My post on a Yahoo! news story "Many blacks shrug off Obama's new view on gays"

[HiPointDem]

89. Golly, no, I never heard of those people, thanks for educating me -- not.

Yeah, Giovanni's room was published in 1956 -- by a small press (Dial, then an independent press) that published "arty/literary" books. It was rejected by his own publisher because it was gay-themed. And it was written in paris, where baldwin had gone because he could be more "openly gay" there (and openly black) without being persecuted for it. Which should make you wonder why he had to go to france to be "openly gay," even in the artistic/literary circles he traveled in.

And second, I didn't tell you that Baldwin was closeted (though he wasn't exactly "openly gay," either, as the general reading public didn't know he was gay and the fact wasn't mentioned in the media discussions of his work).

Nor did I tell you that there were *no* uncloseted gay people in 1963. So not sure why you're setting up that straw man.

You seem to think the existence of a gay-themed book in 1956 proves that 1) Bayard Rustin was "openly gay," & 2) "lots of people" were openly gay at the time. It doesn't, and they weren't.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3041915?uid=3739856&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=47698994131177


"Baldwin’s tenure as a critical darling of the black press, however, came to a head six short years later with the publication of his controversial second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956). Set in the Parisian gay underworld and featuring an all-white cast of characters, Giovanni’s Room was initially ignored and, later, frequently satirized in the black press throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s..."

http://zeteojournal.com/files/2012/04/Corbman-FINAL-PDF.pdf


Revisionist history tells us that "the reviews were excellent" and cites a review by granville hicks and one by nelson algren. What these histories neglect to mention is that both hicks and algren were communist party members and that the "excellent" reviews came almost exclusively from this segment of reviewers -- i.e. from the left, which had some power in those days in the NY literary scene, but was itself "closeted" in this mccarthyite era.

And as you can see by reading Hicks' short review, it discussed the homosexual content rather delicately and by highlighting the fact that david chose the woman (not mentioning that he later went back on that choice), the paris "underworld" setting ("exotic&quot and the "grotesqueness" of the characters.

David tells the story on a single night, the night before Giovanni is to be guillotined as a murderer. He tells of his life in Giovanni's room, of deserting Giovanni for Hella and of making plans to marry her, of the effect of this on Giovanni, and of the effect of Giovanni's plight on his own relations with Hella. Mr. Baldwin writes of these matters with an unusual degree of candor and yet with such dignity and intensity that he is saved from sensationalism.

Much of the novel is laid in scenes of squalor, with a background of characters as grotesque and repulsive as any that can be found in Proust's "Cities of the Plain." But even as one is dismayed by Mr. Baldwin's materials, one rejoices in the skill with which he renders them. Nor is there any suspicion that he is working with these materials merely for the sake of shocking the reader. One the contrary, his intent is most serious. One of the lesser characters, in many ways a distasteful one, tells David that "not many people have ever died of love." "But," he goes on, "multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it." This is Mr. Baldwin's subject, the rareness and difficulty of love, and, in his rather startling way, he does a great deal with it.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-giovanni.html

There is no discussion of Mr. Baldwin's own sexuality or even any acknowledgement of homosexuality as the book's theme that isn't couched in delicate terms. The fact that a gay-themed book was published in 1956 doesn't mean that 1) bayard rustin was "openly gay," 2) the average person outside the ny/la/sf lit-scene knew anything about the book or what it was about, or 3) "lots" of people were openly gay.

As for langston hughes, he was in no sense "openly gay".