You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. In November 1948 at the age of twenty-four, James Baldwin moved to. In this introduction from the new Everyman edition, Colm Tóibín unravels the intimately confessional style that draws this beautiful book into so many readers’ hearts. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a mainstay on lists of LGBTQ classics. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap-and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. “You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror-you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it-man or woman.
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