Another Country is a 1962 novel by James Baldwin. The novel is primarily set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France in the late 1950s. It portrayed many themes that were taboo at the time of its release, including homosexuality, bisexuality, interracial couples, and extramarital affairs.
Background Baldwin started writing Another Country in Greenwich Village in 1948 and continued to write the novel in Paris and again in New York. Despite his privately confessed reluctance to bring "Another Country, unfinished, into yet another country," Baldwin completed the book in Istanbul in 1962. In 1959, amidst growing fame, Baldwin received a $12,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support his work on the book.Leeming, David. 1994. James Baldwin: A biography. New York: Knopf. .
Baldwin had returned to the United States in 1957, partly to cover the mounting Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin admired King, but sought to depict relationships deeper than King's "brotherly love."
Plot summary The book uses a third-person narrator who is nevertheless closely aware of the characters' emotions.Weatherby, W. J. 1989. James Baldwin: Artist on Fire. New York: Laurel (Dell). .
The first fifth of Another Country tells of the downfall of jazz drummer Rufus Scott. He begins a relationship with Leona, a white woman from the South, and introduces her to his social circle, including his closest friend, struggling novelist Vivaldo, his more successful mentor Richard, and Richard's wife, Cass. Initially, the relationship is frivolous, but it turns more serious as they continue to live together. Rufus becomes habitually physically abusive of Leona, and she is admitted to a mental hospital in the South. Depressed, Rufus returns to Harlem and commits suicide, jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
The rest of the book explores relationships between Rufus's friends, family, and acquaintances in the wake of his death. Rufus's friends cannot understand the suicide, and experience some guilt over his death. Afterwards, they become closer. Vivaldo begins a relationship with Rufus's sister Ida, which is strained by racial tension and Ida's bitterness after her brother's death.
Eric, an actor and Rufus's first male lover, returns to New York after years living in France, where he met his longtime lover Yves. Eric returns to the novel's social circle but is calmer and more composed than most of the group. Everyone's relationships become strained in the course of the novel. Ida starts having an affair with Ellis, an advertising executive who promises to help with her career as a singer. Cass, who has become lonely due to Richard's writing career, has an affair with Eric after he arrives in New York. At the novel's climax, Cass tells Richard about her affair with Eric, who in turn has a sexual encounter with Vivaldo, who himself learns about Ida's relationship with Ellis.
Themes
Race and nationalism Baldwin called Rufus Scott "the black corpse floating in the national psyche," as well as a Christ figure—a living (and dying) symbol of suffering black men.Leeming, James Baldwin (1994), p. 201: "Rufus has been deeply wounded by the realities of racism. He is an embodiment of the curse that lurks in the American soul. Baldwin describes Rufus as 'the Black corpse floating in the national psyche'; he and what he represents must be squarely faced if we are to find peace in ourselves and our society. In Nobody Knows My Name, Baldwin had written, 'The nation, the entire nation, has spent a hundred years avoiding the question of the place of the Black man in it.' Rufus is that man, touched in one way or another by him, by his agony. Rufus is the Christ figure — the sacrificial victim — in this parable of Baldwin's 'gospel.'" Rufus's death has been described as tantamount to murder.Ryan, Katy. 2004. "Falling in Public: Larsen's 'Passing', McCarthy's 'The Group', and Baldwin's 'Another Country'." Studies in the Novel 36(1):95–119. . . .Dunning, Stefanie. 2001. "Parallel perversions: Interracial and same sexuality in James Baldwin's Another Country." Melus 26(4):95–112. .
Because Rufus is living in a predominantly racist era, his life is constantly affected by an internalization of this racism to the point where he hates himself. Throughout the novel, the effects of this internalized oppression are obvious: he is sexual with any person who is white — violently sexual, because he seeks power; he feels disappointed in himself in comparison to his proud Black sister Ida, and he avoids the support of his family during his last day of life.
The concept of "another country" reflects not only the return of Eric to the United States from France, but also the feelings of alienation experienced by African Americans within the United States.
Another Country was unique at the time, in its attempt to explore race relations through romantic love instead of homosocial friendships.James, Jenny M. 2012. "Making Love, Making Friends: Affiliation and Repair in James Baldwin's Another Country (PDF)." Studies in American Fiction 39(1):43–60. . via Project MUSE.
Love The relationship between Ida and Vivaldo serves as a microcosm for the relationship between African Americans and white liberals.Leeming, James Baldwin (1994), p. 202. "It is through Rufus's sister, Ida, the surviving witness, that Baldwin carries the message of Rufus's tragedy to the 'white liberal' world represented primarily by her white lover, Vivaldo. Like Baldwin, Ida sees herself as a voice in 'another country'. Again like him, she stresses that she can trust the love of that country's white inhabitants only if they can afford to know her 'name,' her history, her condition [...]." Their relationship and others (including the earlier coupling of Rufus and Leona) represent a struggle for love amidst the obstacles of race, sex, and modern society. According to Baldwin biographer W. J. Weatherby:
Whether it was the central relationship between white Vivaldo and black Ida or the accompanying bisexual affairs involving most of the other leading characters, all were intended by Baldwin to illustrate how difficult he felt real love was in contemporary American society. Facing each other without lies and perceiving the relationship realistically were much more important than which sexes were involved or how love was expressed, in Baldwin's opinion.… The whole racial situation, according to the novel, was basically a failure of love.
Racial and sexual differences are compared and contrasted, both represented as areas for conflict that must be addressed en route to mature love.Leeming, James Baldwin (1994), pp. 172–73: "Even as he was addressing the students of Kalamazoo, Baldwin was exploring ideas about love in the complex relationships that form the basis of Another Country. The struggle of the races was analogous to the struggle of sexual union. Out of the struggle could come a breakthrough to real communication, to a recognition of the love bond, to real 'growing up.'" According to some readings, this complete unity represents "another country" and perhaps an impossible utopia.Ohi, Kevin. 1999. "'I'm not the boy you want': Sexuality, 'race', and Thwarted revelation in Baldwin's Another Country." African American Review 33(2):261–81. . . Stefanie Dunning wrote:
Rufus' death suggests that there is no black utopia, no place where he can escape the iniquities of racism. More importantly, Another Country suggests that we have not yet found a model for thinking outside the box that frames our discussions of interraciality and same-sex eroticism. It suggests, more importantly, that eliminating gender and racial difference will not solve the "problems" of difference either. The title of the novel suggests the wish for "another country," another nation, in which our racial and sexual selves are imagined and defined differently or perhaps where they are not defined at all. It is at once a question: another country, illustrating the futility of national crossings, and it is a wistful fantasy: another country, a mythic, imaginary and unattainable place where relationships are not fractured by difference.
Dunning argues that the novel's critique of nationalism extends to black nationalism, which still relies on a fantasy of authentic and heterosexual reproduction.
Willing ignorance One of the most significant themes in Another Country is one's willingness to ignore parts of reality (including oneself) that one finds unpleasant or ego-dystonic. Vivaldo is perhaps the most affected by this tendency. He also partially denies his own bisexuality. He fails to fully admit his attraction to Rufus. He does not see that his attraction to Ida potentially mirrors his attraction to Rufus. Also, despite mounting signs that Ida is involved in a career-advancing affair with the white TV producer Ellis, Vivaldo mostly denies this until the disillusioned Ida confesses to him herself in a cathartic scene near the end of the book.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, after considerable youthful struggles with self-acceptance of his homosexuality due to social ostracism in his hometown in Alabama, Eric eventually becomes the novel's most honest and open character. He admits that Rufus was abusive of Leona, that he actually does not reciprocate Cass's love, and that his love of Yves is genuine. This also makes him the book's calmest and most composed character. Only after a night with Eric does Vivaldo see the world more clearly and make tentative steps toward acceptance of his own bisexuality.
Most of the white characters in the book downplay or refuse to admit the racial tension surrounding them. Cass and Richard are shocked when a group of black boys beat up their sons. Ida constantly suspects Vivaldo of exploiting her because she is black and has known white men who seek out sexual relations specifically with black women. Vivaldo refuses to admit any of this, although it is indicated that it may be true of their relationship.
Professional jealousy Richard and Vivaldo are jealous of one another as writers. Vivaldo essentially denies the value of Richard's first novel and is jealous that it is being published, while Richard is jealous of Vivaldo because Richard thinks his wife Cass sees suffering and a lack of commercial success as a sign of artistic integrity. Consequently, after Cass and Eric initiate their affair, Richard suspects she is seeing Vivaldo.
Also, Ida's beginning recognition as a jazz singer causes increased tension and jealousy between her and Vivaldo.
Black homosexual masculinity In his 1968 essay "Notes On A Native Son", from his book Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver denounced the concept of interracial homosexuality and, in effect, acted as the mouthpiece for the hegemonic narrative that framed black homosexual masculinity in America in the 1960s. He expressed not so much a discomfort with homosexuality as with the power paradigm and ultimate feminization that ensues after the physical act of black men sexually submitting to white men: