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Currently Reading: Swimming In the Dark, by Tomasz Jedrowski
I just picked this one up a couple days ago and spent the first 22 pages going, "is this a riff on Giovanni's Room? No--don't be silly...or is it?"
This book is a novel about a gay man's life growing up in post-WWII Poland and later moving to the United States; I decided to read it after reading a review of The Recent East by Thomas Grattan that compared that book to Swimming in the Dark in a way that made the latter sound more interesting to me personally.
The opening scene has the narrator tormented by the memory of a past lover, who is now in a danger the narrator has been spared and experiences at a remove, which is the same way Giovanni's Room begins. It then moves into a flashback to a boy the narrator loved as a child; the second scene of Giovanni's Room is a flashback to a young man David loved when they were young. The narrator of Swimming in the Dark has an inclination to try to pretend things never happened by never speaking of them, much like David. The major theme so far seems to be how an individual's personal life comes in tension with national politics and broad social dynamics, which is compelling, and not particularly like Giovanni's Room. The social dynamics in Jedrowski's Poland are strikingly different from those in Baldwin's Paris. I'm on the verge of discarding the similarities itching at my mind as just commonalities of the genre (angsty midcentury gay men who split time between Europe and America).
Of course, then the narrator goes and has an earth-shattering moment over the one novel by James Baldwin that did not at the time have an official translation into Polish. Yes, it's Giovanni's Room. Of course it's Giovanni's Room.
Which I have mixed feelings about. Everyone loves a literary reference they can get, and I do feel a little proud of myself for picking up on it. And the impact of literature on people's lives is an interesting subject for art! The meaning of a work of art to an individual and a society is an excellent subject for art. And echoing, reworking, and borrowing elements from the work of art being reflected on is a great way to accomplish this (if I didn't believe this wholeheartedly, I would not read nearly as much fanfic as I do). Giovanni's Room itself references the story of David and Jonathan in the Book of Samuel (off the top of my head: the main characters' names, but I feel like there was more to it -- it's been a while), so there's a nice little matryoshka doll of literary references.
The problem is that, on the sentence and scene level at least, Baldwin is better. This is not to say Jedrowski is a bad writer -- far from it -- but compared to James freaking Baldwin it feels inexperienced, clunky, and heavy-handed (while being, by any more sensible standard, none of those things!). By borrowing structure and tone so heavily from Giovanni's Room, it's hard not to make these comparisons, and I don't want to! I'm interested in the setting and the characters! I'm even enjoying the writing style, although it's a little ostentatiously "literary" rather than contenting itself to be good. In general, I think this book could have benefited from a lighter touch in terms of references and in terms of reappearing images and other flourishes.
I'm also concerned that this book isn't going to do a good job of balancing reference to Giovanni's Room with all the other super interesting things its doing, and that one thematic strand is going to wind up distracting from and jumbling the impact of another. But it's far too early in the book to tell; I'm only a tenth of the way through. I'm excited to see where it goes.
This book is a novel about a gay man's life growing up in post-WWII Poland and later moving to the United States; I decided to read it after reading a review of The Recent East by Thomas Grattan that compared that book to Swimming in the Dark in a way that made the latter sound more interesting to me personally.
The opening scene has the narrator tormented by the memory of a past lover, who is now in a danger the narrator has been spared and experiences at a remove, which is the same way Giovanni's Room begins. It then moves into a flashback to a boy the narrator loved as a child; the second scene of Giovanni's Room is a flashback to a young man David loved when they were young. The narrator of Swimming in the Dark has an inclination to try to pretend things never happened by never speaking of them, much like David. The major theme so far seems to be how an individual's personal life comes in tension with national politics and broad social dynamics, which is compelling, and not particularly like Giovanni's Room. The social dynamics in Jedrowski's Poland are strikingly different from those in Baldwin's Paris. I'm on the verge of discarding the similarities itching at my mind as just commonalities of the genre (angsty midcentury gay men who split time between Europe and America).
Of course, then the narrator goes and has an earth-shattering moment over the one novel by James Baldwin that did not at the time have an official translation into Polish. Yes, it's Giovanni's Room. Of course it's Giovanni's Room.
Which I have mixed feelings about. Everyone loves a literary reference they can get, and I do feel a little proud of myself for picking up on it. And the impact of literature on people's lives is an interesting subject for art! The meaning of a work of art to an individual and a society is an excellent subject for art. And echoing, reworking, and borrowing elements from the work of art being reflected on is a great way to accomplish this (if I didn't believe this wholeheartedly, I would not read nearly as much fanfic as I do). Giovanni's Room itself references the story of David and Jonathan in the Book of Samuel (off the top of my head: the main characters' names, but I feel like there was more to it -- it's been a while), so there's a nice little matryoshka doll of literary references.
The problem is that, on the sentence and scene level at least, Baldwin is better. This is not to say Jedrowski is a bad writer -- far from it -- but compared to James freaking Baldwin it feels inexperienced, clunky, and heavy-handed (while being, by any more sensible standard, none of those things!). By borrowing structure and tone so heavily from Giovanni's Room, it's hard not to make these comparisons, and I don't want to! I'm interested in the setting and the characters! I'm even enjoying the writing style, although it's a little ostentatiously "literary" rather than contenting itself to be good. In general, I think this book could have benefited from a lighter touch in terms of references and in terms of reappearing images and other flourishes.
I'm also concerned that this book isn't going to do a good job of balancing reference to Giovanni's Room with all the other super interesting things its doing, and that one thematic strand is going to wind up distracting from and jumbling the impact of another. But it's far too early in the book to tell; I'm only a tenth of the way through. I'm excited to see where it goes.