The tone is almost theatrical, mixing the commanding voice of a single actor onstage with precise stage directions. The voice is not whispering but speaking as though to a large audience. “Giovanni’s Room” begins in a tone that is grave, almost stately. The words in the opening sentences do not have the hushed tone of guilt or confession, which will come later, as much as a ring of certainty, a sense of finality. This new book will ruin your career, because you’re not writing about the same things and in the same manner as you were before, and we won’t publish this book as a favor to you.’ ’’ (The book was published in 1956, by the Dial Press in the U.S. ‘‘So they told me, ‘You cannot afford to alienate that audience. They told him that he was a ‘‘Negro writer’’ and that he reached a certain audience. His American publishers, Knopf, however, wanted another novel about Harlem life. I could not handle both propositions in the same book.

‘‘I certainly could not possibly have-not at that point in my life-handled the other great weight, the ‘Negro problem.’ The sexual-moral light was a hard thing to deal with. In that interview, Baldwin also stated that his book was ‘‘not so much about homosexuality, it is what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anybody.’’ Since “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” set in Harlem, had dealt with the African-American experience, it came as a surprise to Baldwin’s editors that he had written a novel in which all the characters were white. I saw him in the headlines, which reminded me that I was already working on him without knowing it.’’ He had been arrested and was later guillotined. And, two or three days later, I saw his face in the headlines of a Paris paper. He spoke of using some of the people he met: ‘‘We all met in a bar, there was a blond French guy sitting at a table, he bought us drinks. Some of the atmosphere in “Giovanni’s Room” came from close observation and experience, as Baldwin made clear in an interview in 1980.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin