What do you think?
Rate this book
Another Country
From one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century—a novel of sexual, racial, political, artistic passions, set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France.
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.
448 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1962
About the author
James Baldwin
346 books14.4k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
Works of American writer James Arthur Baldwin, outspoken critic of racism, include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a novel, and Notes of a Native Son (1955), a collection of essays.
James Arthur Baldwin authored plays and poems in society.
He came as the eldest of nine children; his stepfather served as a minister. At 14 years of age in 1938, Baldwin preached at the small fireside Pentecostal church in Harlem. From religion in the early 1940s, he transferred his faith to literature with the still evident impassioned cadences of black churches. From 1948, Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France but often returned to the United States of America to lecture or to teach.
In his Giovanni's Room, a white American expatriate must come to terms with his homosexuality. In 1957, he began spending half of each year in city of New York.
James Baldwin offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s.
He first partially autobiographically accounted his youth. His influential Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time informed a large white audience. Another Country talks about gay sexual tensions among intellectuals of New York. Segments of the black nationalist community savaged his gay themes. Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers stated the Baldwin displayed an "agonizing, total hatred of blacks." People produced Blues for Mister Charlie , play of Baldwin, in 1964. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, defended Baldwin.
Going to Meet the Man and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone provided powerful descriptions. He as an openly gay man increasingly in condemned discrimination against lesbian persons.
From stomach cancer, Baldwin died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. People buried his body at the Ferncliff cemetery in Hartsdale near city of New York.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,251 reviews
April 21, 2024
‘Love was a country he knew nothing about.’
Where would we be without love? It uplifts, it hurts, it sends us ricocheting with one another across existence, and we all grapple with consuming or being consumed by one another in its name as we struggle to apply our love with that of another. ‘Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,’ James Baldwin wrote in his nonfiction work, The Fire Next Time, and the duality of understanding or being understood with the fear of being truly perceived drives much of Another Country, a striking portrait of the ways society informs our collisions of love that we all use as a method of chipping away at ourselves to discover our identities. It tells the stories of a group of young people living in Greenwich Village in the 70s, ‘all equal in misery, confusion, and despair,, as they inflict one another with themselves in emotional and sexual relations. At the heart of this is Rufus, a Black musician who’s relationship with the white Leona exposes the struggles of being Black in America, and the reverberations of his life are constantly felt against the lives of his friends, family and former lovers in searing portrait of the obfuscations of being human in a world with obdurate social enforcement on the ways we can love. There is tragedy in the miscommunications of love, worst when it is an unrequited love affair with a world which, instead of love, shows only scorn back through society to those who are Black or queer. Brilliant and impossible to put down, feelings at once a quick read and a hefty psychological investigation into gendered interactions and racism, Another Country tackles the ineffable sadness and hunger of finding oneself in the chaos of human relations.
‘Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.’
James Baldwin can WRITE. I mean, this is a 400pg book that breezes by from the way his prose grabs you by the heart and makes it beat to its rhythm, driving you like a bassline across the story in which his characters seem so alive on the page that you begin to wonder if they are your friends as well. The writing moves like jazz. He has heavily punctuated sentences where the commas and dashes drive the writing forward like a drum beat, propelling the reader through melodies of struggle and understanding but also bringing the city to life, thrumming along to the beat. The locations become characters in their own right: New York reads as a violent cacophony of hectic lives, Harlem rolls out as ‘sexual excitement, with danger, like a promise, waiting,’ whereas France vibes calm and slow through the novel. While reading this it felt akin to the writing and psychological narratives of Fyodor Dostoevsky, something I felt justified in when Baldwin name drops him multiple times in the first half, but the book engulfs you with it’s world and makes you feel like you are there engaging and complicit in all the uncomfortable glory of it’s story. Plus there are passages that just read with such intensity, life a fever dream of insight taking flight in his prose, with waves of emotion and scorching critiques of love such as:
Baldwin can transport you through the stratosphere with philosophical musings then abruptly return you to the mundanities of life with expertise, playing your mind like a jazz horn then returning you to sipping your drink watching it all unfold. Baldwin has a lot to say, and despite the decades that have elapsed since this first went to print, it is all just as relevant today.
‘It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.’
Love is often used in metaphors about being consumed. Think of phrases like ‘loves burning flame,’ or the idea of giving oneself to another. As we see in Another Country, each person’s ideas of love is unique, and the ways we brush up against one another with our individual aims of love often hurts those we love most. Love is dropping your armor and being most vulnerable, opening up to the possibility of hurt. Baldwin shows this is just part of love, such as when Cass says to her husband, Richard
Love is shown as both creation and destruction, a dual imagery not unlike the way waves are used in the novel: the black waves of destruction Rufus hallucinates compared to the way Eric says Yves' voice washed over him in soothing waves. But, tragically, all the loves of the novel find friction in the variances each person tries to love the other. Cass, for instance, feels like housekeeper ignored by Richard who spends all his time working, but for Richard working to provide is how he feels he should show love (this is getting into some Five Love Language territory, but you see what I mean). These aren’t portraits of problematic people per say—though they are all problematic and hurt and betray each other—but merely people as people are with all their flaws, fears, foibles and failures. It is quite moving and Baldwin embodies individual perspectives across race and gender with extraordinary dexterity that truly brings them to life.
‘His life, passions, trials, loves, were, at worst, filth, and, at best, disease in the eyes of the world, and crimes in the eyes of his countrymen.’
Often we see that external forces are also acting upon the characters, adding friction to already perilous affairs. When Rufus and Leona first get together, there is an immediate air of distaste aimed at them when they go out into public for being a mixed race couple. ‘[Rufus] has not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy,’ and this unease seeps into him, making him react violently with rage and jealousy at Leona, or picking fights with any white man he perceives to be looking down on him. Similarly we see how being queer is equally looked down upon, and the intersection of Black and queer only exponentially raises the ire of society. This novel does contain a lot of domestic abuse and toxic masculinity, be forewarned, yet Baldwin refrains from passing judgment on his characters and never directs the reader to either. Instead, everyone is handled sympathetically, allowing you to see the social forces that back them into corners. Baldwin never negates their actions with the causes as understanding does not mean condoning, but he does pull back the psychological curtains to see the forces at work which understandably lead to so much suffering, rage and insecurity.
‘And what were these terrors? They were buried beneath the impossible language of the time, lived underground where nearly all of the time's true feeling spitefully and incessantly fermented. ’
They say society in the US is a melting pot, but it is more of a violent blender with blades that hack away. Being Black is to be in danger in the America, Baldwin argues, and we see how even some of the well-meaning white characters fail to understand it. We have Jane who weaponizes her whiteness and, when shouting of her white womanhood feeling threatened by a Black man, causes a bar fight nearly killing Rufus and Vivaldo. Cass must even explain that, sure, bad things happen to everyone ‘but they didn’t happen to you because you are white,’ she tells Richard, but the troubles and gatekeeping that befalls Rufus ‘happens because they are colored. And that makes a difference.’ The racism, faced by Baldwin as well causing him to leave the US to live in France where he wrote this book, is seen as a function of US society that keeps Black people down on purpose while claiming to be the land of opportunity. As Ida says to Cass:
Ida calls bullshit on the whole proclamation of freedom in the US, looking at all the progress only to be held back (such as Jim Crow laws) and recognizes freedom means White Only. But everyone must playact otherwise, causing a lot of ambiguity and despair in their own identity having to support a system hellbent on destroying them. In a novel where a search for identity often trips over self-hatred and internalized racism or homophobia, we see Rufus act in ways his sister Ida criticizes as avoiding being Black as if out of shame. Even Vivaldo says he only paid attention to Leona because she was white, something that is reversed later when Vivaldo considers that his relationship with Ida might be because she was not white…that she would not dare despise him.’
This is key in Vivaldo, who also recognizes that he may have hated Rufus for being Black and his close friendship compensated for it. Vivaldi who lived in Harlem, who hung with the Black crowd. We see in a way that he uses Black people and Black culture as a way to find his identity, but as a white man he is consuming something not for him in a way that is used to prop him up. In modern context he is the well-enough-off college kid who lives in the poor districts of a big city for the excitement and edginess, knows all the right inclusivity terms, curates his social media to be all about productive allyship and social justice, but at the end of the day is using it all less to prop up the communities he claims to love but to convince himself he is good and doing good. Not to only drag Vivaldo, who is certainly my favorite character of the bunch. I love the whole rivalry between him and Richard, Richard who is publishing a book Vivaldo finds underwhelming while struggling to write his own—he realizes he does not understand his characters enough to make them act correctly for the story which metaphor’s his own lack of understanding of himself keeping him in a hiatus of emotional growth.
But society at large is also acting against them in ways beyond racism and homophobia, though these are products of the larger forces. Society crushes some in order to uphold others, divides by class, consumes the poor in factories and workshops to benefit the owner class.
How is one to love and thrive under these conditions? All the expectations, social stigmas, rules and regulations on how to love befall these fledgling relationships and send everyone on a crash course.
‘How can you live if you can’t love? And how can you live if you do.’
Each character hurts the others and is hurt in return with a whole tangled web of affairs and lies. They all want to be understood, but being understood means giving yourself away to someone. To be known, truly known, is to be vulnerable and is frightening. Jealousy occurs from this insecurity, jealousy that threatens every relationship in the book and sends us towards the tumultuous climax of affairs and tears. ‘Love does not begin and end the way we think,’ Baldwin wrote years later, ‘love is a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up.’ And that is what we see, these characters growing up and being forged in the flames of their own missteps. I’m beginning to think,’ Cass says near the end of the novel, ‘that growing just means learning more and more about anguish.’ By the end everyone has had their share of anguish, but the future is uncertain and possibilities are vast.
Another Country is an absolutely outstanding novel that flows to the beat of life and never shirks from the grit and pain of living. These characters are remarkable and we watch them all struggle to understand one another, seeing each other's existence as if it were a foreign country. This was my first Baldwin, and I am sorry I haven’t read him before but will certainly continue to do so as I was blown away. There is such power and passion here, so much empathy for the characters even in their darkest moments, and despite all the suffering under the cold sun of the novel, it fills your heart. Baldwin tackles racism and homophobia head on, shouts back at the world with an intensity of words and desire for justice and delivers a story that will shake you to the core. Nothing but awe for Another Country.
5/5
‘Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person result in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.’
Where would we be without love? It uplifts, it hurts, it sends us ricocheting with one another across existence, and we all grapple with consuming or being consumed by one another in its name as we struggle to apply our love with that of another. ‘Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,’ James Baldwin wrote in his nonfiction work, The Fire Next Time, and the duality of understanding or being understood with the fear of being truly perceived drives much of Another Country, a striking portrait of the ways society informs our collisions of love that we all use as a method of chipping away at ourselves to discover our identities. It tells the stories of a group of young people living in Greenwich Village in the 70s, ‘all equal in misery, confusion, and despair,, as they inflict one another with themselves in emotional and sexual relations. At the heart of this is Rufus, a Black musician who’s relationship with the white Leona exposes the struggles of being Black in America, and the reverberations of his life are constantly felt against the lives of his friends, family and former lovers in searing portrait of the obfuscations of being human in a world with obdurate social enforcement on the ways we can love. There is tragedy in the miscommunications of love, worst when it is an unrequited love affair with a world which, instead of love, shows only scorn back through society to those who are Black or queer. Brilliant and impossible to put down, feelings at once a quick read and a hefty psychological investigation into gendered interactions and racism, Another Country tackles the ineffable sadness and hunger of finding oneself in the chaos of human relations.
‘Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.’
James Baldwin can WRITE. I mean, this is a 400pg book that breezes by from the way his prose grabs you by the heart and makes it beat to its rhythm, driving you like a bassline across the story in which his characters seem so alive on the page that you begin to wonder if they are your friends as well. The writing moves like jazz. He has heavily punctuated sentences where the commas and dashes drive the writing forward like a drum beat, propelling the reader through melodies of struggle and understanding but also bringing the city to life, thrumming along to the beat. The locations become characters in their own right: New York reads as a violent cacophony of hectic lives, Harlem rolls out as ‘sexual excitement, with danger, like a promise, waiting,’ whereas France vibes calm and slow through the novel. While reading this it felt akin to the writing and psychological narratives of Fyodor Dostoevsky, something I felt justified in when Baldwin name drops him multiple times in the first half, but the book engulfs you with it’s world and makes you feel like you are there engaging and complicit in all the uncomfortable glory of it’s story. Plus there are passages that just read with such intensity, life a fever dream of insight taking flight in his prose, with waves of emotion and scorching critiques of love such as:
‘There was only the leap and the rending and the terror and the surrender. And the terror: which all seemed to begin and end and begin again—forever—in a cavern behind the eye. And whatever stalked there saw, and spread the news of what it saw throughout to entire kingdom of whomever, though the eye itself might perish. What order could prevail against so grim a privacy? And yet, without order, of what value was the mystery? Order. Order. Set thine house in order. He sipped his whiskey…
Baldwin can transport you through the stratosphere with philosophical musings then abruptly return you to the mundanities of life with expertise, playing your mind like a jazz horn then returning you to sipping your drink watching it all unfold. Baldwin has a lot to say, and despite the decades that have elapsed since this first went to print, it is all just as relevant today.
‘It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.’
Love is often used in metaphors about being consumed. Think of phrases like ‘loves burning flame,’ or the idea of giving oneself to another. As we see in Another Country, each person’s ideas of love is unique, and the ways we brush up against one another with our individual aims of love often hurts those we love most. Love is dropping your armor and being most vulnerable, opening up to the possibility of hurt. Baldwin shows this is just part of love, such as when Cass says to her husband, Richard
‘you and I have hurt each other—many times. Sometimes we didn’t mean to and sometimes we did. And wasn’t it because—just because—we loved—love—each other?’
Love is shown as both creation and destruction, a dual imagery not unlike the way waves are used in the novel: the black waves of destruction Rufus hallucinates compared to the way Eric says Yves' voice washed over him in soothing waves. But, tragically, all the loves of the novel find friction in the variances each person tries to love the other. Cass, for instance, feels like housekeeper ignored by Richard who spends all his time working, but for Richard working to provide is how he feels he should show love (this is getting into some Five Love Language territory, but you see what I mean). These aren’t portraits of problematic people per say—though they are all problematic and hurt and betray each other—but merely people as people are with all their flaws, fears, foibles and failures. It is quite moving and Baldwin embodies individual perspectives across race and gender with extraordinary dexterity that truly brings them to life.
‘His life, passions, trials, loves, were, at worst, filth, and, at best, disease in the eyes of the world, and crimes in the eyes of his countrymen.’
Often we see that external forces are also acting upon the characters, adding friction to already perilous affairs. When Rufus and Leona first get together, there is an immediate air of distaste aimed at them when they go out into public for being a mixed race couple. ‘[Rufus] has not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy,’ and this unease seeps into him, making him react violently with rage and jealousy at Leona, or picking fights with any white man he perceives to be looking down on him. Similarly we see how being queer is equally looked down upon, and the intersection of Black and queer only exponentially raises the ire of society. This novel does contain a lot of domestic abuse and toxic masculinity, be forewarned, yet Baldwin refrains from passing judgment on his characters and never directs the reader to either. Instead, everyone is handled sympathetically, allowing you to see the social forces that back them into corners. Baldwin never negates their actions with the causes as understanding does not mean condoning, but he does pull back the psychological curtains to see the forces at work which understandably lead to so much suffering, rage and insecurity.
‘And what were these terrors? They were buried beneath the impossible language of the time, lived underground where nearly all of the time's true feeling spitefully and incessantly fermented. ’
They say society in the US is a melting pot, but it is more of a violent blender with blades that hack away. Being Black is to be in danger in the America, Baldwin argues, and we see how even some of the well-meaning white characters fail to understand it. We have Jane who weaponizes her whiteness and, when shouting of her white womanhood feeling threatened by a Black man, causes a bar fight nearly killing Rufus and Vivaldo. Cass must even explain that, sure, bad things happen to everyone ‘but they didn’t happen to you because you are white,’ she tells Richard, but the troubles and gatekeeping that befalls Rufus ‘happens because they are colored. And that makes a difference.’ The racism, faced by Baldwin as well causing him to leave the US to live in France where he wrote this book, is seen as a function of US society that keeps Black people down on purpose while claiming to be the land of opportunity. As Ida says to Cass:
‘They keep you here because you’re black, the filthy, white cock suckers, while they go around jerking themselves off with all that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with that same music, too, only, leep your distance.’
Ida calls bullshit on the whole proclamation of freedom in the US, looking at all the progress only to be held back (such as Jim Crow laws) and recognizes freedom means White Only. But everyone must playact otherwise, causing a lot of ambiguity and despair in their own identity having to support a system hellbent on destroying them. In a novel where a search for identity often trips over self-hatred and internalized racism or homophobia, we see Rufus act in ways his sister Ida criticizes as avoiding being Black as if out of shame. Even Vivaldo says he only paid attention to Leona because she was white, something that is reversed later when Vivaldo considers that his relationship with Ida might be because she was not white…that she would not dare despise him.’
This is key in Vivaldo, who also recognizes that he may have hated Rufus for being Black and his close friendship compensated for it. Vivaldi who lived in Harlem, who hung with the Black crowd. We see in a way that he uses Black people and Black culture as a way to find his identity, but as a white man he is consuming something not for him in a way that is used to prop him up. In modern context he is the well-enough-off college kid who lives in the poor districts of a big city for the excitement and edginess, knows all the right inclusivity terms, curates his social media to be all about productive allyship and social justice, but at the end of the day is using it all less to prop up the communities he claims to love but to convince himself he is good and doing good. Not to only drag Vivaldo, who is certainly my favorite character of the bunch. I love the whole rivalry between him and Richard, Richard who is publishing a book Vivaldo finds underwhelming while struggling to write his own—he realizes he does not understand his characters enough to make them act correctly for the story which metaphor’s his own lack of understanding of himself keeping him in a hiatus of emotional growth.
But society at large is also acting against them in ways beyond racism and homophobia, though these are products of the larger forces. Society crushes some in order to uphold others, divides by class, consumes the poor in factories and workshops to benefit the owner class.
‘People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.’
How is one to love and thrive under these conditions? All the expectations, social stigmas, rules and regulations on how to love befall these fledgling relationships and send everyone on a crash course.
‘How can you live if you can’t love? And how can you live if you do.’
Each character hurts the others and is hurt in return with a whole tangled web of affairs and lies. They all want to be understood, but being understood means giving yourself away to someone. To be known, truly known, is to be vulnerable and is frightening. Jealousy occurs from this insecurity, jealousy that threatens every relationship in the book and sends us towards the tumultuous climax of affairs and tears. ‘Love does not begin and end the way we think,’ Baldwin wrote years later, ‘love is a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up.’ And that is what we see, these characters growing up and being forged in the flames of their own missteps. I’m beginning to think,’ Cass says near the end of the novel, ‘that growing just means learning more and more about anguish.’ By the end everyone has had their share of anguish, but the future is uncertain and possibilities are vast.
Another Country is an absolutely outstanding novel that flows to the beat of life and never shirks from the grit and pain of living. These characters are remarkable and we watch them all struggle to understand one another, seeing each other's existence as if it were a foreign country. This was my first Baldwin, and I am sorry I haven’t read him before but will certainly continue to do so as I was blown away. There is such power and passion here, so much empathy for the characters even in their darkest moments, and despite all the suffering under the cold sun of the novel, it fills your heart. Baldwin tackles racism and homophobia head on, shouts back at the world with an intensity of words and desire for justice and delivers a story that will shake you to the core. Nothing but awe for Another Country.
5/5
‘Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person result in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.’
June 12, 2013
All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrevocable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever. It was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it.
But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable – only love, and love itself mostly failed.
This is not a love story.
It was fitting that I read Another Country while camped out under the air conditioner or sweltering in the park or seeking solace by the ocean. The characters, too, were always seeking refuge, always trying to find some relief as they drank cheap whiskey, their skin stuck to the furniture, their foreheads damp, their worlds colliding and falling. The characters are tangled up with each other, muddled, two-faced, broken, angry, and pitiful. Baldwin created such an intense and suffocating piece. I needed a shower after each read. I needed a drink.
Baldwin, who fled to a more liberated France while writing this book, explores another side of his home country and hometown. It’s deep summer in NYC in the 50s. There’s jazz, filth, liquor, art. The city – the country – is experiencing an undercurrent of racial tension. But not you. You’re so cool and forward thinking, right? Your circle of friends includes whites and blacks, see?
But what if you’re struggling with your sexuality as well as your race? And what if you add class distinction to the list? And denial, guilt, fear? What if there’s infidelity, death, domestic violence?
What if everybody is so damn lonely they turn to each other? Turn on each other?
What if there was no such thing as “gay” or “straight?”
What if you think you’re just so free and so bohemian in your middle-class apartment with your two kids and your husband’s fat paycheck and then it all comes crashing down?
What if you never realize who you’re in love with until it’s too late?
This book got under my skin. It penetrated my moods. It stifled me. It’s so bogged down in sorrow and anger and it never lets up for a moment. Never releases its noose-like grip on you. And I loved every uncomfortable and unbearable moment of it.
Best book I've read all year.
But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable – only love, and love itself mostly failed.
This is not a love story.
It was fitting that I read Another Country while camped out under the air conditioner or sweltering in the park or seeking solace by the ocean. The characters, too, were always seeking refuge, always trying to find some relief as they drank cheap whiskey, their skin stuck to the furniture, their foreheads damp, their worlds colliding and falling. The characters are tangled up with each other, muddled, two-faced, broken, angry, and pitiful. Baldwin created such an intense and suffocating piece. I needed a shower after each read. I needed a drink.
Baldwin, who fled to a more liberated France while writing this book, explores another side of his home country and hometown. It’s deep summer in NYC in the 50s. There’s jazz, filth, liquor, art. The city – the country – is experiencing an undercurrent of racial tension. But not you. You’re so cool and forward thinking, right? Your circle of friends includes whites and blacks, see?
But what if you’re struggling with your sexuality as well as your race? And what if you add class distinction to the list? And denial, guilt, fear? What if there’s infidelity, death, domestic violence?
What if everybody is so damn lonely they turn to each other? Turn on each other?
What if there was no such thing as “gay” or “straight?”
What if you think you’re just so free and so bohemian in your middle-class apartment with your two kids and your husband’s fat paycheck and then it all comes crashing down?
What if you never realize who you’re in love with until it’s too late?
This book got under my skin. It penetrated my moods. It stifled me. It’s so bogged down in sorrow and anger and it never lets up for a moment. Never releases its noose-like grip on you. And I loved every uncomfortable and unbearable moment of it.
Best book I've read all year.
May 20, 2024
well sheesh.
james baldwin's books are one of a kind. they range, for me, in pleasurable reading — some i must drag myself through, some seem to open themselves up to the reader, but i am always left struck and wondering.
this book, uncharacteristically lengthy for baldwin's works, was not one that i read without effort. i found it painful and intense, excellent as always but difficult. where notes of a native son or giovanni's room were not light reads, but felt consuming and emotional, this was more grueling, as with if beale street could talk.
in truth, baldwin's disregard for his female characters can sometimes be hard to read. occasionally, it even takes precedence to me as a reader.
unfortunately, while this book remained brilliant, even punishing in its conveying of the pain of love and the melancholy loneliness of life, this was one of those times.
bottom line: i still recommend this book. but i won't reread it.
---------------------
tbr review
even james baldwin's short works take me a million years to read out of sheer appreciation, so this 450-pager will be my life's work
james baldwin's books are one of a kind. they range, for me, in pleasurable reading — some i must drag myself through, some seem to open themselves up to the reader, but i am always left struck and wondering.
this book, uncharacteristically lengthy for baldwin's works, was not one that i read without effort. i found it painful and intense, excellent as always but difficult. where notes of a native son or giovanni's room were not light reads, but felt consuming and emotional, this was more grueling, as with if beale street could talk.
in truth, baldwin's disregard for his female characters can sometimes be hard to read. occasionally, it even takes precedence to me as a reader.
unfortunately, while this book remained brilliant, even punishing in its conveying of the pain of love and the melancholy loneliness of life, this was one of those times.
bottom line: i still recommend this book. but i won't reread it.
---------------------
tbr review
even james baldwin's short works take me a million years to read out of sheer appreciation, so this 450-pager will be my life's work
April 3, 2023
I read James Baldwin's Another Country because I thought it would give me the opportunity to revisit the New York City I had visited in the summer of 1966. I thought it would give me a chance to once again experience the New York City I revisited in both Patti Smith's Just Kids and Dave Van Ronk's The Mayor of MacDougal Street. No such luck. Another Country presented me with an entirely different city. It was as if Baldwin's New York City was from a different universe.
From 1948 through June of 1966, I lived in the Parkwood area of Kalamazoo, Michigan. First on Rose Street in the valley between two hills. Then, on the top of Westnedge Hill, not far from the majestic Crane Park. Shortly after graduating from high school, I spent a week at Emory College before moving on to New York City. NYC made a huge impression on me, but NYC paid me no never mind.
I read two books while I was living in New York City. The first was a novel by Saul Bellow. I'm pretty certain it was Herzog. The second book was written by James Baldwin. I'm thinking it must have been The Fire Next Time. Those two books made this Midwestern boy feel forward thinking and progressive as I laid reading in my tiny Village room. I laid on the bed to read because I didn't have a chair.
Towards the end of July, my time in NYC came to an end, and I took a train back to Kalamazoo. While I was away, my parents built my mother's dream house on Indian Lake near Vicksburg, Michigan. Living in Mom's new house was like being transported to a different world. I felt like a Stanger in a Strange Land, while I waited for college to begin in the fall.
At times, I felt lost and alone until my future wife came for a visit. She brought me a cherry pie. She was a little disappointed when the pie wasn't as perfect as something her grandmother would bake. It was more like something her mother would bake. Naturally, we didn't yet know that our daughter would end up being the best cook of the bunch.
During July and August, I worked at a local bank as a coin wrapper so I could help pay some of the bills that would come due when I was at college. I mention this because in Another Country, James Baldwin frequently mentions the need to pay up when a bill becomes due. Although he was talking about the personal lives and transgressions of his characters, it didn't take a lot of imagination to conclude Baldwin was really talking about slavery, and the need for people in the USA to honestly face and discuss the legacy of slavery.
Another Country was published in May of 1962. In May of 1962, JFK was still alive, the world economy was healthy, and the Civil Rights Movement was front and center in the news. In 1962 The Sixties hadn't yet happened, but they were on the verge of being born. In 1962, the Jim Crow South was still alive, and The New South was still a myth. Personally, I was in the 8th grade, and I was still 13, but I was on the verge of becoming 14. There is no way I could have imagined John Kennedy's assassination or The Beatles. I certainly couldn't have imagined Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, let alone his willingness to throw it all away.
The theme in Baldwin's book is straightforward but never explicitly stated. It is time for the citizens of America, the U, S of A, to have a frank and honest discussion about our history. It's a history we share the second we come ashore or cross the line. It's a history whose dues are long overdue, and we must pay our dues. After we have faced our history head-on, we can decide how to best move forward. Move forward together, when and where we can. Move forward separately where that's the only remaining option. Move forward to create another country; a better country.
James Baldwin's Another Country is character driven. It's about friends with benefits that are rarely beneficial. There are a good many sex scenes. Scenes where the action is both explicitly described and alluded to in a suggestive nondescript way. For example, we read how one person's hand goes between another person's thighs or between their own thighs. The male sex organ is referred to as his "sex" and female sex organs aren't mentioned at all. They're implied, as in his sex was in her. So, if you hate sex scenes, you're out of luck. If you love sex scenes, you're also out of luck. Sex is assumed to be a natural component of both a normal healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship with a predator. I mention this sex business only because I accept the notion that one is forearmed when one is forewarned. So expect male and male sex. Male and female sex. But curiously, there is no female and female sex.
Major characters include Rufus Scott and his sister Ida. There's Richard Silenski and his wife Cass. Then there's Vivaldo. There's also Eric and Yves. By the end of the novel, you're wondering if Cass can, or Richard will, work things out for the sake of the children. You'll be hoping Vivaldo and Ida can work things out. You will also be hopeful for Eric and Yves, but you will wonder if their relationship will survive if Eric is as honest with Yves as Cass was with Richard.
From 1948 through June of 1966, I lived in the Parkwood area of Kalamazoo, Michigan. First on Rose Street in the valley between two hills. Then, on the top of Westnedge Hill, not far from the majestic Crane Park. Shortly after graduating from high school, I spent a week at Emory College before moving on to New York City. NYC made a huge impression on me, but NYC paid me no never mind.
I read two books while I was living in New York City. The first was a novel by Saul Bellow. I'm pretty certain it was Herzog. The second book was written by James Baldwin. I'm thinking it must have been The Fire Next Time. Those two books made this Midwestern boy feel forward thinking and progressive as I laid reading in my tiny Village room. I laid on the bed to read because I didn't have a chair.
Towards the end of July, my time in NYC came to an end, and I took a train back to Kalamazoo. While I was away, my parents built my mother's dream house on Indian Lake near Vicksburg, Michigan. Living in Mom's new house was like being transported to a different world. I felt like a Stanger in a Strange Land, while I waited for college to begin in the fall.
At times, I felt lost and alone until my future wife came for a visit. She brought me a cherry pie. She was a little disappointed when the pie wasn't as perfect as something her grandmother would bake. It was more like something her mother would bake. Naturally, we didn't yet know that our daughter would end up being the best cook of the bunch.
During July and August, I worked at a local bank as a coin wrapper so I could help pay some of the bills that would come due when I was at college. I mention this because in Another Country, James Baldwin frequently mentions the need to pay up when a bill becomes due. Although he was talking about the personal lives and transgressions of his characters, it didn't take a lot of imagination to conclude Baldwin was really talking about slavery, and the need for people in the USA to honestly face and discuss the legacy of slavery.
Another Country was published in May of 1962. In May of 1962, JFK was still alive, the world economy was healthy, and the Civil Rights Movement was front and center in the news. In 1962 The Sixties hadn't yet happened, but they were on the verge of being born. In 1962, the Jim Crow South was still alive, and The New South was still a myth. Personally, I was in the 8th grade, and I was still 13, but I was on the verge of becoming 14. There is no way I could have imagined John Kennedy's assassination or The Beatles. I certainly couldn't have imagined Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, let alone his willingness to throw it all away.
The theme in Baldwin's book is straightforward but never explicitly stated. It is time for the citizens of America, the U, S of A, to have a frank and honest discussion about our history. It's a history we share the second we come ashore or cross the line. It's a history whose dues are long overdue, and we must pay our dues. After we have faced our history head-on, we can decide how to best move forward. Move forward together, when and where we can. Move forward separately where that's the only remaining option. Move forward to create another country; a better country.
James Baldwin's Another Country is character driven. It's about friends with benefits that are rarely beneficial. There are a good many sex scenes. Scenes where the action is both explicitly described and alluded to in a suggestive nondescript way. For example, we read how one person's hand goes between another person's thighs or between their own thighs. The male sex organ is referred to as his "sex" and female sex organs aren't mentioned at all. They're implied, as in his sex was in her. So, if you hate sex scenes, you're out of luck. If you love sex scenes, you're also out of luck. Sex is assumed to be a natural component of both a normal healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship with a predator. I mention this sex business only because I accept the notion that one is forearmed when one is forewarned. So expect male and male sex. Male and female sex. But curiously, there is no female and female sex.
Major characters include Rufus Scott and his sister Ida. There's Richard Silenski and his wife Cass. Then there's Vivaldo. There's also Eric and Yves. By the end of the novel, you're wondering if Cass can, or Richard will, work things out for the sake of the children. You'll be hoping Vivaldo and Ida can work things out. You will also be hopeful for Eric and Yves, but you will wonder if their relationship will survive if Eric is as honest with Yves as Cass was with Richard.
June 24, 2015
Something about Baldwin's writing doesn't quite work for me and I wasn't sure what it was until I read this book; it's the centrality of male pain. Despite what Ida goes through, it's Rufus' death that is privileged, Rufus' hardship that shapes how Ida views her life, more than her own experiences. It's Rufus' death that is the crux of Baldwin's condemnation of America. The only character who dislikes Rufus for beating up his white southern girlfriend is Richard, the least sympathetic, least fleshed out character in the book. Ida is actually Rufus' chief hagiographer - calling the girlfriend a crazy cracker/bitch who ruined a great man. In an interview with Audre Lorde, Baldwin draws a distinction between 'responsibility' and 'fault' - a black man in America who commits an offense is responsible but not at fault. I don't agree with his use of those words, but I understand his point. So does Audre Lorde - she agrees with most of what Baldwin is saying but attempts to make him recognize that black men have a place in the power hierarchy as well - specifically in the oppression of black women. Given the harassment that Ida receives from black men for dating white men, you would think this would not be a point of contention among them, but Baldwin just doesn't get it. He speaks over Lorde, saying: "How can you be so sentimental as to blame the Black man for a situation which has nothing to do with him?" He also says that the 'only' crime in America is to be born a black male - "It's not like being a woman." OIC. I'm underwhelmed by this, but I'm glad that I was picking up on something that was actually there.
Read
January 24, 2022"Ne m'oublie pas," he whispered. "You are all I have in this world."
Don't forget me. From Paris to Greenwich Village and Harlem, love traverses boundaries, inflames souls, manipulates the vulnerable, and burns each person who comes near its flames. Turbulent love is what Baldwin transcribes, the kind of love that is ignited by passion until it knows no name, has no form, except for the triangle it forms among friends. By now, my close GoodReads friends know about my reading love affair with Baldwin, so I'll try to encapsulate the elation I feel when I savor his words.
James Baldwin. Photograph: Ralph Gatti/AFP/Getty Images
This is my sixth Baldwin read. In Giovanni's Room, I described, in that review, how he hypnotized me with simple lyricism that entrapped. Our rendezvous usually unfolds this way. In my review of Go Tell It on the Mountain, I wrote how he gave me music in words, and I fell for each note. In If Beale Street Could Talk he rendered pain vivid; in The Fire Next Time, he warmed me, and in Notes of a Native Son, which I plan to read again soon, he gave me perspective.
In Another Country, he makes me ponder the profundity of love's role in self-angst, self-loathe. What happens in a person's life to make him hate himself, his skin, his people, his lover, his friend? What makes a woman use her beauty not only as a method of survival, but also as a tool for delivering hatred? What drives a secured and married mother into the hands of another? What happens when hopelessness drowns the conscious mind and sends it into self-pitying stupor? Each chapter is laced with these questions.
Harlem
"The light seemed to fall with an increased hardness, examining and inciting the city with an unsparing violence, like the violence of love, and striking from the city's grays and blacks a splendor as of steel on steel. In the windows of tall buildings flame wavered, alive, in ice."
One thing's for sure: Baldwin knows how to write about sex and angst. He elucidates despair in a way uniquely his and highlights biracial and homosexual love in a way only someone from his unique vantage point could. Here, despair lives on the streets of Harlem and Greenwich village, in the hearts of bohemians, in struggling artists and writers.
Greenwich Village, 1960s
"We're all unpredictable, he finally said, "one way or another. I wouldn't like you to think that you're special.
"It's very hard to live with that," said Eric. "I mean, with the sense that one is never what one seems-never-and yet, what one seems to be is probably, in some sense, almost exactly what one is." He turned his half-smiling face to Vivaldo. "Do you know what I mean?"
"I wish I didn't," said Vivaldo, slowly,"but I'm afraid I do."
The first eighty-eight pages of this book could have been a novella. No one could read this first part and love Rufus, for even Rufus didn't love Rufus. Pained as he was, he took it out on Leona, a young white woman who escaped a painful past from the South, only to find herself in a tumultuous relationship with him. The first part is a novella cold and hostile, laced with self-hatred, but it exists to make lucid the gritty world of racism and segregation, a world wherein each character connected to Rufus resides within some self-revelatory cocoon he or she must be released from. There is Cass, wife of the writer, Richard; Eric, the American actor who has returned from Paris; Ida, Rufus' sister who becomes his friend's lover, and Vivaldo, Rufus' best friend and the white man whose perspective Baldwin uses to inspect race relations. Vivaldo was my favorite character.
Don't forget me, it's as if the phrase is embedded within each sentence spoken, within each unforgivable gesture. Love, lust, and angst engulf these pages and turn thunderous. Relationships are mangled and mutilated, and one wonders if anything is what it seems. As the sections progress, erotic savagery culminates into hungry lovemaking and misguided lust turns into uncertain love that is
Don't forget me. From Paris to Greenwich Village and Harlem, love traverses boundaries, inflames souls, manipulates the vulnerable, and burns each person who comes near its flames. Turbulent love is what Baldwin transcribes, the kind of love that is ignited by passion until it knows no name, has no form, except for the triangle it forms among friends. By now, my close GoodReads friends know about my reading love affair with Baldwin, so I'll try to encapsulate the elation I feel when I savor his words.
James Baldwin. Photograph: Ralph Gatti/AFP/Getty Images
This is my sixth Baldwin read. In Giovanni's Room, I described, in that review, how he hypnotized me with simple lyricism that entrapped. Our rendezvous usually unfolds this way. In my review of Go Tell It on the Mountain, I wrote how he gave me music in words, and I fell for each note. In If Beale Street Could Talk he rendered pain vivid; in The Fire Next Time, he warmed me, and in Notes of a Native Son, which I plan to read again soon, he gave me perspective.
In Another Country, he makes me ponder the profundity of love's role in self-angst, self-loathe. What happens in a person's life to make him hate himself, his skin, his people, his lover, his friend? What makes a woman use her beauty not only as a method of survival, but also as a tool for delivering hatred? What drives a secured and married mother into the hands of another? What happens when hopelessness drowns the conscious mind and sends it into self-pitying stupor? Each chapter is laced with these questions.
Harlem
"The light seemed to fall with an increased hardness, examining and inciting the city with an unsparing violence, like the violence of love, and striking from the city's grays and blacks a splendor as of steel on steel. In the windows of tall buildings flame wavered, alive, in ice."
One thing's for sure: Baldwin knows how to write about sex and angst. He elucidates despair in a way uniquely his and highlights biracial and homosexual love in a way only someone from his unique vantage point could. Here, despair lives on the streets of Harlem and Greenwich village, in the hearts of bohemians, in struggling artists and writers.
Greenwich Village, 1960s
"We're all unpredictable, he finally said, "one way or another. I wouldn't like you to think that you're special.
"It's very hard to live with that," said Eric. "I mean, with the sense that one is never what one seems-never-and yet, what one seems to be is probably, in some sense, almost exactly what one is." He turned his half-smiling face to Vivaldo. "Do you know what I mean?"
"I wish I didn't," said Vivaldo, slowly,"but I'm afraid I do."
The first eighty-eight pages of this book could have been a novella. No one could read this first part and love Rufus, for even Rufus didn't love Rufus. Pained as he was, he took it out on Leona, a young white woman who escaped a painful past from the South, only to find herself in a tumultuous relationship with him. The first part is a novella cold and hostile, laced with self-hatred, but it exists to make lucid the gritty world of racism and segregation, a world wherein each character connected to Rufus resides within some self-revelatory cocoon he or she must be released from. There is Cass, wife of the writer, Richard; Eric, the American actor who has returned from Paris; Ida, Rufus' sister who becomes his friend's lover, and Vivaldo, Rufus' best friend and the white man whose perspective Baldwin uses to inspect race relations. Vivaldo was my favorite character.
Don't forget me, it's as if the phrase is embedded within each sentence spoken, within each unforgivable gesture. Love, lust, and angst engulf these pages and turn thunderous. Relationships are mangled and mutilated, and one wonders if anything is what it seems. As the sections progress, erotic savagery culminates into hungry lovemaking and misguided lust turns into uncertain love that is
buried beneath the impossible language of the time, lived underground where nearly all of the time's true feeling spitefully and incessantly fermented.
January 22, 2019
It took 15 years for Baldwin to complete this novel. He travelled all across from Paris to Turkey in poor health, depressed, and feeling that he had lost sight of his aims as a writer. On the brink of suicide, this novel had almost killed him. And while reading this you can sense Baldwin's sense of despair, torment and rage.
This would not be a Baldwin novel if he did not deal with social issues such as race, class, and same sex relationships. Baldwin has a way of eloquently showing people's ugly core as they deal with such issues. He doesn't allow any character to simply get by but he makes them face and confront their weaknesses and lies.
A large and relevant piece of America can be inspected here. I hesitate about stars. I certainly don't 'love' the book on 5 star level. Do I 'like' it enough for 4? Does respect and tempered admiration justify 4?
This would not be a Baldwin novel if he did not deal with social issues such as race, class, and same sex relationships. Baldwin has a way of eloquently showing people's ugly core as they deal with such issues. He doesn't allow any character to simply get by but he makes them face and confront their weaknesses and lies.
A large and relevant piece of America can be inspected here. I hesitate about stars. I certainly don't 'love' the book on 5 star level. Do I 'like' it enough for 4? Does respect and tempered admiration justify 4?
November 23, 2023
2.8 "an overwrought(sometimes maudlin) inter-racial, bisexual New York 1950s literary soap opera" stars !!!
Warm thanx (and apologies) to Spenx and Mirnes who strongly encouraged me to give this a go.
On topical interest, this would be something my soul and heart craved but my reading experience was only fair with a few moments of sublime appreciation.
The biggest issues I had was that I did not believe in the motivations and actions of all the players. They were theatrical, over-the-top and in some ways felt very stereotyped despite the variety of themes of queer love, gender and race relations as well as bohemian artistry. I sometimes enjoyed watching them play their roles but more often I was annoyed by pretension and artifice and adolescent grandstanding. I also did not believe in the narrative and much of the dialogue. The prose was clear and strong but often felt that it was more for show rather than deepening experience or connecting to something I cared about.
Having said that there were three scenes of deep authenticity and beauty that will stay with me for a very long time. These were five star quality and for me elevated the novel to something I am glad I experienced. For those of you that have read the book they are:
1. the initial romance and lovemaking scene between Ida and Vivaldo
2. romantic interlude in France of Eric and Yves
3. Vivaldo's scene of wandering New York and utilizing alcohol and marijuana to escape emotional pain while hanging out with other bohemian types
The majority of the novel was of 2.5 quality but am putting on my 3 star shelf on the strength and authenticity of the abovementioned scenes.
I look forward to trying one more book by this much beloved author.
Warm thanx (and apologies) to Spenx and Mirnes who strongly encouraged me to give this a go.
On topical interest, this would be something my soul and heart craved but my reading experience was only fair with a few moments of sublime appreciation.
The biggest issues I had was that I did not believe in the motivations and actions of all the players. They were theatrical, over-the-top and in some ways felt very stereotyped despite the variety of themes of queer love, gender and race relations as well as bohemian artistry. I sometimes enjoyed watching them play their roles but more often I was annoyed by pretension and artifice and adolescent grandstanding. I also did not believe in the narrative and much of the dialogue. The prose was clear and strong but often felt that it was more for show rather than deepening experience or connecting to something I cared about.
Having said that there were three scenes of deep authenticity and beauty that will stay with me for a very long time. These were five star quality and for me elevated the novel to something I am glad I experienced. For those of you that have read the book they are:
1. the initial romance and lovemaking scene between Ida and Vivaldo
2. romantic interlude in France of Eric and Yves
3. Vivaldo's scene of wandering New York and utilizing alcohol and marijuana to escape emotional pain while hanging out with other bohemian types
The majority of the novel was of 2.5 quality but am putting on my 3 star shelf on the strength and authenticity of the abovementioned scenes.
I look forward to trying one more book by this much beloved author.
March 4, 2024
There is something so miraculous in the way James Baldwin writes about being defeated by society and yet can still find so much affection for a life that could have been, if the realities of being black or gay in America were different. I think that the hope the characters have comes from their dreams of becoming artists. They believe that as artists, they will be able to create a world in which their relationships have more chances, and I couldn't agree more with their hope. Art is the one that can heal, but sometimes it doesn't happen instantly.'
Another Country' is an episodic novel about these aspiring artists and their difficult love lives. The prose is almost too beautiful, even if the sentiments are so bleak. James Baldwin creates them with the care of a real friend. Reading some of Baldwin's nonfiction, you can notice that these are fragments from his real life. Friends like Rufus existed.
This is a very homoerotic novel. To my surprise, I think Baldwin did a better job than in 'Giovanni's Room' of showing how internalized homophobia works, especially at that time.
The imperfections come from its episodic structure. Some moments are slower than others, but this may still be a masterpiece. It needs a little space to be sure about it.
Another Country' is an episodic novel about these aspiring artists and their difficult love lives. The prose is almost too beautiful, even if the sentiments are so bleak. James Baldwin creates them with the care of a real friend. Reading some of Baldwin's nonfiction, you can notice that these are fragments from his real life. Friends like Rufus existed.
This is a very homoerotic novel. To my surprise, I think Baldwin did a better job than in 'Giovanni's Room' of showing how internalized homophobia works, especially at that time.
The imperfections come from its episodic structure. Some moments are slower than others, but this may still be a masterpiece. It needs a little space to be sure about it.
July 16, 2015
Wow. Just... wow. Kind of weird—my reaction is not declare Another Country a new favorite, I just didn't love it in that way. And yet, and yet, it penetrated deeply, perhaps more deeply than some books I do consider my favorite...
Perhaps this has to do with how perplexing Baldwin is as an author—it takes a while, almost too much effort to get into the story, and then suddenly, unexpectedly you're in an ever-tightening vice, not sure how the hell Baldwin got you there before you even managed to notice. He certainly has a way with words, beautiful, almost aggressively lyrical without ever being showy; but what his words do have is weight, an almost unbearable density that in some passages seem to weigh so heavily upon the skin, as if their sole purpose is to rip to shreds any layers of resistance, pick apart any and every last defense...
Really, I suppose that's as good a description as any of what Baldwin does to his characters; he flays them alive so their intangible insides—their hopes, fears, secrets, contradictions, prejudices, dreams—are splayed unceremoniously upon dirty Greenwich Village sidewalks and greasy tables in the smoky corners of dive bars for each other to see, to gawk at, to pick ruthlessly at, to take up and wield like weapons to destroy each other, to bind each other closer than ever before...
And to take it one step further—the title kind of demands as much—the same could be said about Baldwin's general examination of America: mercilessly yet lovingly (the oh-so-thin line separating love from hate is a reoccurring preoccupation throughout the book) ripping the American psyche apart. Granted, his focus on a very particular group, mid-to-late 50's Greenwich Village, certainly one of the most socially progressive enclaves in society at that time. But that's almost what makes Baldwin's exposé so very painful—he's unearthing and then brutally exposing the most hidden prejudices of the particular kind (regarding race, gender, class, sexuality) that liberals and artistic types like to think they've managed to exorcise and escape from. Baldwin's indictment of white liberal guilt can be particularly agonizing...
Kind of hopeless (the constant refrain at our first bookclub discussion: "it's amazing how so little has changed..."), but oh, so very necessary. Anybody who claims we live in a post-racial, post-anything era here in America needs to be promptly slapped upside the head with this book.
"Perhaps such secrets, the secrets of everyone, were only expressed when the person laboriously dragged them into the light of the world, imposed them on the world, and made them a part of the world's experience. Without this effort, the secret place was merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness; and she saw, with a dreadful reluctance, why this effort was so rare."
Perhaps this has to do with how perplexing Baldwin is as an author—it takes a while, almost too much effort to get into the story, and then suddenly, unexpectedly you're in an ever-tightening vice, not sure how the hell Baldwin got you there before you even managed to notice. He certainly has a way with words, beautiful, almost aggressively lyrical without ever being showy; but what his words do have is weight, an almost unbearable density that in some passages seem to weigh so heavily upon the skin, as if their sole purpose is to rip to shreds any layers of resistance, pick apart any and every last defense...
Really, I suppose that's as good a description as any of what Baldwin does to his characters; he flays them alive so their intangible insides—their hopes, fears, secrets, contradictions, prejudices, dreams—are splayed unceremoniously upon dirty Greenwich Village sidewalks and greasy tables in the smoky corners of dive bars for each other to see, to gawk at, to pick ruthlessly at, to take up and wield like weapons to destroy each other, to bind each other closer than ever before...
And to take it one step further—the title kind of demands as much—the same could be said about Baldwin's general examination of America: mercilessly yet lovingly (the oh-so-thin line separating love from hate is a reoccurring preoccupation throughout the book) ripping the American psyche apart. Granted, his focus on a very particular group, mid-to-late 50's Greenwich Village, certainly one of the most socially progressive enclaves in society at that time. But that's almost what makes Baldwin's exposé so very painful—he's unearthing and then brutally exposing the most hidden prejudices of the particular kind (regarding race, gender, class, sexuality) that liberals and artistic types like to think they've managed to exorcise and escape from. Baldwin's indictment of white liberal guilt can be particularly agonizing...
Kind of hopeless (the constant refrain at our first bookclub discussion: "it's amazing how so little has changed..."), but oh, so very necessary. Anybody who claims we live in a post-racial, post-anything era here in America needs to be promptly slapped upside the head with this book.
"Perhaps such secrets, the secrets of everyone, were only expressed when the person laboriously dragged them into the light of the world, imposed them on the world, and made them a part of the world's experience. Without this effort, the secret place was merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness; and she saw, with a dreadful reluctance, why this effort was so rare."
February 25, 2022
I love Baldwin’s writing, his beautiful prose that punches me in the gut without fail. This book might be his most sophisticated, from a narrative structure point of view, but jeez, it was also his heaviest, as far as I am concerned. “Another Country’ weaves together the story of a small group of friends living in New York in the 1950s, Rufus, Vivaldo, Cass, Ida and Eric. Loss brings them closer together, but also pulls them apart, both literally and metaphorically.
Baldwin did something remarkable with this book: it is so far ahead of its time in terms of analysis of race relations and the way racial identity can never be removed from the conversation in America. It is also extremely frank about sex, the confusion that sometimes veils sexual orientation, and love’s place in that discourse. The extremely introspective, warts and all narrative, can be painful to read, but the characters’ confusion, anger and pain are so vivid that it is difficult to judge them. If anything, the sharpness with which he captured their inner struggle made me feel even more compassion for them, for their attempts at finding a tiny moment of happiness, dignity and capacity to survive in the cruel and messy world they live in. The pain every character in this book feels comes from a deep feeling of alienation, a feeling brought on by the judgement they see in other people’s eyes and their rage and being perceived as something so different from what they are. They push back, try to claim their identity more truthfully, but society pushes back harder…
The humanity Baldwin saw was not always pretty to look at, but he never averted his eye, and his writing reminds us of the flaws we all struggle with. This bleak books ends of a note of hope, a hope based in honesty and forgiveness. If you like Baldwin’s work, this is a dark but impressive example of his talent and his gift for seeing people as they really are.
Baldwin did something remarkable with this book: it is so far ahead of its time in terms of analysis of race relations and the way racial identity can never be removed from the conversation in America. It is also extremely frank about sex, the confusion that sometimes veils sexual orientation, and love’s place in that discourse. The extremely introspective, warts and all narrative, can be painful to read, but the characters’ confusion, anger and pain are so vivid that it is difficult to judge them. If anything, the sharpness with which he captured their inner struggle made me feel even more compassion for them, for their attempts at finding a tiny moment of happiness, dignity and capacity to survive in the cruel and messy world they live in. The pain every character in this book feels comes from a deep feeling of alienation, a feeling brought on by the judgement they see in other people’s eyes and their rage and being perceived as something so different from what they are. They push back, try to claim their identity more truthfully, but society pushes back harder…
The humanity Baldwin saw was not always pretty to look at, but he never averted his eye, and his writing reminds us of the flaws we all struggle with. This bleak books ends of a note of hope, a hope based in honesty and forgiveness. If you like Baldwin’s work, this is a dark but impressive example of his talent and his gift for seeing people as they really are.
April 17, 2023
4.5
Near the start of this book, I was reminded of Baldwin’s previous novel, Giovanni's Room. But it quickly becomes Giovanni’s Room-‘exploded’, for this is not just the story of fraught tension between a homosexual man and a possibly bisexual man; but also the story of other couples, and coupling: a white woman who has escaped the South and a black man; a white man and a black woman; and, the one that seemed the most forced to me, an ‘older’ married woman and a homosexual (bisexual?) man, another escaped Southerner. Ultimately, Baldwin seems to be commenting on the uselessness of such sexual labels, that these relationships are all due to love, or at least something approximating it—and any hate arising between the couple is due to cultural discrimination and pasts that may be impossible to overcome.
Through the characters’ thoughts and words, rendered in beautiful prose, the intricacies of the various relationships are empathetically delineated, in both their joy and their violence. “Violence” is a word Baldwin uses in interesting, and unexpected, ways throughout the work, such as using it as a collective noun.
“Towers” (skyscrapers) loom over the inhabitants of New York City, seeming to doom them. That image is carried over to France, with the towers of Chartres Cathedral serving the same function for a visiting couple consummating their relationship. Despite the plot’s brief sojourn to France, I am left with the feeling that the city of New York, more so than any of the characters, is the primary, motivating force of the work; even more so than the character from the first section who links the others.
With its frank depictions of sexuality (never seeming gratuitous), the casual use of marijuana and themes that have remained relevant, I had to keep reminding myself this was published in the very early 60s.
Near the start of this book, I was reminded of Baldwin’s previous novel, Giovanni's Room. But it quickly becomes Giovanni’s Room-‘exploded’, for this is not just the story of fraught tension between a homosexual man and a possibly bisexual man; but also the story of other couples, and coupling: a white woman who has escaped the South and a black man; a white man and a black woman; and, the one that seemed the most forced to me, an ‘older’ married woman and a homosexual (bisexual?) man, another escaped Southerner. Ultimately, Baldwin seems to be commenting on the uselessness of such sexual labels, that these relationships are all due to love, or at least something approximating it—and any hate arising between the couple is due to cultural discrimination and pasts that may be impossible to overcome.
Through the characters’ thoughts and words, rendered in beautiful prose, the intricacies of the various relationships are empathetically delineated, in both their joy and their violence. “Violence” is a word Baldwin uses in interesting, and unexpected, ways throughout the work, such as using it as a collective noun.
“Towers” (skyscrapers) loom over the inhabitants of New York City, seeming to doom them. That image is carried over to France, with the towers of Chartres Cathedral serving the same function for a visiting couple consummating their relationship. Despite the plot’s brief sojourn to France, I am left with the feeling that the city of New York, more so than any of the characters, is the primary, motivating force of the work; even more so than the character from the first section who links the others.
With its frank depictions of sexuality (never seeming gratuitous), the casual use of marijuana and themes that have remained relevant, I had to keep reminding myself this was published in the very early 60s.
July 22, 2015
I wanted to love this book so much more than I did. I deeply admire Baldwin's bravery in tackling the subjects of systemic racism and socially forbidden love, and some of the sentences took my breath away with their beautiful construction. Even so, the book is veined with a deep-seated misogyny. Women here are either weak or "bitches," and either way they seem to want to be slapped around. Ugh. The characters in general feel thin to me, like figures created to drive a plot and propose theories of the world rather than real people taking real action driven by their desire and individual personality. Each seems to speak with the same voice. The shifting point of view didn't help, and at the end, I had no idea whose story this was or what I was supposed to take from it except that love is inflammatory and destructive, a theory I'm not quite willing to buy. In this novel, Baldwin is at his best when writing about the love between men. There is real beauty here, but in the end, for me at least, the novel's beauty wasn't enough to overcome its woman hating.
December 1, 2024
It’s the late fifties in New York and Another Country begins following the ineffaceable Rufus Scott. He’s a jazz musician whose luck seems to have run out. From there the story of Another Country unfolds in three parts to uncover artists on their journey to survive life among racial unrest, misguided friendships, vacillating sexuality, societal pressures, and all while discovering a myriad of unlikable, flawed characters.
Another Country is a slow burn of a story that will suck you in and keep you hooked. It’s not a story of plot. It is a novel which is purely character development. Each character is introduced in juxtaposition with another character to stress their faults... Click this link for the rest. http://didibooksenglish.wordpress.com...
Another Country is a slow burn of a story that will suck you in and keep you hooked. It’s not a story of plot. It is a novel which is purely character development. Each character is introduced in juxtaposition with another character to stress their faults... Click this link for the rest. http://didibooksenglish.wordpress.com...
February 21, 2022
This is an extraordinarily raw, perceptive, sorrowful, blazingly alive exploration of the unknown and mysterious territories of the human heart.
It’s astonishing to me to read a book that — 60 years after its publication — is as unapologetically queer and complex in its depiction of interracial relationships as anything being written today.
To say that James Baldwin was a profoundly wise and visionary thinker is an understatement.
I’m very moved and troubled and stirred to my soul after having read this incredible novel.
It’s astonishing to me to read a book that — 60 years after its publication — is as unapologetically queer and complex in its depiction of interracial relationships as anything being written today.
To say that James Baldwin was a profoundly wise and visionary thinker is an understatement.
I’m very moved and troubled and stirred to my soul after having read this incredible novel.
April 17, 2020
I am appalled that it took me so long to read Baldwin, but I am gradually correcting my outrageous neglect of this important author. He was a tremendously skillful writer. This character-driven book is about a group of authors, musicians, actors and a few others who come together in New York City. They are male, female, black, white, heterosexual and bisexual. They love, hurt, attract, challenge and repel each other in various combinations. They also struggle with issues surrounding their careers, families, race and sexuality.
There is a staccato rhythm to this book. Although it is not plot-driven, the book moves along very quickly. Baldwin was a master observer. It felt like he had spent hours watching people both alone and interacting in bars, funerals, apartments and on the street. He eavesdropped on conversations and looked through windows. There is clarity in both his observations and his precise use of language. The book ended abruptly and I really wanted to know what happened next to these people.
The narration by Dion Graham of the audiobook was excellent. He even sings well.
There is a staccato rhythm to this book. Although it is not plot-driven, the book moves along very quickly. Baldwin was a master observer. It felt like he had spent hours watching people both alone and interacting in bars, funerals, apartments and on the street. He eavesdropped on conversations and looked through windows. There is clarity in both his observations and his precise use of language. The book ended abruptly and I really wanted to know what happened next to these people.
The narration by Dion Graham of the audiobook was excellent. He even sings well.
November 26, 2011
I don't even know where to begin with Another Country.....
This book showed me myself in ways I had never imagined a book could....I mean talk about intense, raw, truth, hurt, love, booze, swinging, and every other action that connects all human beings...
I am 21 years old, and to think that December 10th if this year will mark the 50th Anniversary of this book is mind-blowing to me.
I first have to start with Rufus Scott....I have never had a character in fiction who was complex, and damaged that I could FEEL like this young man.....The funeral scene where the pastor is eulogizing Rufus is by far one of my most powerful moment's in reading I have had...I being a african American truly have been to funerals like this my life.
Now with the other person who I truly connected with was Eric....I found Eric to vulnerable, real, human...One of my most favorite quotes comes from Eric talking about his relationship with Yves, and how being homosexual in an era where that it was not accepted, and with that has the background he goes on talking about because of his desires, he found himself living a 'secret life' where he goes on to say to me one of the most profound life mantras..." The trouble with a secret life, is that it is frequently a secret from the person who lives it, and NEVER from people the person encounter."....
Love, Love, Love this Book.....
Thank You, Mr. Baldwin!
This book showed me myself in ways I had never imagined a book could....I mean talk about intense, raw, truth, hurt, love, booze, swinging, and every other action that connects all human beings...
I am 21 years old, and to think that December 10th if this year will mark the 50th Anniversary of this book is mind-blowing to me.
I first have to start with Rufus Scott....I have never had a character in fiction who was complex, and damaged that I could FEEL like this young man.....The funeral scene where the pastor is eulogizing Rufus is by far one of my most powerful moment's in reading I have had...I being a african American truly have been to funerals like this my life.
Now with the other person who I truly connected with was Eric....I found Eric to vulnerable, real, human...One of my most favorite quotes comes from Eric talking about his relationship with Yves, and how being homosexual in an era where that it was not accepted, and with that has the background he goes on talking about because of his desires, he found himself living a 'secret life' where he goes on to say to me one of the most profound life mantras..." The trouble with a secret life, is that it is frequently a secret from the person who lives it, and NEVER from people the person encounter."....
Love, Love, Love this Book.....
Thank You, Mr. Baldwin!
February 19, 2022
I don’t think I could talk about this book without putting spoilers into the review. I will try to make them as unimportant as I can so that if you haven’t read the book, which you should, do it now, it won’t mean I’ve ruined it for you too much.
The main character in this, a young and deeply troubled black man, disappears early in the book. The book had been mostly seen through his eyes up until that point and so I looked at how many more pages remained and scratched my head. Suddenly, there were lots of white and no black characters anymore. The book had shifted beyond what I thought was possible. It was an interesting move dumping the central character so early in the book, not unlike what Shakespeare does with the Fool in King Lear – and it was one that could very easily have fallen flat on its face – and for me, anyway, as I struggled to find something to hold onto in the suddenly very turbulent waters of the novel at that point, it wasn’t clear how safe I was going to be allowed to feel with the plot after that point. All the same, the main character remains central to the novel, but this stops being the novel you assume you have started from that point.
At one point I decided that the title of this related to ‘the past’ being Another Country, and so I was expecting a lot of reconsideration and reflection by characters – and don’t get me wrong, there is lots of that – but my understanding of the title changed over the course of the novel. The interpretation I probably like the most now I have finished the book is that other people – lovers in particular – are another country. Of course, Baldwin himself, like one of the characters here, left the US for Europe – so as to find another country where he could be himself. The US at the time was anything but a safe place for a homosexual black man, just as it is hardly a safe place now to be a black man, as we see with sickening rapidity.
I think that twice in this book we are told that falling in love with someone immediately turns them into a kind of stranger, a kind of ‘another country’. Love is another country – but it is ‘other’ in the dialectical sense of the impossibility of understanding someone else, and that this is due to us finding it impossible to see how much of ourselves it is that we love in the other. It is this projection that so often causes us to loath and despise and damage the person we love – when the mirror shifts and we suddenly see in our partner what we despise in ourselves. The horrible violence of the first love-affair in this book isn’t quite repeated, at least, not as intensely as it first is – but there are many, many damaged relationships in this book. But the damage is most often done to the ‘I’ before it is done to the ‘we’.
There are quite a few sex scenes – both sex between men and women and sex between men – we are spared sex between women, always a good idea when the author is male. I often find sex scenes in books to be, well, you know, not particularly sexy. This is not at all helped when the author uses phrases like ‘his sex hardened’ or ‘he entered her’. But sex isn’t used in this book to be just about sex – if you are planning to be a writer, that could be used as a golden rule. For instance, the first part of the novel ends with love making, but it is as much a dance of power as erotica. The particularly horrible sex in the novel is generally reported, rather than forcing the reader to live through it, blow-by-blow, so to speak, but this reporting makes it all the more confronting in its own way, since whose perspective we witness this through becomes infinitely important. We are only given access to the villain’s perspective via the point of view of the victim. But then, our eyes are always directed through the perspective of a single character – so, this is generally true.
Perspective is remarkably important in this book, and I think, if I was to do a proper reading of this book – if I was teaching it or something – the first thing I would do is map whose head we are in throughout each ‘scene’. In fact, if you haven’t read this book yet and intend to, that would be my advice – a good question to ask as you read would be ‘why has Mr Baldwin got me looking out of this character’s eyes now?’
Again, at least twice in the novel we are told that one of the reasons heterosexual men have sex with gay men is because of the pleasure they receive of being the passive recipient of sex and desire. I’ve never had sex with a man, but this was something that felt based on a deep truth, at least in my own experience. The expectation on men – perhaps an expectation they place upon themselves – to always be the active person, the leader in the dance, can also make them feel (and by them, I’m taking it as being obviously I include myself) they need to be the source of desire, if never the object of it. I wonder how many sexual relationships have ended with the man no longer able to muster what feels like unreciprocated desire and the woman assuming they have become no longer desirable?
This paragraph will contain the main spoiler of this review – skip or stop reading now if you must. Richard is the least likeable character in the book, and it is hardly surprising that he essentially knows this and that it is what defeats him in the end, that is, his self-loathing destroys the illusion of his relationship with his wife and everyone else in the book. It is hardly surprising that he assumes Rufus is the one having an affair with his wife. He knows Rufus thinks his novel is crap and he knows his novel is crap. It is the cruel fate for so many writers that they can recognise the hallmarks of greatness in other writers, but that it is impossible for them to replicate that greatness in their own writing. But since that is all they want to achieve, their failure eats away at the foundations of all parts of their lives. Richard is incapable of seeing that he has pushed Cass aside but still feels he can get to play the cheated husband, when his insecurities made her cheating on him inevitable. Ironically enough, given my last paragraph, she cheats on him because she needs to feel desired again.
Desire is such a complicated emotion, especially when the need to feel desired by someone is one of those things we have so little control over. We live in a society that depends of heightening our feelings of desire – desire for things, mostly – it is what makes a consumer society tick – but our desiring is a poor substitute for our need to be desired.
I didn’t really have a clue what I was getting myself into when I started reading this book. I only read it because it was banned in Australia when it was first published, although, the censor did say that perhaps literary types could be allowed to read it, just not everyone, with literary types obviously being able to cope with the fact the book contained scenes and language that was "continually smeared with indecent, offensive and dirty epithets and allusions". Really, epithets are the least of your problems here – I suspect many of us will see parts of ourselves in these pages – something that is rarely as comforting as we hope it might prove. This was a very good read – it shines a not-terribly-flattering light on relationships, and not just on sexual relationships. We see relationships as sites of power imbalances and of the consequences of battles we choose not to bother fighting for the sake of peace, for the sake of love, for the sake of companionship, and then we are shown the costs all this can claim. It is a book concerned with wilful blindness too, of course – but I guess I’d already made that clear when I said it was a book about relationships.
The main character in this, a young and deeply troubled black man, disappears early in the book. The book had been mostly seen through his eyes up until that point and so I looked at how many more pages remained and scratched my head. Suddenly, there were lots of white and no black characters anymore. The book had shifted beyond what I thought was possible. It was an interesting move dumping the central character so early in the book, not unlike what Shakespeare does with the Fool in King Lear – and it was one that could very easily have fallen flat on its face – and for me, anyway, as I struggled to find something to hold onto in the suddenly very turbulent waters of the novel at that point, it wasn’t clear how safe I was going to be allowed to feel with the plot after that point. All the same, the main character remains central to the novel, but this stops being the novel you assume you have started from that point.
At one point I decided that the title of this related to ‘the past’ being Another Country, and so I was expecting a lot of reconsideration and reflection by characters – and don’t get me wrong, there is lots of that – but my understanding of the title changed over the course of the novel. The interpretation I probably like the most now I have finished the book is that other people – lovers in particular – are another country. Of course, Baldwin himself, like one of the characters here, left the US for Europe – so as to find another country where he could be himself. The US at the time was anything but a safe place for a homosexual black man, just as it is hardly a safe place now to be a black man, as we see with sickening rapidity.
I think that twice in this book we are told that falling in love with someone immediately turns them into a kind of stranger, a kind of ‘another country’. Love is another country – but it is ‘other’ in the dialectical sense of the impossibility of understanding someone else, and that this is due to us finding it impossible to see how much of ourselves it is that we love in the other. It is this projection that so often causes us to loath and despise and damage the person we love – when the mirror shifts and we suddenly see in our partner what we despise in ourselves. The horrible violence of the first love-affair in this book isn’t quite repeated, at least, not as intensely as it first is – but there are many, many damaged relationships in this book. But the damage is most often done to the ‘I’ before it is done to the ‘we’.
There are quite a few sex scenes – both sex between men and women and sex between men – we are spared sex between women, always a good idea when the author is male. I often find sex scenes in books to be, well, you know, not particularly sexy. This is not at all helped when the author uses phrases like ‘his sex hardened’ or ‘he entered her’. But sex isn’t used in this book to be just about sex – if you are planning to be a writer, that could be used as a golden rule. For instance, the first part of the novel ends with love making, but it is as much a dance of power as erotica. The particularly horrible sex in the novel is generally reported, rather than forcing the reader to live through it, blow-by-blow, so to speak, but this reporting makes it all the more confronting in its own way, since whose perspective we witness this through becomes infinitely important. We are only given access to the villain’s perspective via the point of view of the victim. But then, our eyes are always directed through the perspective of a single character – so, this is generally true.
Perspective is remarkably important in this book, and I think, if I was to do a proper reading of this book – if I was teaching it or something – the first thing I would do is map whose head we are in throughout each ‘scene’. In fact, if you haven’t read this book yet and intend to, that would be my advice – a good question to ask as you read would be ‘why has Mr Baldwin got me looking out of this character’s eyes now?’
Again, at least twice in the novel we are told that one of the reasons heterosexual men have sex with gay men is because of the pleasure they receive of being the passive recipient of sex and desire. I’ve never had sex with a man, but this was something that felt based on a deep truth, at least in my own experience. The expectation on men – perhaps an expectation they place upon themselves – to always be the active person, the leader in the dance, can also make them feel (and by them, I’m taking it as being obviously I include myself) they need to be the source of desire, if never the object of it. I wonder how many sexual relationships have ended with the man no longer able to muster what feels like unreciprocated desire and the woman assuming they have become no longer desirable?
This paragraph will contain the main spoiler of this review – skip or stop reading now if you must. Richard is the least likeable character in the book, and it is hardly surprising that he essentially knows this and that it is what defeats him in the end, that is, his self-loathing destroys the illusion of his relationship with his wife and everyone else in the book. It is hardly surprising that he assumes Rufus is the one having an affair with his wife. He knows Rufus thinks his novel is crap and he knows his novel is crap. It is the cruel fate for so many writers that they can recognise the hallmarks of greatness in other writers, but that it is impossible for them to replicate that greatness in their own writing. But since that is all they want to achieve, their failure eats away at the foundations of all parts of their lives. Richard is incapable of seeing that he has pushed Cass aside but still feels he can get to play the cheated husband, when his insecurities made her cheating on him inevitable. Ironically enough, given my last paragraph, she cheats on him because she needs to feel desired again.
Desire is such a complicated emotion, especially when the need to feel desired by someone is one of those things we have so little control over. We live in a society that depends of heightening our feelings of desire – desire for things, mostly – it is what makes a consumer society tick – but our desiring is a poor substitute for our need to be desired.
I didn’t really have a clue what I was getting myself into when I started reading this book. I only read it because it was banned in Australia when it was first published, although, the censor did say that perhaps literary types could be allowed to read it, just not everyone, with literary types obviously being able to cope with the fact the book contained scenes and language that was "continually smeared with indecent, offensive and dirty epithets and allusions". Really, epithets are the least of your problems here – I suspect many of us will see parts of ourselves in these pages – something that is rarely as comforting as we hope it might prove. This was a very good read – it shines a not-terribly-flattering light on relationships, and not just on sexual relationships. We see relationships as sites of power imbalances and of the consequences of battles we choose not to bother fighting for the sake of peace, for the sake of love, for the sake of companionship, and then we are shown the costs all this can claim. It is a book concerned with wilful blindness too, of course – but I guess I’d already made that clear when I said it was a book about relationships.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2023
Baldwin spent 13 years writing ANOTHER COUNTRY. He stated that the characters fell silent, stopped talking to him, so he let them rest and focused on his prolific and defining essays and commentaries, as well as his own travels through Europe, Africa, and Asia.
In some ways, the span of time it took to write it is evident. There are tonal shifts in this book, most notably a "set piece" in the first 80ish-pages, following the character Rufus, inspired by one of Baldwin's friends. The book sprawls over time and space, as well as character motivations and actions. It reflects a changing Harlem, with migration of southern African-Americans, immigration of Europeans to New York, class and generational conflicts, and the bohemian life of artists, writers, and musicians who have a lot of sex and do a lot of dope.
The jazz bars are a key setting in this story. Characters live in these spaces, perform in them, drink excessively in them. Hook up and break ups. Much of the ink of 320 pages is the intricate conversations and observations in this world. It's character-driven at its core. It's groundbreaking in its themes, but beautifully rendered with equal parts compassion and rage.
It's subtle, and it's sublime.
My second novel by Baldwin - I read his earlier work Giovonni's Room several years ago - and this one is deeper, but also bigger in scope.
I read and reread paragraphs and pages of this book. It seemed like Baldwin had the ability to stop time and give the reader 360° access to this world.
In some ways, the span of time it took to write it is evident. There are tonal shifts in this book, most notably a "set piece" in the first 80ish-pages, following the character Rufus, inspired by one of Baldwin's friends. The book sprawls over time and space, as well as character motivations and actions. It reflects a changing Harlem, with migration of southern African-Americans, immigration of Europeans to New York, class and generational conflicts, and the bohemian life of artists, writers, and musicians who have a lot of sex and do a lot of dope.
The jazz bars are a key setting in this story. Characters live in these spaces, perform in them, drink excessively in them. Hook up and break ups. Much of the ink of 320 pages is the intricate conversations and observations in this world. It's character-driven at its core. It's groundbreaking in its themes, but beautifully rendered with equal parts compassion and rage.
It's subtle, and it's sublime.
My second novel by Baldwin - I read his earlier work Giovonni's Room several years ago - and this one is deeper, but also bigger in scope.
I read and reread paragraphs and pages of this book. It seemed like Baldwin had the ability to stop time and give the reader 360° access to this world.
November 1, 2014
Such an excellent novel. This is Baldwin's Ulysses. A cast of genius and memorable characters, impeccable prose, and such relentless realism makes this the brilliant novel that it is. Baldwin has outdone himself by writing this novel. Just flawless.
January 31, 2022
Such a passionate book!! He is so ahead of his time, I had not read him, and I now need to read everything by him. I loved this!!
July 18, 2016
The first chapter is what makes this book: 88 pages of astonishing sadness, the amazing elucidation of the painful psyche of main character Rufus and could easily be a standalone novella/short story in Baldwin's remarkable oeuvre; perhaps one of the best short stories about the human psyche I've come across so far.
This chapter sets up for what's to follow; more pain, more self-analysis of what it means to be of color, what it means to loathe the opposite or the oppressor, to loathe yourself for who you are and what you are and what you're attracted to, but to accept it, warily, each day until you take your last breath.
Baldwin's rhetoric formulates questions that you want to answer, but often cannot, but follow closely and intimately. Such beautiful writing as always. Read this for the first chapter alone.
This chapter sets up for what's to follow; more pain, more self-analysis of what it means to be of color, what it means to loathe the opposite or the oppressor, to loathe yourself for who you are and what you are and what you're attracted to, but to accept it, warily, each day until you take your last breath.
Baldwin's rhetoric formulates questions that you want to answer, but often cannot, but follow closely and intimately. Such beautiful writing as always. Read this for the first chapter alone.
July 17, 2020
This is one of those novels, like Giovanni's Room that dives deep into interpersonal relationships in a very deep and broad way. Not only is it about the complicated relationships between blacks and whites, but about m/m, m/f, and all the messy complicated issues that can happen between them all.
Yes, it's about racism, but mostly it's about fairly decent people trying to make it work and still getting it all wrong. And that's interesting, no? For a book that came out in 1962, he runs through the whole gamut of human interaction and it's often sweet, scary, idealistic, depressing, and sometimes downright ugly.
But it's also not overblown or politicized. And that's INTERESTING, to me. It's very modern without being ugly-modern. Where everyone has an agenda, Baldwin seems free of it.
I mean... assuming you already think that humans are a chaotic heap that can mess itself up quite nicely without outside influence. :)
Very interesting novel. It belongs right up there with all the human-nature greats. :)
Yes, it's about racism, but mostly it's about fairly decent people trying to make it work and still getting it all wrong. And that's interesting, no? For a book that came out in 1962, he runs through the whole gamut of human interaction and it's often sweet, scary, idealistic, depressing, and sometimes downright ugly.
But it's also not overblown or politicized. And that's INTERESTING, to me. It's very modern without being ugly-modern. Where everyone has an agenda, Baldwin seems free of it.
I mean... assuming you already think that humans are a chaotic heap that can mess itself up quite nicely without outside influence. :)
Very interesting novel. It belongs right up there with all the human-nature greats. :)
March 2, 2023
People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.
For James Baldwin, love is the only human possibility, terrifying, but nevertheless the only one we have and there is no law or person who can tell us who we should love. If we lie about it, we live in a lie, building an immaculate colored facade for society as chaos unfolds inside. Love is sometimes another country that we don't know about, as Baldwin so aptly put it.
Love, just like in Giovanni's Room, is the foundation of Baldwin's third novel, "Another Country", upon which he builds further topics he knew a great deal about, racism, class differences, and human relations. Through a group of friends and their connections, Baldwin shows to what extent he was a good observer, a connoisseur of people and, above all, how vast his knowledge was of the inner mechanism that animates us all.
Through the prism of sexuality and love Baldwin brings the story of Cass, a housewife in a seemingly perfect marriage whose illusion is shattered after she realizes she got into the relationship for the wrong reasons, that it was her ticket to leaving an environment where she didn’t feel at home; about Vivaldo, an unpublished writer struggling with his novel and his sexuality, a man who is in a toxic relationship with his best friend's sister because that's how he channels feelings for him, and guilt makes him believe in love, a feeling unknown to him; about Ida, a young African-American woman who carries with her resentment over the death of her brother, over the color of her skin and that of her lover, a girl who tries to get out of the mud of racism without choosing ways to do so; about Rufus, once a promising musician, now only a shadow of his former self wandering the streets of the city eaten away by guilt for his deeds because he was left without love due to repressed sexuality and became a monster he never wanted to be; about Eric, a fugitive and a returnee.
Each of these characters has their own story and a different idea of love, but none of them can say that they really know what true love is because they hide behind lies, behind marriage, behind sexuality, behind skin color. Suppressed feelings drive them to the edge of the abyss.
"Another Country" is not a geographical term, but a symbol of alienation due to the norms imposed by society, all that Baldwin went through in the 13 years he wrote that book. A novel that was a brave move at the time of its publication, but whose themes are still relevant today, 60 years after its publication, which speaks volumes about its quality.
For James Baldwin, love is the only human possibility, terrifying, but nevertheless the only one we have and there is no law or person who can tell us who we should love. If we lie about it, we live in a lie, building an immaculate colored facade for society as chaos unfolds inside. Love is sometimes another country that we don't know about, as Baldwin so aptly put it.
Love, just like in Giovanni's Room, is the foundation of Baldwin's third novel, "Another Country", upon which he builds further topics he knew a great deal about, racism, class differences, and human relations. Through a group of friends and their connections, Baldwin shows to what extent he was a good observer, a connoisseur of people and, above all, how vast his knowledge was of the inner mechanism that animates us all.
Through the prism of sexuality and love Baldwin brings the story of Cass, a housewife in a seemingly perfect marriage whose illusion is shattered after she realizes she got into the relationship for the wrong reasons, that it was her ticket to leaving an environment where she didn’t feel at home; about Vivaldo, an unpublished writer struggling with his novel and his sexuality, a man who is in a toxic relationship with his best friend's sister because that's how he channels feelings for him, and guilt makes him believe in love, a feeling unknown to him; about Ida, a young African-American woman who carries with her resentment over the death of her brother, over the color of her skin and that of her lover, a girl who tries to get out of the mud of racism without choosing ways to do so; about Rufus, once a promising musician, now only a shadow of his former self wandering the streets of the city eaten away by guilt for his deeds because he was left without love due to repressed sexuality and became a monster he never wanted to be; about Eric, a fugitive and a returnee.
Each of these characters has their own story and a different idea of love, but none of them can say that they really know what true love is because they hide behind lies, behind marriage, behind sexuality, behind skin color. Suppressed feelings drive them to the edge of the abyss.
"Another Country" is not a geographical term, but a symbol of alienation due to the norms imposed by society, all that Baldwin went through in the 13 years he wrote that book. A novel that was a brave move at the time of its publication, but whose themes are still relevant today, 60 years after its publication, which speaks volumes about its quality.
June 14, 2010
I love Baldwin's writing style, but this novel has been in my bathroom (read: "library") for months, and I'm only making progress a few pages at a time. An original paperback copy sat in my office for years before that. I was curious about a novel featuring mostly white characters--and it's very well-written, but I have had some trouble engaging over the long term.
ADDENDUM: I'm a softie. I'll just get that out. So I'm giving this book five stars although I suspect it might only deserve four...but I can't say. It's Baldwin. It's brilliant. There are observations or turns of phrase one could quote on almost every page.
At one point, Baldwin faced such writer's block with this manuscript that he considered it "unpublishable." He said his characters wouldn't talk to him. He had to isolate himself in Turkey to finish it.
Like the author, there were times I fell out of engagement with it and put it down for a while...the characters do get "talky"...but then when I came back to it, I inhaled it. The real marvel, to me, is the historical and social context in which this was written. ..probably in 1959 or 1960... Baldwin's New York fascinated me--a window into the club scene in a bygone era. Still incredibly sharp and relevant, and light years ahead of its time in its frank depiction of human sexuality. Baldwin's grasp of human psychology, and his language to elucidate his theories, are a joy.
If you've overlooked this novel by James Baldwin, it is worth reading.
ADDENDUM: I'm a softie. I'll just get that out. So I'm giving this book five stars although I suspect it might only deserve four...but I can't say. It's Baldwin. It's brilliant. There are observations or turns of phrase one could quote on almost every page.
At one point, Baldwin faced such writer's block with this manuscript that he considered it "unpublishable." He said his characters wouldn't talk to him. He had to isolate himself in Turkey to finish it.
Like the author, there were times I fell out of engagement with it and put it down for a while...the characters do get "talky"...but then when I came back to it, I inhaled it. The real marvel, to me, is the historical and social context in which this was written. ..probably in 1959 or 1960... Baldwin's New York fascinated me--a window into the club scene in a bygone era. Still incredibly sharp and relevant, and light years ahead of its time in its frank depiction of human sexuality. Baldwin's grasp of human psychology, and his language to elucidate his theories, are a joy.
If you've overlooked this novel by James Baldwin, it is worth reading.
September 4, 2022
this book exhibits a very specific type of misogyny that only gay men can achieve
September 17, 2020
A messy, meandering, wildly uneven novel that is still somehow elevated to near epic greatness by the brilliance and beauty of James Baldwin's prose. I swear Baldwin could write a Craigslist ad for plumbing services and still move me to tears! 🤷♂️😅
Set primarily in Harlem and Greenwich Village during the late 1950's, this tells the intersecting stories of a small group of artistic friends in their 20's and 30's, and their various sexual and romantic exploits - focusing mainly on relationships that were "forbidden" by the social norms of the time (interracial, homosexual, extramarital, bisexual, etc.).
Shockingly explicit and refreshingly progressive for the time it came out, the novel explores the pleasures, fears, insecurities, doubts, delusions, betrayals, and social obstacles that so often accompany any struggle for real, honest, authentic love.
I didn't care much about most of the characters, and even found a couple of them to be almost insufferable (*cough* Vivaldo *cough*). The dialogue is a bit corny and dated, and some of the plot developments seem straight out of a daytime soap opera. But all of this is EASILY overlooked and forgiven thanks to the eloquence, ferocity, and almost unbearable honesty of Baldwin's narrative voice. He somehow manages to turn the pulp into poetry, and seduced me into sticking around for a very bumpy but unforgettable ride!
Having recently read "The Fire Next Time" and watched the extraordinary documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" (highly recommend it, by the way), I was fully expecting the scathing critiques of White America's delusions and hypocrisy when it comes to issues of race, just as relevant and powerful in 2020 as they were when this novel was first published.
And having read "Giovanni's Room" my freshman year of college, right around the time I was starting to poke my own head out of the closet, I already knew Baldwin was decades ahead of his time in his depictions of gay and bisexual men struggling to live happy, authentic lives unburdened by self-hatred and shame.
(Now it's been over 25 years since I read that remarkable novel, so my memory's a bit foggy, but it seems to me that in the character of Eric here in this later novel, Baldwin has progressed even further in presenting a bold, cautiously optimistic vision of what honest and unapologetic gay self-acceptance might look like in the mid-20th century).
What struck me most about Baldwin's writing THIS TIME, however, is the expansive empathy and unflinching clarity with which he examines human intimacy and relationships, regardless of race, sexuality, gender, or class. He had such a rare gift for illuminating those dark and dreaded distances between the Said and the Unsaid, between the lives (and lies) we present to our families, friends, lovers, etc., and the sometimes terrifying truths so often buried deep beneath the social niceties and norms.
Set primarily in Harlem and Greenwich Village during the late 1950's, this tells the intersecting stories of a small group of artistic friends in their 20's and 30's, and their various sexual and romantic exploits - focusing mainly on relationships that were "forbidden" by the social norms of the time (interracial, homosexual, extramarital, bisexual, etc.).
Shockingly explicit and refreshingly progressive for the time it came out, the novel explores the pleasures, fears, insecurities, doubts, delusions, betrayals, and social obstacles that so often accompany any struggle for real, honest, authentic love.
I didn't care much about most of the characters, and even found a couple of them to be almost insufferable (*cough* Vivaldo *cough*). The dialogue is a bit corny and dated, and some of the plot developments seem straight out of a daytime soap opera. But all of this is EASILY overlooked and forgiven thanks to the eloquence, ferocity, and almost unbearable honesty of Baldwin's narrative voice. He somehow manages to turn the pulp into poetry, and seduced me into sticking around for a very bumpy but unforgettable ride!
Having recently read "The Fire Next Time" and watched the extraordinary documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" (highly recommend it, by the way), I was fully expecting the scathing critiques of White America's delusions and hypocrisy when it comes to issues of race, just as relevant and powerful in 2020 as they were when this novel was first published.
And having read "Giovanni's Room" my freshman year of college, right around the time I was starting to poke my own head out of the closet, I already knew Baldwin was decades ahead of his time in his depictions of gay and bisexual men struggling to live happy, authentic lives unburdened by self-hatred and shame.
(Now it's been over 25 years since I read that remarkable novel, so my memory's a bit foggy, but it seems to me that in the character of Eric here in this later novel, Baldwin has progressed even further in presenting a bold, cautiously optimistic vision of what honest and unapologetic gay self-acceptance might look like in the mid-20th century).
What struck me most about Baldwin's writing THIS TIME, however, is the expansive empathy and unflinching clarity with which he examines human intimacy and relationships, regardless of race, sexuality, gender, or class. He had such a rare gift for illuminating those dark and dreaded distances between the Said and the Unsaid, between the lives (and lies) we present to our families, friends, lovers, etc., and the sometimes terrifying truths so often buried deep beneath the social niceties and norms.
June 26, 2017
“But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable—only love, and love itself mostly failed …”
Have you ever had somebody tell you something, something secret and maybe a bit shocking but at the same time familiar and it makes you see them for who they are and that brings up these tender feelings for them that you didn’t know you had and after that you look at them and yourself and the whole world differently? That’s Another Country.
This is my first reading of Baldwin’s fiction. He mined for truth and brought back gems in his non-fiction writing, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that he did the same with his fiction, but the way he did it was fascinating to me. He goes back and forth through the lives of these characters like he’s uncoiling a spring. And he gives us the characters’ minds and bodies through details of movement as well as thought that go beyond anything I’ve read before. He forces me to inhabit them.
“His fingers, at her waist, seemed to have become abnormally and dangerously sensitive, and he prayed that his face did not show the enormous, illicit pleasure which entered him through his fingertips.”
This story is uncomfortable, gritty, raw, desperate, sad, life-affirming, and real.
“Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.”
Have you ever had somebody tell you something, something secret and maybe a bit shocking but at the same time familiar and it makes you see them for who they are and that brings up these tender feelings for them that you didn’t know you had and after that you look at them and yourself and the whole world differently? That’s Another Country.
This is my first reading of Baldwin’s fiction. He mined for truth and brought back gems in his non-fiction writing, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that he did the same with his fiction, but the way he did it was fascinating to me. He goes back and forth through the lives of these characters like he’s uncoiling a spring. And he gives us the characters’ minds and bodies through details of movement as well as thought that go beyond anything I’ve read before. He forces me to inhabit them.
“His fingers, at her waist, seemed to have become abnormally and dangerously sensitive, and he prayed that his face did not show the enormous, illicit pleasure which entered him through his fingertips.”
This story is uncomfortable, gritty, raw, desperate, sad, life-affirming, and real.
“Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.”
August 1, 2020
Οι βασικοί μας χαρακτήρες είναι έξι, ο Ρούφους, η Άιντα, ο Βιβάλντο, ο Ριτσαρντ, η Κας και ο Έρικ. Δύο από αυτούς είναι αδέρφια και δυο είναι παντρεμένοι μεταξύ τους. Δύο από αυτούς είναι μαύροι και οι υπόλοιποι λευκοί. Το βιβλίο δεν έχει συγκεκριμένη πλοκή παρά μονο παρακολουθούμε αυτούς τους έξι και τις σχέσεις που αναπτύσσονται μεταξύ τους, ερωτικές, φιλικές, εχθρικές και όλα τα ενδιάμεσα. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μιλάει για τις διαφυλετικές σχέσεις μεταξύ μαύρων και λευκών, για τις σχέσεις μεταξύ ανδρών και γυναικών, μεταξύ αδερφών, συζύγων, φίλων , εραστών, μεταξύ ανθρώπων. Μιλάει για την αγάπη και το μίσος, για τη φιλία και τη μοναξιά, για το πόσο υπέροχο είναι να ζεις και ταυτόχρονα πόσο κουραστικό και ανυπόφορο μπορεί να γίνει και για το πόσο μόνος μπορείς να νιώσεις όταν βρίσκεσαι ανάμεσα στους ανθρώπους.
Εξαιρετική σκιαγράφηση των χαρακτήρων και της εποχής για άλλη μια φορά από τον James Baldwin.
Πολύ ωραίο!
Εξαιρετική σκιαγράφηση των χαρακτήρων και της εποχής για άλλη μια φορά από τον James Baldwin.
Πολύ ωραίο!
October 16, 2023
James Baldwin, Bir Başka Ülke’de, 1950’ler New York’unda yaşayan bir arkadaş grubunun hikayesini ele alıyor. Hemen hepsi sanatçı olan ve New York’un bohem mahallesi Greenwich’te takılan (döneme damga vuran Beat Kuşağı yazarlarının yolu da başta Jack Kerouac olmak üzere buradan geçiyor) bu arkadaş grubu birbirine bir ölümle bağlanıyor. Daha sonra ilişkiler iyice karmaşık hale geliyor. Döneme göre -Baldwin’e has- bıçak sırtı temalar (özellikle biseksüellik ve farklı ırkların ilişkisi) çok güzel ele alınmış. Siyahi karakterlerin, arkadaş ortamında herhangi bir olumsuzlukla karşılaşmasalar bile bilinçaltlarına kazınan ırkçılığın, en olmadık zamanda kendisini hissettirip aslında nasıl da içlerine işlediğini görmek çok etkileyiciydi. Cinselliğin ele alınışına ve ilişkileri yönlendirme şekline de bayıldım. Aynı şekilde karakterleri de çok başarılı oldum. Hemen hepsi bir şekilde var olmaya çalışan, hayatın inişli çıkışlı yollarında yollarına devam etmeye çalışan çok “gerçek” karakterler. Baldwin de onları, çektikleri acıları anlamaya çalışıyor. Büyük sözler söylemektense küçük detaylara ve insani kusurlara odaklanmayı seçiyor. Ortaya da kendini zevkle okutan güzel bir roman çıkıyor.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,251 reviews