James Baldwin: Another Country

[Ben Jackson]

James Baldwin began this novel in 1959, continued this novel in Paris and finally finished it in Istanbul in 1961. Published the following year, this novel, set in Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York, looks at the lives of small group of friends before and after the horrible suicide of Rufus Scott, a Jazz Jazz musician who is a victim of societal prejudices and is vulnerable because of his profound prejudices he experiences a black male. (Even walking on the streets with Leonie, a divorced, white Southerner who is a victim of sexual abuse in the hands of both her former husband and Rufus, the society views Leonie as Rufus' whore). Baldwin depicts black masculinity in the character of Rufus: violent and volatile, hyper-sexualized. His failure to break free and asserts his own individuality leads him, with time, to moral and mental instability. In the creation of Rufus' character, he created complex character that can rival the one's I've read: Dostoevesky's Raskolinkov, Woolf's Septimus, Conrad's Kurtz for example and for me, is the highlight of the novel. Other themes include homosexual/bisexual relations (Eric's affairs with Rufus, Vivaldo, Yves and his extra-marital affair with Cass Silenski), inter-racial relationships (Vivaldo and Rufus' Sister Ida and her relationship with Ellis, her music agent), willing ignorance (Vivaldo realizing his sexual identity after his affair with Eric) and artistic and professional jealousy between Richard, a famous writer of crime novels and Vivaldo, who is distracted by his affairs from completing his novel. Another brilliant idea in the novel is the contrast of Rufus character from Ida. While Rufus loses his pride from sense of blackness, Ida is confident of her identity even though her relationship with Vivaldo faltered as a result of her internalised prejudices.

As a whole, the novel is exploitation of race and identity, art and struggle for love amidst obstacles of race, sex and modern society. The title of the novel isn't just the return of Eric to America from France but also the African-America's feelings of alienation. It's well though analysis of race and racial identity.

After reading this novel, I came up with two questions:

Since suicide is an existential paradox, according to Albert Camus, what do you guys think is the MAJOR factor that triggers suicidal tendencies.

--- Absence of hope and realization of living a meaningless existence (examples include Brad Pitt's character in Babylon and Sylvia Plath)
--- Moral and mental disintegration (Sekoni in Soyinka's Interpreters, Rufus)
--- Feeling a sense of awareness from society/feeling society's indifference (Rufus for example)

Secondly, is an individual's coming to terms with his sexuality mainly influenced by genetics or experience?

You can analyse these questions based on your perspective.

 

[Leseratte]

Those are complex questions. In the case of suicide, one has to know the context, there can be so many causes, health(a terminal illness, for example), moral, mental, social and even cultural (like in the societies, where dying is a part of a collective ritual).
As for sexuality, I would say, happy are the people who come to term terms with theirs.

I see you are recovered, Ben, or almost!?

 

[Ben Jackson]

Those are complex questions. In the case of suicide, one has to know the context, there can be so many causes, health(a terminal illness, for example), moral, mental, social and even cultural (like in the societies, where dying is a part of a collective ritual).
As for sexuality, I would say, happy are the people who come to term terms with theirs.

I see you are recovered, Ben, or almost!?

I am very fine now, thanks for showing concern about your health.

 

[The Common Reader]

James Baldwin began this novel in 1959, continued this novel in Paris and finally finished it in Istanbul in 1961. Published the following year, this novel, set in Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York, looks at the lives of small group of friends before and after the horrible suicide of Rufus Scott, a Jazz Jazz musician who is a victim of societal prejudices and is vulnerable because of his profound prejudices he experiences a black male. (Even walking on the streets with Leonie, a divorced, white Southerner who is a victim of sexual abuse in the hands of both her former husband and Rufus, the society views Leonie as Rufus' whore). Baldwin depicts black masculinity in the character of Rufus: violent and volatile, hyper-sexualized. His failure to break free and asserts his own individuality leads him, with time, to moral and mental instability. In the creation of Rufus' character, he created complex character that can rival the one's I've read: Dostoevesky's Raskolinkov, Woolf's Septimus, Conrad's Kurtz for example and for me, is the highlight of the novel. Other themes include homosexual/bisexual relations (Eric's affairs with Rufus, Vivaldo, Yves and his extra-marital affair with Cass Silenski), inter-racial relationships (Vivaldo and Rufus' Sister Ida and her relationship with Ellis, her music agent), willing ignorance (Vivaldo realizing his sexual identity after his affair with Eric) and artistic and professional jealousy between Richard, a famous writer of crime novels and Vivaldo, who is distracted by his affairs from completing his novel. Another brilliant idea in the novel is the contrast of Rufus character from Ida. While Rufus loses his pride from sense of blackness, Ida is confident of her identity even though her relationship with Vivaldo faltered as a result of her internalised prejudices.

As a whole, the novel is exploitation of race and identity, art and struggle for love amidst obstacles of race, sex and modern society. The title of the novel isn't just the return of Eric to America from France but also the African-America's feelings of alienation. It's well though analysis of race and racial identity.

After reading this novel, I came up with two questions:

Since suicide is an existential paradox, according to Albert Camus, what do you guys think is the MAJOR factor that triggers suicidal tendencies.

--- Absence of hope and realization of living a meaningless existence (examples include Brad Pitt's character in Babylon and Sylvia Plath)
--- Moral and mental disintegration (Sekoni in Soyinka's Interpreters, Rufus)
--- Feeling a sense of awareness from society/feeling society's indifference (Rufus for example)

Secondly, is an individual's coming to terms with his sexuality mainly influenced by genetics or experience?

You can analyse these questions based on your perspective.

Hi Ben, I haven't had time to think through the questions you ask here, but I did want to bring to your attention this recording of Baldwin reading part of the novel: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/03/23/another-another-country/

 

[Liam]

Suicide is such a complicated thing to think/talk about, and I agree with the three things you've listed as, perhaps, the main factors in why people choose to voluntarily end their life. Another factor might be disintegrating health, but that can be included somewhere in-between the first two factors you've listed: a cancer diagnosis with no hope of recovery, for instance, where a person simply doesn't wish to die in pain inside a soulless hospice room.

I think there should be no judgement attached to suicide, but my first reaction would be to talk the person (even if I don't know them) out of it. Death is the ultimate end, and even if things seem hopeless today, tomorrow might change all of that. There are, however, as you rightly note, situations with simply NO hope.

I forget who the writer is (some obscure early 20thC, maybe American?), but he has this great quote that simply refused to leave my mind when I came across it years ago: "Life is a privilege, not a prison sentence to be carried out in agony." He was, of course, writing from a privileged position of a Western white male (I think he was a psychologist or something like that), forgetting that for plenty of people in the world, life very well MAY be a prison sentence, but his words still resonated with me deeply, especially in my own periods of despair, ?‍