美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Angel Of History' Says 'I Will Not Forget'

'The Angel Of History' Says 'I Will Not Forget'

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0000:00repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser 1 to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: 

The main character in the new novel by author Rabih Alameddine is a gay, Arab writer living in San Francisco. Rabih Alameddine is a gay, Arab writer living in San Francisco. But he says the character Ya'qub, or Jacob, is not based on his life. For one, Jacob's sex life is a little more adventurous 2 than his.

RABIH ALAMEDDINE: He's somewhat of a sexual masochist. And I keep thinking, you know, well, for me, rough sex, is, you know, having sex on linens 3 that are less than 300-count cotton.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) Jacob and the author do have things in common, though. Jacob has lost friends to AIDS, and he wavers between wanting to remember them and trying to forget them. Jacob gets help in this from Satan, his rival Death and a cast of colorful saints. Alameddine says writing the book was a way to deal with his own anger.

ALAMEDDINE: I write fiction. Nothing is about me. And at the same time, everything is about me. So the details specifically are not mine. The feelings probably are. You know, I mean there are many differences between us, not the least of which, I don't have regular conversation with Satan. I'd...

MCEVERS: Oh, yeah.

ALAMEDDINE: I'd like to, but it's not there.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) We will definitely talk about that part of it. But one of the main subjects in this book is the AIDS epidemic 4 - devastated 5 San Francisco's gay community in the 1980s. And Jacob in the present day is still very upset about it, angry about it.

There's this scene - there's some young gay men talking about the death of Joan Didion's husband and daughter. And Jacob walks up, and he says, you think that's horrifying 6; I had six friends die in a six-month period, half a dozen of my close friends including my partner. If you could pick up reading Maurice (ph) says, I wanted to feel sorry.

ALAMEDDINE: (Reading) I wanted to feel sorry, but I couldn't. I just couldn't stop - could not. I was in the midst of an amygdalic hijacking 7. My sanity 8 deserted 9 me. All I have left was rage, long-lost rage. How could you not know our history, I yelled over and over. You with your righteous apathy 10, how can you allow the world to forget us, to delete our existence, the grand illusion of queer history? The music was still blaring, but every other noise had faded. I could feel every eye on me, every nervous and baleful glower 11.

MCEVERS: He's making a scene in this restaurant, yelling at his younger gay men. And I don't know. Do you share some of that anger particularly about this time of history that you feel like people don't remember?

ALAMEDDINE: Of course, of course, but I actually feel that people don't remember anything anymore. I mean it's both lovely and horrifying that we live in a culture that encourages us to forget, to keep forgetting and moving, keep forgetting and moving on. And this is why the novel is titled "The Angel Of History," which is, you know, a Walter Benjamin piece about the fact that, you know, none of us look back and look at the devastation 12 that we've caused.

It was interesting that when I started writing the novel, I was angry at nothing specific, really, not at first. And it's funny because things were going well in my writing and so on. But the anger - and I couldn't place it, and it would be at any sort of reminder 13 that we're forgetting.

MCEVERS: So you lived through that time in San Francisco.

ALAMEDDINE: I did. I did. I did.

MCEVERS: And did you lose friends?

ALAMEDDINE: Of course. Funny - I was one of two or three people who started a gay soccer team in 1982. By 1992, we probably lost half of the team. I'd never had a lover who died, or I never really took care of, you know, a primary person.

MCEVERS: Yeah.

ALAMEDDINE: But I took care of many people. And then worse, at the height of it - which is what I tend to do - I became an emotional support volunteer at Shanti, so I was - it's not just that I had my friends. I had what was called clients, and everybody was dying.

MCEVERS: Yeah. Yeah, there's - Jacob has so much sadness along with the rage. He really seems like he's not going to be able to hang on much longer.

ALAMEDDINE: It seems that way. Although, you know, he does hang on. I liked one description in a review. He's just slightly unhinged.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

ALAMEDDINE: He's not completely insane, just slightly unhinged, which...

MCEVERS: He manages to keep a job.

ALAMEDDINE: (Laughter) Yes.

MCEVERS: He has one friend.

ALAMEDDINE: He has friends. He does yoga.

MCEVERS: He has one - he has - yep - he's very - he has, like, a routine. He has one pet...

ALAMEDDINE: He has a routine.

MCEVERS: ...One friend - yeah, one job. That's...

ALAMEDDINE: You know - but it's funny because I'm reading this book - David Albahari's book about the Holocaust 14 called "Gotz and Meyer," which is brilliant. But there's this one line which goes, it is terrible to live in history and even more terrible to live outside it.

And that's the dilemma 15 for Jacob, and I think it's actually a human dilemma - is how much to remember and how much to forget. And that's why the book starts with Satan as the angel of memory, and...

MCEVERS: Oh, yeah, let me ask about that. The very first scene in this book - and it is a kind of narrative 16 device throughout - is a conversation between Satan and his companion Death. And what they seem to be doing is sort of fighting over Jacob's future. What is each of them trying to do here?

ALAMEDDINE: Well, it's a negotiation 17, or as they come to explain, it's a dance that they do. And it's basically the whole tension between memory and forgetting. One can't exist without the other. So what they do is this dance. And you know, Satan wants - says at one point, let me lead for a change because he's the angel of memory, whereas, like I said, we live in a time where primarily we are encouraged to forget. And that in the book is Death's domain 18, you know?

MCEVERS: Right. Why make Satan the angel of memory?

ALAMEDDINE: Because he's the angel who said no, you know? He refused to become part of the dominant 19 culture. He said no to God.

MCEVERS: (Laughter) He was the rebel.

ALAMEDDINE: He was the rebel.

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

ALAMEDDINE: And we have lots of revolutions. So you know, at one point he does say, all those who say no, follow me, you know? And I'm saying no, and so is Jacob. No, we will not forget, you know? Death, on the other hand, is the opposite. He's leading, let's forget and move on, which, again - both are needed.

MCEVERS: How has writing about memory in this way helped you remember things from your own life?

ALAMEDDINE: It's been an interesting process. This has not been an easy book to write. A lot of things came up for me, or you know, I remembered many things, some that were good and some that were terrible. But primarily it's also helped me deal with what's going on today.

As an example, I - in about three years ago, I started working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, just talking to them and interviewing them. I was an interpreter in Greece for a little bit, maybe like five or six days. But what was constantly a stark 20 reminder - and it helped change the novel in some ways - is that I kept seeing people who nobody wants to look at. I kept seeing people who are suffering that nobody would like to think about their suffering, sort of what happened to us during the AIDS crisis - that nobody wanted to look at us. There were all kinds of bad jokes.

It fascinates me because we don't seem to remember. We can't seem to - our society keeps forcing us to move forward and never look back.

MCEVERS: Rabih Alameddine, thank you so much.

ALAMEDDINE: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MCEVERS: Rabih Alameddine's new novel is "The Angel Of History." It's out today.