“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception,” he confesses. David, facing a “cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came,” concludes it would be harder to love men freely than to live a lie.įor David, the decision is less a conscious choice than an involuntary act of psychological contortion his foremost victim is not one of the many people to whom he lies throughout the novel - his girlfriend, Hella his lover, Giovanni - but himself. It is one of the most stirring depictions in literature of a moment all too familiar to queer folks - an instance of self-recognition and denial. He was a teenager, in bed with another boy - the bed itself a testament to “vileness” - and made what he calls a “decision” to live as a straight man. Near the beginning of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel “Giovanni’s Room,” the narrator, David, recalls the moment at which he became conscious of his homosexuality.
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