This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“People are too various to be treated
so lightly. I am too various to be
trusted. If this were not so I would not
be alone in this house tonight. Hella
would not be on the high seas. And
Giovanni would not be about to perish, sometime between this night and this
morning, on the guillotine.” – James Baldwin, Part One: Chapter One, Page 11
“And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the
very young inevitably undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge
him. And the very harshness of this
judgement, which broke my heart, revealed, though I could not have said it
then, how much I had loved him, how that love, along with my innocence, was
dying.” – James Baldwin, Part One: Chapter One, Page 21
“For I am – or I was – one of those people who pride
themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it
through. This virtue, like most virtues,
is ambiguity itself. People who believe
that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue
to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at
all – a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of
more things than can be named – but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion,
designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world
are not.” – James Baldwin, Part One: Chapter One, Page 24
Is This An Overview?
David is in the process of maturing, and wanting to be
independent. The need to take control of
one’s own life changes how David thinks.
Becoming harsher in judging others, as David’s innocence is dying. David believes that independence comes from
willpower that makes someone master of their own destiny. But this control comes from self-deception. Real decisions makes one humble due to the
various influences involved in outcomes.
Those who think that they can control their destiny require elaborate
systems of evasion to make themselves believe their own views of who they are
and what reality is.
Those who remember have to deal with the pain of their
decisions. Those who forget are in
denial of pain. This is a retrospective
story, of the pain of thinking about the past.
The self-denial of one’s own sexual identity. The pain the denial causes oneself and
others. Denial partly caused by a
culture that does not support homosexual behavior. This is a story of what David thinks of
Giovanni. What happens to Giovanni?
Caveats?
The way the story is told can make the book a bit difficult
to read. The theme is a sensitive topic
of how and why people cause emotional pain.
