Book Review: Another Country by James Baldwin

In 1950s Harlem, Rufus, a young black man, walks around the wintry city, tired and hungry, remembering the good times that lead him to his current destitute situation. The music he once loved, now gone from his life, as were the two people he cared about in the world -- besides his sister Ida. Unable to bring himself to confront his friends, he makes a drastic move, jumping from the George Washington Bridge into the frigid Hudson River.

Word of his death spreads quickly among his friends, triggering long hidden tensions to come into the light. Vivaldo, a young, white wannabe writer, who considered Rufus one of his best friends, now finds himself falling for his sister Ida. Ida, in the meantime, has aspirations of her own to make it big as a jazz singer. Cass and Richard, married for so many years and but realizing that they were just holding things together until Richard's novel was published. Then there's Eric, a young white boy from Alabama who moved to New York to pursue acting and found himself falling for Rufus. Unable to take the strain of their relationship, he fled to France, hoping that would help to put things in perspective.

With the sad blues of Bessie Smith lingering the background, Another Country gathers Rufus' friends together and allows their pent up emotions to pour onto the pages. From the racial tensions of the 1950s, shown in great detail through the troubled relationship and jealousies between Vivaldo and Ida to sexual identity involving Eric's feelings for Rufus and for his new romantic interest Yves -- a man much younger than himself -- and how both pairs were different yet the same. And, it also covers the decline of marriage, focusing a lens on the affect Rufus' death had on Cass and Richard's marriage and how each handles it: one by hiding away behind a typewriter, the other by finding another in the same situation and striking up a clandestine love affair.

It is a slow-moving tale, and for me, though it dealt with those heavy issues of race and sexuality, the story seemed to be nonchalant about the sexual relations, almost as if the characters had given up caring about not just what society thought but what they themselves thought. They seemed to jump from bed to bed as if it were almost a tedious, tiresome task that was expected of them. That indifference carried throughout the entire book. As for the racial tensions, it was interesting to read how Ida and Vivaldo handled their differences in the face of both acceptance and non-acceptance within both the black and white communities.

After reading a few mini-biographies of the author James Baldwin, it almost seems to mirror what he felt was a disinterest by Americans to take a closer look at sexuality and issues of race which lead him to leave the United States for Paris in the late 1940s. Another Country provides a fine examination of those issues and is a definite recommended read.

Another Country
by James Baldwin
Vintage International
trade paperback, 436 pgs.

purchased book

Image from Negro Artist.