Baldwin created such an intense and suffocating piece. The characters are tangled up with each other, muddled, two-faced, broken, angry, and pitiful.
The characters, too, were always seeking refuge, always trying to find some relief as they drank cheap whiskey, their skin stuck to the furniture, their foreheads damp, their worlds colliding and falling. It was fitting that I read Another Country while camped out under the air conditioner or sweltering in the park or seeking solace by the ocean.
It was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it.īut it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable – only love, and love itself mostly failed. It was fitting that I read Another Country while camped out under the air conditioner or sweltering in the park or seeki All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrevocable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever. But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable – only love, and love itself mostly failed. It was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it. For more of TSF’s reviews, check out the blog, TSF is a Mess.All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrevocable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever. This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. Whether they do or not, I very much look forward to reading every word he has ever had published. I hope others may value Baldwin’s work as I have. I love it despite it’s flaws and feel quite terrible pointing them out publicly.Īn imperfect work, yes, this may nonetheless be the most important literary discovery I’ve made in years. I feel entirely serious (and quite ridiculous) stating that I had an almost romantic relationship with it. It is the first time I have had such an intense and turbulent relationship with a book. In fact, I found myself completely obsessed with it when I was reading it, but almost felt it too heavy an emotional burden to pick up again after several hours away from it. Often brutally honest in its exploration of relationships, willful ignorance and jealousy, it remains an intense and uncomfortably familiar read.
As a whole, however, it is muddled, and even infuriating in its failure to live up to its full potential. The first third of the novel is its strongest, ranking with some of the best writing I have ever read. Reading Another Country is a frustrating experience. Taken care of by friends, away from his tempestuous life and relationships, he managed to conclude his 14 years of torment. On the brink of suicide, his novel had literally almost killed him. Carrying with him an “unpublishable manuscript” that was “ruining his life,” Baldwin claimed the characters simply wouldn’t speak to him. From Paris he had traveled to Turkey, arriving in poor health, depressed, and feeling that he had lost sight of his aims as a writer. He completed it on a kitchen counter in Istanbul in 1962. Baldwin immediately draws the reader in, setting us on a bumpy and often harrowing path exploring interracial relationships, extramarital affairs, bisexuality, as well as self delusion and its consequences.īaldwin began writing the novel in Greenwich Village in 1948.
Thrown right into a cold New York City night, the story begins with urgency, as we follow the young Rufus Scott wandering the dark city streets, broke and broken. James Baldwin’s Another Country is a sprawling novel that details the lives of a group of musicians, writers and artists in 1950’s Greenwich Village.