Style as Author and Author as Style: Analyzing the Ambivalent Baldwin

Authors: Jack Byrne, Mariel Rodney

SUNY Campus: Purchase College

Presentation Type: Oral

Location: UUW 325

Presentation #: 9

Timeslot: Session B 10:15-11:15 AM

Abstract: In this presentation, I argue that James Baldwin’s essays continue a critique of American sexual norms that Giovanni’s Room initiates. I arrive at this argument by posing a question: How does Baldwin’s work make visible a series of anxieties around depicting queer desire? I suggest that Baldwin’s work stylistically refuses simplistic models of sexual knowledge. The shared stylistic ambivalence of these two forms, one written in the mode of fiction, the others written using autobiographical address and analysis, forms the basis for my discussion. My methodology builds off of recent scholarship on Baldwin that reconsiders his contributions to queer theory and fiction. Throughout Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin strategically uses long, qualifying sentences that are constantly shifting, providing descriptions only to further complicate them in the next breath. No statement ever stands on its own, making for a reading experience that can only be described as ambivalent; the reader must sit with contradiction. On the one hand, this syntactic ambivalence structurally mirrors David’s ambivalence as a character in the novel; he refuses to accept his same-sex desire at the same time that his desire compels consummation. This structural and thematic ambivalence in Giovanni’s Room is mirrored in Baldwin’s strategic use of the personal essay as a genre. I argue that given these shared strategies, the stylistic ambivalence in Giovanni's Room cannot be fully understood without the contextualization provided by his essays.