Author: Jack Glaspey

            Currently the two texts which will be the center of my Senior Thesis are Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, and Koolaids: The Art of War by Rabih Alameddine. I first encountered Koolaids my first semester of college in my English 101 course about American Postmodernism. This was the first book that I had read that truly refused to be confined by any standards of the novel format. That is, the story is composed of vignettes, most of which are less than a page, but some can be up to 3 pages long. The whole time I was reading Koolaids I could not help but wonder, “Okay, why is this like this?” I think, also, I just really enjoy weird books and stories that open entirely new avenues of looking at the world. I certainly never would have thought that the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese civil war had anything in common, or that writing about them in tandem could be so beautiful. Koolaids is a book that is both weird and beautiful, and I would argue, it is beautiful because of its weirdness.

            I encountered Giovanni’s Room for the first time last February. I had read Going to Meet the Man and Go Tell It On the Mountain over winter break and was absolutely enthralled by Baldwin’s prose. As such I found myself in Whistlestop one afternoon looking for something interesting to read for fun and happened to look at the shelf with Baldwin’s works on it and thought, “It would be cool to read some more Baldwin,” so I grabbed Giovanni’s Room by chance. Mostly because I was certain I would enjoy anything that he had written. I was of course correct. Baldwin’s prose, storytelling, and characters are all stunning.

            The goal, or rather the question then, becomes how these seemingly very different texts come together. I was reading Koolaids again over Fall Pause, and realized, that at the center of both of these novels is the simple fact that the openly gay, or queer, main characters of these books die at the end. So, the center of these novels in the question of the future, and what a life looks likes when one is left without the possibility of ever truly being oneself or is confronted with the slow and painfully death of all of your closest friends. Indeed, while these stories address different generations of queer men the ending, or rather the conclusion is the same: to be gay is to die.

            Giovanni’s Room was published in 1958 by Dial Press in New York and was Baldwin’s second novel, the first being Go Tell It on the Mountain. After the successful and critically acclaimed publication of his first book, Baldwin claimed that he was now stuck in a trap, “[N]ow I was a writer, a Negro writer, and I was expected to write diminishing versions of Go Tell It on the Mountain forever.  Which I refused to do.” (Wiggins, 2019). Thus, Baldwin wrote Giovanni’s Room. A work which is concerned with a love affair between two men set in Paris. This, one might note, is very different from Go Tell It on the Mountain which is based on Baldwin’s own life, and set in Harlem. One should also note that while Baldwin’s first novel is concerned with issues facing the African American community Giovanni’s Room features an all-white cast of characters as well. (Wiggins, 2019).

Upon receiving the book Baldwin’s publisher told him he should burn it. Though upon release the novel was generally well received. Long term, however, the book came to be viewed as weak and without depth. (Wiggins, 2019). This opinion has changed over time, and the novel has now become a focus of scholarly work as more people work with Queer Literature.

This evolution of the way people think about Giovanni’s Room is a critically important example of the power of Queer literary studies and its restorative abilities. Part of this area of study is proving that queer stories have always existed and that explicitly queer characters and narratives already exist. It is the restorative ability of the field which has led to the increased popularity of Giovanni’s Room, or rather, the growth of the work’s popularity. As such, the reader should consider that when scholars work specifically with Queer Stories and Queer Literature there is an element of restoration. It is as if to say, “We’ve always been here.”

Primary Sources:

Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2000.

Baldwin, James. Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone; a Novel. Dial Press, 1968. 

Koolaids by Rabih Alameddine

Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming-Pool Library. First Vintage international edition., Vintage Books, 1989.

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace Walk. Doubleday, 1990

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace of Desire. First edition., Doubleday, 1991.

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Sugar Street. First edition in the U.S., Doubleday, 1992.

Keywords:

1. Queer
2. Black Masculinity
3. Masculinity
4. Homosocial Desire

Journal:

James Baldwin Review. Manchester University Press, 2023.

Secondary Sources:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2007.

Donica, Joseph. “‘Addressing a Virus, a War, or Oneself’: Everyday Life in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” College Literature, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019, pp. 424–52, https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2019.0017.

Hout, Syrine. “To Paint and Die in Arabic: Code-Switching in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, 2018, pp. 277–99, https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.40.4.0277.

Hout, Syrine. “Koolaids and Unreal City.” Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 21–51, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748643431-005.

Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. Library of America, 1998. 

Karmakar, Pritikana, and Nagendra Kumar. “The Body Writes Back: The Pharmacopolitics of Cure and Care in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” QScience Connect, vol. 2022, no. 3, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5339/connect.2022.medhumconf.28.

Robert F. Reid-Pharr, 1997. “Tearing the Goat’s Flesh: Crisis, Homosexuality, Abjection, and the Production of a Late-Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity”, Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Wayne Koestenbaum. Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Thirtieth anniversary edition, Columbia University Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.7312/koso17629.

Shannahan, Dervla. “Reading Queer A/Theology into Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids.” Feminist Theology, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 129–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735010383800.

Foucault, Michel, and Robert Hurley. The History of Sexuality. First Vintage Books edition., Vintage Books, 1988.

Explanatory Essay:

            In creating the above list of sources and keywords I began with the choice of my primary source options: Giovanni’s Room and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. I have decided to write about these texts in particular because I find them to be extremely compelling, and for the most part, they follow Professor Moffat’s advice that we should choose to write about something that we find ourselves thinking about anyway. Indeed, Baldwin’s work is gripping and his ability to create complex characters with interesting identities and relationships makes his novels fascinating.

What I find interesting these works in the nature of relationships between men. How the lines between relationships of a sexual nature, and friendships come to be. With this inquiry in mind, Between Men by Sedgwick is an obvious inclusion. It seems, to me at least, to be absolutely critical reading for the discussion of this topic. I have read excerpts from this particular book in previous courses and enjoyed reading it as well. It seems also, that this line of questioning is tied directly to ideas of queerness, masculinity, and identity. Thus, the inclusion of the above keywords, “Black Masculinity” is specified in this case because Baldwin sees these two as completely intertwined with one another. Following in this thought process I then selected Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and The History of Sexuality by Foucault as understanding the development of sexuality as identity is critical to answering my questions. Further, sexual and gender identity as very tightly tied to one another, and thus Butler’s work is absolutely necessary as well.

Update:

My topic has changed significantly. Over Fall Pause I reread “Koolaids” by Rabih Alameddine and decided that I would like to write about the relationship between Queerness and Death in “Giovanni’s Room” and “Koolaids.” Professor Johnston recommended that I read “The Swimming-Pool Library” and “The Cairo Trilogy” because they cover the two areas that “Koolaids” is about. “The Swimming-Pool Library” is a novel about the AIDS Pandemic, and “The Cairo Trilogy” is a queer narrative set in an Arab country. As such, these books have found their way into my Reading List. My current thinking is that I will most likely abandon Baldwin entirely, and move towards narratives of the AIDS pandemic.

I have also added a number of scholarly sources on “Koolaids” to my list and removed the entire collection of Baldwin’s essays and Foucault from my List. In place of the essay collection I have put “Here Be Dragons” one of my all time favorite Baldwin works. The removal of these sources should better allow me to tackle these complex ideas and focus my energy on subjects more directly related to my area of interest.

In Beloved, the aforementioned character’s eyes denote their magical qualities. At moments it is as if her eyes are completely without whites and instead are entirely black. What is perhaps most interesting about this particular description is typically this is saved for demonic or evil characters. Often in horror movies that feature a demonic character, or more broadly, in films that have a magical component the villain’s grand reveal will be that their eyes are completely pitch black.

                  What does this mean in the case of Beloved? First, the obvious answer is that in some way she is not a force of good in the novel. That is not to say that she is potentially a great evil who has come to commit violent acts against Denver and Sethe. What is more likely, in my opinion, is that she represents tremendous pain. That the manifestation of her eyes is not because she herself is evil but instead that the evil of slavery has infected her. Thus, the reader is presented with an extremely interesting and somewhat subtle description of the true violence of slavery. As the horrific actions of the institution have literally filled Beloved up with evil. Have changed her eyes into a symbol which is one of pure unaltered evil.

                  Perhaps, then, the reader is left questioning how this evil relates to Sethe, and by extension Denver. It is in the destruction of natural bonds of love. Sethe should not be afraid to love her children, and yet the institution of slavery has taken what is typically a person’s first experience of love, that of their mother, and replaced it with coldness. This of course, in reference to slavery more broadly, as Sethe takes the risk of loving her own child. Thus, the evil that is represented in Beloved’s eyes in two-fold. First, it shows the psychical, obvious violence of slavery, but secondarily, it demonstrates the more subtle, less talked about, destruction of the family and bonds of kinship amongst those who are enslaved.

            The goal of this blog post is to continue with my previous work with regards to gender roles and masculinity within Rear Window and create a connection to one of the sources I am interested in writing about for my thesis, Giovanni’s Room. Last time I argued that Jefferies is subservient to Lisa. He is less wealthy that she is, and physically less able, thus the position of power, on the surface, seems to lie with Lisa.

            Yet, as Belton argues, Jefferies still holds an incredible amount of power in the relationship. He is in charge, in large part because he has an absolutely beautiful woman falling over herself to try to win him over. The reason that Jefferies is opposed to entering into a relationship with Lisa is because he is scared of commitment, and instead finds he would prefer to continue his life as a bachelor. In Rear Window Jefferies is the central masculine figure. As Belton points out, he is the only competent man in the entire movie. The detective is bumbling and slow, and the other male character who has dialogue is a murder who buried part of his wife in his flower beds. Thus, Jefferies cements himself as the main masculine figure in the movie.

            Part of my interest in writing the Senior Thesis is on the role of masculinity in the plot and decision making in male main characters. This stems mainly from my interest in the novel Giovanni’s Room. The novel and Rear Window are similar in that the narrator of the novel, David, and Jefferies are opposed to entering into a relationship with their main love interest. David’s reasoning is very different from Jefferies’. David’s main concern is that he does not believe it is possible to achieve happiness in a homosexual relationship, and two he is terrified by the potential social stigma he would face. For David living a life with Giovanni is an impossibility. While Jefferies’ main concerned is with a loss of independence.

            Yet, the central concern for both main characters is a loss of a part of themselves. Jefferies believes once he’s married, he will no longer be able to be the exciting and risk-taking photographer. While, for David, entering into a relationship with Giovanni would mean the death of the version of himself that he has believed to exist for his entire life. It means completely reinventing himself as a new man.

            Perhaps the most interesting scene in Rear Window is the one in which the Jefferies tells Lisa that he is no longer interested in marrying her because he is uncapable of providing the standard of living which she is used to. In watching this scene, it became apparent that in this moment, and in the film more broadly, Lisa and Jefferies have switched gender roles in the traditional sense. While they are sharing a dinner that she arranged and paid for he listens to her adventures, and day of business dealings while he was stuck at home. This is an example of the true central conflict of the movie, Jefferies is physically unable of caring for himself, and thus loses a significant aspect of what it means to be a man in the traditional sense. He is unable to work or move about freely, and thus struggles greatly with this loss of independence. It is the reason that he wants to break up with Lisa even though she is perfect. His subservience to her, or rather, the nature of this dynamic between them shifts in the climax of the film, when he is stuck watching Lisa fight and perform the physical acts required to bring the killer to justice. He is unable to assist her physically, and is instead stuck watching, in the position that would typically be reserved for the female love interest. In the end, though, Hitchcock allows Jefferies the small victory of saving her by calling the police, and further, surviving a physical confrontation with Lars Thorwald. Thus, in the end of the story, while Jefferies is still physically unable to move, he has reasserted his masculinity by saving his fiancé and defeating the villain in a David versus Goliath style victory. One which necessitates his outsmarting a physically more capable opponent.