We can’t choose the time and place in which we were born, though we try to make our own way within that particular context. This provides the theme of any number of works of great art: the individual at odds with the larger society. Sometimes, I get the sense that certain people romanticize art of the past as reinforcing some lost status quo, but I’m not sure much lasting art was ever made that way. Compare and contrast: Father Knows Best and Iphigenia.
Okay, that’s a bit glib. The point is that fictional characters can’t choose the time and place in which they were born either, although the most interesting ones will struggle mightily against the tides and time. The danger in this approach- pitting an engaging character against a disapproving society- it seems to me, happens when the character is at odds with a societal milieu that is so specific the art dates poorly. I’m not sure that every mid-century drama about a Black American who can pass for white quite makes sense today. Similarly, The Boys in the Band remains a strong play and film; but could it be updated? Could we really understand a group of gay men living in New York City in 2023 who hate themselves?
Perhaps the most successful works of fiction are the ones that combine close psychological readings of individuals and sociological readings of their worlds. Contexts change, but human beings remain much the same. The best novels of James Baldwin strike me as aging particularly well because they are not simply caustic broadsides against mid-century America (although I suspect they’re sometimes remembered as such); they’re also fairly intense character studies. I can’t fully relate to David and Giovanni, for instance, but I feel like I’m in the room with them. The reason If Beale Street Could Talk made such a powerful film not so long ago- aside from the perennial nature of police brutality- is that it’s easy to imagine a family coming together when a young man suffers a great injustice. The basics of human life remain the same.
Which is to say Baldwin will still rip your heart out, if you let him. I only aspire to write with the clarity about the human experience as he did in his best work. Sometimes, though, his fiction can be a bit too intense; great fiction is really a heightened experience of reality. We don’t perceive things quite so clearly in life as we do in fiction because we’d likely suffer a nervous breakdown if we did; I suspect this is why so many great writers do seem to go through a nervous breakdown when they finish a work.
At any rate, this is what I tell myself happened this last week, as I finished Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain, one of the greatest portraits of religious belief I’ve read, and Another Country, an epic depiction of how societal repression can warp individuals’ ability to love, which I found a little too overwhelming to fully appreciate. It was a slog. And possibly- I’m somewhat hopeful this is the case- the societal context has changed enough that I can’t fully understand it either.
To be sure, Another Country is a sprawling story, so much so that Baldwin worked on it for years: an intertwined depiction of five couples, and a few random couplings, all affected by the early suicide of a young Black jazz musician, Rufus, whose internalized racism manifested as sexual violence and self-destruction. After his death early in the novel, we focus on his friend Vivaldo, an aspiring novelist who falls in love with Rufus’s sister Ida, who will betray him for a career; their friend Richard, a novelist whose dedication to “success” drives his wife Cass to an affair with Eric, a bisexual actor who has recently returned from Paris (and who once made love to Rufus) and his French lover, Yves.
Does this sound a little exhausting? Baldwin spends a great deal of time putting each couple under the microscope, and every character is sharply drawn and believable. They all feel like individuals. Nevertheless, there are parallels between them: each one is artistic and sensitive, and unable to quite hold themselves upright under the pressure of societal opprobrium. Each is in a certain type of denial. The pressures of capital, racism, and homophobia have forced each of them to make certain compromises that warp and torment them.
Rufus is the closest thing the book has to a martyr, taking out his self-loathing on his white girlfriend, Leonora, before killing himself. Nevertheless, his sister Ida finally cheats on Vivaldo with an agent, seemingly thinking its expected of her. Vivaldo can’t really accept his own bisexuality. Eric might be the only one who genuinely loves his partner, who he also cheats on. All of them, though, will hurt the ones who most love them because they see that love as mistaken and perverse.
To some extent, I am hopeful that the context has changed. Baldwin began the novel in 1948, in Greenwich Village, brought it to Paris, and finally completed it in Istanbul in 1962. One hopes that a Black American man in an interracial relationship in 2023 doesn’t feel the same intense self-hatred that destroys Rufus and his beloved. The racism of the era is a sort of suffocating airborne toxin in the novel. It could be that things have improved, or due to my own particular limited experience, that this aspect of the novel felt a little dated; especially in contrast to the male characters’ inability to deal with their same-sex attractions, which remains easily understandable.
For the most part, Another Country feels like four angry, penetrative social novels combined into one. I suspect that Baldwin was trying to cover everything he knew about internalized oppression in the book and it’s a wonder that the novel is so coherent, varied, and true-to-life.
But, it’s also a little exhausting.
So, what are YOU reading, watching, playing, pondering, creating, or raging against this weekend?
