How Do You Adapt James Baldwin? Very Carefully.
Few writers turn out their career-defining work on the first try. But that was James Baldwin with his 1953 debut novel, 'Go Tell It on the Mountain.' The semi-autobiographical book, about a day in the life of a Black teen whose stepfather is a minister of a Harlem Pentecostal church, was received by critics with glowing praise. Today it remains lauded as one of the great novels of modern American literature.
Baldwin's second novel, 'Giovanni's Room,' was quite a different story — literally and figuratively. A thematic departure from its predecessor, the novel was about two gay white men: David, a closeted American man, who falls in love with Giovanni, an Italian bartender, in Paris. In the book Baldwin unpacks motifs related to masculinity and queerness, classism and American exceptionalism all through sparkling dialogue and robust, deeply ruminative prose.
Though now considered a significant work of the 20th-century queer literary canon, 'Giovanni's Room' didn't share the immediate adoration and popularity of its predecessor. In fact, it was rejected by his publisher, Knopf, when first submitted. 'We think that publishing this book, not because of its subject but because of its failure, will set the wrong kind of cachet on your writing and estrange many of your readers,' the editor Henry Carlisle wrote in a letter to Baldwin in 1955. But Dial Press published the book in 1958, and almost immediately Baldwin had further plans for it.
First there was the stage. In 1958 he produced a dramatization of 'Giovanni's Room' for the Actors Studio starring the Turkish actor Engin Cezzar as Giovanni. The play didn't make it to Broadway, but Baldwin intended to return 'Giovanni's Room' to the stage, or even adapt it to film. He insisted on creative control, which hindered some potential efforts from other artists.
In the late '70s he collaborated with the South African filmmaker Michael Raeburn on a screenplay, with hopes of big names like Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando taking part. The project never got off the ground, though; Baldwin's literary agent requested $100,000 for the book option, which the writer couldn't afford.
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