Revisiting ‘Giovanni's Room’

Summary

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NPR's Book of the Day – Revisiting ‘Giovanni’s Room’

Date: November 15, 2025
Guests: Glen Weldon (NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour), Garth Greenwell (Author)

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Episode Overview

This episode revisits James Baldwin's 1956 novel Giovanni's Room, a landmark work in both queer literature and the larger literary canon. Hosts Andrew Limbong and BA Parker are joined by Glen Weldon to discuss why this complex, provocative depiction of love, shame, and identity remains compelling—and necessary—decades after its publication. The discussion explores Baldwin's intentions, the book’s queer legacy, its place in the canon, as well as personal connections to the novel. The episode also features an interview with author Garth Greenwell on the transformative power of Giovanni’s Room for queer readers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Book and Its Significance

• Giovanni’s Room is Baldwin’s second novel, released in 1956, centered on David, an American in Paris, as he reflects on his relationship with Giovanni and his engagement to Hella.

• BA Parker admits to reading the book for the first time:

  "But now that I’ve read it, I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m hooked." (01:41)

• Glen Weldon emphasizes the importance of literary canon that’s actually enjoyable:

  “Isn't it great when something that's in the literary canon is actually, you know, it's important, it's groundbreaking. It's also good.” (00:00 / 02:24)

2. Personal Connections & First Encounters

• Weldon shares his experience of self-discovery and coming out:

  "There was a gay bookstore in Philadelphia called Giovanni's Room, and I must have walked around that block 20 times before I worked up the courage to go in... I just bought a copy of Giovanni's Room in Giovanni's Room..." (04:15-04:37)

• He notes the lack of fulfilling gay representation in literature at the time:

  "All I wanted was to know that everything was gonna be...I wanted to read at that time about really successful, well adjusted, hot looking gay men having great sex and stable relationships and universal acceptance." (04:42-05:02)
  "What I got instead was this book which is filled with terrible people...The real villain in this book is self loathing. What today we would call internalized homophobia." (05:06-05:58)

3. Thematic Exploration: Love, Shame, and Self-Knowledge

• BA Parker recaps Baldwin’s own view of the book:

  “This isn’t a book about homosexuality. This is about a person who doesn’t know how to love and can’t love himself...” (Baldwin quote replayed at 09:14-09:57)

• Andrew points out how Baldwin's life inspired the story:

  “It is a lot inspired by his relationship with this guy named Lucien ... a lot more comfortable in his sexuality than Baldwin is...” (09:57-10:46)

• Glen Weldon highlights the cultural archetype created by the book:

  “That final scene between Hela and David is like the urtext, the seminal text for the gay guy coming out to the woman he's been dating scene...” (10:46)

4. Representation and Shifting Cultural Attitudes

• Weldon traces queer representation across media:

  “Historically, any marginalized group ... we're not the ones writing the history. So when we appear in the narrative at all... we're the other, we're the enemies... victims, sidekicks... Finally, when we wrest the narrative away, we get to tell our own stories. And you can feel that in Giovanni’s Room…” (13:39-15:10)

• Discussion of honesty and controversy:
  Giovanni’s Room was controversial for its candid portrayal of desire and for containing no Black characters, which was, at the time, a fraught political statement for Baldwin.

  “I think writing Giovanni’s Room is a political act, and it’s something really, really interesting that even today would require some, like, heavy discussions.” (19:56-20:41)

5. On Adaptation and Literary Structure

• Debate over why the novel has rarely been adapted:

  “It reads like a stage play... but it just never happened until this year in 2025.” (18:18-18:57) “It’s a memory play almost. It has to be a memory play, I guess.” (19:08)

6. Sexuality, Euphemism, and Cultural Context

• Discussion about the degree and depiction of sexual content:

  "Is there enough gay sex in this book?... There did seem to me an absence. And it's not like an explicit book." (22:02-22:41)
  "I agree. Again, this is what I was looking for when I was 25. I was like, let's get to it... And I retired to the room with the sailor. It's like, well, he didn't retire. There was no retiring happening." (22:41-22:53)

• Noting the era's euphemistic language:

  "And it's also like the way the language he uses is a language of that time. At one point, he's looking into the mirror and contemplate. I contemplated my sex, he says. And it's like, okay, it's not ... the language we use today." (23:03-23:22)

7. Book Structure and Character Dynamics

• Examining the supposed ‘love triangle’:

  "I referred to David, Giovanni, and Hella as a love triangle... I feel like it's like a love triangle. That is impossible. That is, like, irreparably broken." (24:16-24:52)
  "I just don't think Hella is like, Hella literally disappears from the narrative multiple times in the book." (25:30-25:41) "This is a very transactional book. These people are all in transactions. They're all, like, trying to get something out of each other." (26:06)

8. Theme of Respectability and Internalized Shame

• How David’s desire for stability links to internalized homophobia:

  "She is trying to get a stable life out of David, and he is trying to get respectability out of Hella. And Giovanni's just out here living his own truth." (26:06)

• Concept of Giovanni's room as both purgatory and sanctuary:

  "David, our protagonist, is treating Giovanni's room...as this kind of purgatory that he can't get out of...But somehow, like, the concept of Giovanni's room has been reinterpreted as this kind of safe haven." (28:05-28:33)

9. Why Read Giovanni’s Room Now?

• Weldon’s take:

  "Again, it has a power of truth that is an ugly truth. And ugly truths are the ones that matter. Ugly truths are the ones that carry, that convey, that have real power." (29:32)

• Parker on Baldwin’s self-confrontation:

  "The way that Baldwin is able to confront his truths, you don't see that a lot nowadays. This was like full self confrontation in writing is just really compelling to me." (30:06-30:33)

• Aging and growing with a book:

  "25-year-old Glen could read it and be like, yeah, David's in the right...50-whatever-Glen can read it and go, the Davids of the world. Down with the Davids of the world. More, more Giovanni's, less Davids." (30:33)

10. If You Liked Giovanni's Room, Read...

• Andrew recommends: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (31:12)
• Glen recommends: Florentzer by Phil Mellin—historical fiction of young Leonardo da Vinci & queer Florence (31:41)
• Parker recommends: The Stranger by Albert Camus (32:22)

  “It is like peak existentialism ... David not being aware of his behaviors having consequences..." (32:22)

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Memorable Quotes

• Glen Weldon:

  “The real villain in this book is self loathing. What today we would call internalized homophobia.” (05:06)

• James Baldwin (as cited):

  “It’s not about homosexuality at all. It’s about what happens to you…when you can’t love anybody.” (09:17)

• Glen Weldon:

  “Ugly truths are the ones that matter. Ugly truths are the ones that carry, that convey, that have real power.” (29:32)

• Garth Greenwell:

  "To open up Giovanni's Room and read a story in which gay lives are treated as deserving of the kind of beauty that art can bestow on its subject. It just radically reoriented my relationship to dignity." (34:13-34:57) "To love someone is to make a commitment to be their witness." (38:56)

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Interview with Garth Greenwell (33:13–39:01)

Greenwell’s Personal Story

• Growing up queer in the pre-Internet South, Giovanni’s Room offered Greenwell his first glimpse of gay dignity:

  “Basically there were two stories about gay men that I had access to: that we could molest children and we could die of AIDS... to open up Giovanni’s Room and read a story in which gay lives are treated as deserving... it just radically reoriented my relationship to dignity.” (34:13-34:57)

Influence on Writing

• Greenwell was inspired to become a writer for the chance to “talk to” authors like Baldwin across time. (35:15)

Lessons for Students and Readers

• On what he wants students to consider:

  “...to love someone is to make a commitment to be their witness... David failed to be a witness to Giovanni in their life together. But in telling Giovanni's story... he has learned something about love." (38:56)

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Notable Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 – Glen Weldon on the pleasure of canonical books being good
• 04:15 – Glen Weldon's coming out story and connection to the novel
• 05:06 – On self-loathing as the real villain
• 09:14 – Discussion of Baldwin’s own description of the book’s theme
• 10:46 – The “urtext” coming out scene
• 13:39 – History of queer representation in literature and media
• 15:10 – Mutual understanding and exchanges in Giovanni's Room
• 18:18 – On why the book has not been widely adapted
• 22:02 – Discussion about depiction of sex in the novel
• 24:16 – Is it a love triangle? Debate
• 26:06 – Transactional relationships in the book
• 29:32 – Why read this book now?
• 33:13 – Garth Greenwell interview begins
• 34:13 – Greenwell on encountering the book as a queer youth
• 38:56 – Greenwell on the lesson of witnessing and love

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Tone & Style

The hosts and guests balance analytical depth with humor, warmth, and honesty. Weldon's self-deprecating reflection, Parker's excitement, and Limbong’s candidness make the conversation approachable and relatable. The discussion weaves personal stories with broader cultural critique while maintaining sensitivity for the novel’s emotional complexity.

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Summary Takeaway

NPR’s Book of the Day’s revisit of Giovanni’s Room deftly combines the personal and the universal. It celebrates Baldwin’s skill in laying bare both the shame and the hope at the center of queer experience, while insisting that uncomfortable truths are what make literature—and its readers—grow. The episode serves as a loving, critical, and highly engaging guide for longtime admirers and first-time readers alike.

Transcript

[Glen Weldon]

Isn't it great when something that's in the literary canon is actually, you know, it's important, it's groundbreaking. It's also good. Isn't that fun when that happens?

[Andrew Limbong]

You're listening to books we've loved from.

[BA Parker]

Npr, the book show where we reread old favorites and tell you why they still matter today.

[Andrew Limbong]

I'm Andrew Limbong.

[BA Parker]

And I'm BA Parker.

[Andrew Limbong]

Hi Andrew, how you doing?

[BA Parker]

I'm super stoked about today.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah? Yeah. Why, what's that?

[BA Parker]

Well, we're reading a book that I never have gotten to read before. And it's something I've been really hyping myself and really excited to read. Cause I want to get in the know.

[Andrew Limbong]

When you told me that you hadn't read this before, I was like, wow, that's a twist. I didn't see that one coming.

[BA Parker]

It has eluded me and this was the perfect time to finally read it. But first we would like to introduce our guest, Glen weldon, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Hey Glenn.

[Glen Weldon]

Hey guys.

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey Glenn.

[Glen Weldon]

It's great to be here.

[BA Parker]

All right, so the book that we've been reading is James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.

[Glen Weldon]

Uh huh.

[BA Parker]

Now before we get into the synopsis, I wanna give a quick content warning that this book and our conversation will discuss sex. All right?

[Andrew Limbong]

All right, cool.

[BA Parker]

Now, it is the second novel by James Baldwin released in 1956. It's the story of a young American man living in Paris who reminisces about his relationship with an Italian bartender named Giovanni, while at the same time he is engaged to another fellow American woman.

[Andrew Limbong]

Uh oh.

[Glen Weldon]

Uh huh. There's the twist.

[Andrew Limbong]

So, okay, Parker, since you had never read this before and this isn't like a revisiting for me, why'd you pick it?

[BA Parker]

I picked it because it's such a part of the literary canon and it's like the quintessential James Baldwin book. But I had somehow never read it. Like in school I'd read Notes of a Native Son. I'd read if Beale Street Could Talk. I even went to another country. It wasn't intentionally that I skipped over it, but now that I've read it, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm hooked.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. Are you a Baldwin head or were those just like assigned to you in school and just.

[BA Parker]

I am a James Baldwin. Appreciate. That's not a word.

[Andrew Limbong]

I got it. That works. Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Like, I know his like, cultural importance as a black writer in the 20th century that like, if you hadn't read at least one you like, you get kicked out.

[Glen Weldon]

Both black men. But, Parker, isn't it great when something that's in the literary canon is actually, you know, it's important. It's groundbreaking. It's also good. Isn't that fun when that happens?

[BA Parker]

My goodness. When you read a part of the canon, you're like this. Yeah, but no, reading Giovanni's mom's like, oh, there's a way that he described a car crash that I was like, he's got the juice.

[Glen Weldon]

This book is good. And it's also chewy and substantive and difficult and kind of hard to distill into something easy and pat. Which is one of the reasons I love it.

[BA Parker]

Yeah. What did you think, Andrew?

[Andrew Limbong]

All right, so I first read it, not super duper long ago. I wasn't like a young man reading. I was like a grown adult.

[BA Parker]

You weren't 21 in a bar.

[Andrew Limbong]

I kind of wish I was. So it's one of those, like, if I was, it would have ruined my life in that I think I would have become a different kind of guy, you know, because I've been off cigs for a couple years now. This book kind of made me miss, you know what I mean? I felt this is not a pro smoking podcast, but I did for a while when I was reading, it was like, oh, it'd be really nice to be, like, smoking a cigarette now.

[Glen Weldon]

There's so much cognac in this book.

[Andrew Limbong]

I know.

[BA Parker]

It's high praise, I gotta say.

[Andrew Limbong]

Well, it also doesn't help that, like, every picture of James Baldwin where he looks impossibly cool, oh, there's a cigarette right there. He's got a cig right there. It's like, hell, yeah, brother don't smoke. But, you know. Anyway, I think the long story short of it, I think my wife was nannying for a family who happened to have Go Tell it on the mountain, and she was bored during that time and started reading it and loved it and brought it home, and I read it. And then we just started reading, going through the Baldwin books.

[BA Parker]

That's so romantic, Andrew.

[Andrew Limbong]

I guess this book isn't.

[Glen Weldon]

No, it ain't.

[BA Parker]

This book isn't.

[Andrew Limbong]

This book is not.

[Glen Weldon]

That's why I like it. Yep.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Andrew Limbong]

What about you, Glenn? When did you first read it? Were you a young man?

[Glen Weldon]

Well, I was 25. I was still coming out. I came out pretty late. I was struggling. There was a gay bookstore in Philadelphia called Giovanni's Room, and I must have walked around that block 20 times before I worked up the courage to go into the store. As soon as I went in, I didn't look around. I just bought a copy of Giovanni's Room in Giovanni's Room, which, you know, kind of like wearing the band's T shirt to the band's gig. You know what I mean?

[BA Parker]

We don't judge. As long as you appreciate what's wrong, that's cool.

[Andrew Limbong]

Now we're okay to do that. I got the note from high up. Good.

[Glen Weldon]

Cause that's a thing I also have done. But I was in my 20s, I was coming out and all I wanted was to know that everything was gonna be. Cause it didn't feel like everything was gonna be good. I wanted to read at that time about really successful, well adjusted, hot looking gay men having great sex and stable relationships and universal acceptance.

[BA Parker]

Have you ever read a book with a stable gay protagonist who's doing all right?

[Glen Weldon]

That's right. Right. I mean, like, you don't look to literature to have this like flattering mirror, this completely frictionless assurance that you're gonna get all the acceptance of sex that you want. What I got instead was this book which is filled with terrible people, queer characters who are really vain and superficial and they hate women and they're racist and they're classist. They're also self loathing, which is key, which is what this book's really about. I recognize myself in these horrible people because the real villain in this book is self loathing. What today we would call internalized homophobia. But you watch this self loathing poison David's the main character's soul, poisoning everything in his life. But I mean, I'm not going to lie, it had a power. I kind of felt that at that time.

[BA Parker]

After the break, we will dig into the world of Giovanni's room. Stay with us.

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[BA Parker]

And we're back. Now before the break, we talked about our personal connections to Giovanni's Room. But I'd like to zoom out and talk a bit about James Baldwin. So James Baldwin, he was born in Harlem, grew up in poverty and came of age like during the Harlem Renaissance. And in the 1940s, Baldwin moved to Paris to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. Cause they're not racist and homophobic in France. So Giovanni's Room was written during his time in Paris and was released in 1956. And Giovanni's Room was controversial for its focus on homosexuality and for having no black characters. So like a recap of the book, you've got this protagonist, David, who is reminiscing about this intimate relationship he was having with an Italian bartender in Paris named Giovanni, while also beholden to named Hella, who is traipsing around Spain through a lot of the book. While David is squarely in Paris with this collection of queer characters, including Jacques, who is like an older gay man who David can kind of see what his future could look like, but also shares like a bit of loathing towards Jacques because of Jacques's clear homosexuality. But there was a recording that I found an interview that Baldwin had later in his life where he talks briefly about Giovanni's Room. And it speaks to what Glenn was saying about how the interviewer was like, well, this was a book about homosexuality. And Baldwin was like, no, this isn't a book about homosexuality. This is about a person who doesn't know how to love and can't love himself. And I really think like, Glenn really hit the nail on the head there.

[Glen Weldon]

But when you wrote Giovanni's Room a.

[BA Parker]

Long time ago, that was quite a.

[Glen Weldon]

Brave book to bring out, wasn't it? It was about love, but it was about homosexual. But it was about love. But you deliberately put on in homosexual love, presumably. Well, the boys in the middle, it's not so much about, it's not about homosexuality at all. It's about what happens to you. You can't love anybody. It doesn't make any difference whether you can't love a woman, can't love a man, you can't love anybody. You're dangerous because you have no way of learning humility, no way of learning that other people suffer, and the way of learning how to use your suffering and theirs to get from one place to another. In short, you fail even the responsibility, which is to love each other.

[Andrew Limbong]

You know what's incredible about that is that I'm flipping my way through the new Nicholas Boggs Baldwin biography, and I was, like, paying special attention to the part when he's, like, doing Giovanni's Room. And it is a lot inspired by his relationship with this guy named Lucien, right? A younger white guy from Switzerland who's a lot more comfortable in his sexuality than Baldwin is, and he's a lot freer. Da, da da. Baldwin's a messy dude throughout the whole thing. He's quick to fall in love with other guys. And to hear him say that, reflecting on his younger self. But he's also writing this book about this guy who has trouble loving himself and thus hurting other people in the process. It's this weird sort of both acute self awareness and yet an odd distance to stop from hurting people in the moment. You know what I mean?

[Glen Weldon]

That's exactly it. That lack of empathy. That's what Baldwin was talking about. I will also note that that final scene between Hela and David is like the urtext, the seminal text for the gay guy coming out to the woman he's been dating scene that we have since seen in movies and television and plays hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. We're still reading variations of it today. And because that's how it goes, I've had that conversation. It goes exactly that way. And it's the scene where Hela, who throughout the novel has been kind of, we agree, one dimensional. I mean, she's demonstrated some kind of proto feminist notions about how unfair life is to women, yet she still wants to get married and have babies. Like now she gets to apply some of that insight to David and call him out, which is great.

[BA Parker]

It's so satisfying. It was like the final scene with David and Hela where Hela finally calls out David's behavior. And it's kind of like a culmination of all the frustration she's felt in the relationship this whole time where David is like, I've been li. You don't understand. I've been lying to myself. And she's like, no, you've been lying to Me like, I am the other person in this relationship. And it kind of really shows the consequences of his actions. Throughout is like, she is impacted. And I think he thought it was a victimless crime when it truly wasn't. It was like the one, two punch of, like, the Giovanni scene and the Hella scene felt as someone who was frustrated with all of David's behavior was kind of this culmination. But it also felt like not browbeating, but just like, really just hitting the hammer on the head of, like, what is David's problem throughout this entire book?

[Glen Weldon]

His interactions with Hela are some of the most frustrating in the book because Hela is saying these kind of proto feminist things and David is doing what a dude would do today, which is like, so what you're talking about me, I'm a sweaty stranger. I think I'm not. Not all men, he says. He says, literally over and over again, not all men. It's interesting.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. And, well, Glenn, you'd mentioned before, there's that final conflict between the two of them that sort of reverberates throughout culture and plenty of scenes. I was thinking a lot about this movie, Beach Rats, which came out a couple years ago, directed by Eliza Hitman, where it's like, I was thinking about it a lot at first because the opening chapter talks about being gay in Brooklyn. There's all these interactions with older men introducing you to a quote, unquote. I'm putting air quotes here. Seedy world of gay sex and stuff like that. And then there's the hiding behind or lying to a female partner is like every iteration of that in culture indebted to Giovanni's Room. Do we think.

[Glen Weldon]

I think what Giovanni's Room represents, one of the reasons it's in the queer canon certainly is because it's one of the first examples we got of queer folks telling our own stories. Right. Because that's not the way it happens historically. Historically, any marginalized group, people of color, women, queer folks, most of history, we're not the ones writing the stories. We're not the ones writing the history. So when we appear in the narrative at all, which isn't often, we're the other. Like, we're the enemies. First off, we start off as the enemies. Like we're the force that the straight white guy protagonist has to combat. We're cowboys and Indians. Then a little later, we become the victims. Right? We're the story triggers that spurs the straight white guy into action. We're the damsel in distress. We're Tom Robinson in mockingbird Right. Who's wrongfully accused of a crime and needs white guy Atticus Finch to come in and save the day. We're a gay bash teenager that a white, straight, manly man has to stick up for A little later. We become the sidekicks. We're in the mix, but we're only there to kind of shine a light on the straight white guy or the straight white girl. Right? We're the queenie best friend in the rom com who says, girl, go to him. Like, that's all we do. Finally, when we wrest the narrative away, we get to tell our own stories. And you can feel that in Giovanni's room because these men are taking advantage of each other. There's a mutual understanding here that trading sex for something is. It's something that is simply observed and acknowledged. And Baldwin approaches it matter of factly and says, this is the world we live in. It's not moralized about until the ending. It's not judged from the outside until the ending. And that's what happens when the calls are coming from inside the house.

[Andrew Limbong]

My favorite part is when they're young. Both Giovanni and David are hanging out with the older guys. And David goes to pay, and Giovanni stops and be like, bro, that's not what we're doing here.

[Glen Weldon]

Come on. Yep. Come on. Yep, yep.

[Andrew Limbong]

Come on. We know the score, dude. We know what's happening.

[BA Parker]

Yeah. Giovanni knows the rules of the game.

[Glen Weldon]

Exactly. You said it. Exactly. That's the rules of the game. And we all understand the rules of the game. And he understands the rules of the game. And because he depicts it so clearly, it's one of the reasons this was controversial, because he was being honest. Right. And this is how it could be used by straight 1956 audiences to kind of say, oh, my God, look at these tawdry people. And I read it today and I'm like, yeah, this is. No, I get it. This is not conforming to heteronormative ideals. This is kind of us making our way through the world. And the ending, which. Can we talk about the fact that David goes away from Giovanni and then the entire last, what, third of the novel plays out purely in David's imagination. Yeah, but in a way, like, we just talked about Brokeback Mountain on pop culture happy hour. And that also has exactly the same vibe here where Ennis hears that Jack dies and he goes into this whole imagination of him being gay bashed instead of it being an accident, as everybody around him is telling him, oh, yeah.

[BA Parker]

Jack was pumping up a flat on the Truck out on a back road when the tire blew up. The rim of the tire slammed into his face, broke his nose and jaw, and knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time somebody come along, he'd drowned in his own blood. He was only 39 years old.

[Glen Weldon]

And again, it's that same thing. I know Jack. So I know this is what happened. And we're not supposed to be left with, is that the way it happened? We're supposed to be left with a conviction of, yes, this is exactly what happened. The same way. We're supposed to be left with that same conviction here.

[BA Parker]

Well, that's so interesting, because I recently went with co workers to, like, the 20th anniversary of Brokeback Mountain to go see it. Cause I had to be like, you don't understand. I learned how to drive a car as a teenager so that I could drive to the theater so that I could see Bro Mountain. And I like, this is how important it was. And then they were like, this is traumatic.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, this is queer trauma.

[BA Parker]

This is queer trauma. But I was like, you don't understand. In 2005, this was considered progress.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, that's the thing that I keep thinking about. I do sense, Parker, the same thing you are, that the younger queer folk are looking for positive representation. They don't want to read about queer trauma. And in my experience, and I don't want to overstate this, but I will say, in my experience, they react to characters making bad decisions, unflattering decisions, selfish decisions, malicious decisions, like they do in this book. Characters making choices in fiction as if it was a person in real life making those choices. They don't want to have anything to do with them. Right.

[BA Parker]

People make bad decisions haunted by respectability.

[Glen Weldon]

Exactly.

[Andrew Limbong]

There's a weird difference. It's like, is it trauma, or is it just drama?

[Glen Weldon]

That's a great question. You nailed it, Andrew.

[Andrew Limbong]

You know, we've been talking a lot about different movies and stuff like that. The part I'm up to in the Baldwin biography is him being frustrated. Why? This book, Javon's Room can never get adapted. Right. There are cracks at it to be on the stage. It reads like a stage play.

[Glen Weldon]

It does?

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. Like, I felt I kind of was thinking about, like, a movie like Marriage Story or what's that? Like, one, like, black and white Netflix movie that was just like the couple in the.

[BA Parker]

Oh, Malcolm and Marie. Yeah. Don't even bring that into this conversation.

[Andrew Limbong]

I don't know, but I'm just like. It felt like something that could be shot in that style, right? Where it's like a sort of a closed set thing, but it just never happened until this year in 2025.

[BA Parker]

There was a production this year.

[Garth Greenwell]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Of Giovanni's Room. But how can you adapt it? Like, how to make it? If you have an imaginary third act, what can you do?

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, that's the thing. It's a memory play almost. It has to be a memory play, I guess. And to your point, Andrew, like that scene, that last scene between Giovanni and David, there is nothing happening. It's just pure dialogue. It goes on and on and on and there's nothing. It's just a screenplay.

[Andrew Limbong]

It's all there. And it's so efficient. It's so cleanly written. So cleanly written. Yeah. Parker, like something you said before, when did you realize all these people were white or something? From Jump.

[BA Parker]

When he said blonde, I was like, great, okay. I get the vibes. And then he started describing Giovanni. I was like, oh, he's okay. And, yeah, my entire life, my entire adult life, I just thought this about black people because I knew a black kid named Giovanni.

[Glen Weldon]

There you go.

[BA Parker]

But I think. But I also think it's interesting because particularly nowadays there is this desire for an author to only write about lived experience.

[Garth Greenwell]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

And if a black author today is to write about white people, it's inherently like a political decision. Like that is something you are deciding to do. What does that mean? What does that represent? Some people can resent you for it, I'm sure. I mean, possibly there were black artists who read this in the 50s and were like, what are you doing? Talk about the cause, like, everything else. So I think writing Giovanni's Dream is a political act, and it's something really, really interesting that even today would require some, like, heavy discussions.

[Andrew Limbong]

Well, so his publishers wanted him to do essentially, like, a sequel to Go Tell it on the Mountain, like a follow up. And he didn't want to be, like, I'm using heavy air quotes. He didn't want to be, like, a black writer. Right. He wanted to show that he can, like, do other stuff. The thing I like about Boulder is he's always self aware about where he is as an artist, like, how people are seeing him and, like, the weight he holds. And he wanted to just, like, flex a bit, which I think is so funny. And so I don't want to say, like, brave, because that seems like a bit pat.

[Glen Weldon]

But, yeah, mission accomplished, though. It was a flex.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, we're just going to take a quick break right here and then come back to discuss some of the literary themes in the book. We'll be right back.

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[Andrew Limbong]

And now we're back. I wanna talk about sex.

[BA Parker]

Let's do.

[Andrew Limbong]

Is there enough gay sex in this book? And I ask that not because I find that the memorable sex scenes, thinking back on it are. There's some stuff with like, hela. And then there's the one night stand he has with Sue, I believe, which is like some.

[Glen Weldon]

Who he describes as stolid, which.

[BA Parker]

Ooh, man, don't let that be her legacy.

[Glen Weldon]

Woof.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah, I know. Shout out to Su. You know. Yeah, you came in.

[BA Parker]

But it.

[Andrew Limbong]

There did seem to me an absence. And it's not like an explicit book. This isn't like we're not talking about like a romantic book. But there did seem to me like an absence of dude smooching.

[Glen Weldon]

Huh? I agree. Again, this is what I was looking for when I was 25. I was like, let's get to it. And I found like. And I retired to the room with the sailor. It's like, well, he didn't retire. There was no retiring happening.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. I wonder, did you think of it? I know you said what you were looking for was more salacious, but a part of me is like, is that a bit of a cop out? Did he. Sort of. I think that's pullback.

[Glen Weldon]

I think that's.

[BA Parker]

It's a 1956 problem. I don't know if it's like, specific to this book. Problem.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah.

[Glen Weldon]

And it's also like the way the language he uses is a language of that time. At one point, he's looking into the mirror and contemplate. I contemplated my sex, he says. And it's like, okay, it's not.

[Andrew Limbong]

We've all contemplated sex, but that's not.

[Glen Weldon]

The language we use today. And of course, it was a different time. And this is the way they talked about sex. I mean, you would look at Gore Vidal. Same thing. Gore Vidal writing around more or less the same time he was using these kind of euphemisms. It's, you know. Cause it was a major publisher. If it was like a cheap porn paperback you would pick up at, like, a gritty bookstore, they were going to town about this.

[BA Parker]

I mean, you'd hear words like member all over the place.

[Glen Weldon]

Members. There's so many members. Members over.

[Andrew Limbong]

What kind of club is this?

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah, that would be a great. Members only would be a great name for a poor. Like a real one of those cheesy pores. But, yeah, I just think, you know, I did miss it. I wanted more of it, but I had avenues that I could explore that gave me plenty of that stuff. Didn't need to look to James Baldwin for that.

[BA Parker]

We know what we're searching for when we're looking for a James Baldwin, and it's maybe not that.

[Glen Weldon]

Yep.

[Andrew Limbong]

Glenn, I wanted to chuck to you a question that I was talking to Parker about, but when we were talking about this book, I referred to David, Giovanni, and Hela as a love triangle.

[Glen Weldon]

Oh.

[Andrew Limbong]

And, yeah, Parker made that sound.

[BA Parker]

That's not what that is.

[Andrew Limbong]

And I was like, is it not? And it's like. I feel like it's like a love triangle. That is impossible. That is, like, irreparably broken. But I still feel like it deserves discussion in the great love triangles of pop culture. I don't know. What do you think?

[Glen Weldon]

What do I think reading about this book? You know, it's like, themes of bisexuality. And I'm like, I don't want to label. I hate labels. But there's a moment towards the end of this book where he feels revulsion when her breasts rubs against his arm. And I'm like, exactly. Glenn, is this. Is this bisexual? I don't know about feeling revulsion. I don't. It's not. That is not a happy marriage make. To be fair, though, he does feel revulsion towards Giovanni when Giovanni is needy. Like, when Giovanni is in that room and he's needy and the sweet smell of his breath made me feel like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, I kind of got that.

[BA Parker]

I just don't think Hela is like, Hela literally disappears from the narrative multiple times in the book.

[Andrew Limbong]

I don't think Hela business to attend to.

[BA Parker]

I don't think Hela. I don't think hella is a priority.

[Glen Weldon]

I did like that one.

[BA Parker]

No, don't encourage Angie.

[Glen Weldon]

Don't encourage. Very, very Orange County. Yeah, Very Orange County, California.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

So I don't know. I don't think of it as the love triangle. I think it is like David knows who he is but doesn't want to Press the button and go forth.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Is what I think.

[Glen Weldon]

This is a very transactional book. These people are all in transactions. They're all, like, trying to get something out of each other. And she is trying to get a stable life out of David, and he is trying to get respectability out of Hela. And Giovanni's just out here living his own truth.

[Andrew Limbong]

Speaking of the stable life thing, I keep thinking, you know, Glenn, you'd mentioned when we were talking about Hela before, about, like, how she just wants, like, you know, the kids, the picket fence. Da, da, da, da. There's that scene where David is playing housewife, right? Where he, like, does the dishes and cleansing. What is it, like a studio apartment? Congrats. Good job, buddy. But he feels, like, so accomplished, which I was thinking a lot about what he wants. And what he wants is to be a wife. Right? Like, he's a wife guy, but not in the way that we use it. You know the term today. Right. And I don't want to call it like a. Like a gender flip, because everybody should be cleaning their apartment. He wants to be kept. Yeah. Is that what it is?

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah. Cause at the time, right to your point, Andrew, like, there's a scene where David has abandoned Giovanni. He's with his fiance, Hella. They're on the streets of Paris. They see Giovanni and this guy Jacques out and about, and Giovanni is drunk, and he's cleaning it up in public. And you get this from David. You get this revulsion, right? This kind of, ugh, what a horrible. What a horrible person. And I read that back then because I was a pick me gay. And I was like, well, I'm not like the other gay guys. And I was like, yeah, I get it. I totally get what David's going through here. And now today, of course, I just read that same scene, and I'm like, man, Giovanni is out here. He's standing in his truth, and David is this sad ball of rage and shame. And I would. I would so much want to be Giovanni and not David. I'm glad I'm not David anymore.

[BA Parker]

That's so interesting, because I think while reading the book, David, our protagonist, is treating Giovanni's room, like the actual Giovanni's room, as this kind of purgatory that he can't get out of.

[Glen Weldon]

This trap.

[BA Parker]

Yeah, this trap. But somehow, like, the concept of Giovanni's room has been reinterpreted as this kind of safe haven. The bookstore there's, like, this place to find solace, and I find that, like, a really interesting juxtaposition.

[Glen Weldon]

Yep.

[BA Parker]

We're gonna take another break and when we're back, we'll give you some book recommendations and we'll call up another fan of Giovanni's Room. Stay with us.

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[BA Parker]

So the question I guess now would be why should we read this book now?

[Glen Weldon]

Again, it has a power of truth that is an ugly truth. And ugly truths are the ones that matter. Ugly truths are the ones that carry, that convey, that have real power. Tidy truths, like flattering truths, frictionless truths aren't. And so the grittiness of this thing, the difficulty of it, the substantiveness of it, is what matters. And if you read it as author insert really self aware and self lacerating in a really smart way.

[BA Parker]

Yeah, this idea of like frictionless truth is uninteresting is really compelling to me right now. And the way that Baldwin is able to confront his truths, you don't see that a lot nowadays. This was like full self confrontation in writing is just really compelling to me. And now I wanna read it again.

[Glen Weldon]

I mean it's so clear and so honest and so truthful that 25 year old Glen could read it and be like, yeah, David's in the right Giovannius. What a queen, what a femme. What a like uncomfortable gay guy and 50, whatever. Glenn can read it and go, the Davids of the world. Down with the Davids of the world. More, more Giovanni's, less Davids. That's what the queer culture needs, a hell of a lot more Giovanni's.

[BA Parker]

We'll put that on a bumper sticker.

[Glen Weldon]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Okay, so let's give some recommendations for Giovanni's Room. If you like this, then that. If you don't like this, then that.

[Andrew Limbong]

All right, I would recommend. This is gonna be a very Andrew Kohr recommendation. Ernest Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises.

[Glen Weldon]

Sure.

[Andrew Limbong]

If we're talking about young and horny depressed people bumming around France smoking cigs. If we're talking about self loathing dudes looking at themselves in front of a mirror like naked and not liking what they see. If we're talking about dialogue as action in a Very clean and fast way. I think there's a lot of parallels here.

[Glen Weldon]

Cool. My pick is a new novel, Florenzer by Phil Mellin, which is a historical fiction look at the life of Leonardo da Vinci as a young artist. The main thing that I love about it, I mean, there's lots of spicy. The kids today would call it spicy. It really captures this time and place of Florence at that time and being a young artist and the furtive kind of queer scene. And it just. As you walk through the streets, he's really great at capturing the sights, the sounds, the smells. It really places you there in a way that I haven't been placed in a historical novel in a long time. So that's what I should recommend.

[BA Parker]

The inner high school English teacher in me is going to pick the Stranger by Albert Camus, which is. It is like peak existentialism where this young man, Meursault is kind of this disaffected man who is very apathetic towards the things around him. This is also in regards to David not being aware of his behaviors having consequences and the impact around them. And it's a short book. It's fun. I reread it last year because I interviewed my high school English teacher.

[Glen Weldon]

There you go.

[Andrew Limbong]

Oh, wow.

[BA Parker]

So I think it pairs. I always think about it a lot while reading Giovanni's Dream. I think it pairs nicely. That is my recommendation.

[Glen Weldon]

Excellent.

[Andrew Limbong]

Well, thanks a lot, Glenn. This is a lot of fun.

[Glen Weldon]

Thank you so much. This was great. Appreciate it.

[BA Parker]

Thank you.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

And now for this week's FONA fan, I sat with author Garth Greenwell. Hi, Garth.

[Garth Greenwell]

Hello.

[BA Parker]

How's it going?

[Garth Greenwell]

Great. Very happy to be here.

[BA Parker]

Happy to have you. So in 2016, you described finding the book Giovanni's Room at a local bookstore in the queer section in the early 90s. But being in the American south, you felt the need to grab whatever book you could find, you could off of the shelves and take it to the other side of the store to read.

[Garth Greenwell]

That is true.

[BA Parker]

Yeah. And even as a young reader, how did reading Giovanni's Room shape that moment in time?

[Garth Greenwell]

Oh, you know, it really feels kind of miraculous to me. I mean, okay, so growing up in Kentucky, in the pre Internet American South, I mean, basically there were two stories about gay men that I had access to that we could molest children and we could die of aids.

[BA Parker]

Golly.

[Garth Greenwell]

And so to open up Giovanni's Room and read a story in which gay lives are treated as deserving of the kind of beauty that art can bestow on its Subject. It just radically reoriented my relationship to dignity. And growing up in Kentucky as a queer person, like, I just felt that nothing about me fit in the world. And reading Baldwin's prose, which is so gorgeous, so expressive, so fruity in the best sense of the term, you know, what it did, it suggested to me I could fit.

[BA Parker]

That's so interesting and so lovely because when you wrote what belongs to you and cleanness, were there moments when Baldwin felt like a companion or even a challenge in your creative process?

[Garth Greenwell]

You know, I feel like there was this shadowy corner and now rest in peace, Holly Cook Booksellers in Louisville, Kentucky. There was this shadowy little corner in the back that somebody loved of gay and lesbian literature, which was full of incredible stuff. And I discovered Baldwin, I discovered Mishima, I discovered Wolf and Jeanette Winterson. You know, just amazing writers. I think the reason I became a writer was because I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to be part of this amazing conversation happening between queer writers among queer writers across time.

[BA Parker]

Hmm. I'm thinking about, while reading the book, for me, as a reader, is that it seemed like it took so long, even at all, for David to view Giovanni as a person, in a way, comparably. I think about your book Miko.

[Garth Greenwell]

Yeah.

[BA Parker]

Where he's treated like a person and given, like, agency and like a backstory in a way that I think in 1956 would not have existed. And I was so struck by that. Like, oh, this is the turn. This is the thing that I think I was craving that wasn't allowed in that time period that you were able to dig deeper into.

[Garth Greenwell]

I'm so glad you feel that, because one of the things I felt so strongly writing what belongs to you, was that Mitko, even though the book is told from the perspective of the narrator, who's an American high school teacher. And I knew from the first moment I started writing it that we could not get Mitko's pov. We couldn't enter Mitko's brain, that this was like. Like a sealed off space. But I knew that the reader had to know that Mitko was a full human being with a consciousness, even if we don't have access to it. Having his own experience.

[BA Parker]

Gosh. This is our last question. When you teach or talk about Giovanni's room, what's the question you most want readers to wrestle with after closing the book?

[Garth Greenwell]

Oh, that's a very brilliant question. And I wonder if I have a real answer for it. You know, I have lived with this book so much, and it's such a personal obsession. But obviously I want my students to encounter this book on their own. I mean, in some ways it depends on who the students are. Like if I'm talking to my MFA students, I want them to be thinking about craft. I want them to be thinking about the brilliant way that Baldwin manipulates time in the novel. If I was teaching it to high school students, I think that I would want them to come away with questions about love and about what it means to love someone and therefore to be in some way responsible to them. And what David, I think, does learn in the book, because I don't think David learns a lot in the book. But one thing that I think he does learn in the book, and Baldwin would say this again and again across his career, is that to love someone is to make a commitment to be their witness. And at the end of the book, David knows that for the rest of his life he is going to be haunted by Giovanni's face. And David failed to be a witness to Giovanni in their life together. But in telling Giovanni's story. And the whole book is a monologue from David, the whole book is David speaking to us. And in realizing that he has in some radically flawed way loved this man and that he is bound to him for life and that he will be his witness to life, he has learned something about love.

[BA Parker]

On that note, Garth, thank you so much for talking with me.

[Garth Greenwell]

Oh, it has been a joy. Thank you so much for having me.

[BA Parker]

All right, thank you to Garth and be sure to pick up Garth's latest book, Small Rain Out Now.

[Andrew Limbong]

This episode was produced by Cher Vincent and edited by Megan Sullivan.

[BA Parker]

And our executive producer is Yolanda Sanzgweni.

[Andrew Limbong]

Thank you for listening to books we've loved from npr. We'll see you next time.

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