Another Country

By: James Baldwin / Narrated By: Dion Graham

Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins

Where’s an ice pick to your brain when you need one?!?

I did the first hour, hour and a half of Another Country without much problem, though I started getting the sinking feeling that I was drowning. I s’pose that’s what Baldwin may’ve been shooting for, but still: Do I want that in a listening experience? It doesn’t have to be all hearts and flowers all the time, but do I really want 16+ hours of absolute, out-and-out hatred and anger?

Cuz the characters in the book haaaaaaate each other and treat each other like dirt. We’re supposed to see Rufus as a Christ-figure sacrificing his own life at the altar of racism in America, that he’s internalized the racism he’s experienced and is filled with self-loathing which ends in his suicide.

Uhm, I just got that he was a mentally ill guy. He needed help, but he shunned it.

And that’s where we’re supposed to get the other part of the book—that it’s about the fraught relationship between African-Americans and Liberal Whites.

Dunno, it was just people getting into relationships with each other, having mean and angry sex with each other then dumping all over each other then continuing on as though they have no options. Ida, Rufus’s sister is filled with anger and hatred even as she’s in a relationship with white Vivaldo. Okay, I can get that she sees Vivaldo as the personification of what drove her brother to his death, but well, uhm, LEAVE!!! Do NOT go on attacking attacking attacking. DO SOMETHING! She winds up being soooooo passive in her anger even as she’s aggressive in her hatred. She doesn’t break it off with Vivaldo, rather, she hooks up with another idiot.

And THEY have sex.

Eric and Cass have sex, even tho’ Cass is married. I’m thinking we’re to think of Eric as the only sane one in the bunch, but dude! You’re CHEATING with your friend’s wife! Even as you’ve been in this long relationship with Yves… whom he’s been having sex with…

And Vivaldo just pretty much sits back and watches this huuuuuuuuge train wreck of a little community of friends… as they lie, cheat, and hell, Ida thinks they’ve KILLED (Rufus)… and they have sex.

And veteran narrator Dion Graham voices aaaaaaall of their spite so well I wanted to scream. So I’m not sure if that makes him a super duper narrator cuz I really really wanted to jam an ice pick into my ears the more I listened to it… you know, before jamming that lovely little ice pick into my BRAIN…

Plus, the guy can’t carry a tune to save his life, so there’s THAT.

I get it: I have noooooo idea what it’s like to be black, certainly not during more fraught and evil eras in this country. So perhaps I’ll just never get the “genius” that is Another Country. It got rave reviews over on Audible, is a classic and all that, but I’m just saying:

You want me to weep when you commit suicide? Don’t beat the crap outta your girlfriend; don’t hector the hell outta your best friend.

And for cripes sake, the lot of you: You’re angry? You’re filled with hate? Well then keep your freaking pants on.

Just sayin’