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. 

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – Full Account and Record

James Baldwin – smiling

Priya

The reading began by playing an audio file by Priya, one of the selectors, who had to be absent on account of a pilgrimage she was undertaking. Priya and Thomo selected the book. Priya sent the recorded audio file of her James Baldwin bio, which Joe shortened. This below is just five minutes; an expanded text follows.

Joe played the recording:

Priya Audio File of James Baldwin Bio

Here is the text:

Hello, friends.

I must begin by thanking Kumkum for selecting Giovanni’s Room. I had earlier introduced James Baldwin through his poetry, and today I’ll briefly recap his life.

Baldwin (1924–1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist, acclaimed for essays, novels, plays, and poems. His debut novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is among Time’s 100 best novels, while Notes of a Native Son (1955) established him as a leading commentator on race.

Born in Harlem to a single mother, he was later raised by his strict stepfather, David Baldwin. Their fraught relationship shaped his sense of identity. Teachers quickly noticed his talent for writing, which echoed his mother’s lyrical prose. As a teenager, he was already reading Dickens and Dostoyevsky, and even won praise from Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia for a school composition.

Supportive mentors, such as teacher Orilla Bill Miller and poet Countee Cullen, helped him resist anti-white sentiment and embrace literature. After high school, Baldwin struggled with poverty and odd jobs until modernist painter Beauford Delaney inspired him to believe a Black man could live by art. In Greenwich Village, Baldwin explored both politics and sexuality, beginning relationships with men and women and becoming active in leftist circles.

In 1948 he moved to Paris, escaping American racism and the label of “Negro writer.” There he wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain, followed by Giovanni’s Room (1956), groundbreaking for its treatment of same-sex desire. His years in France brought friendships with writers, artists, and a long, complex relationship with Lucien Happersberger.

Lucien Happersberger in whose Lausanne chalet Baldwin finished his first novel, is one of his few close friends

Giovanni’s Room was dedicated to the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger.  Baldwin and Happersberger met soon after Baldwin arrived in Paris in 1949, sparking a love affair which soon burned out, although the warmth of their friendship remained through the years. The winter between 1951 and 1952 came the closest to domestic bliss that the two men would ever share, living together in a small chateau in the Swiss Alps, with Baldwin working on his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, while Happersberger painted. Soon after, Happersberger, who was bisexual, married his first wife.

Although the fallout from the failed love affair would torment Baldwin for the rest of his life, they remained close. Happersberger, in fact, sat by Baldwin’s deathbed for nearly an entire day before he passed away. Baldwin wrote in a letter to his brother, that his relationship with Happersberger, was “the one real love story of my life.”

Though abroad, Baldwin engaged deeply with the U.S. civil rights movement, returning often to publish essays such as The Fire Next Time (1963), which gave powerful voice to the struggles of the 1960s. Unlike many contemporaries, Baldwin was uncompromisingly pro-Black but not anti-white, a stance that distinguished him in the movement.

James Baldwin’s French home in Saint Paul de Vence from the garden

In later years he divided his time between America and France, where his final home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence became a gathering place for artists like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. He continued to write—novels such as Just Above My Head (1979) and nonfiction like The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985).

Baldwin, openly gay but resistant to labels, sought to be recognized not as “only” Black, gay, or expatriate, but as a full human being. He died of stomach cancer in France in 1987 while working on Remember This House, a memoir of his friendships with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers.

Baldwin and Martin Luther King

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman, Selma to Montgomery March, Alabama – photo by Matt Herron

His final home, once a vibrant salon of art and activism, was demolished in 2019. Yet Baldwin’s words endure, shaping conversations on race, sexuality, and justice across generations.

James Baldwin Paris Review 1984 "I knew what was going to happen to me, I'd kill or be killed... I left because I didn't think I could survive the race problems.”

Joe said it was sad towards the end to hear that the house in which he had lived for seven or eight years in the south of France was demolished, because they couldn't get enough people interested to fund its preservation as a museum. He certainly was known around Paris, but not in the south of France.

His very sojourn in France was a liberating stay for him in terms of his development – which we see in this novel itself through the eyes of his protagonist, David.

Zakia

Zakia was reading from part two and sought to go first as she was returning from a medical appointment with her mil.

It's a very nice piece Zakia selected, said KumKum: “The name of the book is Giovanni's Room, and the complete description of the book is here. You can see the disordered state, garbage thrown around; everything in that room is so beautifully described there.”

Zakia said: “That means his mind was confused.” She wanted to get some clarity about this passage, exactly what was happening over here. This passage was meant  to clear up the confusion, was what she understood.

KumKum said David wanted some stability with him. Maybe that's what he was looking for.

“I like the way he has described the potato,”  said Saras, – “a single brown and wrinkled potato in which even the sprouting eyes were rotten.” That is so hilarious. And the violin – lying on the table in its warped, cracked case – it was impossible to guess from looking at it whether it had been laid to rest there yesterday or a hundred years before. The violin has been buried there and Giovanni hasn't practiced. There is another description of the room later after the relationship starts heating up, which is a real contrast from this.

Arundhaty said the light and the ceiling and all that, is not understandable in the real world; it transports you to another world. The room, although it is described in this fashion very graphically, seems not to have impressed David, said Joe.

The description of the room is symbolic of his state of mind.

Joe said somewhere in the book, it tells about how Giovanni ran away from Italy after the death of his child. He's also a guy in search of something in Paris.You can see that just like David, he's also ambiguous about his sexuality. If one appeals to the other to clean up the room, it's not as though the other is in a position to clear it up. They're both at a loss.

Rachel brought the tea for Joe and KumKum – it was early morning in Arlington, MA, and she was on screen momentarily.

KumKum

When Priya looking for a book last year, she asked KumKum to suggest when she was in the US. She hoped we could select this one because we haven't read Black author. But no, this is not the first Black Author we are reading – there was 

Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie 

(https://kochiread.blogspot.com/2017/03/ngozi-chimamanda-adichie-americanah-mar.html), and 

Color Purple by Alice Walker (https://kochiread.blogspot.com/2022/04/alice-walker-color-purple-march-242022.html), and 

Beloved by Toni Morrison (https://kochiread.blogspot.com/2020/02/toni-morrison-beloved-jan31-2020.html)

Last year was the 100th birth anniversary of Baldwin. All the papers were carrying articles about his work then.

KumKum first read Giovanni's Room when she enrolled in a course on Black American authors in American literature. That was in 2001/2002. After Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, this was the novel that impressed her the most on the subject of homosexuality. Both works were written in lyrical prose. KumKum had no difficulty in finding beauty and normalcy in such relationships.

The protagonists of the two novel struggled with their identities.

Wilde's novel, published in 1890, centred on a young man obsessed with youth, beauty, and of course, his homosexuality, haunted by the fear of aging and decay. Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room, published in 1956, presented David, who reluctantly comes to terms with the fact that he is homosexual – he is not entirely comfortable as a bisexual.

The passage KumKum chose to read was at the centre of the story. It describes David's first experience of same-sex love. Though he tried to forget Joey, his first partner in the act, as well as the incident itself for years, the truth of that moment returned with full force and splendour in Giovanni's cramped little room in Paris. He knew Joey before he came to Paris, when he was younger, in school.

So this is how he's remembering his first encounter with Joey. A very poetic heartfelt description. He didn't recognise this event at all. He tried to forget it. That's why he was not sure of  his sexuality.

The consciousness comes quite late, but it comes with the memory of this incident.

Joe

In the passage David goes to a bar with Jacques and meets Giovanni, the bartender.

This encounter makes it look almost surreal happening in the bar with Baldwin’s minute description of events. There's Jacques, the old rich guy from whom he has borrowed money, accompanying him. Then he sights Giovanni, the barman.

The novel Giovanni's Room, Joe realised is actually telling about a white American who in those post-war days had shipped out to Paris to find out who he was and what he wanted to do. And in this very quiet escape from the preset world of America where everything was familiar, he wanted to take a fresh view.

David begins his search with the holdover of an American girl who sort of wants to partner him, but has yet to decide. And she goes off to Spain to think, and David is left to fend for himself. He has no associates except this well-off older man, Jacques, who likes younger men and lends them money.

He goes pub-crawling. And there he meets and takes a shine to a man who's described as the ultimate exciting homosexual man would be described. You can immediately make out this is meant to be a gay man.

The inevitable happens, and when torn between the handsome Italian youth and an absent American girl, the double-minded David can't decide.

This is at the heart of the dilemma. David goes to Paris to find himself and get clarity. But because he is double-minded – which is true from beginning to end in this book – he can’t conclude his quest with a definitive answer. Although he's propelled impulsively toward Giovanni, he still can't make up his mind in this shabby place that Giovanni is the one he has been searching for.

David seems to enjoy a measure of comfort and love, but is unable to commit himself fully. This is what reminds one of an old maxim, actually the name of a book by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.”

He unable to will one thing. His girlfriend, Hella, comes back from Spain. The continuing double-mindedness leads to his unhappiness, and to Giovanni's self-destruction, and the murder. All the sunny hopes of a Parisian summer, which were held out by some of the earlier descriptions of the boulevards and pub crawling, and the cafes – all that just goes up in smoke.

People have drawn all kinds of lessons from this. One of the things that Baldwin said is that this is not a book about homosexuality. That's not what this is about.

Some others have said, oh, this is the inability to reconcile yourself to your preference, and you are still ashamed of who you are. In that view shame is the essential part of this novel.

Joe’s conclusion is that regardless of whether one is homosexual, or heterosexual, or any other kind of sexual, there is always the thrill of the first encounter with some kindred spirit who, in some way, makes an impression on your mind, and leaves a longing in the soul.

But a relationship cannot survive on a momentary thrill, and the hope that the thrill will continue. The thrill will not continue. It has to be converted into something else.

And that's what made Joe think about the very satisfying homosexual relationships of a long term nature between men he has read about, and lesbian relationships of a long term between women. There, something else replaces what originally sparked the fire of attraction between two people.

The tragedy here is that David and Giovanni can't find that. David can neither find it with his girl, nor with Giovanni.

Saras said it's almost as if he could find it, but he's scared, because he thinks what will people say. He says that they cannot live together because of the scandal it would cause. Though France was more open, he certainly knows he can't go back to America with a male partner. And he wants to have children. So he's basically very confused about his sexuality, Saras said.

KumKum felt exactly the same.

Saras said David loves Giovanni. Look at the part when Giovanni is in prison – it was very touching, actually. David imagines how Giovanni would be feeling inside in the cell. He's just scared. He's not ready to accept what he is. He feels everybody is looking at him and knows that he’s homosexual.

Saras continued: he sees some sailor and thinks he is looking at him. Then he feels some ladies are looking at him and they know that he's homosexual. He does love Giovanni, but pays too much mind to other people. He's not prepared to face the world with Giovanni as his companion.

Pamela agreed he is scared of the societal discrimination, which was much more at that time, and even now, it is not widely accepted.

Arundhaty noted that David was young, too young to pluck up the courage and take responsibility, with that kind of fearful consequence.

Ultimately, David caused pain to everybody, his father included.

He is prepared to get married to Hella and have children. He's old enough for that. He's just not prepared to act. He thinks giving in to his inclination of homosexuality  would be demeaning, and it would cast aspersions on his masculinity, according to Saras. That false idea of masculinity also enters into his thinking.

David says that he's becoming more and more camp (i.e. effeminate) when Giovanni goes on the job to earn money and he plays the woman keeping house for Giovanni. That's in the passage Saras will be reading.

Shoba

She chose the part where David is walking around in Paris. It's late. He looks into the houses, and sees the lights inside, and imagines families – fathers and mothers putting children to bed.

He's just longing for that life, even though it's impossible for him. He really wants to be what you call normal. This is the moment where, to a very high degree, he feels he is outside of the normal. He feels very alone and shaken because of that feeling.

The conflict in this book is that one part of him really longs for that. But then there's this other side, where he wants to be with a man.

Shoba remembers when she went to downtown Chicago once on a visit there was a gay pride parade, where she saw so many male couples being together. And the way they were dressed in high heels like women and wearing very short shorts and jewellery and all that – that was the first time Shoba was seeing a spectacle like that. 

Society also is to blame for the way we look at gay relationships. One wonders if that is the real problem. Readers agreed that society is the real problem here. It was not accepting. David wouldn't have had all these problems otherwise.

Will it ever be fully accepting, wondered Shoba? It’s a whole lot better now, and the laws are better but will we regress? You see signs now of things going back to where they were before.

One wonders how many of them are happy in their life, being like this. There are a lot of insecurities, said Arundhaty, regarding money, economy, jobs, everything. Everything in life is linked to this.

Devika mentioned there's a restaurant in Bengaluru called Sunny’s, a famous restaurant. It was one of the only places where you got really good Continental food. It's run by two guys who are gay. She met them more than 30-35 years ago. They've grown old now. And they have a dog, a Labrador, that they shared called Sunny.

Are they Indian, a reader asked. Yes, very much Indian, replied Devika.

The restaurant is on Lavelle Road:

https://www.instagram.com/sunnysrestaurantblr/

Earlier they would close by 7pm but now they are open during normal hours. Arun Sajnani is co-owner and chef and his partner is Vivek Ubhayankar.

Excellent food, continental food, and run by these two guys.

It was Devika’s first experience of meeting a gay couple because they lived in the same building as friends of her friend there, and one day they just walked in with this dog of theirs called Sunny. Later Devika’s friend told her they were a gay couple. This was in 1990.

Arundhaty’s daughter Shubhra has two women friends who live together, and have been together for many years. The parents have accepted it. The parents have given a house to them for living, which is rare. If you can afford it, and if the parents are broad-minded and accepting,  and the money is there, then they are able to express themselves. But even then, they have to keep the relationship under-stated, said Saras. 

Arundhaty said these two girls are doing a very good business, selling various natural products from Kodaikanal, living there. Nice kids.

Shoba must have enjoyed the novel with so many French phrases and expressions, said KumKum. You can see Carla Pettigrew’s web page for translations of the French phrases in Giovanni’s Room:

https://theremightbecupcakes.substack.com/p/french-translations-in-part-2-giovanni

KumKum said David’s confusion is beautifully rendered. How he longed to be a normal husband and father. That was the tragedy of this story. He tried both modes of living, heterosexual and homosexual, but was not comfortable in either.

He wanted to conform and build a normal family life, said Pamela. But he was also strongly attracted to Giovanni. What to do?

Pamela

Her passage is more about how David and Giovanni look at women. It really surprised Pamela that this is how men can think. That they can hold so low an opinion of women. They are both trying to convince themselves that probably it's better to be with a guy than with a woman.

Giovanni asks more questions of David and asks him to answer.

Joe said you can certainly see that of these two people, it's David who is confused. What on earth is his problem? – you feel like asking.

Saras agreed, Giovanni doesn't think it's wrong. His background is different. That's why one feels so sorry that he's the one who is punished in the end, said KumKum.

But David is confused, and is ashamed of his liking for Giovanni. Ashamed of it, yes. Shoba said Giovanni loved David more than David ever loved Giovanni. Ultimately, David was very cruel to him, thought Saras. Cruel to the girl, also, said KumKum.

He hurts his father too, in the end. He hurts the two people who are in his corner. Baldwin is very honest about portraying his protagonist as a totally miserable guy.

Arundhaty said in the end, David, while recalling all these things that happened and how it led to Giovanni's death penalty, is actually punishing himself and regretting what he has done. He knew that it was he who was the original cause of the murder.

In the part at the end, he's really wracked with guilt, said Devika. Which made Pamela curious to know how David’s life will go on after this book? The last para actually says the corruption had begun. It was all downhill now. Where did he land up?

Priya

Her passage flows into that of Saras. She was reading from the part where David has decided to leave Giovanni, and be with Hella. David is very unsure about the decision. He has definite homosexual inclinations, but is afraid to come out in the open about it. He's afraid of what society will say. And finally decides to choose sides, not live the life that he's leading with Giovanni.

Hella is back. So that's the tragedy. It was also a time when people had to hide their identity. Society wasn't open at all. The main theme of this book is thus revealed, said Priya.

Priya reading selected passage – audio

Priya‘s passage flows into what Saras will be reading.

Joe said this passage shows, as we have been discussing earlier too, that Giovanni is very clear about his commitment and his desire. And he's trying to shake David out of his vacillation and clarify his mind. Finally, he makes a damning accusation that David will never love anyone at this rate:

“You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror – you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs!”, Giovanni says to David.

It’s a very striking passage. Joe believes that this is where the author is coming out and stating very clearly what is the central flaw in one of the characters that he has created. Of course, authors create characters with flaws, every one of them.

Saras will then continued the passage of Priya.

Saras

It's so sad. Finally, Giovanni has accepted that David is not going to stay, no matter what he says.

Arundhaty

When she started reading this book, somewhere in the middle, there was a mention of Giovanni awaiting his death in prison. She kept thinking, what could Giovanni have done to reach this ultimate predicament?

This is the passage where the author reveals what actually happened to condemn Giovanni to such a fate – the desperate situation that Giovanni found himself in after David left, in which he is driven to commit a murder, not intentional or pre-mediated.

It is intentional perhaps, but not a premeditated crime. This was a homicide, and extenuating circumstances should have prevented the death penalty from being applied. The death penalty  was abolished in 1981 in France and later explicitly banned in the Constitution by a 2007 amendment, with France now actively supporting the universal abolition of capital punishment worldwide. 

The final passages of the novel steadily leads the reader through the Giovanni’s moral decline and financial slump, as narrated by David after he abandons Giovanni. He transforms gradually into a feminine fairy kind of person after David left him. That is probably because of his insecurities.

Giovanni befriended Jacques, and after that he was walking around Paris. David watches from a distance how Giovanni is slowly is going down, which also means that David is not able to actually let go of Giovanni fully. He's following Giovanni around and watching what is happening to him.

Arundhaty said it is clear that gay people were exploited because of their sexual preference; they were vulnerable in those days, and desperation pushed them to the wall to commit such crimes. Later, the owner of the bar where Giovanni worked is found dead.

So Giovanni had actually left Jacques and he was going from bad to worse. He didn't have any money. Earlier when he lost his job in the bar, he asked David whether his father had sent him money or not.

So when David left him, he was dependent on this job to support himself. And after that, when they parted ways, he had nothing and nowhere to go. That's when he started looking like those boys, not so well-dressed anymore.

He went and asked Guillaume, the bar-owner, for his job back. But the owner would give it back only in return for sexual favours from Giovanni.

Giovanni at that point had had enough of Guillaume and from utter disgust choked him to death – he was found strangled with the sash of dressing gown.

Devika

Devika confessed she really had not done as much reading as she normally does, and apologised. But the other readers were more than happy to see Devika, smiling and restored after a scheduled treatment.

She has been travelling a bit to recover and recuperate at resorts. She was  exhausted when the novel session came around. But she had chosen the passage and sent it for inclusion way back; now she felt a little bit better, and this participation was a relief. Devika is usually the first one to choose a passage and put it on RSFUS.

Pamela said she was happy that Devika appeared on screen for us to see – her presence is a reward for us. Devika’s passage concerns David’s guilt which is manifest in the last part where Giovanni goes to trial and pleads guilty.

It's very touching, said KumKum – this relationship is so perilous, and everything militates against it, and the two people – it’s bad for both of them, as Arundhaty stated.

Shoba remarked that in a straight relationship, the children play a big part in keeping the relationship going in the long term.  The shared love of parents for their children is a cement.

Pamela raised the question to what extent homosexuality is a condition of the mind – how much of it is biological, and how much psychological? It seems as if the biological condition is so overpowering that they are unable to help themselves, said Arundhaty. That becomes a primary factor in their life.

But is it more of a biological condition, or is it a psychological condition? – Pamela asked again.

Joe said in his opinion calling it a ‘psychological condition’ is the source of all the cruelty that has happened in the past. Because people then say, “Oh, we can convert him. We can put him through a process, and then he'll come out straight.”

This has been repeatedly shown by research to be an entirely false line of thinking. It is just a statistical fact that something like 6% to 8% of people all over the world are attracted to partners of the same sex. That's it.

Now, if they of their own accord say, “Okay, I want to compromise with society, and though I'm a guy who yearns for another guy, I'll get married because my parents say I should get married, and I must have children, and so on and so forth” – they reconcile themselves to that.

But then they live a very false life, and it'll come through to the potential wife who is married to such a person.

It's best that society realises this. Joe said he is  very happy that in India, we have appreciated at long last by a Supreme Court verdict that there are people like that, and you can't go around trying to convert them to some straight line, and deny them equal status with the rest of us. In 2018, the Supreme Court of India decriminalised homosexual acts by striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India case, which was a historic victory for LGBTQ+ rights. 

Devika said there was a Malayalam movie recently starring Mammootty, called Kaathal – The Core. In the story he lives with his wife, and has a daughter but he is not in a relationship with her, in reality, having had intercourse with her only 4 times in 20 years. His wife files for divorce and the distraught father reveals that he knew from his son’s childhood that he was thus inclined but pressured him to marry. Later the divorce goes through and the Mammooty’s character, a bank manager, steps out to find a husband for his former wife.

Kaathal, film starring Mammooty and Jyothika

There is another Malayalam movie of a transgender girl who acts as a guy and the father is proud of his son – but finally, she says, she wants to be a woman. It is a very beautifully done movie.

Even the Mammootty movie was very sensitively done. It was brave of Mammootty, a leading man who usually plays the hero to do that role. Kaathal is generally used in Malayalam to mean the ‘core’ or ‘essence’ of something, but it can also mean love, the Tamil meaning.

Saras asked Joe if he noticed the sentences in the book, the number of commas embedded in them? Very different from the editing that is now donw in books to structure the sentences.

In this novel there are a lot of commas in each sentence, commas separating the phrases. In modern novels the sentences are very short, and to the point, said Saras. The newer books are very different in their editing.

And even if the sentences are long, there's not always punctuation to help you, agreed Joe. The whole thing is like some stream of words going through your mind as a reader, and you have to put in the pauses.

Pamela found the sentences in this novel having a sense of speed, moving much faster than the normal books. The storytelling is also fast-paced. But the author does slow it down when he wants to dwell on something, like in the passage that Joe read, where he's talking about Giovanni appearing in the scene in the bar. Yes, that is slow, Pamela agreed.

Saras noticed David keeps talking about Giovanni's hair. The passage KumKum read is also very slow. Love coming out. It's so beautifully written.

 

Joe said Baldwin is a first rate author, there's no question about it. But the punctuation may also sometimes depends on the editor. Styles change over the years. 

Arundhaty mentioned about her grandson’s latest innovations

The next session is Poetry is on October 30, an open session, with no constraint on the type of poetry.

Please think of books to read next year, KumKum pleaded. Don't leave it for the last moment. The last novel of the year is Joe's selection, actually a novella, Conan Doyle's, The Hound of the Baskervilles. It features Sherlock Holmes.

January 2026 is going to be short story month by a single author. We have experimented with short stories before, and it works, e.g. Manto and Edgar Allan Poe. What didn't work was plays.

We therefore have short stories, romantic poets, poetry of different kinds, and novels.

The Readings

KumKum

Part 1 Ch 1 David’s first homosexual encounter

When we came back along those streets it was quiet; we were quiet too. We were very quiet in the apartment and sleepily got undressed in Joey’s bedroom and went to bed. I fell asleep—for quite awhile, I think. But I woke up to find the light on and Joey examining the pillow with great, ferocious care.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I think a bedbug bit me.’

‘You slob. You got bedbugs?’

‘I think one bit me.’

‘You ever have a bedbug bite you before?’

‘No.’

‘Well, go back to sleep. You’re dreaming.’

He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big. It was as though he  had just discovered that I was an expert on bedbugs. I laughed and grabbed his head as I had done God knows how many times before, when I was playing with him or when he had annoyed me. But this time when I touched him something happened in him and in me which made this touch different from any touch either of us had ever known. And he did not resist, as he usually did, but lay where I had pulled him, against my chest. And I realized that my heart was beating in an awful way and that Joey was trembling against me and the light in the room was very bright and hot. I started to move and to make some kind of joke but Joey mumbled something and I put my head down to hear. Joey raised his head as I lowered mine and we kissed, as it were, by accident. Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person’s body, of another person’s smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened, I am sure he was frightened too, and we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then. Great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding intolerable pain came joy, we gave each other  joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love. (417 words)

Joe

Part 1 Ch 2 – David goes to a bar with Jacques and meets Giovanni, the bartender.

Now someone whom I had never seen before came out of the shadows toward me. It looked like a mummy or a zombie—this was the first, overwhelming impression—of something walking after it had been put to death. And it walked, really, like someone who might be sleep-walking or like those figures in slow motion one sometimes sees on the screen. It carried a glass, it walked on its toes, the flat hips moved with a dead, horrifying lasciviousness. It seemed to make no sound; this was due to the roar of the bar, which was like the roaring of the sea, heard at night, from far away. It 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, revealed a hairless chest and a silver crucifix; the shirt was covered with round, paper-thin wafers, red and green and orange and yellow and blue, which stormed in the light and made one feel that the mummy might, at any moment, disappear in flame. A red sash was around  the waist, the clinging pants were a surprisingly sombre grey. He wore buckles on his shoes.

I was not sure that he was coming toward me but I could not take my eyes away. He stopped before me, one hand on his hip, looked me up and down, and smiled. He had been eating garlic and his teeth were very bad. His hands, I noticed, with an unbelieving shock, were very large and strong.

‘Eh bien,’ he said, ‘il te plait?’

‘Comment?’ I said.

I really was not sure I had heard him right, though the bright, bright eyes, looking, it seemed, at something amusing within the recess of my skull, did not leave much room for doubt.

‘You like him—the barman?’

I did not know what to do or say. It seemed impossible to hit him, it seemed impossible to get angry. It did not seem real, he did not seem real. Besides—no matter what I said, those eyes would mock me with it. I said, as drily as I could:

‘How does that concern you?’

‘But it concerns me not at all, darling. Je m’en fou.’

‘Then please get the hell away from me.’

He did not move at once, but smiled at me again. ‘Il est dangereux, tu sais. And for a boy like you—he is very dangerous.’

I looked at him. I almost asked him what he meant. ‘Go to hell,’ I said, and turned my back.

‘Oh, no,’ he said—and I looked at him again. He was laughing, showing all his teeth—there were not many. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I go not to hell,’ and he clutched his crucifix with one large hand. ‘But you, my dear friend—I fear that you shall burn in a very hot fire.’ He laughed again. ‘Oh, such fire!’ He touched his head. ‘Here.’ And he writhed, as though in torment. ‘Everywhere.’ And he touched his heart. ‘And here.’ And he looked at me with malice and mockery and something else; he looked at me as though I was very far away. ‘Oh, my poor friend, so young, so strong, so handsome—will you not buy me a drink?’

‘Va te faire foutre.’ (575 words)

Pamela Part 2 Ch 1 David and Giovanni discuss women

'Oh, women! There is no need, thank heaven, to have an opinion about women. Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know?—and they can be that shallow. And that dirty.' He stopped. 'I perhaps don't like women very much, that's true. That hasn't stopped me from making love to many and loving one or two. But most of the time-most of the time I made love only with the body.

'That can make one very lonely, I said. I had not expected to say it.

He had not expected to hear it. He looked at me and reached out and touched me on the cheek. 'Yes,' he said. Then 'I am not trying to be méchant when I talk about women. I respect women—very much-for their inside life, which is not like the life of a man.'

'Women don't seem to like that idea,' I said.

'Oh, well, said Giovanni, 'these absurd women running around today, full of ideas and nonsense, and thinking themselves equal to men - quelle rigolade!-they need to be beaten half to death so that they can find out who rules the world.'

I laughed. 'Did the women you knew like to get beaten?' He smiled. 'I don't know if they liked it. But a beating never made them go away. We both laughed. 'They were not, any way, like that silly little girl of yours, wandering all over Spain and sending postcards back to Paris. What does she think she is doing?

Does she want you or does she not want you?'

'She went to Spain,' I said, 'to find out.'

Giovanni opened his eyes wide. He was indignant. 'To Spain.

Why not to China? What is she doing, testing all the Spaniards and comparing them with you?'

I was a little annoyed. 'You don't understand,' I said. 'She is a very intelligent, very complex girl, she wanted to go away and think.'

'What is there to think about? She sounds rather silly, I must say. She just can't make up her mind what bed to sleep in. She wants to eat her cake and she wants to have it all.'

'If she were in Paris now,' I said, abruptly, 'then I would not be in this room with you.'

"You would possibly not be living here,' he conceded, 'but we would certainly be seeing each other, why not?'

'Why not? Suppose she found out?'

'Found out? Found out what?'

'Oh stop it,' I said. "You know what there is to find out.' He looked at me very soberly. 'She sounds more and more impossible, this little girl of yours. What does she do, follow you everywhere? Or will she hire detectives to sleep under our bed?

And what business is it of hers, anyway?'

'You can't possibly be serious,' I said.

'I certainly can be,' he retorted, 'and I am. You are the incomprehensible one. He groaned and poured more coffee and picked up our cognac from the floor. 'Chez toi everything sounds extremely feverish and complicated, like one of those English murder mysteries. To find out, to find out, you keep saying, as though we were accomplices in a crime. We have not committed any crime.' He poured the cognac.

'It's just that she'll be terribly hurt if she does find out, that's all.

People have very dirty words for-for this situation. I stopped. His face suggested that my reasoning was flimsy. I added, defensively'Besides, it is a crime – in my country, and, after all, I didn't grow up here, I grew up there? (607 words)

Zakia Part 2 Ch 2 David is brought to Giovanni’s dirty room to transform his life

I remember the first afternoon I woke up there, with Giovanni fast asleep beside me, heavy as a fallen rock. The sun filtered through the room so faintly that I was worried about the time. I stealthily lit a cigarette, for I did not want to wake Giovanni. I did not yet know how I would face his eyes. I looked about me.

Giovanni had said something in the taxi about his room being very dirty. 'I'm sure it is,' I had said lightly, and turned away from him, looking out of the window. Then we had both been silent. When I woke up in his room, I remembered that there had been something strained and painful in the quality of that silence; which had been broken when Giovanni said, with a shy, bitter smile: 'I must find some poetic figure.'

And he spread his heavy fingers in the air, as though a metaphor were tangible. I watched him.

'Look at the garbage of this city,' he said, finally, and his fingers indicated the flying street, 'all of the garbage of this city? Where do they take it? I don't know where they take it-but it might very well be my room.'

'It's much more likely,' I said, 'that they dump it into the Seine?

But I sensed, when I woke up and looked around the room, the bravado and the cowardice of his figure of speech. This was not the garbage of Paris, which would have been anonymous: this was Giovanni's regurgitated life.

Before and beside me and all over the room, towering like a wall, were boxes of cardboard and leather, some tied with string, some locked, some bursting, and out of the topmost box before me spilled down sheets of violin music. There was a violin in the room, lying on the table in its warped, cracked case-it was impossible to guess from looking at it whether it had been laid to rest there yesterday or a hundred years before. The table was loaded with yellowing newspapers and empty bottles and it held a single brown and wrinkled potato in which even the sprouting eyes were rotten. Red wine had been spilled on the floor, it had been allowed to dry and it made the air in the room sweet and heavy. 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. And I stared at the room with the same nervous, calculating extension of the intelligence and of all one's forces which occur when gauging a mortal and unavoidable danger: at the silent walls of the room with its distant, archaic lovers trapped in an interminable rose garden, and the staring windows, staring like two great eyes of ice and fire, and the ceiling which lowered like those clouds out of which fiends have sometimes spoken and which obscured but failed to soften its malevolence behind the yellow light which hung like a diseased and undefinable sex in its center. Under this blunted arrow, this smashed flower of light lay the terrors which encompassed Giovanni's soul. 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. This life could only be my own, which, in order to transform Giovanni's, must first become a part of Giovanni's room. (634 words)

Shoba Part 2 Ch 3 Giovanni muses on a future with children as he walks through Paris

The city, Paris, which I loved so much, was absolutely silent.

There seemed to be almost no one on the streets, although it was still very early in the evening. Nevertheless, beneath me-along the river bank, beneath the bridges, in the shadow of the walls, I could almost hear the collective, shivering sigh-were lovers and ruins, sleeping, embracing, coupling, drinking, staring out at the descending night. Behind the walls of the houses I passed, the French nation was clearing away the dishes, putting little Jean Pierre and Marie to bed, scowling over the eternal problems of the sou, the shop, the church, the unsteady State. Those walls, those shuttered windows, held them in and protected them against the darkness and the long moan of this long night. Ten years hence, little Jean Pierre and Marie might find themselves out here beside the river and wonder, like me, how they had fallen out of the web of safety. What a long way, I thought, I've come-to be destroyed!

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. I wanted a woman to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, where I could always be renewed. It had been so once; it had almost been so once. I could make it so again, I could make it real. It only demanded a short, hard strength for me to become myself again.

I saw a light burning beneath our door as I walked down the corridor. Before I put my key in the lock the door was opened from within. Giovanni stood there, his hair in his eyes, laughing. (325 words)

Priya

Part 2 Ch 4, When David decides to part ways from Giovanni

'Giovanni,' I said, "you always knew that I would leave one day. You knew my fiancée was coming back to Paris.'

'You are not leaving me for her, he said. You are leaving me for some other reason. You lie so much, you have come to believe all your own lies. But I, I have senses. You are not leaving me for a woman. If you were really in love with this little girl, you would not have had to be so cruel to me.'

'She's not a little girl,' I said. 'She's a woman and no matter what you think, I do love her...'

'You do not,' cried Giovanni, sitting up, love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror-you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs!

You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it — man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap— and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime. He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. 'You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you-you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?'

'Giovanni, stop it! For God's sake, stop it! What in the world do you want me to do? I can't help the way I feel.'

'Do you know how you feel? Do you feel? What do you feel?'

'I feel nothing now,' I said, 'nothing. I want to get out of this room, I want to get away from you, I want to end this terrible scene.'

'You want to get away from me.' He laughed; he watched me; the look in his eyes was so bottomlessly bitter it was almost benevolent.

'At last you are beginning to be honest. And do you know why you want to get away from me?'

Inside me something locked. 'I-I cannot have a life with you,' I said.

(479 words)

Saras Part 2 Ch 4 The final painful parting, as Giovanni proposes une séparation de corps

'But you can have a life with Hella. With that moon-faced little girl who thinks babies come out of cabbages—or frigidaires, I am not acquainted with the mythology of your country. You can have a life with her.'

'Yes,' I said, wearily, I can have a life with her.' I stood up. I was shaking. 'What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? All this love you talk about— isn't it just that you want to be made to feel strong? You want to go out and be the big laborer and bring home the money, and you want me to stay here and wash the dishes and cook the food and clean this miserable closet of a room and kiss you when you come in through that door and lie with you at night and be your little girl. That's what you want. That's what you mean and that's all you mean when you say you love me. You say I want to kill you. What do you think you've been doing to me?'

'I am not trying to make you a little girl. If I wanted a little girl, I would be with a little girl.'

'Why aren't you? Isn't it just that you're afraid? And you take me because you haven't got the guts to go after a woman, which is what you really want?'

He was pale. 'You are the one who keeps talking about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want.'

'But I'm a man,' I cried, 'a man! What do you think can happen between us?'

'You know very well,' said Giovanni slowly, 'what can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.' He got up and walked to the window and opened it. 'Bon,' he said. He struck his fist once against the window sill. 'If I could make you stay, I would,' he shouted. 'If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.' He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. 'One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.'

It's cold,' I said. 'Close the window.'

He smiled. 'Now that you are leaving—you want the windows closed. Bien sûr.' He closed the window and we stood staring at each other in the center of the room. 'We will not fight any more,' he said, fighting will not make you stay. In French we have what is called une séparation de corps—not a divorce, you understand, just a separation. Well. We will separate. But I know you belong with me. I believe, I must believe—that you will come back.'

'Giovanni,' I said, 'I'll not be coming back. You know I won't be back.'

-//-

He produced a bottle from beneath the sink. 'Jacques left a bottle of cognac here. Let us have a little drink—for the load, as I believe you people say sometimes.'

I watched him. He carefully poured two drinks. I saw that he was shaking—with rage, or pain, or both.

-//-

We drank. I could not keep myself from asking: 'Giovanni. What are you going to do now?'

'Oh,' he said, 'I have friends. I will think of things to do. Tonight, for example, I shall have supper with Jacques. No doubt, tomorrow night I shall also have supper with Jacques. He has become very fond of me. He thinks you are a monster.'

'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.'

That was the last time we really spoke to one another. I stayed with him until morning and then I threw my things into a bag and took them away with me, to Hella's place. (670 words)

Arundhaty Part 2 , Ch 4 David sees Giovanni around Paris, and later the owner of the bar where Giovanni worked is found dead

And from time to time, around the quarter, I ran into Giovanni. I dreaded seeing him, not only because he was almost always with Jacques, but also because, though he was often rather better dressed, he did not look well. I could not endure something at once abject and vicious which I began to see in his eyes, nor the way he giggled at Jacques' jokes, nor the mannerisms, a fairy's mannerisms, which he was beginning, sometimes, to affect. I did not want to know what his status was with Jacques; yet the day came when it was revealed to me in Jacques' spiteful and triumphant eyes. And Giovanni, during this short encounter, in the middle of the boulevard as dusk fell, with people hurrying all about us, was really amazingly giddy and girlish, and very drunk – it was as though he were forcing me to taste the cup of his humiliation. And I hated him for this.

The next time I saw him it was in the morning. He was buying a newspaper. He looked up at me insolently, into my eyes, and looked away. I watched him diminish down the boulevard. When I got home, I told Hella about it, trying to laugh.

Then I began to see him around the quarter without Jacques, with the street-boys of the quarter, whom he had once described to me as 'lamentable.' He was no longer so well dressed, he was beginning to look like one of them. His special friend among them seemed to be the same, tall, pock-marked boy, named Yves, whom I remembered having seen briefly, playing the pinball machine, and, later, talking to Jacques on that first morning in Les Halles.

One night, quite drunk myself, and wandering about the quarter alone, I ran into this boy and bought him a drink. I did not mention Giovanni but Yves volunteered the information that he was not with Jacques any more. But it seemed that he might be able to get back his old job in Guillaume's bar. It was certainly not more than a week after this that Guillaume was found dead in the private quarters above his bar. strangled with the sash of his dressing gown. (369 words)

Devika

Part 2 Ch 5 – Giovanni goes to trial and pleads guilty

By the time we found this great house, it was clear......more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say. 

By the time we found this great house it was clear that I had no right to come here. By the time we found it, I did not even want to see it. But by this time, also, there was nothing else to do. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I thought, it is true, of remaining in Paris in order to be close to the trial, perhaps to visit him in prison. But I knew there was no reason to do this. Jacques, who was in constant touch with Giovanni’s lawyer, and in constant touch with me, had seen Giovanni once. He told me what I knew already, that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do for Giovanni any more.

Perhaps he wanted to die. He pleaded guilty, with robbery as the motive. The circumstances under which Guillaume had fired him received great play in the press. And, from the press, one received the impression that Guillaume had been a good-hearted, a perhaps somewhat erratic philanthropist who had had the bad judgment to befriend the hardened and ungrateful adventurer, Giovanni. Then the case drifted downward from the headlines. Giovanni was taken to prison to await trial.

And Hella and I came here. I may have thought—I am sure I thought, in the beginning—that, though I could do nothing for Giovanni, I might, perhaps, be able to do something for Hella. I must have hoped that there would be something Hella could do for me. And this might have been possible if the days had not dragged by, for me, like days in prison. I could not get Giovanni out of my mind, I was at the mercy of the bulletins which sporadically arrived from Jacques. All that I remember of the autumn is waiting for Giovanni to come to trial. Then, at last, he came to trial, was found guilty, and placed under sentence of death. All winter long I counted the days. And the nightmare of this house began.

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever  read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say. (382 words)