GIOVANNI'S ROOM (Book Review)

I must admit that, when a book is termed a classic, I feel intimidated. I think of titles such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and James Joyce’s Ulysses. I assume the book will be challenging for my brain to access. The language will be too flowery and high-brow, perhaps even archaic. The dialogue will be too smart, as though only the author and select readers are in on the joke. I even dread the fact individual paragraphs may ramble on for a couple of pages. 

 

I pre-judge classics. I avoid them. Instead, I pick up a “beach read” without a pang of guilt.

 

This is why I told myself that I’d never read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin which is widely regarded as a gay classic. I got so far as checking it out once from the library, but I returned it when it came due, never having opened the cover. 

 

While helping clean out the house of Evan’s highly literate aunt who died of cancer in the fall, Giovanni’s Room stared at me from a bookshelf. I’d been looking for another title Pilar had recommended to me but, alas, never found it. Giovanni called my name. 

 

All right, dammit. I took it. 

 

I finally read it this past week. 

 

What surprised me from the first page was how accessible it was. If I had to reread sentences, it was on account of my drifting mind rather than Baldwin stuffing them with six-syllable synonyms for “happy” and prepositional phrases that leaned into Old English. Set mostly in Paris, it’s true that there were a fair number of French statements, but I understood most of them—perhaps Duolingo has actually done some good. Regardless, the French asides were not essential to understanding the story.  

 

Published seventy years ago, Giovanni’s Room is about an American in Paris, David, a blond man in his late twenties who likes to drink a lot and otherwise seems aimless. (It surprised me that the main character—and every character—was white since Baldwin was Black. Being ignorant of anything about the story, I’d at least looked forward to reading about a Black gay character.) 

 

David meets Giovanni, a bartender hired for his good looks at a gay bar owned by Guillaume, one of two older, richer gay men (the other being Jacques) whom David and Giovanni view with disgust but from whom they readily accept money. There is some clever conversation between David and Giovanni on that first night, the American versus the Italian, and it is Giovanni who declares, rather quickly, that they are friends. 

“Ah!” cried Giovanni. “Don’t you know when

you have made a friend?”

 

I knew I must look foolish and that my 

question was foolish too: “So soon?”

 

“Why no,” he said, reasonably, and 

looked at this watch, “we can wait

another hour if you like. We can be-

come friends then. Or we can wait

until closing time. We can become

friends then. Or we can wait until

tomorrow, only that means that you

must come in here tomorrow and

perhaps you have something else

to do.” He put his watch away and

leaned both elbows on the bar.

“Tell me,” he said. “what is this thing

about time? Why is it better to be

late than early? People are always

saying, we must wait, we must wait.

What are they waiting for?”

 

By morning, David, who may be bisexual or just very closeted—his girlfriend Hella is wandering Spain—has gone back to Giovanni’s room, a small unkempt maid’s chamber on the outskirts of Paris. David doesn’t have the money to continue paying for his own hotel room so he stays with Giovanni in the cramped space for several months until Hella’s return.

 

This is when things get complicated and matters unravel. David and Giovanni have fallen in love but David still tells himself he loves Hella. In fact, he is intent on marrying her. 

 

The story does not end well, the fate of one character mentioned on the third page of the novel. It’s how things get to that point that made me read to the end. 

 

While Giovanni’s Room turned out to be readable, I can’t say I loved it. The passage quoted above is my favourite part and, if there had been banter like that throughout, I would have been more entertained. But this is one of those books that is lite on action and heavy on the internal thinking of the main character. I’m not sure I even liked David and it probably didn’t help that he and Giovanni find Guillaume and Jacques disgusting mainly for the fact they are older, less attractive, less fit gay men. The older men are regularly referred to as vile—if anything they may be predatory regarding the two younger characters but Giovanni and David play the older two for money and, in Giovanni’s case, work. The lines seem blurry as to who’s preying on whom.

 

I am glad I finally read Giovanni’s Room. I don’t feel quite as shallow as a gay reader even as I track down one of Rachel Reid’s gay romances from the Game Changer series which led to the steamy TV series, Heated Rivalry. And, oh, how times have changed. Wikipedia’s entry about James Baldwin noted that Giovanni’s Room, “caused great controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.” Reading that remark, I am at a loss for what that content was. Most everything happens off the page and certainly there wasn’t anything explicit of the caliber of many of today’s gay works. Not that that does much for me. Really, I just wanted something more to happen on the page… something plot-driven, in particular.

 

One must-read gay novel finished. I have so many more to consider…

 

 

BANISHED BOOKS

Sometimes I subject myself to punishment. Not in a masochistic way. There’s no gratification. In this case, it was to affirm a sad truth I already knew. 

 

I’d had a medical appointment last week on Vancouver’s Davie Street which was once the heart of the city’s “gay village.” That always seemed sad in and of itself. There’s never been anything pretty about the street. There were gay bars and gay businesses scattered among a hodgepodge of other establishments—a bakery that always seemed to have a lot of flies doing aerobatic loops, a hardware store that made mops and dustpans look especially dull, an overrated Greek restaurant that always had people lining the sidewalk. I lived in the area for a year or two and avoided most of the spots, not needing an apricot Danish, another toilet bowl cleaner or an instant, unanimous rejection at Celebrities as Crystal Waters sang “100% Pure Love.” The videostore was my most frequent destination.

 

The clubs are still there though I haven’t been in one in about a decade. The hardware store and bakery remain. Same for the Greek restaurant though I don’t think it draws the lines it once did.  The videostore is, alas, long gone. 

 

After my appointment, I should have headed east to begin the half hour walk home, but I paused and opted to go one more block in the other direction. Tucked away off Davie Street is Little Sister’s, a business I first knew from its previous location on the second floor of an old house on Thurlow Street. Back then, in the ’90s, it was a queer bookstore that always had people milling about, checking out books and each other. This was a place to be amongst other queers without having to order a drink. If no one made a move to take you home, you could at least leave with a work of fiction by Paul Monette, Armistead Maupin or a hot, new author, “hot” because he had a certain way with words, not necessarily on account of his photo on the back flap. 

 

The bookstore is very much part of gay history in Vancouver. It endured an ongoing battle with the Canada Border Services Agency which blocked the importation of various books the authority deemed obscene. Little Sister’s sued the government in 1990 and the case slooowly made its way through the court system until, a full decade later, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favor of the bookstore, stating the border agency had violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects against discrimination based on, inter alia, sexual orientation. 

 

A book once banned from entry
into Canada for delivery to
Little Sister's.

Also, of note, the bookstore had been smoke-bombed three times at its prior location, acts of intimidation that did not lead to the business shuttering. Thus, Little Sister’s was more than a place to buy a book by Maupin, or the blocked children’s book, Belinda’s Bouquet, or maybe even a titillating magazine. Its struggles reflected our own, as it trudged on despite hatred and discrimination. 

 

In 1996, the bookstore opened at its new location. Its doors being twenty steps back from the other businesses on Davie, patrons could take the back alley and park behind the store, never to be seen by pedestrians and drivers on the busy street. It seemed ideal as there were many more closeted queers at the time. (Yes, I always checked for a spot in the back first.) I clearly remember going to the store when it first opened. While its prior location had books stuffed in boxes, crammed everywhere with limited opportunities to prominently display anything, the new spot had rows and rows of beautiful shelves, of cherry wood according to my recollection. I remember thinking the rent to be much higher and the bookcases alone must have been a huge budget item in the re-lo plan. It was a stunningly beautiful space, a true showcase for queer lit that seemed to elevate the city and its gay ghetto, the otherwise lackluster Davie Street. 

 

That was long ago. Back in 2013, I blogged how much had changed. The bookstore, then named Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium, seemed to retain the work “Book” in its sign as nothing more than a nod to the past. Gone were all the beautiful shelves. Gone were the books. The space was filled with those bright, cheaply made, Lycra and mesh short shorts and tank tops that are apropos for Pride parades, raves and not much else. There were prime displays of cock rings and dildos. Aside from a collection of greeting cards, I saw nothing to validate the word “Art” in the Little Sister’s sign either. It was a novelty store, a cross between International Male and a gay version of that ’80s mall standard, Spencer’s. A gay Barnes & Noble? Wishful thinking.

 

It’s that sort of thinking that made me opt for another walkthrough. I’d been buoyed in the past year by a new queer bookstore in Seattle. Seattle may be a UNESCO-designated  City of Literature, but surely Vancouverites didn’t just hike and build cock ring collections. We have just as much rain. Weren’t we readers, too? Couldn’t we enjoy in-person book browsing just as much? 

 

Hide and Seek: 
the book version

Hopeful, yes, but still I braced. I entered Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium, empty at 10:30 on the weekday morning, and it was like passing through a time capsule. Sadly, from 2013, not 1996. Gaudy rainbow clothing plus a vast supply of lube, dildos and those ring things. Books? Yes, I found a few, seemingly hidden on plain shelves, first a few hundred used books, then “newer” books against another wall—one shelf poetry, one shelf memoir, four shelves of other nonfiction, four shelves for children, five shelves fiction. Strangely, the two display shelves with book covers fully on view were placed as a seeming afterthought at the bottom of the bookcase, level with my shoes. Bookselling was clearly not the draw. 

 

I walked out, disheartened and bookless. If the place even remains in business based on a consistent demand for cock rings, let it be a decade before I take another punishing peek.

 

 

READ GAY BOOKS...PLEASE!

Support gay bookstores, too.
This one is in London.

Do gay men read books? One of my closest friends reads about two a week, but that’s one extreme. Another friend of mine hasn’t read a book since law school, three decades ago. He’s fond of saying, “I only read if it’s a menu.” That’s another extreme. According to Goodreads, I read thirty-two books in 2023, amounting to eight thousand pages. Not bad for a guy who has always been a slow reader.  

 

I have piles of books in my home and a steady number of titles on hold at the local library, their due dates and limited renewals creating artificial priorities in what gets read. Still, I’m pleased to have a well-established reading habit. While I can stretch Sunday’s New York Times over the course of a week and I read countless articles daily online, I love sticking with a book, seeing how a story or a single nonfiction topic plays out over a few hundred pages. A book offers me many hours of entertainment that I pace myself through over a week or sometimes more than a month. (Reflecting an apparent onset of adult ADHD, I can have up to five books on the go at a time.) I savor some reads, reading in smaller bites to extend the joy, while others demand to be devoured in bigger gulps. 

 

Admittedly, there are also some books that I struggle to maintain a commitment to finishing and a few I decide to abandon, reminding myself that time is precious and there is no need to stick with books that become irritating, pretentious and/or plain boring. A huge shout-out to Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader for getting real about reading! While Pennac’s first stated tenet is “the right not to read,” I’m hoping that 2024 is a year when more gay men commit to reading more books and, specifically, LGBTQ books.

 

A favourite gay read 
from recent years. 

To be even more specific: Please read gay books.

 

Do I sound like I’m begging? I am.

 

On Twitter, I follow a lot of gay men. A few of them post regularly about books they read, but so many more identify as “gaymers” in their profile and I get a sense they pass much of their free time playing video games and jumping aboard the bandwagon to stream “Fellow Travelers” or whatever movie/series/special is generating buzz at the moment. 

 

One of the gay books I
read this past year.

To each his own but, selfishly speaking, I really need gay men to be readers. I need them to read gay books and have a few good things to say about them, maybe even posting something positive, possibly creating a buzzy bookish blip on social media. (I just did a quick check of the latest tweets for common hashtags #booktwt and #BookTwitter and nothing in the LGBTQ realm popped up.) 

 

I am a gay writer. I write about various things—ice cream, coffee, mental health, even fly swatters once—but often I focus on something related to being gay. I journal occasionally as it can help me stop obsessing over a darker thought, but mostly I write with the hope someone else will read my work. If someone likes my writing and even comments on it, well, imagine me standing with my shoulders back, my head held high as I tell Dana Carvey’s Church Lady, “Yes. Isn’t that special!” We all need a little affirmation and writing is a solitary endeavor, the sole visitor so often being a voice in one’s head that constantly casts doubt: 

 

What are you doing this for? It’s just drivel. 

 

Why don’t you ever add zombies? 

 

An oldie but a goodie

I’ll say it again: Read gay books. Say something nice about them when possible and, if you can’t, then follow your mama’s advice, not saying anything at all.

 

If gay men don’t read gay books, publishers don’t have an incentive to put out gay books. They may genuinely love incoming gay manuscripts, but they are running a business. They love money more. Or, at the very least, they need it. Printing books costs money. Shipping books costs money. Same with paying for editors, cover designers, warehouse storage, office heat and lighting, ice cream and coffee. Plus all the other necessities of life.

 

If people aren’t buying or checking out gay books, if they aren’t talking about them on social media, if they aren’t leaving positive reviews and ratings on Goodreads, fewer gay books are released. The reason there are thousands of Chicken Soup for the Soul books is because people read them (or, at least, buy them). The same for sassy takes on kids’ books, like Go the F**k to Sleep. James Patterson, Colleen Hoover, Stephen King and now Britney Spears could get a publishing deal to print their grocery lists or their annotated log of bathroom behaviors because they’ve proven that people will buy their work. It’s a better bet for a publisher to put out Patterson Poops or Scatting with Britney than to print an amusing take on a suddenly single middle-aged gay character written by some unknown gay dude (me!) who has a blog that no one comments on. (Oh, how I’d welcome the occasion comment!)

 

A gay young adult
book I read last year.

It's feeling like more of an uphill battle to get gay fiction published these days. Enthusiasm for #LoveIsLove faded once the Supreme Court guaranteed marriage equality in 2015. Foolish as it may be, there’s a complacency about gay rights and no deeper yearning to read about gay lives. Trans rights are the current battleground along with spats over gender pronouns. Stories by and about trans or nonbinary characters are hot. Gay plots? Not so much.

 

Last year, I received a very discouraging email from a nonbinary, non-white literary agent after submitting the first fifty pages of my still unpublished novel. They stated that “nothing is throwing me off [by your writing] aside from the VERY obvious which is that white men aren’t usually the best fit for my list.” They then openly wondered if “fiction primarily about gay men has kind of peaked already.” 

 

Um...maybe shorts instead?

Peaked? How did my identity become nothing more than a passé trend? Good god, tell me I’m not the equivalent to cargo pants (blech!), Crocs (horrors!) and distressed jeans that flash full knees through oversized holes.

 

After George Floyd was killed and protests broke out, the publishing industry, like so many other businesses, faced scrutiny over declarations of support for racial justice and minority rights. The words were right, but was there anything to back them up? Where was the diversity in the editors on staff, in agents at firms, in authors on publication and representation lists and in the characters and subject matter that got published? 

 

100%!

Since 2020, it seems to have become standard practice for agents to post in their official agency bios and on their manuscript wish lists a statement like, “I am committed to advocating for the work of authors and artists with marginalized identities” or, “We are looking to engage with work by writers from historically underrepresented communities, including—but not limited to—those who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, disabled, neurodivergent, or LGBTQIA+.”

 

A powerful book set
during the AIDS crisis.

For a while, I felt optimistic. I’m gay! I’ve been marginalized! I lived through the AIDS crisis. Hell, I lived more than a decade in Texas. I grew up hearing repeatedly that “my kind” was a bunch of perverts who mixed with pedophiles. Why distinguish though? We were probably pedophiles, too. And recruiters who actively sought to see families disintegrate. I was often patronizingly regarded as a sinner who was loved but whose sin was hated. Sorry, but if you hate an immutable aspect of my identity, I’m never gonna feel the love. 

 

So, yes, hurray! Diverse stories! My time had come. People wanted to publish my stories!

 

David Sedaris is one of
the best known gay writers,
but so many more authors
deserve to be published.

But it turns out they didn’t. I may have been marginalized, underrepresented and subject to hate and discrimination but not marginalized, underrepresented or subject to hate and discrimination enough. Those opening the gates for more storytellers still controlled the criteria. It seemed like there were only so many spaces saved for the underrepresented and thus it became a contest. Minorities were pitted against one another. Representing a trans author held more cachet than a gay author. A Black gay author looked better on an agent’s profile than a white gay author. 

 

I do not dispute that people who are Black or trans have felt more discrimination on a consistent basis. Being white and male, as the nonbinary agent insinuated, I was privileged which, in some regards, is certainly true, but much of that depends on passing as straight, keeping my gayness in check, liking Sam Smith but not dressing like them or endorsing (or, heaven forbid, adopting) their pronoun preferences. 

 

I did not feel privileged going through school and being mocked relentlessly for my effeminate mannerisms, my total lack of athletic skills and my gravitation to hanging out with girls at recess. I did not feel privileged during my thirty years as an educator, first fearing I’d be fired working in Catholic schools, then worrying about students mutinying and parents pushing for my reassignment (or their child’s transfer) if my gayness were known. It’s why I started this blog anonymously and then wrote under a pseudonym. 

 

A funny book I
reread last year.

I schooled the self-righteous millennial nonbinary agent who lumped me in with all white cisgender men. Technically, I know I am also nonbinary, but I haven’t officially adopted this identity. It wasn’t available during my prolonged coming out years. Getting myself to accept and eventually embrace gay felt like enough of a process. In the past decade, I’ve unveiled all sorts of assigned mental health labels and tried to be open, setting an example in my own effort to break the accompanying stigmas. In terms of myself, I’ve experienced label overload.

 

When one minority status is lifted up over another for one or two spots, it’s tokenism. It also pits us against one another, dividing rather than uniting us. The fact I’ve feel compelled to say, even beg, READ GAY feels unsavory but a matter of creative survival. 

 

Definitely a thought-
provoking read from 
the past year

In the past year, I’ve read books by authors who identified as ace, nonbinary, trans, Black, Korean, Chinese, Jewish, Muslim and polyamorous. The gay authors I’ve read are white, Black, Latino, Jewish and one who was overwhelmingly stuffy and pretentious. I’m rather certain there was a Wiccan in the mix, but I can’t recall who. Some of these authors carry multiple labels. Some choose not to air all of them, hoping one or two labels are enough to entice an agent and editor to give their work a closer look. 

 

Read all kinds of diverse books. 

 

One of the classics I'm 
determined to read this year...
but not while wearing 
these jeans!

In the end, however, I must advocate for myself and for my aspiring cohort of gay writers. Some who are luckier, younger and more talented do manage to break through. Read something gay. As I’ve already stated, if you like it, tell people, in person and on social media. Maybe even tell the writer. (You’ll make his day, I assure you.) If you don’t like it, just mark it as “read” and move on. Negative reviews are fun to write but they don’t need to be published across any format. If you’re having a really bad day, enjoy an extra scoop of salted caramel ice cream in a waffle cone, but walk away from any temptation to drop a one-star review—that goes for all creative folks and virtually all restaurants and hotels. (If you must, air your gripes privately and directly. It’s more constructive, especially if delivered with a respectful tone.) 

 

Currently reading...

After reading one gay book, maybe read another. Is that asking too much? 

 

One will do. You’ve just supported the arts. Let Love Is Love mutate into something broader and longer lasting. Thank you for your patronage!