Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddineis a Lebanese-American painter and writer. He was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California. A lover of mathematics, he earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angelesand a Master of Business in San Francisco. He began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. The author of...
NationalityLebanese
ProfessionArtist
CountryLebanon
english hunted moscow parade public school seals
I stuck out more in an English public school than I would have had I marched in a May Day parade with the Red Army in Moscow or sashayed the Yves St. Laurent catwalk with supermodels or hunted seals with the Inuit or - well, you get the idea.
boarding lebanese school shipped war
When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.
allowed arabic french school
In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.
school boys years
Me? I was lost for long time. I didn’t make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school […]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. […]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.
develops meanings
Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.
began organized since teams
I was gay before I began to play soccer over 40 years ago. It's been 28 years since a friend and I organized one of the first gay soccer teams in the world.
rejected
When I wrote my first book, 'Koolaids,' I felt rejected and not wanted.
great taken upset
I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
basically exaggerate lebanese means somebody tales tells
'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.
fact fit good outsider perspective somebody state time
I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.
assumed awarded country knew
I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.
bad
I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.
easily hold time
I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.
america large west
We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.