Are we all just a tad too pretentious already?

[Stately Plump]

I love that the "Are we all just a tad too pretentious already" thread has turned into the "how to make a book gayer" thread.

I feel like that is brilliantly unpretentious (meant in earnest, not internet sarcasm).

[Aztecson23]

"Well, I certainly wouldn't have blanketed the sex in such heavy coding. That said, it's a remarkable novel."

What do you mean? You would've made it more graphic? I read this book when I was fifteen. As I recall, it was a good book. I also read one...I think it's called "Another Country". That was good too.

"The question is not making Giovanni's Room gayer, but giving more narrative subjectivity to Giovanni. I once tried to write a paper about Giovanni's personhood, failed, and wrote a paper about how different marginalized figures--Giovanni, all those scare queens hanging around Guillaume's bar--destabilize David's personhood."

I think you're right. Giovanni does kind of serve as a ...well, like he's there to help David figure out (or not) his sexuality, a support, an object, not a subject, as it were.

"Speaking of pretension (or lack thereof), that book may have been the anchor of the Queer Studies class I took as an undergrad, and queer theory might be the example people use to make of the esoteric excesses of the humanities academy (grrr), but that doesn't change the fact that "man, when I first read this book, I HATED David" was my point of departure for intellectual discussion. "

Donald Hall was the keynote speaker at a conference at my school. He discussed G's Room through these queer hermeneutic lens informed by Gadamer. It was like this ethical imperative thing. I remember he kept discussing a "frozen ontology" with respect to David, for his lack of openess to himself as other and to others as others (my characterization of Donald's argument sounds pretentious.) It was good.

[girlmostlikely]

Oooh, this is all very interesting! I understand (or understood) David as undergoing a gradual self-shattering in the novel--at first unwillingly. That scene towards the end where he's looking in the mirror and then suddenly imagines Giovanni was a favorite of mine. I wrote the paper during my brief flirtation with psychoanalysis, so I was really drawn to scenes of mirrors and gazes. Though I tried to integrate my discussion of subjectivity with some historical materialism!

The class was co-taught and one of my profs has done a lot of recent work on Baldwin. Trip, are you familiar with Aliyyah Abudur-Rahman's essay on GR? She argues that David undergoes a gradual racialization in the novel.

To lighten this abit: yeah, anyone as resistant to camp as David won't rank among my favorite fictional characters, though I love GR nonetheless!

[Aztecson23]

Girlmostlikely: "Though I tried to integrate my discussion of subjectivity with some historical materialism!"

This my holy grail, always, an attempt to successfully combine Marx and Freud (and the inheritors of their traditions). Your paper sounds very interesting.