What Makes Baldwin Special

Craft-oriented notes on Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin. God, the man could write!

I’m only a third of the way through Giovanni’s Room (at the end of Part One). I really have no business writing about it yet. But I’m so excited about what I’ve encountered, the brilliance I’ve observed, that I can’t help getting ahead of myself.

I usually struggle to turn my impressions of great writing into words. In this case, I was able to make a few concrete observations — so I figured I might as well share them.

So... what makes Baldwin special?

One: His Writerly Emotional Intelligence

Lots of people are emotionally intelligent. They sense when someone’s hurting and find ways to signal support. They can tell when a wounded friend wants them to stay, and when it would be better to go. They understand when to speak and when to listen. But none of this necessarily makes them better at writing. Their emotional intelligence is an instinct, and they act upon it unconsciously. They’d struggle to explain their intuitions.

Baldwin, like many great writers, has a different sort of emotional intelligence — one that readily produces communicable insights. He presents his characters as inhabiting, as people really do inhabit, a fraught interpersonal tableau, in which subtle desires and aversions ricochet in a shared space.

David and Jacques enter a gay bar. Jacques is attracted to the new barman, but he’s called away by a friend. David, who insists even to himself that he’s not gay, is left alone with the barman (Giovanni), at which point he narrates, “I realized I was quite happy to be talking with him and this realization made me shy. And I felt menaced since Jacques was no longer at my side. Then I realized that I would have to pay, for this round anyway; it was impossible to tug Jacques’ sleeve for the money as though I were his ward. I coughed and put my ten thousand franc note on the bar.”

So many emotions appear in this brief passage, and in quick succession. Yet it never feels like Baldwin is just flashing a series of emojis across the screen. Each emotion feels true, as does the sequence in its entirely. David is happy, then shy — menaced, and then embarrassed. Baldwin renders each emotion with utter simplicity, yet their communal effect is remarkably complex. He writes simply, because the magic isn’t in linguistic embellishment, but in an understanding of human emotions and the ability to distill those emotions into text.

Two: His Knack for Conveying Specificity in Apparent Vagueness

Here’s Baldwin on Paris’s female cashiers: “All over Paris they sit behind their counters like a mother bird in a nest and brood over the cash register as though it were an egg. Nothing occurring under the circle of heaven where they sit escapes their eye, if they have ever been surprised by anything, it was only in a dream — a dream they have long ago ceased having.”

What a wonderful description! It’s so specific, despite lacking the sort of details that we normally associate with specificity. We don’t get insights into their backgrounds or social contexts (are they well or poorly dressed? Beautiful or ugly?). We don’t learn about their specific gestures of the sound of their voices. And yet — what a sense we get for them, these domineering, all-knowing women of 1950s Paris. We know exactly who they are.

Three: His Lack of Concern for “Elementary” Conventions

Don’t repeat words in too small a space, and be careful about repetitive sentence structures. How often do we hear these admonitions? How faithfully do we heed them in our work?

Well, Baldwin doesn’t seem to pay them any mind.

From the first page of Chapter Three: “On a corner near the bar a butcher had already opened his shop and one could see him within, already bloody, hacking at the meat.”

Those two “alreadys” sound perfectly fine together — yet I suspect that, if I caught the repetition in a draft, I would insist on deleting one of them.

A few paragraphs later: “The river was swollen and yellow. Nothing moved on the river. Barges were tied up along the banks.”

These single-clause sentences come in the midst of significantly longer sentences. They don’t mark anything distinct, in terms of content. They don’t correspond to any moment of intense action. They just... happened, for no apparent reason. But their effect is undeniably pleasant, providing the reader with a surprising melodic change.

There’s something refreshing in this unconventionality. It suggests a writer who’s too focused on the essential and the profound to worry about something so frivolous as a repeated word. It shows a complete lack of fussiness and a comfort with language as it happens to come out. It also displays chutzpah, the earned confidence of an All-Star pitcher who ignores critiques of his delivery.

It’s the writing style of someone who knows they have the goods.

And man oh man, does Baldwin have the goods.

***I’ve been trying my hand at some journalism.***

Check out my recent article on the bold environmental activism of Tz’utujil leaders in my sometimes-hometown of Santiago Atitlan: How Indigenous Guatemalans Fought Pollution Themselves

(These guys are an inspiration. They’re fearless, and they know how to get stuff done.)