In Another Country, books are symbols of education and class status. In the novel, Richard writes a detective novel, a popular genre that characters—including Richard—believe is intellectually worthless. Neither Cass nor Vivaldo respect Richard’s novel, though they will not say so explicitly. Richard’s novel—which he himself does not care for—exemplifies the commercial side of artistic pursuit and the pitfalls that come along with it. Meanwhile, Vivaldo hopes to write a great novel that may not be commercially viable but that instead represents some sort of greater truth about the world. At the end of Another Country, after Vivaldo ends his relationship with Ida, he finally feels able to write his novel. Vivaldo’s relationship with Ida taught him something that he feels he can turn into high art, giving him the inspiration he has sought after the entire novel. Baldwin depicts Vivaldo’s act of artistic creation as a great triumph. Unlike Richard, Vivaldo’s novel does not code him as a sellout—rather, he is a noble artist seeking to reveal something difficult and true about the human condition.
Books Quotes in Another Country
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived—nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died—through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.
She put the book down on the bar between Ida and Vivaldo. “It’s had great advance notices. You know, ‘literate,’ ‘adult,’ ‘thrilling’—that sort of thing. Richard’ll show them to you. It’s even been compared to Crime and Punishment—because they both have such a simple story line, I guess.” Vivaldo looked at her sharply. “Well. I’m only quoting.”
He looked at the blonde again, wondering what she was like with no clothes on. She was sitting at a table near the door, facing him, toying with a daiquiri glass, and talking to a heavy, gray-haired man, who had a high giggle, who was a little drunk, and whom Vivaldo recognized as a fairly well-known poet. The blonde reminded him of Cass. And this made him realize—for the first time, it is astonishing how well the obvious can be hidden—that when he had met Cass, so many years ago, he had been terribly flattered that so highborn a lady noticed such a stinking boy. He had been overwhelmed. And he had adored Richard without reserve, not, as it now turned out, because of Richard’s talent, which, in any case, he had then been quite unable to judge, but merely because Richard possessed Cass.
Smoke poured from his nostrils and a detail that he needed for his novel, which he had been searching for months, fell, neatly and vividly, like the tumblers of a lock, into place in his mind. It seemed impossible that he should not have thought of it before: it illuminated, justified, clarified everything.
Books Symbol Timeline in Another Country
