I read this book after being blown away by The Hakawati (speaking of underlining book titles, the MLA has changed their guidelines to suggest italics instead), and wanted to read something else by Alameddine. There is not much of comparison between the two works. The multiple narrative perspectives are there in both books, Lebanon as seen by an expatriot, but the similarities end there.Koolaids makes parallels between war-torn Lebanon and the gay community torn apart by the AIDS epidemic. The main perspective is Mohammad, a painter from Lebanon who moves to the United States and is part of a close community of gay men. We experience the civil war in Lebanon and the AIDS epidemic through the lenses of several characters: a mother's diary in Lebanon; recollections of dreams; quotations from famous authors; humorous scenes based on the Bhagavad Gita; memories from members of the community in San Francisco. The narrative unravels like the delirious end-of-life ramblings of an invalid, and it is often difficult to tell who is who.Let's see a sample:"In normal situations calling oneself a bookworm may not be pejorative; however, this was a gay BBS [computer bulletin board:], which the majority, if not all, of the men used to cruise for sex. In this case, it was the kiss of death."(32)"Do you realize if antidepressants were available fifty years ago, the existentialists could have been happy? We would have been spared reading so many dull books."(44)"So here we have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us to idolize drunks who sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob."(64)"I just read the peace plan in Lebanon between Hizballah and Israel. It sounds like a tag team professional wrestling match with too many referees."(79)"Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino is an Egyptian virus, first discovered in June of 1967, probably in the Sinai. It afflicts Semites in the Middle East, both Arabs and Israelis. Those infected with the virus are known to close their eyes, and fire, hoping to hit something. Translated from the Egyptian dialect, Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino means "Oh God, I hope this gets him in the eye."(97)"I always thought AIDS should be a trademark of Burroughs Wellcome. You know, AIDS(TM) is a registered trademark of Burroughs Wellcome, use of this trademark without paying royalties to its rightful owner is a crime punishable by a slow, torturous, torturous death."(167)"All I can say is, I am glad I'm not Christian. For us Muslims, we just stone adulterers to death, which is much more humane than guilt."(175)"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life."(196)"I was sitting, smoking a pipe by the fire, when Updike asked me, 'What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?'"(237)"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."(240)"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."(240)
"Man is nothing more than giant genitalia for viruses.""I yearn for a moment I know nothing of.I pine for a feeling, as impression of myself as content, fulfilled. At times, I feel it as a yearning for a lover, someone to share my life with, someone to laugh with. I loved, lost, and loved again. The longing never abated. I was only distracted for a little while. I searched for the elusive grail.In that moment, I envision myself joyous, spiritually felicitous. When I shut my eyes, I feel the possibility of the moment. I long to understand.Someday, I used to tell myself. Someday, I will know the moment I yearn for, someday.I wait for the peace beyond all understanding.I lie on my deathbed waiting.I yearn for a moment I know nothing of.""Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody."
What do You think about Koolaids: The Art Of War (1998)?
An ancient tale. Magical, incisive, dreamlike, floating among narrators in a fog of time, place and character. Blurring and blending hate, love, death and life, it is near biblical in its scope and essence. A deft and poetic exploration of tribes vs. the "other"--for without one the other cannot exist, of what it means to be a family--inherant and created, of loyalty--and where does/should loyalty lie... But ultimately about what it means to be human, homo sapien or just plain homo. Alameddine exposes and excavates an elemental raw, gut truth that is oh so painful to listen to but oh so necessary to hear. Listen, and hear those moans and cries of woe for thee too shall one day mourn and, hopefully, be mourned.
—Macartney
In KOOLAIDS, the visual artist Rabih Alameddine demonstrates such brave open-ended form, along with such flinty discernment in his references both literary & historical, that I may wind up adding a fifth star to my review, once I finish the book. This collage-narrative pastes together the shards left over from two holocausts of the last 35 years: Beirut during & after the Civil War, & the US gay community during & after AIDS. Naturally, the primary narrator meditates while he's in his deathbed. His selection of painful snippets include the the yearnings & recollections of others, lovers & friends & relatives, a number of them women. He works in, for instance, what appear to be old letters from his mother, a stubborn & therefore doomed believer in the cosmopolitan & multi-cultural dream that Beirut used to represent. Yet a similar gloom seems to have settled over the dream of the American gay revolution: that of abundance & equality, without stigma. Ultimately, the fascinating disillusioned consciousness at work here picks at very notion of intense connection -- also known as love -- to a partner, a city, a culture, even the palpable world.
—John
One of the best books I've ever read: a Borges-esque take on AIDS, Lebanese-Americans, and gay identities. A series of vignettes told from a variety of voices; time and location fold on themselves, and I am left wondering who is speaking and realizing, somewhat ironically, that it doesn't matter. Humorous in its serious understanding of futility and hope and death and longing. Up there with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude and David Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius as one of my favorite works.
—Michael
