![]() They thought the homosexuality in Giovanni’s Room would alienate the “certain audience” who bought his books. Baldwin had already established a considerable reputation with his superb first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, but his publisher Knopf Doubleday thought that reputation rested on Baldwin being an authority on the “negro problem”. There was no room for it.”Įven with those self-imposed restrictions, the novel faced a difficult journey to publication. I could not handle both propositions in the same book. “The sexual-moral light was a hard thing to deal with. “I certainly could not possibly have – not at that point in my life – handled the other great weight, the ‘negro problem’,” he said, in 1980. ![]() Baldwin explained that he populated Giovanni’s Room with white characters because he couldn’t bear the burden of writing about race issues and homosexuality in one book at that time. He had been arrested and was later guillotined … I saw him in the headlines, which reminded me that I was already working on him without knowing it.”īut that’s not to say that this novel is autobiographical. ![]() And, two or three days later, I saw his face in the headlines of a Paris paper. “We all met in a bar, there was a blond French guy sitting at a table, he bought us drinks. ![]()
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