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.
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."
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' friends, family, and acquaintances in the wake of his death. Rufus's death has been described as tantamount to murder.
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.
Love
The relationship between Ida and Vivaldo serves as a microcosm for the relationship between African Americans and white liberals. 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: According to some readings, this complete unity represents "another country" and perhaps an impossible utopia. Stefanie Dunning wrote:
A film adaptation was announced in 1964, with Tony Richardson directing and Baldwin himself writing the screenplay, though the film was never produced.
In Australia, the Commonwealth Customs Department banned its import. The country's Literature Censorship Board, while admitting Baldwin's writing had some merit, described Another Country as "continually smeared with indecent, offensive and dirty epithets and allusions". The chairman noted that some might connect the novel's depiction of race relations with current events in Australia, and bearing in mind that a complete ban might damage the country's reputation, suggested that the book be available to "the serious minded student or reader." In 1966 Alexander William Sheppard, an Australian bookseller, announced his plan to publish Another Country by dint of airmailing a number of letters to Australia, each containing a number of pages from the book, and then assembling all the pages received and printing the book. He did this and the Australian ban was lifted.
Baldwin inferred from the book's popularity that "many more people than are willing to admit it lead lives not at all unlike the lives of the people in my book." Baldwin also said that the book "scared people because most don't understand it."
Eldridge Cleaver had harsh words for Baldwin, in his book Soul on Ice, writing that he admired Baldwin in some ways but felt increasingly uncomfortable with his writing. Cleaver says that Another Country made clear why his "love for Baldwin's vision had become ambivalent," and writes:
It has been argued that James Baldwin is in three characters: Rufus as Baldwin would have turned out had he not moved to France; Eric as Baldwin was in Paris; and Vivaldo as a writer struggling with a writer's block because of his love affairs, in the manner of Baldwin himself.
One author felt the title echoes lines in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta: