James Baldwin’s “Another Country” (published 1962) really seems to give the reader a lucent glance into the author’s own view of America and Baldwin’s feelings on how America handles diversity. Baldwin’s character Rufus Scott in my judgment has some striking similarities to the character Sonny in Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues.” Like Sonny, Rufus struggles with the direction his life is headed as he tries to make a living as a struggling jazz musician.
There are several different issues that are dealt with in this novel including homosexuality, infidelity, racism, hypocrisy on the part of Greenwich Village-New York City type liberals like the characters Cass and Richard who begin to question their own values as their white children get into an altercation with a group of black children on the playground and one of their children gets hurt in the scuffle while their other son has to resort to violence in order to protect his brother.
Richard, a successful writer and Cass a homemaker and debutante also have to deal with the affair that may or may not shake their marriage as Richard deals with the pressure of publishing another hit novel.
Really, the first portion of the book deals with the torment that Rufus has to go through as he lives his life and then it picks up on the drama surrounding his family and friends through the second portion. Vivaldo, a former student of Richard’s and troubled writer has an interesting outlook on life and many of his viewpoints come into question as he deals with people like Rufus’ sister Ida, Eric a struggling actor originally from Alabama who moves to New York and then to France.
Baldwin, the author himself a black man and a homosexual would often be badgered throughout his life by both whites for his race and blacks for his sexual preference so as people like Rufus walk through the streets of New York City. Baldwin seems to draw back the curtain and let Rufus shine some light on what are probably Baldwin’s own thoughts as a black man trying to find a way to make a living during 1950’s America.
Rufus has constant paranoid thoughts about whether white people are secretly sneering and thinking racist ad homonyms in their mind as he walks by them. He even begins to question the sincerity of his friends Vivaldp and Cass and to a certain point comes to not even trust his own family because they won’t embrace him due to his drug addiction.
I will go ahead and warn the reader now, if you are uncomfortable with reading about homosexual relationships, this is not the book for you, but hopefully this being the twenty first century we have moved past such ignorance. Another County appears to me at least to be a reference to the state of mind that many of the characters are in.
Being a beat nick was never popular in some circles, but for people who were involved in the arts in 1950’s in the heartland of America (I know NYC is as left-wing as you can get in many ways) they still yearned for acceptance by a broader swath of the population or at least for tolerance and understanding.
I think Baldwin in a sense was a sort of giving up on America with this piece and some of his later work because after participating in some marches in favor of civil rights he moved to France and would die there at age 63 of stomach cancer in 1987. I would say just because Mr. Baldwin gave up on America doesn’t mean he hated America as many assume after reading this, but that he simply didn’t see the progress that would have verified staying here.
