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. 

Arundhati Roy launches her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me on Sept 2, 2025 in Kochi

 

Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me – front cover photo by Carlo Buldrini

The global launch of Suzanna Arundhati Roy’s memoir of her mother, Mother Mary Comes To Me (MMCTM), took place on Sept 2 at Mother Mary Hall of St Teresa’s College in Kochi. Ms Roy came down from New Delhi with a host of friends and admirers, publishers and editors, to ensure that the book would take off on its world-wide exposition from Kochi, her home ground, so to speak. Her last launch from here was of the Malayalam translation of The God of Small Things (TGOST) by Priya A. S. from an open air site on the Marina close by. 

Arundhati Roy in green saree and red choli – Feb 3, 2011

On that occasion Ms Roy arrived looking distant and stately in a lovely blue-green saree, the colour of the river Meenachal, wearing a trim red choli with a necklace of black string attached to a pendant of square metal secured to a fragment of nondescript red fabric. On this day, fourteen years later, she arrived in a floppy red top over blue jeans, relaxed and ready to mingle with the crowd gathered to celebrate her literary presence in the city. It was the middle of the Onam season and the roads were crowded but those who wanted to meet her arrived an hour and a half in advance of the slated 6:30 pm event to find the venue three-quarters full. There were more than a thousand attendees, with the overflow from Mother Mary Hall necessitating the setting up of a second hall to accommodate the crowd. Former students of her mother’s Pallikoodam School were there in strength as a special contingent.

Arundhati Roy in red top and blue jeans at Mother Mary Hall, Sep 2, 2025

The audience was a diverse mix of people, young and old, along with friends, family, movie stars, and publishers. It was organised by DC Books and Penguin Random House India. The event bore the typical marks  of an Arundhati Roy event, filled with emotion, wit, and political discourse. “Almost everyone that I love is gathered in this room. That’s a pretty dangerous thing, given our government,” laughed Ms Roy. 

Arundhati Roy with her mother Mary Roy

Ms Roy identified the origin of the book to a time after her mother’s death on Sept 1, 2022 – “I was walking in London one day with my agent, and I said to him that my mother was my shelter and my storm.” He turned around and said “So when are you writing this book?” 

In a way, Ms Roy had been writing this book all her life; whether she was spending her fatherless childhood in Kerala or going to college in Delhi – her mother was an inescapable presence in her mind. She went away at age eighteen and gradually discovered who she could be and flowered in her multitudinous ways far from the critical eye of her mother. But she had been taking notes all the while, as writers do. And here after a difficult journey she was ready to present to public gaze the persona of her mother and her own relationship along with the myriad battles she fought along the way, mirroring several that caught her mother up in a different storm 2,600 kms away.

Israeli airstrikes destroy buildings in the Gaza Strip. Photo: © UNRWA/Ashraf Amra – more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, half of them women and children; the total Israeli death toll has risen to nearly 2,000

But Ms Roy noted that the troubles of the world constantly knock on our doors for desperate attention; she made special mention of the horrors of the war in Gaza, linking the ongoing suffering there to the feeling that “someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in another room” when she receives recognition. She emphasised that her awareness of the crisis isn't triggered by guilt but by a genuine understanding of the interconnectedness of suffering: “Wherever you look, things are happening, and you can't just think of your own story,” she said.