I often struggle in blog 4 and evaluating the rhetorical narrative. To an extent, I’ve understood this method thus far, but I feel as if I’ve had a breakthrough this time around. As I was reading Peter J. Rabinowitz’s essay in preparation, I was struck by something interesting. In the essay, Rabinowitz examines the three main audience types found in novels and how they interact with each other, the reader, and the author.
And it was in his essay “Truth in Fiction: Reexamination of Audiences”, that I came upon the “notion of verisimilitude”. Rabinowitz defines it as a way to “theoretically measure the novel against the ‘real’ world but in fact only measures the novel against the world as perceived by the current actual audience,” (132). The notion is a measure of how “real” a novel is. But Rabinowitz has started to critique the notion because “real” changes over time. The same way that cultural codes change over time.
Giovanni’s Room is in part operating within the cultural code of heteronormativity, and at the time it was written, 1956, that was the code people were expected to operate in. The actual audience, the flesh-and-blood people that read the book, are expected to favor David for his white heterosexuality. Not to mention his ability to resist the “temptation” to be with another man. The actual audience that existed in the ‘50s is measuring Giovanni’s Room’s realness by how well it prescribes to heteronormativity.
So as the actual audience begins to determine how “real” the novel is, they’re measuring it against how well it fits this cultural code. To this version of the audience, it is right and real and moral to “deny temptation”. And in that sense, it does. David chooses to stay within the cultural code; he is owned and operated by it.
After sitting with this idea for a moment, another grabbed my attention. Rabinowitz also defines the authorial and narrative audiences in the essay and I found myself wondering how this notion affects these other two types of audiences. It was an interesting journey.
The authorial audience is created as the author “[makes] certain assumptions about his reader’s beliefs, knowledge, and familiarity with conventions,” (126). The authorial audience must possess a certain bank of knowledge about what the author is writing. Baldwin writes about a man who denies his sexuality as the main character because David’s self-denial is closer to what the authorial audience understands. They already have the knowledge that a gay/queer/non-straight person is bad or immoral. They can understand David more than Giovanni, a man who is open with his sexual expression.
Then we encounter the narrative audience, who believes that the characters “‘really’ existed, and that the events in their lives ‘really’ took place,” and that they (the reader) must “ temporarily take on minimal beliefs in addition to those we already hold,” (127-128). The narrative audience is subject to believe that David and Giovanni are real flesh-and-blood people that exist in Paris 1956. The characters can touch, taste, and feel each other, and Giovanni was a real person who felt the slice of the guillotine.
It is important to make distinctions between the authorial and narrative audiences. The authorial audience is able to believe that this could have happened, that the guillotine was a method of execution, that gay men exist, and they exist in Paris in 1956. But they are not trapped in this belief, they can question and critique the narrative. Whereas the narrative audience cannot pull themselves away from the story to make any sort of question. The narrative audience is also asked to take on beliefs that they might not already possess. In fantastical novels, this idea is easier to identify because the narrative audience must believe that things like fairy godmothers exist to solve a princess’s problem.
As I began to make this distinction I thought again of the notion of verisimilitude. As Rabinowitz continues to explain it he writes the following:
“The realism of a novel will then depend upon the beliefs common to the audience at the time when it was written, rather than upon the beliefs common to the audience by which it is now read.” (132)
And this felt like an interesting take on how we read Giovanni’s Room. I started to think about this in terms of the narrative and authorial audience. I realized quickly that it didn’t quite fit. The narrative audience isn’t going to change over time, like this idea presents. The narrative audience is always and already in the story of David and Giovanni. They are witnesses to David’s story. Instead, it is the authorial audience that experiences this change over time.
There is the authorial audience of the 1950s, the one that read and experienced this novel when it was originally published. The authorial audience is David. It denies sexual expression and deviance from heteronormativity. This authorial audience exists in a time where it wasn’t appropriate to express yourself the way David wants to without facing drastic/intense consequences.
Then we begin to notice that authorial audience of 2020. Us, as students of How Writers Read, in 2020, reading this for a virtual class in a world where it is now legal to express your sexuality in places like the United States and France. Gender and sexual expression is legal and embraced in a way that wasn’t possible in the ‘50s. This second authorial audience is Giovanni. With the ability and confidence to express themselves without (more like with less) persecution.
This doesn’t mean that this version of the authorial audience is the final form. The same way that 1950’s version feels outdated and ‘unreal’ will happen to the 2020 version. There’s always the hope that the 2020 audience will become as outdated. That historically we’ll change and I can experience an audience that can also accept LGBTQ+ rights and expression with full openness and acceptance, at least on a larger scale than we are living in now. At the same time there will always be people who disagree. Readers who will read this novel and its contents as an immoral stink.
And perhaps this distinction is why David is so frustrating. I am reading as this 2020 authorial audience. Yes, I’ve struggled with my own sexual identity and I can relate to David in a way, but I am constantly frustrated by David’s inability to own his sexuality. Now that I’ve worked through some of the audiences in the novel, it makes sense to me. I’ve been projecting these 2020 authorial audience ideas onto a character that is the literal representation of the 1950’s actual audience.
The fun part is that now that I am aware of this distinction and multiple authorial audiences I can alter my reading for. I have the full ability to read Giovanni’s Room and place myself in the David-authorial-audience and I can live in that experience of the story. I’ll be able to experience something new, perhaps understand David on a level that I wasn’t able to before.
Written by Angelina
Posted by Brendan
A Reading List By Group 5 
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