character(s). Writers must cut scenes and descriptions that do not directly contribute to the central theme or conflict. It is often necessary to start in the middle of the action, avoiding lengthy exposition or scene-setting. There is no time to waste. The world has seen great short story writers – from the time of Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales. Modern masters come from all parts of the world: Alice Munro (Canada), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Ernest Hemingway (USA), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Edgar Allan Poe (USA), Guy de Maupassant (France), James Joyce (Ireland), Rabindranath Tagore (India), and the list goes on.

Anton Chekhov, renowned Russian playwright and short-story writer

For the same reason of time, a short story can typically only focus on two or three main characters. Evolution of the characters and any significant change must happen quickly without feeling forced or abrupt. 

The most important thing is that a successful short story must revolve around a central theme with perhaps, a few interconnected complications.

Coming to the ending, short stories rely on a surprise, a twist, or a profound revelatory conclusion.

3. Mansfield’s life as a writer and its associations

Katherine Mansfield was a rare New Zealand writer to achieve international renown. She left for Europe as a 19-year-old. This sensitive documentary examines her relationships with her family and homeland, her turbulent personal life, her writing, and her early death in France in 1923, at age 34. It quotes extensively from her letters to give an account of the years of her productive life. 

John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield in France 1921

John Middleton Murry (1889 – 1957) was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.

It seems that Mansfield wrote the short story, The Garden-Party, while she was dying of tuberculosis. Middleton Murray, her husband and primary publisher, wrote of his wife, “She loved life—with all its beauty and its pain.” In the story Laura experiences both the beauty and the pain of life, but Mansfield leaves Laura at the end of the story groping for a satisfactory definition of life.

4. The stories

Marriage à la Mode depicts the quiet tragedy of a marriage undone by incompatible desires and societal pressures, where neither partner truly understands the changes occurring in the other, resulting in mutual dissatisfaction and an ironic, sad conclusion. 

The Stranger is concerned with how death affects the living, and in this respect it is like that of Mansfield’s two other short stories in this collection, Daughters of the Late Colonel and The Garden Party. In The Stranger  Mrs.Hammond returning from a long absence  has been greatly affected by the death of a passenger on the ship who dies in her arms. She seems distant and not very responsive to her surroundings after the experience, “She made no answer. She was looking away from him at the fire.” But the deaths also touches Mr. Hammond and deprives him of an intimacy that he has been yearning for.

Miss Brill analyses loneliness, illusion vs. reality, and aging, through the story of a fragile, solitary woman who creates a fantasy world where she's an actress in a grand play, only to have it shattered by a young couple's cruel words. Those words reveal her isolation and lead her to retreat like her fur, crying, into her “little dark room.” It explores the theme of social alienation. 

Her art of writing is described by Mansfield in relation to this story in one of her letters: 

I chose not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of every sentence—I chose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit [Miss Brill] on that day at that very moment. After I’d written it I read it aloud—number of times—just as one would play over a musical composition, try to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss Brill—until it fitted her. 

5. Her colonial locales

Many of the stories in Katherine Mansfield's collection, The Garden Party and Other Stories, are written with a New Zealand locale. The specific story The Garden Party is explicitly set in Wellington, New Zealand, and is based on her own childhood home.  It pictures the cloudless blue sky “veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer”  and the karaka trees “with their broad, gleaming leaves, and their clusters of yellow fruit.” They stand in contrast to the “mean little cottages” down the hill that reflect the real-life landscape and class distinctions of Mansfield's youth.  Its luxurious setting is based on Mansfield's childhood home at 133 Tinakori Road (originally numbered 75), the second of three houses in Thorndon, Wellington that her family lived in.

Katherine Mansfield House and Garden was her early childhood home

The collection features fifteen stories in total; while many are set in her native New Zealand, others are set in England and the French Riviera, reflecting where she lived at various points in her life. 

Her work often explores New Zealand identity, social class, and gender roles within that specific colonial context. 

Arundhati Roy Interviewed by Mohan Vellapally on Dec 30, 2025 about her Memoir

 

Arundhati Roy and Mohan Vellapally on stage at Pulse on Dec 30, 2025

Ms Arundhati Roy gave an interview at an event on Dec 30, 2025 where her memoir was re-examined by Mr Mohan Vellapally, who brought out its finer points by asking a number of questions. Ms Roy responded in the time available with incisive comments, and to further elaborate, read sections of her memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me. This threw light on various facets of the complex relationship between her and her mother.

Arundhati Roy with Rema and Mohan Vellapally in their home

It became clear that her visits worldwide for readings of the memoir are not merely for marketing, but in her case establishes the essential contact between her and her readers that matters so much to her. A previous blog post shows just how she goes about cultivating her loyal, adoring, fan base by extending her love to them. It is an important counter-balance because she has a large number of detractors among the conservative right wing factions in India who habitually hurl epithets like ‘urban Naxal’ and ‘anti-national’ at her.

Raina John and Lalith Roy sing the Beatles song ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me’

The reading and interview was preceded by by the Beatles song Mother Mary Comes To Me sung by her brother Lalith Roy with Raina John:

https://www.instagram.com/pulse.unplugged/reel/DTIGKFNESAP/

Arundhati Roy began her readings by acknowledging the beautiful event her brother Lalith put together

The interview with Ms Aurundhati Roy was conducted by Mohan Vellapally at the beautiful auditorium Lalith Roy built in his Pulse centre for performing musicians. Here is the entire 1-hour interview on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTIPpkkk8y5/

During the course of the interview Ms Roy brought up various topics which are of interest to readers everywhere. In this blog post I cover a few under the headings below.

Kavita with Arundhati Roy posing at the book signing.

Humorous Poems – Dec 5, 2025

It was a delightful evening of enjoyment, which started off with a high tea of fabulous snacks contributed by all the readers, and enjoyed in the warm hospitality of Arundhaty’s home. 

The Reading Group outside by the lawn

The group inside – Pamela had left

KRG Readers gathered for the year-end joyful session of Humorous Poems where by custom everyone wears fanciful costumes, often illustrating the poem they are going to read. They make a motley crew glad to drop all pretence of literary accomplishment for the fun of having a rollicking time with stories in rhyme that reveal the light touch in poets, even those as venerable as T.S. Eliot.

The sad comic poet Edward Lear could not be omitted as he was the founder of the Limerick poetic form which  features anapaests rhymed AABBA fashion in 5-line stanzas to celebrate comical events. There is the famous one about Calcutta:

There once was a man from Calcutta

Who coated his throat with butta

Thus converting his snore

From a thunderous roar

To a soft, melodious mutta.

(L. Kilham)

Here’s a tribute to Lear:

Although at the limericks of Lear

We may feel a temptation to sneer,

We should never forget

That we owe him a debt

For his work as the first pioneer.

Devika produced a superb piece by Nissim Ezekiel, the Bombay poet who in a moment of light musing delivered a colloquial exchange between two friends, in the kind of quaint speech that is full of gauche Indian ways of using English, such as using ‘backside’ for ‘rear.’ Which reminds one of a famous limerick celebrating Sardar Baldev Singh, India’s first Defence Minister –

A visit to Lady Mountbatten

Found her ducks running round in the garden,

Baldev Singh then stated

His spirit elevated

How lovely your battakhs, so fattened!

Maya Angelou, not known for her comedic verse, was selected by Priya. She came in a costume wearing a trendy hat and carrying a basket of wool, mimicking Mrs. Ruth Anning (not a character in Virginia Woolf's novel which we read, Mrs Dalloway) but instead, the protagonist of Woolf's short story titled Together and Apart, which is set at one of Clarissa Dalloway's parties. Her poem was about a dauntless woman whom nothing frightens –

Panthers in the park

Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

Saras took up a Cat poem of T.S Eliot that features the Pekes and the Pollicles – pollicies being perhaps a kind of  terrier given to barking. The battle between the dogs is shown in this video on YouTube, the The Battle of Pekes and the Pollicles. The ascending crescendo of cries overwhelms the neighbourhood in the battle:

Bark bark bark bark

Bark bark BARK BARK

Until you can hear them all over the Park.

Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles from Cats, the Musical

Th largest contribution to the estate of T.S. Eliot has accrued from the royalties of the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats, where a dramatic narrative is created around the poems in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. It was first released as a full production in 1981 in London. To imagine it all began with T.S. Eliot writing funny little cat poems as gifts to his god-children by various friends! 

Eliot Letter to Tandy family at The British Library

It was a delightful evening of enjoyment, which started off with a high tea with fabulous snacks contributed by all the readers, entertained in Arundhaty’s home to her customary hospitality. 

Eats on Dec 6, 2025 at the KRG Humorous Poems session

Diligent Reader Exercises (DREs) for Humorous Poems KRG session on Dec 5, 2025

1. While everyone was excited by the phallic energy of Geetha’s poem Asparagus, there is a 2-word phrase in that poem borrowed from a 17th century satirist we have recited before at KRG. What is the phrase, and who is the satirist?

2. In Joe’s poem selection, Under the Drooping Willow Tree, from the collection by Auden of The Oxford Book Of Light Verse, three lines have been substituted. Which are the lines? To refresh your memory go to page 408 of the W.H. Auden book:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ex6Xv5WFUPCsohxN3BgzsBcCXlj6Lq7e/view?usp=sharing

3. On the subject of family planning in Devika’s professor of Indianisms, Joe recited a haiku in Hindi to the gathering. Can you select any other subject touched on in Ezekiel’s poem The Professor, (for example. aches and pains, world is changing, score a century, weight and consequence, backside, etc.) and make a 17-syllable haiku in the famous form 5-7-5 in 3 lines? Preferably humorous, possibly scandalous.

4. Edward Lear (whom Thomo recited) almost single-handedly created the humorous poetic form called the Limerick which is rhymed in 5 lines as AABBA and has an anapaestic structure:

Lines 1, 2, and 5 each contain three anapaests (three “ta-ta-DUM” units) and have three stressed syllables.

ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM

Lines 3 and 4 each contain two anapaests (two “ta-ta-DUM” units) and have two stressed syllables.

ta-ta-DUM | ta-ta-DUM

But limericks can vary from that strict form …

FIND a limerick (or write your own) on any ONE of the following cities: Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Delhi.

5. Saras read a cat poem of T.S. Eliot, who demonstrated how adept he is at rhyming – something he never did in his ‘serious’ works. For whom did T.S. Eliot write his poems on cats? Which cat is labelled the ‘Napoleon of Crime’?

(Solutions are given at the end of the Consolidated Poems)

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle – Nov 21, 2025

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles – first edition 1902

Sherlock Holmes has been rated as one of the most popular fictional characters in history. His claim to fame is backed by an official world record. According to Guinness, Holmes is the “most portrayed literary human character in film & TV,” having been depicted on screen in over 250 films and hundreds of TV episodes. The stories have been translated into over 60 languages and Braille. Some iconic portrayals are by Basil Rathbone in the forties, and Jeremy Brett in the 80s and 90s. The enduring appeal of Holmes for over a century is a testament to his lasting impact. He consistently ranks at the top of “greatest character” lists and is an enduring literary figure. His stories have never gone out of print, and he has inspired one of the world's first and most dedicated fan communities.

Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett are both iconic Sherlock Holmes portrayals

His quixotic qualities, his unique enthusiasms, and vast range of expertise on esoteric subjects have contributed to his becoming an almost mythical figure. In the present novella, the third of four Conan Doyle wrote, a dark mystery presents itself and he has to put himself and his client in danger’s way to entrap the villain behind the baying hound on the moor that is heard during the ‘hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.’ Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, who has by now become an admirer of Holmes’ methods, is called upon to assist in the planned denouement when Holmes hopes to catch the villain red-handed.

Portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle from the official website conandoyleestate.com

One of the charms of Conan Doyle’s writing is his use of words that have by now become archaic, such as Farrier (one who shoes horses), Almoner (an official responsible for distributing alms on behalf of another individual), Roysterer (a noisy and boisterous reveller), Pannikin (a small pan or drinking vessel of earthenware, what we would call a ‘khullar’ in Hindi), Tor (a high rock; a pile of rocks, gen. on the top of a hill), Goyal (a deep trench, a ravine). Then there are obsolete uses of verbs such as this:

the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat.

‘worry’ meaning to seize by the throat with the teeth and tear or lacerate; to kill or injure by biting and shaking. It is said, for example, of dogs or wolves attacking sheep, or of hounds when they seize their quarry. (OED definition). 

Sherlock Holmes with revolver and Watson in the Hound of the Baskervilles

The powers of observation of Holmes are the foremost among his detective skills. “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,” he says. When the portrait of Hugo the Roysterer, who became the first known victim of a hound among the Baskervilles, is before them, Holmes observes an uncanny resemblance to Stapleton, and cries out to Watson: “Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.” 

The Grimpen Mire with its Tors is very atmospheric, full of boulders and mist and eerily open spaces, which help set the mood

Next to observation is his ability to frame a series of hypotheses after collecting as many facts as possible. Facts are the underpinning of every one of his deductions. Indeed the word ‘facts’ occurs 23 times in the novel. “An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours,” Holmes says. A third and perhaps crowning part of his intellectual apparatus is described in this famous saying of his: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (from The Sign of Four). His method of logical deduction works by ruling out all possibilities that are not feasible, based on the facts.

The novel is full of interesting characters like the butterfly hunter Stapleton who has discovered a species on the moor and is quite famous in entomological circles. There is a litigious community worker, Mr Frankland, who has filed cases to open up private lands for common access to walkers, and also done the opposite, close off his own land to public  trails. Of course, Holmes himself takes centre-stage with his  sharp powers of observation and deduction, combined with an eschewal of unverified assumptions, which give him a penetrating access to detective solutions. Some of the descriptions give a Gothic cast to the novel, for instance:

– the hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted, 

– two great stones worn and sharpened until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast,

– slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces,

Poetry Session – Oct 30, 2025

Of the ten poets read at this session only one was new, Ryan Teitman. All the others from Ben Jonson to W.H. Auden, and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish had been selected for previous readings. Had Priya been present we would have had one more new poet to add, George Sze.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes - illustration

It began with the highly atmospheric and haunting ballad The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The poem tells about the gallant outlaws of olden times and begins with the line

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

…

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

Ben Jonson invites a friend to supper

Ben Jonson the great rival dramatist to Shakespeare, came up with a feast for his patron that is described in lush terms, more poetic and detailed than any modern Michelin starred restaurant could muster:

An olive, capers, or some better salad

Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,

If we can get her, full of eggs, and then

Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony

Is not to be despaired of, for our money;

And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,

The sky not falling, think we may have larks.

The spirit of conviviality and shared enjoyment at the supper makes for delightful reading.

St. Cecilia with an Angel by Orazio Gentileschi (father of the renowned woman artist Artemesia Gentileschi). The organ is the symbol of St Cecilia

Auden was a fortuitous choice occasioned by Joe’s desire to remember his sister, Cecilia. Auden wrote the lyrics of a chorale that was composed by his friend Benjamin Britten whose birthday fell on the feast day of St. Cecilia on Nov 22. The refrain has the lines:

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

It ends with an instructive line:

O wear your tribulation like a rose.

Ada Limón, the current poet laureate of America, was read in a simple poem, The Conditional. The poem imagines all the malign things that can happen but reminds us it is enough that tomorrow comes, and we are still alive to enjoy the day:

Say we spend our last moments staring

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.

Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be

enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,

right here, feeling lucky.

Robert Frost – man peering into a well

Robert Frost, a perennial favourite among our readers, is here represented by a strange poem in which a man peers constantly at the still water in a well, seeing himself reflected – but one day Something happens. That something is what disturbs this proto-Narcissus from succumbing to his enduring fancy for himself. Readers were reminded of another modern, sitting atop the world with only himself to admire!

Darwish, the poet of Palestine, who made it his calling to defend his land against all comers ready to snatch it from his compatriots, writes:

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: 

on this earth, the Lady of Earth,

mother of all beginnings and ends. 

She was called Palestine. 

Her name later became

Palestine. 

My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

Imtiaz Dharker reminds us that to be in a minority is no disaster, indeed it builds one up to resist all encroachment on one’s freedom and meet others on an equal footing. She writes:

I don’t fit,

like a clumsily-translated poem;

She has become a prescribed author for school children in UK.

Bob Dylan delivers his Nobel lecture finally – photo by Lester Cohen

Bob Dylan has been a favourite songster-poet of Thomo’s and this time one of his signal recordings, Mr. Tambourine Man, was sung by Thomo, paying homage to one of the greats of the modern world who is still going strong at age 84.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

…

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship

My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip

My toes too numb to step

Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’

It is a song about seeking inspiration and escape from the mundane through a mystical, musical figure, often interpreted as a muse. The real Tambourine Man was musician Bruce Langhorne, who played a large Turkish frame drum that looked like a giant tambourine on several covers of Dylan's recordings; Dylan confirmed Bruce was indeed the inspiration. 

Bruce Langhorne – Tambourine Man

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – Sept 19, 2025

 

Giovanni’s Room, first edition, Dial Press, NY, 1956

Giovanni’s Room (GR) tells of a white American who in those postwar days shipped out to Paris, intent on finding out who he was and what he wanted to do. In his quest to escape from the preset world of America and take a fresh view, David begins with the holdover of an American girlfriend who sort of wants to partner him, but has yet to decide and goes off to Spain. 

David is left to himself and having no associates except a well-off older man who likes younger men and lends them money, goes pub crawling. There he meets and takes a shine to a man who is described only as the ultimate exciting homosexual man would be:

in slow motion … carried a glass, … walked on its toes, the flat hips moved with a dead, horrifying lasciviousness. … glittered in the dim light; the thin, black hair was violent with oil, combed forward, hanging in bangs; the eyelids gleamed with mascara, the mouth raged with lipstick. The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia-like perfume. The shirt, open coquettishly to the navel

The inevitable happens – thrown from an absent American girl to a foppish Italian youth, an unsure David can’t decide. Thus David, still ashamed of his homosexual propensities, is captivated by the tragic youth Giovanni who is ill-treated by his bar employer, Guillaume.

James Baldwin’s 1951 address book includes the names of other artists, such as Richard Wright, with whom he interacted

Giovanni’s room turns out to be a shabby place where David seems to enjoy a measure of devotion and love from his male partner, but is unable to commit himself fully. Recall the maxim of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, “Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing,” – the name of a book he wrote. David is unable to achieve that and after his girl friend Hella returns from Spain, his double-minded wavering leads to his unhappiness and Giovanni’s self-destruction. The sunny hopes of a Parisian summer sink into an abyss. 

Henry James – signed picture hung over his desk in Paris

People have drawn all kinds of lessons from this novel, about shame and guilt, about having the courage to be oneself in the face of societal disapproval, and so on. A different conclusion would be that though happiness in human love towards a particular person, arises often from the thrill of sexual attraction, its long term persistence depends on a bond of loyalty. The thrill may abate but the bond will still keep pouring out quiet happiness.

James Baldwin working at his desk in Paris

In the modern world it would help to build oneself when young, acquire competence in some chosen sphere and a measure of independence, before committing to emotional love with another person. Then when it happens it will be between two equals. On the other hand, committing to love from a position of inferiority or lack of attainment, leaves one partner weak and dependent on the other. Does one need to marry to achieve happiness? That's another question many could answer in the negative. 

Baldwin – ‘The story of the Negro in America is the Story of America’

Baldwin’s writing is superb in painting the overheated atmosphere of the bars in Paris where much else happens besides emotional connections. The rambles in Parisian streets and the interjection of French slang frames the novel intimately. Baldwin gives space for Hella to appear sympathetically pliant to David’s moods, ready to take the plunge and make babies for him. 

The devotion of Giovanni to David was remarked on by readers as one of the beautiful things in the novel. His mental clarity contrasts with David’s hesitation; the guilt David feels in the end for Giovanni’s degradation underlines the tragedy for both. Though the novel has a large theme of homosexuality, it only serves to set up the disappointment that awaits those who are not willing to take the risk and follow their own interests, setting aside the conformist demands of the social culture around them.