Another Country

Rating:
Summary: An important book
Review: More straight people should read this book. As a sociology major in school, I realized that there were very few, if any, easy answers to life's questions. However, as a straight male, this novel helped illuminate the fact that, as enlightened as I may think I am, even I have a tendency to take my sexuality for granted, considering it just one aspect of myself and nothing more. Yet, for others, who would like to make it "just another aspect" of themselves, it typically comes to define them totally in society's eyes, and with the expected negative consequences.
Baldwin could have continued this book for days and days, but he left it as it is, giving us a much-needed portrait of the tangled web we create out of trying to pigeonhole everyone into nice little catergories, whether it be on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, religion, or what have you. Baldwin intended it as a provocation, so that we might ponder why we hold on to our little hang-ups about those who are different from us. Especially when, most often, these same people are just like us, trying to get by with as little suffering and as much happiness as possible.

Rating:
Summary: An important book
Review: More straight people should read this book. As a sociology major in school, I realized that there were very few, if any, easy answers to life's questions. However, as a straight male, this novel helped illuminate the fact that, as enlightened as I may think I am, even I have a tendency to take my sexuality for granted, considering it just one aspect of myself and nothing more. Yet, for others, who would like to make it "just another aspect" of themselves, it typically comes to define them totally in society's eyes, and with the expected negative consequences.
Baldwin could have continued this book for days and days, but he left it as it is, giving us a much-needed portrait of the tangled web we create out of trying to pigeonhole everyone into nice little catergories, whether it be on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, religion, or what have you. Baldwin intended it as a provocation, so that we might ponder why we hold on to our little hang-ups about those who are different from us. Especially when, most often, these same people are just like us, trying to get by with as little suffering and as much happiness as possible.

Rating:
Summary: The Relationship Between James Baldwin and Rufus Scott!
Review: Most works of fiction rely on some implied notion of community in order to maintain their narrative and normative coherence, but they achieve this coherence by the explicit framing of some person (or persons). Of all of James Baldwin's novels, Another Country is the most important for a consideration of this narrative dynamic. In Another Country this impossibly ideal condition especially of social organization is enacted by, or perhaps I should say projected onto, the figure of Rufus Scott. At Best, Baldwin's Rufus is the depiction of a pathology that is never explicitly acknowledged, a case of internalized racism of almost Frankensteinian proportions. Contextualized by his unlikely group of middle-class white friends, Rufus's life can best be read not as the acts of a tragically self-aware black man destroyed by the inescapable forces of white racism, but as those of a racially alienated white/black man fatally frustrated by a lack of recognition from the only people whose recognition he can perceive as being of any value, the white wealthy class. In Another Country, Baldwin never establishes a believable social ellipse upon which we can situate Rufus. The very formlessness and social pessimism of the two novels in which Baldwin actually tried to situate socially the openly homosexual black man, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone and Just Above My Head, indicate Baldwin's investment in the idea of this homosexual condition and of positive community itself as something that was for whites only. It is this dynamic of internalized racism that catalyzes the only genuinely well-drawn relationship in Another Country, the one between Rufus Scott and Leona, the pathetic white southern woman whom he destroys. Finally, despite his limitations, Rufus is the most complex and important character in Another Country. This is because he is the only one who actually seems to grow not only in self-awareness, but in the awareness of himself as a specific self in the specific world in which Baldwin has placed him.

Rating:
Summary: living within turbulanet times
Review: mr. baldwin's tale of lives that break taboo yet deal with normality once we gaze inside. the brutality of his honesty is overpowering, and can be uncomfortable at times.

Rating:
Summary: another country
Review: No writer I have encountered can match the emotional purity, crystalline anger, and palpable humanity of Baldwin. I had read Go Tell It on the Mountain, but Another Country was the book that grabbed me by the guts and rattled me. Baldwin was one of the last authors, in my view, to understand that the writer's role is to be a witness. Baldwin was an eloquent outsider, a prophet against injustice, and one of the few writers I have read who captivates me because it is evident that he is writing out of something essential, a fire at the core of who he was. The work could not be separated from the man. (In fact, in an interview he gave, Baldwin said that the writer is not telling many stories, but one, and during his life he is simply adding to that story, giving it greater clarity and detail). One comes away from a Baldwin work not with a tickling in your brain, but with something visceral happening in you. You come away not entertained, but challenged. Another Country ranks as my favorite Baldwin novel, and one of my favorites, period. I wish I could have met the man.

Rating:
Summary: missing the point
Review: regardless of how people interpret this work, it is a great one. however, i feel that it is commonly misunderstood. race, gender, sexual relations, violence, 1960's liberal attitudes, and music are all minor themes aimed at defining "another country." the title of the book represents the solitude and disconnection a tourist would feel once isolated in a new and foreign country. the feeling of desolation as if through into the middle of an ocean. yet, these characters find life rafts and anchors in these worlds and pressures through these minor themes of love, race, and sex. another country is about connections that tie you to something or someone. about feeling comfortable in another country

Rating:
Summary: Aggressive, wide ranging social commentary
Review: The characters, style and tone of the novel are very much 60s and 70s New York. But the issues Baldwin explores in this hard hitting, gritty novel present a piercing, kelidoscopic view of much of contemporary culture - love, friendship, struggling artists grappling with commercialism, homosexuality, gender, race. The characters in this novel are not always appealing, frequently seedy and embroiled in the seemier aspects of urban American life.

The tone of the novel is not always easy to handle. It starts with pummelling, aggressive prose and remains that way until the conclusion. The reader is drawn into a broiling stew of difficult social relations and little respite is granted.

Rating:
Summary: A very realistic portrayal of relationships and love
Review: The interaction between the characters in Another Country was a very real and in-your-face representaion of love: love for your friends, and supposed friends; and the love that people search to give and receive. The conversations between all of the characters mirrored feelings and obstacles that I have come across in relationships, most accurately, the thin line between love, hate, and guilt. JB knew that it didn't matter who the love came from, but that the fact that you were loved and loved somebody was important. Another Country, however is not for everybody, especially those who are threatened by homosexuality. However, if you have an open mind and have any experience with love, you will be ble to relate to this book.

Rating:
Summary: It will change the way you think about relationships
Review: This book is one of the finest pieces of literature I have read. Baldwin makes his characters come alive in a truly profound way exposing the underlying motivations for their actions. It made me look introspectively at the way in which I treat others and the reasons for my actions. A book not to be read with a light heart. The 400+ pages will fly by.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful book on the tenuous relationship between races.
Review: This book moved me tremendously. Baldwin, though always an eloquent writer, was also a very visceral one. He never forgot from where he came, and that imprint is the thread that ties this book together. Throughout Baldwin's life he shattered superficial assumptions of what it meant to be black, gay, American, educated, whatever, and this book confronts those assumptions and show the insidious effects that fear and misunderstanding can produce.