The passages set abroad are lovely and warm, while the scenes in New York are often brutal and freezing or unforgiving and sizzling. We first meet Eric and his boyfriend Yves on a French beach. He felt to me like a stand-in for James Baldwin himself.įrance offers the reader a brief respite from the grimness of New York. Vivaldo is a struggling writer and Rufus’ best friend. His experience as a black man in America is really the central pillar of the story. His wretched love/hate relationship with Leona, a white woman from the south, ruins both of their lives and sets a grim tone for a serious book. Vivaldo, a white man, is arguably the main character. First, we meet Rufus Scott, a black jazz drummer, stumbling out of a movie theater in New York, disheveled and desperate. Another Country is addictive and almost unbearably tense.īaldwin explores race, gender, sexuality, religion, art, and life in America in the 1950s through the interactions of a group of memorable characters. He pulls the threads of the tangled ball of relationships at the center of the novel tighter and tighter. Baldwin’s relentless prose attack zigs and zags at the reader, and he never lets up. Dark episodes in the cold rain follow erotic passages in warm apartments. Passages that make you weep are followed immediately by passages that make you laugh. Short descriptions set scenes like flashes of light, and dialogue propels us through the story. James Baldwin is brilliant and empathetic his depiction of humanity is beautiful. “Beneath them Rufus walked, one of the fallen – for the weight of this city was murderous”Īnother Countryis a novel that’s more like a play or a poem.

In another country james baldwin