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Art & Politics

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 21:11:55 -0500

The Believer

The Believer: George Orwell’s the Freedom of the Press, a proposed preface to Animal Farm, expurgated and footnoted (with a bias).

First of all, I have to thank Daniel Levin Becker for the Sisyphean task of seeing this to publication. I know that I'm indebted to him, and to a bunch of other people at the Believer who I haven't been in direct contact with. They assidiously fact-checked everything in here, a very old-world and conscientious thing to do. My gratitude.

In short, this is an Orwell essay that I rewrote in the context of Snowball's Chance, which is my parody of Animal Farm that was recently rereleased (tenth anniversary) by Melville House.

And now, I'll defer to the first of 17 footnotes:

Penguin’s 2000 edition of Animal Farm included the essay “The Freedom of the Press,” which was identified as “Orwell’s Proposed Preface to Animal Farm” and dated 1945. The essay was first published in The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1972. You are reading a footnoted and elided version of that essay. By reading further, you risk participating in a crime; what I am doing here may be technically illegal.

Read the rest …

http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=article_reed_orwell

Paris Review Daily: Animal Farm Timeline

Paris Review Daily: Circus and the City

Vice: The Golden Age of the Cockroach

Bomb: The Tragic Last Stand of the Skyhorse Clan

Slate: This is Not Art

Paris Review Daily: Times Square Show Revisited

Publishing Perspectives: 2002 vs. 2012

Out Magazine: Where Are All the Angry Young Men?

Bomb Magazine and DB Art: Whitney Biennial 2012

Bomb Magazine: The Eye-Popping Spectacles of Stuart Sherman

the Rumpus: The Politics of Narrative

In Earnest

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:08:56 -0400

Cassius's Storybook, part two

Cassius's Storybook, Part Two

Cassius, now six. A second book in the series: Bear and Friends. (His sister, when she was five, penned Eliza Goose).

This browser cannot play the embedded video file.

Cassius's Storybook

The Good Men Project: My Last Fight

Largehearted boy: All the World's a Grave

The Good Men Project: This is Not a Toy

Eliza Goose

Brooklyn Rail: How Arthur Phillips Stole My Bike

Los Angeles Times, my version: "The Two Types of Assholes"

Largehearted boy: Tales of Woe

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/12

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/11

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/10

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/9 2

Paper Magazine: Valentine

In Jest

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:03:36 -0400

Vice: Don't Pay Friends for Sex

Vice: Don't Pay Friends for Sex

Have wanted to write this thing for Vice for ages. Met Harry and, uh, we did it.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-top-ten-reasons-not-to-pay-your-friends-for-sex

If you’re in your early 20s, you think this title is a joke. If you’re in your mid-to-late 30s, you’ve either already paid your friends for sex, been paid by your friends for sex, or you don’t have sex because you can’t have sex, or nobody will have sex with you no matter how much you pay. But if you’re in your late 20s or early 30s, this is for you, because you are probably wondering, or about to wonder, if paying your pal for sex is a good idea. It is not.

The rest here ...

Work Wonders

No News Today: Ergonomic Armageddon

No News Today: Ergonomic Armageddon

Robert Lopez posted to his news site, No News Today: http://kambybolongomeanriver.blogspot.com/2012/01/no-news-today-guest-post-john-reed.html

I'll keep it here, too, until we get in trouble.

Robert,

John Reed here. I stumbled across this article in the “Asia Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health” (don’t ask), and it seemed to me that the disclosure, a rather significant one to all men with testicles, warranted more attention than academic publication, and the oblivion of a subscription wall. Maybe we could post until they ask us to take it down? See if someone picks up the story?

Admiration, John

Title: Self-Stimulation in a Seated Posture, Effects upon the Male Sexual Organ

Author: S.S. Eleman.

Abstract: Humanity faces an evolutionary crossroads, as the male of the species adopts an upright, as opposed to a prone, masturbatory position. The repercussions are not just chiropractic, but genetic.

With recent statistics citing a dramatic decline in reported cases of Carpal Tunnels Syndrome, the threat that RSI (repetitive stress syndrome) poses to the digital age has been seemingly neutralized. Preventative medicine and improved factory conditions are to thank for a 70% drop in statistical reportage of carpal tunnels syndrome, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But all is not well in the computer age, says Dr. Theodore Lamb, who reports in the June 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that: “male computer users who spend more than four hours per day in front of the computer show a 17% decrease in their active sperm count.” The study followed 400 subjects in the Massachusetts area. The study went on to cite a startling statistic: “Men, who on a regular basis sit at their computers while they self stimulate to the point of ejaculation, have a sperm count 79% lower than men who masturbate in a reclining posture.”

Critics of the study point to the geographic limitations of the subject pool. “All Dr. Lamb has proven,” said Dr. Padmajai Jaine, who leads a genome research team and instructs graduate students at Harvard University, “is that inactive American men have low sperm counts.”

Dr. Regina Koch, of the Spine Institute of New York’s Beth Israel hospital, viewed Dr. Lamb’s findings as correlative to trends in spinal injuries. “If you look at the physics, of sitting in a chair and arching the lower spine and reaching for the genitals, you’ll see it’s just a very awkward position. We’re getting a lot of lower lumbar trauma and sacral dislocation that I believe is related, at least in part, to this type of spinal insult.”

Dr. Lamb is now researching the possibility that seated onanism in the human male has a negative impact on not just sperm count but chromosomal stability. Dr. Lamb contributed to research featured in the New York Times, 2/27/2007, which concludes that as men get older their chances of fathering a genetically abnormal child increase. “What we’ve been finding so far,” said Dr. Lamb, “is that environmental stresses, such as seated ejaculation, accelerate the aging process. We’re talking about a 20% elongation of the entire seminal delivery system. Normally, the ductus deferens, for example, contracts 2-5%. And the testicles themselves are under pressure equivalent to two pounds per square inch.”

While Dr. Koch would not comment on Dr. Lamb's pending studies, she did echo his concerns. “The testicles are designed to move freely, to regulate their temperature for the optimal production of sperm. Anything that interrupts that cycle, tight underwear or Internet porn, is likely to damage the organism.”

According to Dr. Lamb, male prison populations, who are denied access to computers that may be employed in the pursuit of sexual gratification, have significantly healthier sperm than their wired counterparts.

“People have the attitude that porn is free,” commented Dr. Koch, “but nothing in life is free.”

Workabells

New York Press: Kill All Artists

New York Press: Kill All Artists

Ok, the link to this old piece of mine is no longer working, so I'm posting it here. I guess, in case it starts working again: http://www.nypress.com/article-7110-three-strokes-youre-out-put-artists-in-jail.html

This is the version I have:

A Modest Disposal

Jail all living artists. Elvis stays.

The recent Supreme Court ruling on copyright extension gives culture less incentive than ever to support artistic endeavors. The Supreme Court’s Jan. 15 decision to uphold the 1998 Sonny Bono Act extends copyright to life of the creator plus 70 years, and 95 years for corporate copyrights. Designed to withhold Mickey Mouse from the public domain, the extension has been sold as a way to reward artists for their creations. But since copyrights on revenue-generating works are rarely held by artists or their families, this can’t be viewed as the Act’s primary intention, which is to increase the value of copyrights already maintained by corporations.

Lawrence Lessig, known as a champion of copyright reform, unsuccessfully argued against the Act before the court, losing by a margin of seven justices to two. But even Lessig has no apparent interest in protecting living artists; the principal interest of his client, Eric Eldred, was unfettered access to the literary tomb of Robert Frost. Consequently, Lessig’s suggestions for self-regulating copyright reform is that living artists get even poorer. One proposal would have artists voluntarily limit their copyrights to fifteen years – in other words, diminish the potential earning of their work in an environment where corporations expect infinite holding. Another proposal by Lessig would have the work of unrecognized artists go immediately into the public domain, another boon to corporations.

The unending legal battle over the Jack Kerouac estate gives perspective to what often happens to the heirs of artists. While Jan Kerouc (Jack’s daughter) is denied entrance to Kerouac symposiums, Paul Blake (Jack’s nephew and intended heir) lives out of his truck in the streets of Sacramento, California.

And as it should be. It isn’t a good idea for artists, or people genetically predisposed to be at risk for creativity, to have money, or control over anything. Far better they don’t. Artists are a whining, irresponsible lot. No purchasing power, no insurance, no justification for being—so why not just finally get to it, and legislate this social blight out of existence?

The risks to society when such weak links are afforded any such self-determination, let alone cultural influence, greatly outstrip any advantage. Take Michael Jackson. Yes, he produced a few good songs, but can one really suppose that he wouldn’t have produced those songs if he had remained safely nestled amongst concerned record executives? Certainly, had he availed himself of that protection, his nose wouldn’t have melted off his face, and someone would have wised him up to the fact that boys don’t belong in his bed, and babies don’t really bounce.

With Jackson’s own purchase of Beatles songs, and his brief involvement with Priscilla Presley, it doesn’t take a leap of logic to confirm that even Jackson suspects artists are best when they have no interest in their own creations—which means, of course, that they’re at their very best when they’re good and dead.

The United States is no longer such a young nation that it needs to cultivate an identity through ongoing artistic pursuits. We’ve had artists in this country for 300 years, and even if there wasn’t a new writer or painter or sculptor or actor for, oh, 100 years (by no accident was the copyright extended to 95 years), it’s hard to imagine that anyone would notice the difference. There’s plenty of cheap art and writing by dead people, and nobody would have any trouble finding new sources to exploit. In a pinch, there’s always Shakespeare.

That said, it’s unlikely that corporations would need anything new. Look to the current publishing industry, which profits almost entirely from peddling its backlist, or the Museum community, which is increasingly subsidized by corporations heavily invested in “great masters,” and which has turned markedly away from living artists, in favor of dead ones.

Everyone knows there won’t be another Picasso or Dosteovsky, and that all those pretentious jokers out there painting paintings or writing books are just dilettantes who haven’t the slightest clue what they’re doing. The only laudable endeavor that such an “artist” might take on would be to get permission from the Margaret Mitchell estate to write an official sequel to the official sequel of Gone With The Wind.

Still, while it’s probably a better policy to just to put an end to the arts altogether, one might reach a compromise. One might say, yes, artists will be permitted to continue working, but only in jail. (Most artists are so destitute that they would readily agree to the stipulation.) In the case of music, this arrangement could prove especially productive. With VH1’s “Music Behind Bars” televising of the all-felon band Dark Mischief, it’s clear enough that musicians thrive in jai. Moreover, nobody gets murdered, raped, or robbed. Teenagers need a healthy outlet for their revolutionary impulses, and this would allow them to let off some steam, while at the same time educating them as to the dangers of a rock’n’roll or hip-hop lifestyle. A bit of good fun—but with a moral attached.

Theater is another instance where the arts have been demonstrated to prosper behind bars. Theater critics everywhere are raving about the Shakespeare dramas staged yearly at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky, which also goes to show how well artists and criminals can get along, if it proved too complicated to jail them separately.

There will be the parsing of who is and who isn’t an artist, and some will insist that movies have nothing to do with the arts. This sort of detail can easily be worked out with a common-sense distinction: actors could remain on the streets, as long as they don’t write or direct anything, and work as waiters or waitresses. Cinemaphiles need not panic—ask any producer—as we don’t need writers or directors to make movies. And one might point to the technological advances toward computer-animated entertainers, which will eliminate the degenerate profession of acting.

What about fashion? Well, designers could be judged case by case. Martin Margela? Jail. Kathy Ireland? No, no need to jail her. Jean Paul Gaultier? Parole. Clear enough.

So, jail the artists. But how do we round them up?

My initial thought was that we might, somehow, attract them all to an island, and then put a wall around it. And then I realized, Manhattan is that island. All we need to do now is wall it off. Anyone we nab later, in Brooklyn or the rest of the country, we can just slingshot in.

And what about people who are secretly creative? Yes, a huge percentage of the population harbors fantasies of writing novels and such. But one must remember that people also have criminal impulses all the time, and yet we only jail them if they act on their criminal impulses, as it would be Orwellian to prosecute thought crime. Artistic wannabes are no different. Besides, once all artists are behind bars, it’s likely that many artistic daydreams will disappear, or be pushed so deep into the unconscious that they’re just as good as disappeared.

Those who do act on artistic impulses are another matter. They can’t pay rent. They can’t feed or take care of themselves. Jellyfish-like, they fall victim, said Freud, to an unsatisfied libido, which results in their indulging themselves in fantasy worlds, which results in narcissistic, neurotic, anti-social, foolish behavior. Really—jail. It’s best for everyone

Many New Yorkers are aware that over the last several years these issues have led to a sticker and t-shirt campaign to “Kill All Artists.” That would help too, certainly. But first, shouldn’t we at least try to rehabilitate them?

It would be naive to make the mistake, as did Laura Bush, that artists can be expected to be harmless and a-political on their own accord. In the end, torture and execution might be inevitable. Particularly in the cases of the really miserable ones, who have a tendency to turn into psychopathic serial killers. It’s too bad John Wayne Gacy wasn’t in jail before he took his first life. (Been to Chelsea lately? Gacy never looked so good. Sick. Sick. Sick. Why are those people so unpleasant?)

Okay, you say—but what about the costs? Here lies the true beauty of the system. With none of the risks (the snappish remarks, the crime sprees), society might have all the benefits (free art, free entertainment). You put artists in jail, and have them work in total isolation, and then sell their creations, and never even reveal to them who among their ranks is important, and who isn’t. Either that, or you wait till they’re dead. Regardless, artists would be, for lack of a better word, enslaved, and, by that step, prisons would profit big, and leave the taxpayer untouched.

So, I beseech lawmakers, put an end to obnoxious, confusing cocktail-party comments. Cease the assault on great artists of the past—artists whose works are already copyrighted, or artists whose works are already public domain. In other words, artists whose works don’t cost anything! Why fight it? We’ve already got Elvis. We’ve already got Shakespeare. Why detract from their cultural victory? Here, in America, things are great the way they are. And, frankly, it’s un-American to disagree. So, let’s get to it, and throw those goofballs into the can.

PULL QUOTE:

What about fashion? Well, designers could be judged case by case. Martin Margela? Jail. Kathy Ireland? No, no need to jail her. Jean Paul Gaultier? Parole. Clear enough.

Brooklyn Rail: Shitty Mickey

Brooklyn Rail: Shitty Mickey

As originally published by the Brooklyn Rail — http://www.brooklynrail.org/2003/12/fiction/shitty-mickey — and antholgized in the Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology.

Recently, I was afforded the opportunity of interviewing Mickey Mouse at his Chelsea art complex. In a spartan loft of 6,000 square feet, the Marlon Brando of the mouse world sat in a warm buttermilk bath and sipped papaya smoothies (evidently excellent for the bowels) while we discussed his most recent body of work, which surrounded us. The colorful sculptures came in all shapes and sizes. From simple, abstract conical mounds, to large splattered globs, to flattering busts of famous Johns (John F. Kennedy to John Belushi).

John Reed: Mickey, what a wonderful chance this is for people to get to know the real mouse.

Mickey Mouse: Yes, I often think how exceedingly difficult it must be to get a sense of my importance through just my films— and I so rarely give interviews, as I can only sustain my enlightened state of awareness by way of a quiet, contemplative life, rich with meditation and debased stupors. But of course, even if the audience of the Earth can only glean the most transient sense of my holiness through my movies, it must do them a great deal of good, anyway.

Reed: Meditation and stupor? Is that the secret to your amazing longevity? You must be nearing eighty, which, as I understand it, is quite advanced for a mouse.

Mouse: Seventy. It’s all about quality healthcare. As it stands now, mouse health care is extraordinarily evolved. The testing process for mice, in terms of therapies, medicines, etceteras, is far more developed than it is for humans. Indeed, if a mouse receives the very best in the way of proper medical attention, he might expect to live forever. And that’s true, by the way, because mice are foremost supporters of the medical establishment—and the medical establishment can’t afford to lose me, as the world’s preeminent mouse.

Reed: You mean you sell a lot of candy?

Mouse: And soda, and so forth. But the medical industry owes a great deal to mice, not only because of my candy and soda, but because of Lyme disease and the Hanta virus and the Bubonic plague, and, moreover, because the general social theory of mice— that they can live anywhere, on any food supply, in any level of toxicity/adversity— has been a well-spring of surgical and medicinal necessities, and, henceforth, applications.

Reed: And, aside from your excellent health and prospects, as of the Sonny Bono1998 copyright extension, you’ve been made a protected species, virtually in perpetuity.

Mouse: Yes, as of the Sonny Bono bill, I won’t become public domain in 2004, but will remain protected under the new copyright law.

Reed: Which is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Mouse: But that challenge will fail. And that means, pretty much, that I’ll be around until the sun burns out. And with all the helpful Disney lawyers and all the helpful non-Disney lawyers who don’t want to do anything that might spark a lawsuit, as that would be expensive, and require they rise from their leather couches, in the current, and probably permanent state of things, well, not only am I immortal, nobody can even make fun of me.

Reed: As a matter of fact, I was recently challenged to try publishing a parody of Disney. How long do you think it will be before I hear from the lawyers?

Mouse: Eh?

Reed: How do you feel about being emblematic of the total impunity afforded large corporations? Let’s take, as an example, your own adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Mouse: Hugo would have loved it.

Reed: Why?

Mouse: Because audiences loved it. We tested and tested, and our boards finally came up with exactly what the target market wanted to see. No individual could do that. Besides, our Quasimodo was cuddly.

Reed: I’m not so sure I agree with your assessment of what Hugo would have thought of a "cuddly" Quasimodo. It seems to me you had nothing to add to the story, and that, quite the opposite, you subtracted rather liberally, and that, in terms of justifying your version, there is no critical or satirical element whatsoever— merely a bottom-line of capital gain, and the exploitation, and subversion of an individual’s—

Mouse: Individuals die. Corporations don’t die.

Reed: Like Walt, you mean— corporations continue to exist, unchanging, in perpetual stasis. Come to think of it, that harkens to your own untouchable, immortal state. Would you draw a parallel—

Mouse: I’m not immortal like Walt. Nobody had to freeze me. And nobody’s gonna have to thaw me out. I can lick the back of my own knee if I want to—you call that frozen? Besides, even when he was alive, Walt was just my hand puppet. I had my forepaw so far up his—

Reed: Ehem. We’re already pushing this.

Mouse: No, we’re not. This is nothing. You’re the one who asked the stupid question. You think you’re going to rattle me? You should have seen the time I sold the flammable pajamas to toddlers. I’ve got balls the size of my own head. Look.

Reed: Yes, uh, they are big, comparatively— but isn’t that just because you’re an animated figure, and you can have whatever you want? Much like the giant conglomerates can have or do whatever they want— and anyone who attempts to express something at odds with their agenda is—

Mouse: I’m not animated, I’m real, ask Wall Street. I live and change and there’s no reason to make fun of me in the first place. I’m on top of it. You make fun of me, you’re probably out of it anyway.

Reed: People worry about machines taking over life on Earth, but maybe the real threat is animated figures. You’re like a higher form of life— you reproduce more easily, live forever, get loved and respected like a living being, and yet suffer no moral or physical consequences for anything. You can kick anyone— push anyone off a moving train. You can eat a whole cake if you want to, and only get fat if you’re so inclined. In some ways, you, as a representation of Disney, truly are a kind of divine mouse. God and mouse— everywhere and nowhere, free and yet totally dependent on the laziness and waste of others. And, best of all, as supreme vermin— no glue traps.

Mouse: I told you I’m real. And if that’s some kind of threat about the glue traps, let me tell you—nobody sets glue traps for me. You set a glue trap for me, that’s punitive, and nobody wants a punitive judgment as far as The Mouse is concerned. Nobody messes with The Mouse.

Reed: Yes, I’d agree that’s a fair assessment. And, in a genuine sense, you are real. Did you know that in the Nineteenth century corporations were afforded the rights of individuals?

Mouse: Enough about the damn corporations, the damn copyright law, and your damn campaign of disinformation. I thought this was going to be about my art.

Reed: Uh huh. Well—

Mouse: And, by the way, I saw those articles, in The New York Press and Publisher’s Weekly, about you ripping off George Orwell, and I hope they throw your ass in jail.

Reed: I don’t think there’s too much chance of that. Even with the Sonny Bono extension, which kept Orwell’s work out of the Public Domain in 2000— the year that marked fifty years after his death and the end of the previous term of copyright on his works— my book is pretty clearly a parody. And I’m not the only one taking a second look at Orwell— George is facing some legitimate reassessment after the attacks last September. Animal Farm in particular represents a cold war mindset, a formulation that the enemy is out there, while, contrary to that formulation, we must now realize that, to a large degree, the enemy is within. By applying the Orwell model as it currently stands, via Animal Farm, there’s little room for the realization that we’re not living up to the ideals of our own society, and that, especially abroad—

Mouse: Shut up, Orwell was a great man. Great men can pump heavy metals into frog ponds, if it’s for the greater good.

Reed: Oh?

Mouse: If this isn’t in Artforum, I’m gonna sue.

Reed: Uh, how about The Brooklyn Rail?

Mouse: What the hell is that?

Reed: The Brooklyn Rail? Oh, I don’t know. I’ve published a couple of reviews in the Rail and I’ve been surprised by not only the number of people, but the number of really good people who read it.

Mouse: Yeah, well, I better get the cover.

Reed: That’s really not up to me, but I’ll mention it to Phong and Ted.

Mouse: What? Who are they? And get me their social security numbers. And just forget plugging your stupid knock off of Animal Farm.

Reed: Snowball’s chance.

Mouse: Jail, buddy.

Reed: I really don’t think anything will happen. Everyone close to the publication is frothing at the mouth, but all that’s happened so far is we got one kind of grumpy, not-too-bright e-mail. The representative for the Orwell estate wouldn’t even talk to The New York Times.

Mouse: The Times should be ashamed of itself. They must be getting their writers out of the same cesspool that spawned you.

Reed: I’m not sure how much importance you’d attach to my opinion, but I found myself amazed by how—

Mouse: Anyone who wants to be a writer, anyone who wants to be an artist, they should have to get a license, which could get taken away at a moment’s notice. You have to have a license to do everything else, and, generally, a creative person is more careless and destructive than a drunk driver. Frankly, I think it should be illegal to be an artist at all.

Reed: I see, but don’t you consider yourself—

Mouse: Not me, you moron. Everyone else. And I want approval on the text in this "interview."

Reed: Okay.

Mouse: Run it by my lawyers.

Reed: Okay.

Mouse: Hey, wise guy, try asking this question— in what ways are you, Mickey Mouse, the most influential artist this century? In what ways does your latest, brilliant sculptural expression bring yet more enlightenment to a planet you have already brought enlightenment?

Reed: All right, what of it?

Mouse: Well, I developed film, obviously, and animation, and special effects— almost entirely on my own. Music as well. Consider what we did for Rock n’ Roll on the Mickey Mouse Show. Certainly the music video— I had fully reconciled music and image in the 1930s. And art—figurative, and abstract. Just look at Fantasia. That says it all. From that source alone, you could trace almost all of contemporary culture. From MTV to Jackson Pollack.

Reed: What about Walt, didn’t he—

Mouse: Without me, Walt wouldn’t even be a hunk of ice. By the way, Marc Quinn owes me big time on that.

Reed: Hm, you think so? Could you explain that in more—

Mouse: Stick to the subject. Ask about my new medium.

Reed: Oh— just consider yourself asked.

Mouse: I’m working with excrement and pigment, much in the same method that I have for all of my animated pieces. (Incidentally, I’ve always had that technique on the table, and I’m investigating whether artists such as Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Franz West, Tony Labatt, Chris Ofili, John Miller, Wim Delvoye and Piero Manzoni don’t owe me royalties.) It’s an organic process of intake, digestion, and yield. The medium has always been crucial to me, and I’ve always spread it literally throughout my projects— as a kind of fertilizer in which the viewer might take root. But now, I’m looking for a more pure art. All excrement. Next, the theme park.

Reed: That’s heavy.

Mouse: Now, ask me about my influences. And be sure to print it just the way I say it— I mean, that should be easy for a plagiarist like you, but you never know.

Reed: Whatever you say.

Mouse: You’re darn tootin’.

Reed: Please, go on.

Mouse: Right, then. Influences. As for myself, I studied alongside Anthony Quinn, under Picasso. As for influences— Andy Warhol, Mathew Barney, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. All totally influenced by my work. And totally derivative, I might add. Looking back at this period, the only other artists of any merit will be David Bowie, David Byrne, Paul McCartney, Johnny Rotten, and maybe, Sylvester Stallone, who made some pretty important paintings when he was—

Reed: Righto. Moving on. Not to be a rumormonger, but what about the 1994 article in Star mag—

Mouse: No. Absolutely no basis to it. There was never anything between me, Liberace, and a forceps.

Reed: But it does seem to, pardon me, fit in with your artistic concerns.

Mouse: No, it doesn’t.

Reed: What about the talk of homosexuality at the old Disney studio? If you look at the photo documentation, there are quite a few dapper-looking fellows in v-neck sweaters.

Mouse: What is this, a smear piece?

Reed: No, not at all, to tell the truth, I thought it made Disney more interesting.

Mouse: No comment.

Reed: What about CBGB Gallery’s recent "Illegal Art" show— of parodic images that have been quashed?

Mouse: Huh?

Reed: Disney was featured prominently in the exhibition. Most notable, of course, would have to be Wally Wood’s 1967 "Disneyland Memorial Orgy." I guess Disney really got into the bacchanal spirit of the sixties.

Mouse: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Reed: Oh, well, what about the theory published last month in Zoology mag—

Mouse: No, not so. I am not a rat.

Reed: But straight-up, Mickey, you must be tipping the scales at 12 pounds.

Mouse: Listen, I’m too important to be a rat. You, you’re a rat, and that’s pretty good. Most of the global population is maggots, and those are only good for between-meal snacks. Me, I’m so damn important that I can be whatever I damn well please.

Reed: Aha. Lastly— and I must say your nose does seem a little smaller lately— what about the rumors that you had an eye enlargement as early as 1940, and that, as of 1985, you’ve been sharing a plastic surgeon with Michael Jackson?

Mouse: No, untrue, and as far as I know Michael hasn’t had any surgery either— though he does give excellent sleepovers. And, just for the record, I gave him his first sleepover back in the late seventies when we briefly brought the Mickey Mouse Show back to prime time. Returning to the subject of cosmetic surgery— you know, I lived in Hollywood a long time, and for all the talk in the tabloids, the only celebrity that I know of who, notwithstanding the gossip, really has had some work is Pinocchio. And that was just a little shave of a nose job— back when he was still made of wood.

Reed: And on a more personal note, how’s Minnie?

Mouse: Actually, that’s a common misconception. We’ve been replacing Minnie with a new mouse about every four months since—

Reed: Is that so?

Mouse: Yes, to be perfectly honest, we’ve got a whole new litter to choose from in the back.

Reed: But what about the males?

Mouse: Don’t you know anything about mouse fathers?

Reed: You mean?

Mouse: Yes, occasionally one hankers after more than a maggot.

Reed: Um, thanks. That’s just about all I’ll need for—

Mouse: Yeah, yeah, hotstuff, we’ll see. You think you’re real? I could have you erased. I could have this erased. I could have the whole Brooklyn Rail erased. All I have to say is the magic words— Abracadabra the mouse gets his way, with a wave of his tail this newspaper…

Curriculum

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:06:33 -0400

ana | encomium | summer workshop

contact

Advanced Fiction Writing: Revise and Polish NWRW4310

15 session(s). Tues. & Thurs, 8:00 PM-9:50 PM, beg. June 4. $730.00

John Reed

The New School

66 West 12th

The workshop is an opportunity for writers to speed their creative and technical maturation. This course is for students who are beyond introductory courses and are ready to take their writing to a higher level. Workshop time is dedicated primarily to student work; assignments look toward and initiate tasks commonly encountered by aspiring writers. The intention of the course is to help individuals prepare themselves and their work for the next phase of their vocation, be it approaching editors, agents, and literary journals or applying to graduate schools. These subjects are addressed realistically and reasonably, with the quality of the writing always foremost on the agenda.

Registration: http://ceregistration.newschool.edu/register/index.cfm

What Matters When We Talk About Shakespeare

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:43:20 -0500

Outro: All the World's a Grave

ON WFUV’S CITYSCAPES

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Outro: All the World's a Grave

A version of this essay, very much like the below, appeared as an "Outro" to All the World's A Grave. It occurs to me that I can place it here. I think I can, right? I'm also kind of tempted to post the really really long version. The Word doc. is dated January 30, 2008.

Gist

It is assumed by most of us that Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist in the world …. But take the poetry and the incredible psychological insight away and you have artificial plots that were not Shakespeare's own to start with, full of improbable coincidence and carelessly hurried fifth-act denouements. —Anthony Burgess

Shakespeare's flaws, if unspoken, are self-evident enough. Padded lines. Tangential subplots. Absurd dramatic turns. Interminable speeches. Character and narrative boilerplates. A limited number of dialogue modes: the hero, the fool, the low-birthed, the villain; comedy, drama, exposition.

For all that, the words continually reassert their brilliance. Would Shakespeare's brand of brilliance translate into contemporary letters? A customary if impossible question, given that his method of cut and paste would not. Much has been made of Shakespeare's thievery. Much has been defended. On the merits of the former: true, he stole an enormous amount, from dialogue to characters to themes to plots. On the merits of the latter: so what? Everyone stole back then.

For better and worse, that creative cesspool is no more. Copyright laws make Shakespeare's technique incontrovertibly illegal. An author cannot pluck a bit from here and a bit from there to fashion a work of their own. There are only two exceptions:

1) parody, a shrinking exception, at that;

2) use of work/writing in the public domain;

Which Shakespeare's writing is. (I can hear my high school English teacher, Barclay Palmer, chuckling, "oh, the irony, the irony.")

And it is precisely because Shakespeare's plays were monsters assembled from other monsters that a fresh monstrosity can be assembled from Shakespeare. And, because of Shakespeare's use of stock players and storylines, a new Shakespearian narrative is equally possible.

Who was William Shakespeare, and how did he work? Perhaps the ubiquity of our questions arises not so much from the mystery as from the cultural divide. Shakespeare's role, as writer, actor, director, producer, is more in keeping with a present-day cinema profession than a reclusive author in his garret. Shakespeare often (if not always, our knowledge of Elizabethan drama and literature is limited) sourced his plays from existing works—very commonly, existing plays. All The World's A Grave draws its architecture from five tragedies and one history by William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Henry V.

The lineage of Shakespeare's plays is an ongoing discussion, but, take Hamlet: upwards of ten generally agreed upon predecessors—one of which is Thomas Kyd's 1580-something stage play Ur-Hamlet—and, I count, fourteen additional analogues and possible sources. Many of these works interrelate, are translations of each other, borrow from other texts, etc.; and my count is no doubt faulty and incomplete. More than one lifetime has been lost in oblation to the task of sourcing Shakespeare.

But to accuse Shakespeare of being a re-tooler of old plays, or derivative, is to misjudge Elizabethan authorship. Like a contemporary producer, Shakespeare worked with stories popular to audiences, borrowing from marketplace successes and taking input from actors and other interests. It's a standard practice in Hollywood, among the very worst, and the very best. And, their argument for collective storytelling is very powerful.

Shakespeare's origin as a populist author has long been overmastered by "high" authorship. When did Shakespeare become a litmus test for social class/culture? Perhaps the balance between high and low was always pendular, and the tilt to pretension is a function of an increasingly obscure lexicon. To most Shakespeare lovers, the idea that Shakespeare is a populist, and that his work should be treated accordingly, is closely cherished. Paradoxically, the more one knows and understand Shakespeare, the more one appreciates him, and the more one is drawn to those anathema pretensions.

As Robert Graves expressed it: "He really is very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

One frequently hears that Shakespeare knew everything—from the emotions of a nubile thirteen-year old to the pathology of sociopath Kings. But not even Shakespeare could say everything; his time was rife with political sensitivities, and the ruling class shaped, paid for, approved of, and passed final judgment on all. (To what degree Shakespeare was Bowdlerized in his own time—200 years before Thomas Bowlder—is unknown, and probably unknowable, though the suspicion is, a great deal: Timon of Athens springs to mind.) To this day, Henry V is marched out at wartime, and an appealing male lead is cast to bolster the ranks of the marines. The political right will claim Shakespeare as their own, as will the political left, yet the argument that Shakespeare's attitude towards war was flippant or shallow is a toilsome uphill climb.

For this particular outing of the bard, there'll be no recruitment table in the lobby. One associates with Shakespeare's tragedies a mythic, ageless period of love, war and madness. But these are our times. In ATWAG, Shakespeare weighs in—in his own words, with his own characters.

Hamlet goes to war for Juliet, the daughter of King Lear. Having captured his bride—by unnecessary bloodshed—Prince Hamlet returns home to find that his mother has murdered his father and married Macbeth. Hamlet, wounded and reeling, is sought out by the ghost of his murdered further, and commanded to seek revenge. Iago, opportunistic, further inflames the enraged Prince, persuading him that Juliet is having an affair with Romeo; the Prince goes mad with jealousy.

It is also just fun. That Hamlet have a reason. That Juliet have an affair, with Romeo. That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have a … relationship. The satisfaction is simultaneously one of creation and destruction: to build a sand castle and kick it down. To snatch "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" from the lips of a pining Juliet, and toss it into the angry mouth of Hamlet, who is searching for Romeo to exact a jealous revenge; to recast the historical "Et tu, Brute?" as the droll (but in context, just as tragic), "Et tu, Guildenstern."

Here's what I did:

I updated the spelling.

I updated a few words and phrases—not too many—when the word was overly puzzling to current speakers of English, or when the swap was reasonably painless. For example: "hoodman blind" to "blindman's bluff; "corse" to "corpse"; "porpentine" to "porcupine." I believe the changes are in service of the original intention, be it humor, or drama.

I dropped some apostrophes/elisions, but not all. For example, I wrote out the suffix "ed," because we no longer pronounce that syllable (Shakespeare's elision indicated that the actor should contract the beat); contemporizing the notation would have required that I insert an accent syllable above every suffix metrically emphasized (a procedure in direct conflict with my "don't be silly" rule). I left such elisions as "o'er," and "ne'er," because the pronunciations were sufficiently foreign to warrant indication.

I made changes to the punctuation: to update it, and to make contextual adjustments.

When faced with a choice of Elizabethan English or today's English, I went with today, and, readability. No "exeunt." I can't see any justification in Shakespeare for unnecessary obscurity.

In a few places, I swapped out a line for a clearer line. For example:

Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak. (Hamlet: III, iv)

Witness my tears, I cannot stay to speak. (King Henry VI, part 2; II, iv)

I sometimes swapped out words and phrases to avoid repetition. But, I tried to stay true to Shakespeare's use of repetition. For example: in Hamlet, I count the word "world" twenty-seven times. In ATWAG: twenty-eight times. Or, the word "sweet": forty-two times in Romeo & Juliet; forty-one times in ATWAG.

I did not hobble myself with impossibility, and—as did Shakespeare—adjusted the occasional line, to fit narrative, or scansion.

I kept with Shakespeare's decisions as to what was poetry (line breaks/first word capitalized/meter) and what was prose (no line breaks), based on the source texts I was working with. An example: Shakespeare's Lear, mad, is in a continual flux of poetry and prose (IV, vi); I echoed the pattern. (Ruth Maleczech played Lear's madness brilliantly in the Lee Breuer Mabou Mines production; and it's her voice in my head.) Intermittently, I had to make allowances for dialogue in ATWAG that required verse, or prose, or I had two texts that conflicted: one poetry, one prose. But I endeavored to keep the distinction crisp, and there are very few places in ATWAG where this is the case—the bedroom conversation between Hamlet and Juliet is the primary example—and even so, the seduction scene of Henry and Katherine in Henry V served nicely as a model.

The stage directions are my own. The contemporary standard of stage directions is different than the Elizabethan standard; in contemporary publications of Shakespeare's plays, stage directions are inserted. I did stay terse—tried to keep out of the way—as remains the dramaturgical convention.

Obviously, I didn't keep all of the narrative and dialogue; that would mandate a transcription of the complete works of Shakespeare. I imagine there will be exclusions that Shakespeare purists will mourn. For example: the dialogue between Hamlet and Juliet, at their first meeting in ATWAG, does not unite to form a sonnet. But, in keeping with this being a war story first (a love story second), I decided to give Iago the sonnet—however malicious, he is the conscience of the play. Furthermore, when Hamlet and Juliet first share a scene in ATWAG, it is not their first meeting.

And, always, I had fun. Developing themes (for example, around the word "gold" or "satisfaction"). Referencing Shakespeare unspoken in ATWAG (for example, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, III, ii—I "slandered Valentine," or, Juliet is a rose "untimely plucked," poem X, or, Hamlet's "soldier's kiss" is "rebukeable," Antony & Cleopatra, IV, iv). Riffing on well-known words or lines (for example: my use of "fair," "foolish," "foul," and "fancy," or the transposition of Richard III's parallel declarations "The king is dead" and "The dog is dead" to "The king, the dog, is dead"). Foreshadowing narrative elements through my revisions (examples: my Hamlet's "true friends" are "foul words" in IV, i of Loves Labour's Lost). Punning (often Shakespeare's own puns: Cymbeline's, IV, ii, "fear no more the heat o' the sun," is directed to the son, Hamlet). Looking for a grin (for ex: a line from II, iv of Macbeth, "Upon a thought he will be well again" is revised to pertain to drunkenness, "upon a meal he will be well again".

The outward structure?

In keeping with Shakespeare: five acts, five to seven scenes per act. Overall, the number of scenes, at twenty-nine, is on the high side for Shakespeare, who averaged about twenty scenes per play—but Shakespeare's Antony & Cleopatra clocked in at forty-two scenes. I do pick up the pace—more plot, faster—to keep up with the twenty-first century (thus the high number of scenes). Nonetheless, the scene lengths in ATWAG end up being typical of Shakespeare. There are a few short scenes, but nothing to match IV, vii of Antony & Cleopatra, which is only seventeen lines, or V, ii of Julius Caesar, which is a mere six lines. A consensus on the total line count of any Shakespeare play is impossible—but ATWAG is in the neighborhood of Coriolanus, Cymbeline and Richard III, at 37-3800 lines. That's a few hundred lines shorter than Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest work, which is particularly difficult to tally. At roughly 27,000 words of dialogue, the word count also matches up well with Coriolanus, Cymbeline and Richard III.

(For the sticklers who want to know why an exact word count/line count of Shakespeare is impracticable: 1} most of the stage directions are written by editors, and therefore vary; 2} formatting in a reader's text adds additional lines; 3} dialogue written in prose has no fixed lineation, and varies by format; 4} lines divided by stage directions add additional lines; 5} there are different versions of the plays.)

Why a reader's text? A full-length production of Hamlet, or Richard III or any of the longer works is extremely rare. Usually, the text is cut by a third. (A 20,000-word "Quarto" edition of ATWAG has been prepared for the stage. It exists in two formats: a list of edits to the Penguin edition, which can be found at alltheworldsagrave.com; and a transcript, also available, for theatrical and academic use, through the website.) Convention would see a production of ATWAG well before publication; but an abridgement—by as much as a third—would do grave injury to the work. It might produce a fine play—many will now argue that the first Quarto edition of Hamlet effects a utilitarian functionality. But without the Folio edition of Hamlet, and the other plays included in the Folio—a print edition intended for readers—think what not only readers, but performers would have lost.

The characters …

My Hamlet: "a prince of blood." To me, the added dimension takes easily. Othello, III, iii:

Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars …

Hamlet's conscience, guilty, is a driving force in Hamlet's actions—and, in that, he is as much to blame for his undoing as Iago.

My Iago is evil, manipulative and highly sarcastic. Not too different from Shakespeare's Iago, but more justified. He is damaged by war—his deeds might be seen in the light of delayed stress syndrome. His revenge on the Prince—though he is unconscious of it—an act of war on war. His sense of humor is dark and manic (and I adore it): "Via!" he says, "Bestride your foaming steed!" As in Othello, Iago's asides (as I meant them) are directed at the audience with shining malignancy. I once saw a short Iago, with a Napoleon complex, and I loved it. The diminutive actor played the part marvelously. The performance indelibly influenced me (it's the origin of ATWAGS's "little soldier," III, i), though I've had no luck figuring out who the actor was. It may have been over the summer of 88—when, at nineteen, I had holed up to write in the attic of a cabin in Camden, Maine. A theater group gave on-the-green performances there.

Due to the laws of Elizabethan London, boys played the parts of female characters. I would contend that led Shakespeare to focus on the male roles, which would be handled by more experienced actors. I've tried, in ATWAG, to add complexity to Juliet and "The Queen," who (spoiler warning) I based not only on Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, but Lady Anne. That Juliet (as Ophelia and Desdemona) also has a streak of sado-masochism gives body to her relationship with Hamlet, who is similarly possessed. Gertrude, as knowing, and Lady Macbeth, as loving, make for the two sides of a character that is conflicted, appealing, and repugnant. (I am smitten.) Probably, she is right to think that by having an affair, "All the argument is a cuckold and a whore," and she has no choice in proceeding with the bloody business. My Macbeth, in the end, has a spine—and one can see how he ended up king. Lear is Lear. The Weird Sisters are the Weird Sisters. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—I've outed them. If I were an actor, I would jump at the project; the roles are entirely new, but the stuff of Shakespeare after all—real and throbbing and complex.

Footnotes to this edition—fairly complete, but not exhaustive—are posted at alltheworldsagrave.com. They index the provenance of the words, how they came from Shakespeare to ATWAG: poem, play, line.

What versions of the works did I use? Many. All public domain, which was part of the point of this whole thing. For the plays that don't have acts and scenes aside from editorial approximations—no act or scene breaks in the original text—I used the editorial approximations. (If anyone has trouble with these references, at the very worst, a Shakespeare search engine will do the trick.)

I footnoted locations; all are sourced from Shakespeare.

I referenced a little of the unspoken language, but not always; I didn't want the footnotes to get overburdened by references that weren't immediately correlative.

Sometimes, when there were many references, I chose the one that more accurately matched the meter, or most completely duplicated the phrasing. Sometimes I just noted, "frequent," because I thought the language was common enough to Shakespeare that the footnote was getting silly.

I didn't footnote, for example, "my lord" for "good sir" or vice versa, unless there was a compelling reason to do so.

I didn't footnote narrative and plot elements—the task was as daunting as footnoting the text, and would have required commentary, which was where I drew the line. For people familiar with the plays, my narrative use of Shakespeare is pretty straight-forward.

I occasionally footnoted the meter of an irregular line, but not always; the meter is usually right there in the text I'm borrowing from, and if it's not, and I haven't marked it, it probably means I judged the formulation too widespread to cite. There's nothing that couldn't be pulled up from a Shakespeare search-engine, or Shakespeare software, in swift dispatch.

My use of software: I didn't use any software, but I did use search functions and search engines. I put together Act One in 2003, without the use of a computer—aside from transcription—and that was not easy, or successful. In 2006, I blocked out the next four acts (from the six primary plays) using Microsoft word and downloaded source texts from gutenberg.org; the first draft had plenty of holes and an initial word count of 39,000+ words. As I tightened up the draft, and needed specific lines, I used searches more. For footnoting, I used them extensively, which saved a great deal of time. Imperfect as they are, I spent several months on the footnotes.

& Gybe

A personal confession: when I was thirteen years old, I walked through the line twice at Shakespeare in the Park (Central Park), in an attempt to secure two of the coveted free seats. (A pair of pretty women asked me to do it.) I took off my jacket to alter my appearance, and the Caligula at the gate called me on it, refusing to bestow on me a second ticket. Eventually, a pair of middle-aged women (who looked just like the pretty ones, coincidentally, but were older) gave me their extra ticket, and I was permitted to enter with my father and his party.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I maintained, protested, my innocence. Of course, I was lying, knew I was wrong, but some piece of me always thought I was more sinned against than sinning. I couldn't articulate it then, but as of today, I believe it was this: Shakespeare, free to all, had nonetheless been reduced to elitism. Go to Central Park, wait in line for your ticket, sniff sniff your way to the summer stage—the air of it is unmistakable.

Flash forward: twenty years later, I sit in a playhouse balcony, wishing that someone were juggling chainsaws, or cats, or anything dangerous, dastardly or comic, in lieu of the God-awful Elizabethan tragedy [JR1] to which I was subjected.

I complained bitterly, much to the consternation of my host, who had footed a sizable bill for the outing. But this time, I was right. The later Shakespeare drama, or part Shakespeare drama, or hardly any Shakespeare at all drama, was not only poorly executed, but poorly conceived, imagined and written. With all the great literature published and forgotten every season, we had to dirty ourselves in the dustbin of history for this? This ... garbage?

Should there be doubters as to the great literature published today, I propose a challenge. If you can spend a morning in the basement of The Strand (Strand Books on 13th and Broadway), perusing the new books of the previous year, A to Z, and still bemoan the quality of contemporary letters, I'll concede the point. Many times, I've visited this humbling experience upon myself, and I've always been blown away by how many fascinating, accomplished books I never heard of—and I never got past the letter B.

Would it be too contentious to claim that the entire canon of literature might be replaced every year with the books that molder in the basement of The Strand? Perhaps. Perhaps we might spare a few leather bound tomes from the bonfire. But certainly, there is kindling. For me, the first combustible is Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer, which I read in college. As immature as I was, I was astonished by the immaturity of the "paper" (Soren was thirty when he authored the work, and far too old for such pap), which had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, except that a well-known philosopher had written it, and that is was public domain, and a free acquisition to the publisher. On the flip side, Kierkekaard had written it before his philosophy was known (or even dreamed up, I suspect), and far better books are public domain (and out-of-print).

Shall we share in a small act of revolution? If you could take your hours back from one book—get back your afternoons of reading—what title springs to mind? Go get a pen, or, just make a mental note in the space provided.

______________________________________

Now, I'd like you to replace that title with a lesser-known contemporary book, one that you hold dear:

______________________________________

Surprising how easy, how satisfying that was, no?

ATWAG is a celebration of Shakespeare, but also a protest, a literary sit-in. Or, if you want to be disagreeable about it, I'm the heckler in the gallery—or, in the Elizabethan theater, in there with the groundlings.

Greatness is a myth—and one that very few people in the arts can take seriously. But it is a cancer of our cultural mechanism. The artist as hero, the artist as individual/persona. It was a strange feeling, when I first drafted ATWAG: to have it on my computer—a new play by William Shakespeare that nobody had seen. I could touch it, I could put my cup of coffee on it—and even if I couldn't fully metabolize its creation, and experienced zero sense of propriety, it was there. I feel a sense of marvel, when I flip through it; but there is also something blunt and pragmatic about it—this is how it was done, and here it is, again.

War, parody, the question of what is authorship, sex and exploitation, the current Shakespeare fracas, the long history of Shakespeare adaptations, Shakespeare and Hollywood, the Public Domain, the literary canon, the state of contemporary letters in relation to "great" works, the creative future we bequeath our children: the litmus test here, in keeping with Shakespeare's original productions, favors immediacy to exclusivity—questions less academic than pandemic.

My first love was literature: even the love of loving literature was achingly seductive. Fahrenheit 451: the end-time of a world without books. Portrait of the Artist (and derivatives): the heroism of the written act itself. In college, I spent three days in bed, reading Moby Dick, and, by the end, had a respectable whale imitation going. But despite all that love, and the life I've given to books, if I could make one enduring contribution, it would be to assist in the end of literature as we know it. The shelf space is hoarded by mediocre classics, and we have hobbled our culture, and our creative culture, with received wisdoms.

Where are today's Dostoevskys? Where are today's Virginia Wolfs? To ask is to confess an absence of engagement with contemporary letters. Those books are out there, many of them, languishing

(I can hear the atavists harping: "William Faulkner lost to Toni Morrison! Chaucer, erased from the syllabus!" Well, first: Faulkner hasn't been forgotten, and neither has Chaucer. Second: every Faulkner title pushed a title off the list, which caused someone like you, back then, to whine. Third: Beloved was first published in 1987, The Bluest Eye in 1970—as such, Morrison is hardly a paradigm of new and unproven. Fourth: the assumption that what you've read is the best there is to read is an untenable arrogance. Fifth: Faulkner, Chaucer, Milton—whoever you want to name—these authors would be the last to lobby for the relegation of contemporary letters to a secondary status.)

To commend one classic to oblivion, or even a whole shelf of classics, would not precipitate the downfall of literature. Far from it. The impact on the total number of titles—especially with the archiving and availability of public domain books on the web—would be zero. But maybe it could help to shift the emphasis. Let's say a few more people wander out of bookstores with four brand-new first editions under their arm; that is a fine feeling. And we've made the world a brighter place. The irony that Penguin is publishing this work is not lost on me, or any of the people who worked on the publication of this book, who I am indebted to (neither is it lost on anyone at MTV that my third novel, which they published, was a parody of MTV). Penguin does have a major reprint business—but with the internet, and print-on-demand, etc., it seems feasible that we're moving away from bookstores filled with public domain books. Much to the delight of editors everywhere, I should add.

This essay, and my copyedits, are due today. I have asked for a few days extension, which I'll take regardless, but it's surely not enough. Publishing is a hurry-up and wait process that is not conducive to the patience, the vainglorious introspection of authorship. It's Monday—on Friday, I got an email asking me for a catalog photo. A personal panic, but I finally came up with something; I'm in the country, in a tan suit, standing in front of a barn painted in the stars and stripes of the American flag. As I hunted through my archives, I also stumbled across a beach photo, of me in my American flag bathing suit. (I have a fashion weakness for the American flag, which endures.) I bought the bathing suit in France, and very much identified myself as having a classic American perspective; about the time that snapshot was taken, I said, in the publicity for my first novel (a Civil War novel) that what I really wanted was for other people to get what they wanted. I now find the answer embarrassing, but I fear it's still true—that I had picked up on a core identity that hasn't changed all that much. I may resist it now, I may be mortified by it, I may have the presence of mind to know that some of it, a large serving of it, was an incidental result of alcoholism—the kids grow up to be overly facilitating adults—but it is still there.

An optimistic young American, on the beach.

The discovery that I have made since then: my identity as an author is not the same as my identity as a person. With my second novel—Snowball's Chance, a 9/11 update of Animal Farm—I prompted a good deal of animosity. As an author, I had never been happier, more content.

Those many years ago, as I walked up from the surf at Coney Island (or was it Southampton?), I had a nice smile, a nice profile. Now, my nose has been broken so many times that I can't be bothered to fix it. (My daughter, three, asked a few days ago, "Is that twisted into a nose?") From martial arts, my ears are cauliflowered, my left front tooth is chipped, and I've burst a blood vessel in my left eye, which has never completely healed.

The best compliment ever paid me:

I was standing in a circle of people—too talkative to be called a party, too dark to be called a cocktail party, too personal to be called an event—and some skeptical dude in a suit said that it looked like I had been punched one too many times. And then a wonderful girl replied, "Yeah, but it looks like he punches back."

I hate (is it love?) to be the bearer of bad news, but my beginnings are too humble, and I am too bruised, to be the good guy. It is almost surely a losing battle, to descry the value of today's literature. But I know that it's true, as much as it pains me to say it: for all the intellectual calcification, for all the marginalization of contemporary authors, and the contemporary experience; for all the disinterested and angry students who make solid arguments as to why books are not for them; for all that, I know we would be better off without the literary canon. Were we to lose every single title exalted in the volumes of the Harvard Classics, we would be better off. We would thrive.

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;

Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,

Let's choose executors and talk of wills:

And yet not so, for what can we bequeath

Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

—Richard II: III, ii

So, choose the one—make it your favorite title, or make it your most reviled—anoint it with oil, place it on the alter, and set it alight: a sacrifice to the future. The kingdom is come.

Brooklyn Rail: How Arthur Phillips Stole My Bike

Brooklyn Rail: Praise the Bard

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/12

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/11

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/10

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/9

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/8

Talks with Persons of Interest

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:59:46 -0500

Vice: Seka

Vice: Seka

Talked with to Seka for Vice.

Sex in the 70s was Seka. Half Cherokee, half Irish, and looking like a perfect Hollywood trophy, or a divination of death from the Norse Gods—Seka was a flinty mirage of whatever fantasy you had. Porn mag High Society dubbed her the “Marilyn Monroe of porn." Her costars were just as effusive. Jamie Gillis: "She was porn, but a little above it—sort of a white trash queen in a way that I found really erotic." Veronica Hart: "As long as I have a face, Seka has a place to sit." ...

Read more: http://www.vice.com/read/seka-raising-penises-for-three-generations

Art in America: "To the Letter," Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey

Rain Taxi: "Talking Animals"

Bomb Magazine: Charlie Smith

Brooklyn Rail: Frederic Tuten

Brooklyn Rail: Frederic Tuten

As published in the Brooklyn Rail:

http://brooklynrail.org/2010/09/books/frederic-tuten-with-john-reed

I met Frederic Tuten at the diner we only managed to identify as, “that place a block down from the Strand,” where we talked about his essays, his short stories, and his five novels—The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971), Tallien: A Brief Romance (1988), Tintin in the New World (1993), Van Gogh’s Bad Café (1997), and The Green Hour (2002)—and his interest in the visual arts.

Tuten’s writing has a painterly character—composed, visual, and very often with cartoonish, or cubist, or surreal elements. In a moment of the big, formulaic book, Tuten’s Self Portraits (Norton, 2010) is a deftly delivered group of highly crafted inter-related stories. The “Fictions,” as Tuten subtitles them, are diamond-faceted adventures, glistening with love and death, friends and strangers.

We spoke by phone, several times, while working on the interview—an email correspondence that spanned several days at the height of a New York City summer.

John Reed (Rail): So, where are you now?

Frederic Tuten: Finishing up the summer in Southampton and writing a new novel.

Rail: What’s it about?

Tuten: People vanishing and huge ships evaporating in Brazil’s Tocantins River in the middle of the day. It’s a detective story, a love story, and a story about a man who has found a secret way to change the world. And, finally, like the character of Tintin in my novel, I’m working on my memoir. The Self Portraits is part one of an ongoing autobiography, the stories being transformations of me and of people in my life. That’s why I have dedicated each story individually.

Rail: Since we met at the Bon Vivant Diner, any exciting new developments?

Tuten: It’s a season of blessings. One of my stories in this book, “Self Portrait with Sicily,” is coming out this fall in a little book in Italian and English and with illustrations by the artist Mimmo Paladino. Another story from my book, “Self Portrait with Sicily” is appearing as a book in Spanish and English published in Madrid by the Residencia de Estudiantes, where the poet Garcia Lorca stayed as a young man.

I have started on a project for the young Mexican artist, Pedro Reyes, creating the characters for the puppets of figures such as Mao and Lenin for an internet show called “Baby Marx.” And in October (12) at the Getty in L.A., Steve Martin and I are having a conversation about our new books and about the role of art in our work.

Rail: I have a great story about Steve Martin—I wish I could remember who told it to me. An art dealer, I think. He had gone to a party thrown by Steve Martin, who as you know collects contemporary art, and he needed a break, and took respite in a kind of dark kiddie-structure in Martin’s backyard. My memory is that it was a miniature train tunnel. Another man was sitting in there, also taking refuge, and he and the art dealer had a long conversation about art, and then exited the tunnel together. Of course, the mystery man was Steve Martin.

Tuten: There’s a wonderful playfulness in all that Steve does. In his books, films, standup, and banjo playing, there is always at the heart this childlike innocence and openness, which I admire and is essential in any art. Lichtenstein, Hergé, Queneau, and Resnais all have it. I hope that this spirit shows itself in my book of self-portraits. Anyway, it will be a lot of fun to appear at the Getty with Steve, to talk as we so often do, informally, about art and what it has meant to both our lives, but this time with back-up dancers, a few seals, and a finale involving a fountain.

Rail: Where do you make camp in the city?

Tuten: I’m more of a nester than a camper. I like being in one place that I love and staying there. I get attached in the same way to people. In 1962 I moved into a 6th floor walkup on 8th street between C and D, and when I left two years later, the rent had gone up to 26 dollars a month. The building was a warren for young artists and writers from all over America—and at that rent, they did not have to have roommates and three jobs. The heating was good and the water ran hot and everyone kept their hall clean. I would have stayed there until I died but then I got married, and after a year or so my wife thought we should have a bathtub that was not in the kitchen.

In 1964, I moved into an apartment where I still live. It overlooks Tompkins Square Park on the north side, so I have been blessed with an open sky and a window filled with old sycamores. The park often finds its way into my stories.

Rail: In Self Portraits, have you done away with neighborhoods? Or born witness to their being done away with? Or none of the above?

Tuten: I guess none of the above. Parks and gardens and orchards are my neighborhoods, are my bull rings, my battlefields, my Edens. In Self Portraits, one setting is a park with roving bands of murderous children and a murdered poet, another is a hotel garden bordering the Prado, where rivals toss a coin for their life, and there is also an orchard in the Bronx, under which runs the gold stream that Pissarro went to find in Mexico. The Bronx Park of my childhood is my paradigm of the Golden Age and of all civil wars.

Rail: How so?

Tuten: When I was a kid, we had terrible fights in the parks. Rock fights. I have a scar over my left eye from one of them. The sides kept shifting so that your best friend may be on the other side and throwing rocks at you. You might say that sometimes we were a neighborhood divided. And sometimes gangs came from another neighborhood and wanted to fight with bats. So I see the park as a great field of battle. But it was also a place of great calm and beauty.

My grandmother and I would sit on the same bench in Spring looking over the famous rose beds of the Bronx Botanical Garden. She knitted, I read. I have never felt exactly such peace again. Maybe I’m looking to return to that tranquility in those stories set in parks and gardens. But I can’t detach from the other, violent, side. I brought those twin elements into the story, “The Park on Fire.”

Rail: In Self Portraits, there’s a sense that all the characters are either on a journey, or about to embark on one.

Tuten: In many of these stories, the same two lovers meet at different places, in different guises, sometimes even as different people and at different times—even before and after death. Sometimes they are strangers. They are eternally in flight from and to each other. The narrator also sometimes enters the stories, and the narrator, like the characters, is subject to similar transformations.

Rail: Are we strangers everywhere?

Tuten: Everywhere but in fiction.

Rail: Even to our children?

Tuten: I have no children but I have a godson I’ve known from his infancy. I understood for the first time in my life the feeling that I know parents have, that they would jump in front of a bus to protect their child. I dedicated a story to him, “The Ship at Anchor,” for his seventh birthday and he is a character in my last novel, The Green Hour. He is almost a teenager now, and like most teenagers, a mystery. I suspect that we are all mysteries to each other, and mysteries to ourselves—for all our attempts at self-knowledge. I think that is why characters in fiction are so comforting; we know them better than our friends and lovers; they are fixed and they will not change on us. And let us hope that they are interesting.

Rail: “The Ship at Anchor” is a story about strangers, a father and a son. And a journey as well. There’s some sense of the two having at least sat together at a café. No?

Tuten: “The Ship at Anchor” is a story about a father, son, and grandmother, a distant echo of my own. No café this time, but an exotic banquet in the bowels of a pirate ship, where the boy trades his drawing of Death for his dead grandmother’s soul, which the pirates have stolen. Growing up, I used to tell my grandmother adventure stories from the books I was reading and I think “The Ship at Anchor” is something like our own adventure story.

Rail: I see that Self Portraits: Fictions is dedicated to the film director, Alain Resnais.

Tuten: He my oldest of older friends. The others—Queneau, Hergé, Lichtenstein—are all gone. And deep parts of my life with them. Resnais is in his late 80s and still making beautiful, fresh films. I loved his work before I met him in 1971 or 72 and above all I love Last Year at Marienbad. One of the stories, “The Park Near Marienbad” is a homage to that film. The recurring motifs and the gardens and park settings in my book are in some ways echoes of that film. Books, films, paintings—people—vanish from your mind after the long haul. Some stay forever. This film stays for me in its perfection and beauty and a kind of example of what to reach for in art.

Rail: To reach for what?

Tuten: For something engaging, mysterious, a glimpse of the ineffable.

Rail: And Roy Lichtenstein? His painting is on the cover of your book. Of, if I’m not mistaken, many of your books.

Tuten: He’s an artist I revered and he was my oldest and closest friend. He changed what we all thought was valid imagery, for art while keeping and furthering the tradition from Poussin to Picasso. He taught me that we go to make a work, a painting or a story, with a preconception of what a painting or story should be like. That’s one of the reasons why we have endless repetitions of the same stories and novels.

Roy made original art for the covers my Adventures of Mao on the Long March and Tintin in the New World novels. This one of Roy’s is called “Self Portrait with Cheese,” which tells you a lot about his wit and his debunking of self importance. He also did one called “Self Portrait with Mirror”—the head is a mirror. I used these images in a story I dedicated to him. Roy inspired me. And he was a reminder to approach my work with questions.

Rail: There are some works that are very visual—they somehow appeal to the memory of sight. Self Portraits is that way for me—I remember scenes, conversations, almost in tableau. Does that reflect your intent, your interest?

Tuten: I appreciate that the stories left that impression and memory with you. It’s everything I work toward. To have you see is the life of fiction.

Rail: In Self Portraits, your narrators are always on the brink or periphery of a quest. Thinking of your novel, Tintin in the New World, is eternal youth a journey?

Tuten: The thing about Hergé’s Tintin is that he is always young and innocent in a shrewd way. He also goes from one adventure to another, responsible to no one, except maybe to his dog, Snowy. I like his immortality and how his soul is untainted by the world. In my novel, I have him transformed by love and crime. A kind of fall into the human. The characters in my stories are not seeking youth, but life. And even in death, their souls continue to search. The concept of eternity, of continual growth, of transformations, interests me more than youth. In my novel, Tintin in the New World, the New World into which Tintin embarks is Time, and by accessing time, he falls subject to all its joys and curses. He grows up, but he also grows old. In my new book, Self Portraits, the world of death figures into the landscape as an extension of life, as perhaps its shadow. The living and the dead exist together, echo each other even if unknowingly. Moreover, in one story, Death actually appears. He is a young, handsome waiter in an elegant New York bar facing the Metropolitan Museum where, what else, a couple in deep flirtation are dining. The service is excellent.

Bomb Magazine: Ann Lauterbach

Brooklyn Rail: Stephen Graubard

Brooklyn Rail: Stephen Graubard

All The Presidents as Men

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2005/02/books/all-the-presidents-as-men

Stephen Graubard’s Command of Office is a monumental and challenging analysis of what has come to encompass the contemporary U.S. presidency. The Brooklyn Rail recently caught up with Graubard to discuss with him the historical impact of the presidency on this hour in America.

John Reed (Rail): Has the U.S. presidency had a consistent reaction to disasters and human suffering around the world? What are the variables that come into play when presidents are looking at their involvement in crises abroad?

Stephen Graubard: I am not sure that I know what disasters and human suffering can be said to encompass. I would point out, however, that Theodore Roosevelt was very proud of his efforts to help persecuted minorities in Europe, that FDR literally “saved” Britain by what he did in 1940 and 1941 before Pearl Harbor, not only by pressing Congress but also by his executive orders. He helped in all sorts of ways to alert the country to the dangers of Nazism and therefore kept British resistance alive. He knew something of what Hitler was doing to the Jews, but never all that came to be revealed about the Holocaust. In any case, he did not see what he could do to help the endangered Jews, never taking in the full character of the catastrophe represented by Auschwitz and the other death camps. Harry Truman, by his Marshall Plan, but also by his help to Greece and Turkey and Point Four program, did much to reduce human suffering in the devastated societies that had experienced World War II. John Kennedy imagined that he was helping to liberate Cubans from their oppressors by his Bay of Pigs, a tragic mistake. Richard Nixon withdrew many of the American forces from Vietnam but believed he could not cut and run, that to do so would only increase suffering in the whole of Southeast Asia. Jimmy Carter sought to rescue hostages taken in the invasion of the American embassy in Tehran and failed entirely to do so. Ronald Reagan imagined that the policies advanced by his aides, represented by the unforgettable word “Irangate,” would liberate hostages and at the same time offer aid to “freedom fighters” in America. The plot, when revealed, was only embarrassing to him. Clinton took few risks, though he imagined that he had helped rid Serbia of its oppressor, as George W. Bush also imagined when he toppled Saddam Hussein and rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. Of yesterday’s inaugural speech by Bush II, one can only echo Robin Cook’s words, as given in The Guardian this morning. Cook, once Blair’s foreign secretary, writes: “The Bush administration is in denial about its disastrous failure in Iraq.” His article is entitled “Fireworks in Washington, Despair Around the World.” Presidents generally try to engage themselves when they think they can win popular and world support by doing so. At times, they make grievous mistakes in respect to both.

Rail: At the moment, there’s some idea that the U.S. election process has become exceptionally vulnerable to tampering, even that elections might be or might have been stolen. What’s the historical precedent in this century?

Graubard: Nixon, defeated by Kennedy in 1960, believed he had been cheated by “boss” chicanery in Illinois and Texas. Eisenhower urged him not to contest the election. Bush II, elected by the grace of the Supreme Court, almost certainly won by tampering in Florida, but Gore thought better than to continue the fight. In short, there have been contested elections in this century, but not that many.

Rail: The 19th century saw a good deal of political graft. In whose administrations, in what areas, would we look for that kind of corruption in the 20th century?

Graubard: Corruption was common in the 19th century. It was less common in the 20h, though it reached a very high level in the time of Harding, in the revelations that followed his death. He may not have been himself personally involved, but some in his cabinet were, and others made his administration seem a time of theft. “Teapot Dome” is the best shorthand for 20th century political graft, represented by illegal concessions given to some, including many in high places. The theme of political corruption, though spoken of frequently, not least in the time of Truman, has been partisan political propaganda more often than is sometimes acknowledged. It is not America’s chief political problem, though those who support presidents financially are often the beneficiaries of their largesse. In an age when television costs are so high and it is so important politically to use that medium, money counts as never before.

Rail: Is there a uniformity to the background of U.S. presidents and their administrations? Is there, as is commonly assumed, a political royalty in the United States? And, if so, has there always been one?

Graubard: Is there uniformity to the background of U.S. presidents and their administrations? Yes and no. All have been men, and none has been black. Yet the administrations are very different in their professional composition and in their ideologies. Henry James spoke of “Theodore Rex,” an elected king, a monarch of sorts. Theodore Roosevelt knew the situation but acknowledged that it was important not to emphasize it. He knew how great was his constitutional authority and how he could use it in foreign affairs, a presidential reserve in many ways. Wilson learned from him and was also a “king” of sorts, with a very major courtier, Colonel House. He was a great war president, aspired to be a peacemaker, and failed in that. Men (and women) sought to be close to FDR, a true monarch, again with many courtiers, and we know that the Kennedy court, the court at Camelot, was a reality, made so not only by the journalists who celebrated its qualities. Reagan was a monarch who hid his royalty, pretending to be just a “good Joe.” As for George II, the British and many others are writing today about his “coronation.” Neither of his daughters is dubbed a “princess” in the manner of Alice, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, but this is a “royal” family, thought to be remarkable by some, ludicrous by others. The important thing is that George W. controls the foreign policy of the United States, and neither the Senate nor the media is able to limit his authority in that critical sphere.

Rail: Has the influence of religion on the presidency evolved over the century? What kind of influence has religion had on policy shaped by the presidents you examine?

Graubard: Religion has always been important in the United States. Until John F. Kennedy won the primary in West Virginia, no one believed that a Roman Catholic could win the presidency. The sad fate of Al Smith in 1928 seemed to suggest that the presidency was a “Protestant preserve.” Presidents have always in this century been proud of what has been called America’s “civil religion”—its belief in the unique character of the American people and its democratic institutions, blessed by God, America’s protector in time of war and peace. Catholics, until recently, were deemed dangerous, and not only by the Ku Klux Klan and others like them. Today, great numbers of fundamentalist Christians deem dangerous and immoral all who do not believe in religion as they do. On all manner of issues—federal support of religious schools, gay marriages, abortion, and the like—religion counts. The hostility to the Soviet Union was based in part on hostility to a godless world, and not only by the Hearst press. In short, presidents have to pay attention to religious belief in what they do with respect to both domestic and foreign policy.

Rail: What are your predictions concerning the continuing evolution of the presidency? What about independent candidates?

Graubard: I do not expect the powers of the presidency to diminish in the near future, but it is not certain that it will long remain so dominated by the kind of crude patriotic ideology so dominant today, based on a too-simple notion of what the United States is—what it can do in the world. I do not expect independent candidates to emerge outside of the two great parties who will cause things to change greatly. The only hope for change rests in men more like Harry Truman being selected by one or other of the parties—proud to exercise power, willing to do so, but also aware of its limits. We live in an age of presidential and national hubris, and it is dangerous for the republic but also for others, not least for those abroad. We have lived in far more dangerous times than the present, when Hitler ruled from Berlin and Stalin from Moscow, but FDR’s famous first inaugural words need to be recalled: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Brooklyn Rail: Karen Liebreich

Brooklyn Rail: Karen Liebreich

Karen Liebreich with John Reed

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2004/10/books/karen-liebreich

In 1646, the Piarist Order, which had introduced education to the masses—and not only an education in Latin but also an education in basic reading and arithmetic—was disbanded by Pope Innocent X. The order had succumbed to myriad sexual abuse charges that had been buried by the founder of the order, Jose de Calasanz (who has since been named the patron saint of Catholic schools). The scandal, largely lost to history, and the subject of a massive suppression by the Roman Catholic Church, has been painstakingly reconstructed by Karen Liebreich’s Fallen Order. The work painfully establishes the inability of the Roman Catholic Church to put its children before itself; even today, the reforms of the Church are hardly impressive. In recent weeks, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn introduced a sexual abuse hotline—although the hotline is manned by its own lawyer.

John Reed of the Brooklyn Rail sought out Karen Liebreich for a discussion about the four-hundred-year-old travesty and its implications today.

John Reed (Rail): Over the centuries, how much evidence of these crimes was destroyed by the Roman Catholic Church? What was the quality of that evidence? Important?

Karen Liebreich: By definition, we do not know how much evidence was destroyed over the centuries. In the case of this particular order, there are several areas where I know material is missing. After the initial allegations about the activities of a headmaster, Father Stefano Cherubini, another Piarist teacher, Father Garzia, was sent to Naples in 1629 to interrogate the school’s teachers and boys. He compiled a dossier of the evidence, which, given the reaction of Father Stefano when it fell into his hands, must have been damning. Father Stefano grabbed the dossier and took it to his brother, the important lawyer at the Vatican, and it has never been seen since. Calasanz told Garzia to destroy all his letters and any other correspondence that mentioned this scandal. He obviously failed to destroy everything, since I have copies of these letters, but nevertheless he probably did destroy a great deal.

In 1659, thirteen years after the suppression, one of Father Stefano’s closest colleagues, Father Glicerio Cerrutti, also a man with a very dubious reputation, built an enormous bonfire out of any incriminating material. Given what I found anyhow, just think what I might have found had that material remained in existence.

Why was there no material in the Inquisition archive? From the archive of the order I found instructions and correspondence from the Inquisition and correspondence to the Inquisition, but in the Inquisition itself—nothing. It could, of course, be that the material has been lost in the destruction of the centuries, or that it is misfiled, or that I simply didn’t spend enough time in the archive, but at any rate, such indexes do exist, and such sources as I consulted had no record of any material concerning the Piarist order. Given that the Piarists were suppressed as a result of investigations led by the Inquisition assessor Francesco Albizzi—unprecedented legally and shocking—and that the founder was arrested by the Inquisition and then subjected to house arrest, it is strange that there is absolutely no record.

So, who knows how much evidence was destroyed, or what its true quality. But important material was certainly destroyed, and destroyed in a deliberate attempt to cover up the evidence. This is true in the particular case I studied, and I think one can safely extrapolate that it will be true for other instances through the centuries.

Rail: There’s a blurb on your book from Kirkus: “Cover-ups never work.” Is that true?

Liebreich: Again, by definition, who knows? The really successful cover-ups have presumably remained successfully hidden to this day. And in a way, this cover-up worked for nearly four hundred years, so it was pretty successful. If the attitude of the Church today to the publication of my book is “Who cares, it’s four hundred years ago,” then you could say this cover-up was successful. Incidentally, we have sent copies of Fallen Order to Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican Library, and Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome, and have had no response whatsoever. I sent a copy to the U.K. cardinal, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, and got a polite thank-you, along with a little comment that if I had issues about Calasanz being a saint, I should take it up with Rome.

On the other hand, the Church’s cover-up about priestly pedophilia in general is coming home to roost in a quite dramatic way now, so probably it would have been healthier for them to have been less successful in covering up and more open about the problems. So in that sense, the cover-up has certainly not worked.

Rail: Do you believe that the Roman Catholic Church’s policy of covering up sexual abuse began as a result of the Piarists or predated that?

Liebreich: I would bet that the policy—if you can call an automatic, secretive reaction a policy—predated the Piarists. One of the straplines for the book is “the first priestly child sex abuse scandal,” but in fact I would be surprised to learn that this was the very first case ever of priestly pedophilia and the first case where the authorities deliberately covered it up. But it seems to be—at least so far—the first properly documented, absolutely provable case.

Rail: What is the policy/historical policy of the Catholic Church to the jurisdiction of secular authorities? According to its own doctrines, does the Church answer to anyone?

Liebreich: The Catholic Church historically does not permit secular authorities to exercise jurisdiction over its clergy, so tonsured clerics were not subject to lay courts. At the period of my book, for instance, Venice had fallen under an interdict in 1606 because Paul V was offended that the Republic of Venice had dared to try two clerics and throw them into jail, interdict being a pretty serious punishment—no marriages, funerals, baptisms, confirmations, or anything involving the Church permitted. And this is a problem the Church faces today—traditionally, it has been trying to deal with its own problems without calling in the police, and this is something that those outside the Church find unacceptable. Much of the recent debate seems to have centered on when Church authorities are obliged to tell the secular authorities. I think most outside sources would argue that since the Church has failed so signally to deal with its own dirty linen, it has forfeited any rights it may have had, and priests should be subject to the law of the land as all other people accused of crimes are.

Rail: You mention in your book that the Vatican is not alone in its problems with child abuse—a position often taken by Roman Catholic governing bodies. Are there any other organizations that have committed sexual abuse on the same scale or maintained a comparable policy of enabling offenders through an at-all-costs concern for institutional reputation?

Liebreich: The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest, and most centralized religious bodies, so by definition it is likely to have the longest track record of abuse, the widest selection of abusers, and the most hierarchical methods of dealing with the problem. Celibacy, the traditional Catholic view of sexual activity; the loyalty of brothers-in-arms (or brothers-in-order) to one another; the subservient role of the laity, along with the corresponding elevation of the priest to a position of such respect that questioning his actions is unthinkable; the lack of selectiveness faced with unsuitable candidates; a lack of imagination about the impact of child abuse—all these elements create an environment ripe for abuse to flourish.

Certainly in the U.K., I would imagine that the Catholic clergy far outstrip any other organization in the number of cases coming to court.

Rail: Do you feel that the confessional does anything to redeem incorrigible pedophiles?

Liebreich: Again, who knows, since what is said in the confessional remains secret, so who knows how many potential offenders have been helped or prevented from offending. However, the number of cases of priests who had confessed their problems to their confessors or bishops and then continued to offend is significant. For instance, in France Father Rene Bissey admitted his crimes to his bishop, who simply moved him to another parish. In June 2001 Monsignor Pierre Pican, bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux and president of the Episcopal Committee for Childhood and Youth, member of the Commission on the Family, was charged with “non-denunciation of sexual attack and poor treatment of minors” for failing to tell the police about Bissey’s activities, which included rape and child molestation. So in this case, no, I don’t think the confessional helped. Maybe it helps in some cases. Surely the priest hearing the confession has a duty to society, and shouldn’t his duty to his parishioners’ children take priority over his duty to his confessee?

Rail: The running estimates of the number of people killed in Roman Catholic holy wars and by the Roman Catholic Church itself, in myriad forms of inquisition, range from 50 million to 150 million. If you were to estimate, how many children would you say have been preyed upon?

Liebreich: A couple of estimates: Three thousand people file for compensation in Ireland out of a population of 3.8 million, or 0.08% of the population (which is almost entirely Catholic). There are 1,092,853,000 Catholics in the world (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Extrapolating from that, 873,000 people currently alive have been abused (and in fact, 3,000 who come forward in Ireland is probably underreporting). So, 873,000 victims alive now times 2.5 to get the figure for the 20th century alone equals 2,182,500 for the 20th century. Say 500,000 per century for the previous 500 years, based on a smaller population and fewer Catholics (pretty rough guesses), but that adds another 2,000,000. So this estimate comes in at over 4 million.

According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ independent survey of February 2004 (the results are on www.religioustolerance.org) between 1950 and 2002, 110,000 priests served in the U.S., of whom 4,450 have been accused of abuse, or around 4%. According to 2001 figures, there are 405,000 priests in the world, so if 4% of them are abusers, that is 16,200 priests, assuming the same rate of abuse in America as in the rest of the world (and who knows and why not?). So 16,200 priests abusing a modest 30 victims each is 486,000 victims over the last 50 years. So that comes out at 972,000 victims for 20th century, a few thousand less by this estimate, but still perhaps around 3 million.

But it is very hard to make estimates. Thomas Fox, in the National Catholic Reporter, estimates that the “average pedophile priest abuses 285 victims.” William Reid of the Psychiatric Times has written that “careful studies have indicated…that child molesters commit an average of sixty offenses for every incident that comes to public attention.” Fox’s figure does seem very high, so I would be reluctant to use that as a true basis, even for such rough guessing as we are doing here. Anyhow, that would bring the sum up to 9,234,000 or 1,944,000 for the 20th century, bringing the total number perhaps into the tens of millions.

Rail: In your research—I know you trolled through mountains of documents—how much actual discussion of the gospels was brought to bear in dealing with child abuse? Was there any talk of the weak?

Liebreich: I found no mention of the gospels in any of the documentation dealing with child abuse. I found no mention of the victims and/or the children. Only one child was ever named. In my documents, the concern is always for the public scandal, then for the priest, never for the child. I was careful to quote the relevant sections of the documents comprehensively for fear of being accused of selective quotation, so had they mentioned the gospels, I would have included it.

Brooklyn Rail: Paul Auster

Brooklyn Rail: Paul Auster

Paul Auster with John Reed

As published in the Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2003/08/books/paul-auster

Paul Auster’s 10 novels include, most recently, The Book of Illusions, which comes out in paperback from Picador this August. He has also written several books of poetry, as well as screenplays including Smoke and Blue in the Face (both 1995).

The Rail’s John Reed caught up with him on the 4th of July, at Auster’s home in Park Slope.

John Reed (Rail): Is there a cultural war going on in this country?

Paul Auster: How so?

Rail: Well, for our purposes, a relationship between conservatism and sort of a squashing of creative endeavors.

Auster: I wouldn’t call it a cultural war. I think it’s a real political war that’s going on. We’ve gone through bad periods in the past. McCarthyism, for example, to cite something fairly recent. The Vietnam War was bad, tumultuous, but at the same time invigorating— because a lot was being aired about the nature of our society and culture that was very healthy. Now that the right wing has taken over, we’ve entered a new realm of danger. It’s certainly the scariest moment that I’ve experienced in my lifetime. In a serious way, we’re running the risk of eroding all that’s good about American democracy; and I think these sons of bitches are doing it on purpose, with their eyes wide open. What the right wing wants is to bankrupt the government. They want to make it impossible for any kind of social programs to be affordable. The only money— public money— they want is for the military. Everything else they want privatized. The thing that shocks me about what’s going on is not so much that it’s happening— but that no one is really screaming about it. I would think now, after more than two years of Bush, that the country would be hysterically, passionately against it, but he’s rolling over everybody. That’s appalling to me.

Take something like the Halliburton contract in Iraq. A few years ago, this would have caused a major scandal; it would have been an outrage to the American public. Now nobody seems to think twice about it. On every front, these people are doing things that I’m entirely opposed to. Whether it’s foreign policy, economic policy, social policy, or environmental policy— everything, everything is 180 degrees against what I think the country should be doing. Am I alone in feeling this way? No. Most of the people I know in New York are thinking similar thoughts— but out in the rest of the country I’m not sure. I’m just not sure. I’ve been so angry, I even wrote a song against George Bush, when the war broke out. One Ring Zero, a group of young musicians from Brooklyn, have set it to music, and recorded it on a CD. I’ll play it for you later, if you like.

Rail: That would be great.

Auster: It’s a silly song, but just writing it gave me a chance to let off a little steam. I simply don’t know what to do anymore.

Rail: Well, that’s the next question. What about literature?

Auster: Literature is something else all together. I believe that it’s dangerous for novelists or poets to entangle themselves directly with politics in their work. I’m not saying that we don’t all have a right and a need and sometimes a duty to speak out as citizens, but the value of fiction— let’s just confine ourselves to that for the moment— is that it’s about the individual, the dignity and importance of the individual. Once you start dealing in ideas that are too large or too abstract, you can’t make art that will touch anyone, and then it’s valueless. No matter how angry I am right now, for example, I believe my job as a writer is to stick to my guns and keep writing my little stories.

Rail: Then it’s benign?

Auster: Literature benign? Hardly.

Rail: In that you’re not hurting anyone.

Auster: Well, no, a book can’t hurt anyone. It can disgust people, it can amuse people, it can move people, it can challenge people, but it certainly doesn’t put bullets in their body and take food out of their mouths.

Rail: In the landscape we’re talking about, what role do media conglomerates play?

Auster: Under the new Bush administration, one truly feels that the media is functioning as a kind of propaganda machine for the government. It’s very, very frightening. Look at the paper sitting here on the table, the New York Times. It’s a middle-of-the-road paper, but it’s certainly not pro-Bush. But they can’t attack him to the degree I think they would like to because then the reporters would lose their sources. No one from the administration would talk to them anymore. So they’re in a very delicate position. But other organs of the media are just blatantly pandering to the public, giving them what they think the public wants, entertaining war coverage on cable TV. It’s become impossible for me to look at that stuff anymore— it seems so tainted and biased and twisted.

Rail: Ok, now to Brooklyn. On a social/ cultural map, where is Brooklyn?

Auster: Brooklyn. I’ve lived here now for 23 years, and it’s also the place where my mother grew up. So Brooklyn is a big part of my life, both present and past. Interestingly enough, my daughter Sophie, who is about to turn 16, was born in the same hospital my mother was born in. So we skipped a generation. Brooklyn has changed enormously since I got here. It was much more rundown 23 years ago.

Rail: I remember when you moved to Brooklyn.

Auster: You do? It was the first days of 1980.

Rail: You had a little place on the Upper West Side.

Auster: Well, that was way, way back. Then I had a room on Varick Street in Tribeca for about a year, and I lost it. I tried looking for something in Manhattan and couldn’t find a place I could afford. So I wound up crossing the river into Brooklyn and have been here ever since. I think it’s a very exciting place these days. As neighborhoods have been rejuvenated, there’s been an influx of younger people, creative people. Of course, there’s a downside to all this gentrification— it’s getting expensive. I probably couldn’t even afford to buy this house today, but 10 years ago I could. As it gets more expensive, it’s harder for young people to come in. Still, overall, I think things in the borough have improved a lot.

Rail: Since 9/11 has your relationship with the city changed?

Auster: Not really. Only to the degree that I understand more fully how much I love it. When the attacks came, there was a feeling of tremendous loyalty to the city, and a feeling of solidarity with the people who live here, a sense of pride in our incredible diversity and overall tolerance for one another. You look at other cities in the world— Jerusalem or Sarajevo or Belfast, places where you have ethnic conflict, horrible, murderous antagonisms. Then you look at New York, where we have representatives from the entire world. Nearly 40% of us were born in other countries, which is astonishing to contemplate. The fact that most people most of the time make a real effort to get along with one another is remarkable. I think it makes New York a unique place in the world. I would love to see New York break away from the United States and become an independent city-state. Because I think we represent something more than just America. We represent the entire world. And I think we should be on our own.

Rail: In Europe, they think we’re a European country.

Auster: We’re not that either. We’re an Asian country and a Latin American country. Everybody is here.

Rail: Do you feel that New York City’s relationship with the rest of the country has changed? Or, maybe we should say with the rest of the country, and the world.

Auster: New York has traditionally been both admired and despised around the United States. To say that it was simply hated is false, because a large number of young people in the hinterlands dream only of coming here. New York is filled with young people from all over the country.

Rail: And you don’t have to be from New York to be a New Yorker.

Auster: The minute you stay here for a week you become a New Yorker.

Rail: Put on a Yankees hat and that’s it.

Auster: That’s it. In my case a Mets hat, but we won’t quibble about it. At the same time, New York has been vilified, and people are afraid of it. After 9/11, did the relationship change? Momentarily, everyone was in love with New York, momentarily everyone thought it was an extraordinary place. There was a great surge of sympathy and compassion for us. But now, after close to two years, most of those feelings have faded. We’re back to business as usual.

Rail: In Hand To Mouth, you wrote about your struggles as a writer. Do you see the struggles today as being the same?

Auster: Yes. Anyone who is driven enough to want to become an artist— painter, poet, novelist, filmmaker— has to walk a very difficult road. First of all, it’s not easy to become good at what you’re hoping to become good at. It takes years and years of hard solitary work to write a good sentence, to learn how to paint. And in these apprentice years, you’re obviously giving up a lot of your time for activities that are not going to produce any money. And therefore that is going to put you in a bind. I think this remains true today. You have to earn money, get a job of some kind. But the job eats up all your time. You’re not going to be able to pursue your dream of becoming an artist, and I don’t see how this is ever going to change. There’s a beautiful poem by Charles Reznikoff, a poet I love very deeply. He always worked, he always had jobs. In one of his short poems, he wrote about coming home from work and feeling exhausted and uninspired, unable to write, but nevertheless he sat down and started to write a poem, and little by little the ideas came to him, and little by little he felt his energy return. And the last line is, "Surely the tide comes in twice a day." A very lovely line. I think it expresses what all young artists have to face. Don’t you agree with me?

Rail: Poets have a particularly hard time.

Auster: There’s no way to make a living as a poet. You have to do something else. On the other hand, the only reason people do it is because they’re compelled to do it. No one forces you to becoming a writer. There’s not a single argument for it. I would never advise a young person to become a writer.

Rail: It’s a pretty dumb idea.

Auster: If you choose to become a writer, the world doesn’t owe you a thing. Nothing. Nothing. Sometimes artists fall into the trap of feeling entitled. But they’re not. They’re doing what they have to do. But that doesn’t mean that someone has to support you for it.

Rail: So, the softball. I’d like you to talk about anything you want to talk about in your new project. I’ve phrased it: What is most exciting to you about the project you are working on now?

Auster: What I’m doing right now is correcting the proofs of a novel I finished in April. It’s coming out in December. Oracle Night is the title. It’s taken up all my time and all my thoughts. Sooner or later, I suppose I’ll start writing something else. But I’m not ready yet. Beginning a book is always a scary moment. I always feel extremely shaky when I get into something new.

Rail: Anything else for The Brooklyn Rail?

Auster: Why not end with the lyrics of the George Bush song?

King George Blues

O Mr. Bush you scare me so

From the top of your head to your

little toe

You prowl the halls of Texas death row

Only the rich are in the know

(Chorus)

The fat men are in charge

The thin men take the barge

To hell, to hell, to hell

O demon of the hanging chad

How’d you get to be so bad?

You say the others are filled with evil

But you pray at the shrine of the black boll weevil

The fat men are in charge

The thin men take the barge

To hell, to hell, to hell

It used to be we’d never attack

Now our troops march through Iraq

You don’t like a dictator named Saddam?

Just search him out and drop a bomb

The fat men are in charge

The thin men take the barge

To hell, to hell, to hell

O tool of big bucks oil

How you make my blood boil

You stomp the poor and make them toil

For nickels, for pennies, for nothing at all

The fat men are in charge The thin men take the barge

To hell, to hell, to hell

Paul Auster March 2003

Band: One Ring Zero

Correspondence

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:28:55 -0400

Direct correspondence to

john @ johnreed.org

or send an email via the form below.

Sonnets, Key

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:10:23 -0400

The sonnet (sonneto, "little song,") is a 12-15 line poem of set structure. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the form gained popularity and recognition in Italy. By the sixteenth century, the sonnet had been adopted throughout Europe.

The English sonnet of the Elizabethan age: end-rhymed, three quatraines and a couplet, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG; the third quatrain or final couplet introduces a new emphasis, the volta; usually iambic pentameter, possibly with trochaic variation and femine endings. The "Shakespeare Sonnet" is so-called not as an attribution of invention, but because Shakespeare was a popular practioner of the English sonnet.

The sonnets of this sequence are structured as follows:

1	ABABCDCDDEDEFF
2	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
3	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
4	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
5	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
6	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
7	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
8	ABA BCD CDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
9	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
10	ABABCDCDEFEF GG	(Shakespeare)
11	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
12	ABCBDDABDBDDFF
13	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
14	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
15	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
16	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
17	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
18	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
19	ABABCDCDEFEFGG	(Shakespeare)
20	ABAB CDCD EFEF GG	(Shakespeare)
21	ABDCEFEDCBAFF
22	ABCDEFG FEDCBA GG
23	A BC DEF F ED C BAA
24	ABA B CDCD EFEF GG	(Shakespeare)
25	ABCDEFFEDC BAA
26	ABCDEFFEDCBAA
27	ABCDEFEDC BAFF
28	ABC DEF EF DCB AA
29	ABCDEFEF DCB AA
30	A/BCBCACBCBCAC DD
31	ABCDEDEDCB A AA
32	ABCDEFEFDCB AA
33	ABCD EFEFD CBA GG
34	ABC DEFEFDCBAGG
35	ABCDEFE FDCBAA
36	ABCD EEDCB A FF
37	ABCD EFEF DCBAGG
38	ABC DEFF EDCBAGG
39	ABCD EFFEDBCAA
40	ABCDEF F EDCBAGG
41	ABCDBEBDCBA EE
42	ABCDEFFEDBCAA
43	ABCDEFFEDBCAA
44	ABCDEFEFDCB AA
45	ABCDEFEF DCBAA
46	ABCDE FEFD CBAA
47	ABCDEFEFDCBAGG
48	ABCDEFEFDCBAGG
49	ABC DEAEA DCBAFF
50	ABCD EAEA DCBAFF
51	ABCDEFE FDCBAA
52	ABCD EDE DCBA FF
53	ABCDEFEFDC BAA
54	ABCDEFEFDC BAA
55	ABCDEF EFDCBAA
56	ABCDEFE FDCBAA
57	ABCDEFEFDCBAA
58	ABCDEFE FD CBAA
59	ABCD EFEFD CBAA
60	ABCDEFEF DCBAA
61	ABCDEFAFED BCA
62	A BCDEFAEFD CBA
63	ABCDEFAEFDC AB
64	ABCDEFAEFDCBA
65	ABCDEFAEFDCBA
66	ABCDEFAEFDCBA
67	ABCDEFAEFDCBA
68	ABCDEFAEFD CBA

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Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:51:11 -0400

JohnReed.org

Ana

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:51:05 -0400

ana | encomium

contact

Author of the novels, A Still Small Voice (Delacorte Press), The Whole (MTV / Simon & Schuster), the SPD bestseller, Snowball's Chance (Roof Books, tenth anniversary edition forthcoming from Melville House), All The World's A Grave: A New Play By William Shakespeare (Penguin / Plume), and Tales of Woe (MTV Press); MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University; Senior Editor, the Brooklyn Rail; fiction, essays, poetry and cultural criticism published in (selected): Paper Magazine, Popmatters, the New York Press, Timeout New York, Artforum, Bomb Magazine, Playboy, Vice Magazine, Out Magazine, Art in America, the PEN Poetry Series, the Los Angeles Times, the Good Men Project, the Paris Review, the Believer, the Rumpus, the Daily Beast, Slate, the Wall Street Journal; current member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.

Encomium

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:51:05 -0400

ana | encomium

contact

Snowball’s Chance:

The novel transcends its particular circumstances … Snowball’s gambit is to turn the farm into a giant spectacle of happiness, and his Animal Fair represents more than just a place: it names an entire ethos.

—Craig Epplin, Guernica

Written in lucid, wise, funny, fable-prose, this book brings to mind Spiegelman’s Maus—the use of a playful metaphor to reveal truths we might otherwise refuse to see.

—Jonathan Ames

A wicked illusionist.

—Graham Reed, Los Angeles Journal

A swift and satisfying read, viciously funny.

—William Georgiades, New York Post

In other words: What did the victim do to deserve it?

—Cathy Young, Boston Globe

Likely to offend almost everyone. … Witless parody.

—David Futrelle, Money Magazine

John Reed is as fearless and honest as writers come.

—Greg Dybec, Critical Mob

Free John Reed! Free the piggies!

—New York Press

A pig returns to the farm, thumbing his snout at Orwell ... the world had a new evil to deal with, and it was not communism.

—Dinitia Smith, New York Times

It will take a great deal more than a fortnight's work by a smart-aleck anti-corporatist to undermine the most brilliant satire of the 20th century.

—London Telegraph

Orwell’s sacred pigs get a proper roast.

—Paul Duchene, Portland Tribune

Reed has managed to take a dated masterpiece ... and revive it for the odd, casino-like social and political world we're mired in today; in the process he's created his own masterpiece.

—John Grooms, Creative Loafing, Charlotte

Reed's tale, crafted amid ground zero's dust, is chilling in its clarity and inspired in its skewering of Orwell's stilted style. Whether you liked or loathed the original, there's no denying Reed has captured the state of the farm today.

—Jay Macdonald, Fort Myers News-Press

This book has something to upset almost everyone who reads it, just like a good book should.

—Dennis Loy Johnson

A volatile new novel.

—Arthur Salm, San Diego Union Tribune

The New York author has ignited a fierce literary debate; is it ever right to write a book modeled on a classic, that twists the original message into unrecognizable form?

—David Robinson, Jacqui Goddard, Scotsman

Snowball’s Chance parodies Orwell’s Animal Farm, dragging it kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

—Edward Nawotka, Publisher’s Weekly

Reed skewers our early 21st century (edgy, tragic, absurd) with a marvelously precise wit.

—Faren Miller, Locus Magazine

[Reed] not only shanghais Orwell’s story, but amps up and mocks the writer’s famously flat, didactic style–that fairytailish simplicity that has ensured Animal Farm a place in high school English classes for the last 50 years.

—John Strausbaugh, New York Press

Fearless, provocative, and both reverent and irreverent at the same time.

—Robert Lopez, WordRiot

One of the keenest thinkers of our time.

—Shathley Q, PopMatters

John Reed ... is getting what he never knew he wanted, hate from right wing groups!

—Daniel Robert Epstein, SuicideGirls

Tales of Woe:

The Grotesque is alive and well ... a dash of Rod Sterling with a touch of Alfred E. Neuman.

—Jesse Tangen-Mill, Rain Taxi

A truly memorable and heart-wrenching book.

—Chris Arrant, Newsarama

John Reed’s Tales of Woe presents a sprawling landscape of contemporary apocalyptic vistas painted in the sweeping vignette brushstrokes of a master artist’s hand. Reed, whose previous All the World’s a Grave alerted the world to a timbre of postmodern genius never before seen in American letters, cements his historical legacy with Tales of Woe.

—Rami Shamir, Evergreen Review

Tales of Woe is a macabre compilation of 25 true stories of misfortune, pain and suffering presented in their naked, stark reality without resolution or justice. ... Tales of Woe violently strips the silver lining off of tragedy and presents it as it is most often experienced—without hope.

—Sean Patrick Kelly, New York Press

Novelist John Reed set out to write a book about abject misery and he has succeeded. This month MTV Press is publishing Tales of Woe, a title so appropriate to the unrelenting suffering the book details that there’s little to tell you beyond that. ... Powerful, disturbing and unforgettably painful.

—Calvin Reid, Publisher’s Weekly

Completely void of didacticism, hope, and redemption. Instead, Tales of Woe offers a parade of captivating, affronting stories that challenge and delight — er, disturb — the reader.

—Ben Mirov, Bomb Magazine

An imaginative, eloquent and even funny way of expressing outrage about human behavior ... truly an accomplishment.

—David Winner, The American

Fictionaut loves it LOVES IT ... True stories without any redeeming character whatsoever—just bleak, bleak, unremitting, and undeserved.

—Fictionaut

Tales of Woe is epic.

—Nicolle Elizabeth, The Faster Times

Stories are so dark that they cast no light. Don’t expect happy endings here.

—Lauren Betesh, West Side Spirit

Tales of Woe, a book that will undoubtedly come to define our generational zeitgeist, in it's overturning of the thrall of commercialist catharsis. ... after Friends and The X-Files, Boston Legal, House and The Corrections, reading Tales of Woe feels like a beginning, like the fertile soil of a generational nightmare has at last been properly tilled and readied for something to grow.

—Shathley Q, Popmatters

These stories are especially horrifying since all of them are true. No happy endings, no redemption, just bad things happening to good people for no reason. Reed, like the ancient Greeks, brings catharsis to the reader through observation of others' suffering so that we may feel better about our own lives (and relatively trivial burdens).

—David Gutowski, Largeheartedboy

So twisted and perverse, and so TRUE that even the editor of a horror blog walks away feeling a little sickened. ... Tales of Woe is nearly two hundred pages of strange and twisted tragedy without even the slightest inclination to serve up a single happy ending. It’s a sickening look at the horrors of real life from around the globe, and while I’m hesitant to recommend it, I have a feeling I pretty much just have.

—Marc Patterson, Brutal as Hell

Reed’s dispassionate reportage combines with illustrations that nearly leap off the page, and grabs the reader by the throat, screaming “Unfair? Unfair doesn’t begin to define life!” ... Tales of Woe is not a book to be ignored. It is startling, scary, and relevant. It chills because the reader knows this is the world in which we live.

—Miss Bob Etier, Blog Critics

A dark and deeply disturbing examination of injustice and misery the whole world over. That's a pretty fair assessment of the book Tales of Woe by John Reed. ... The titular tales are clearly and deftly expressed, and its quite a handsome little package: a slightly-larger-than-paperback hardcover with white and red text printed on slick black paperstock, punctuated by occasional illustrations provided by some deeply-disturbed outsider minds. ... I have a feeling that, much like my VHS copy of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Tales of Woe will have a long and lonely shelf life, leering at me and hungrily licking its lips, just daring me to partake in it again. And, just like with Henry, I will occasionally succumb, only to feel guilty and dirty in its wake.

—Jonny Metro, Midnite Media

A universe of sin, suffering, pain, dread, perversion, and depravity. ... If you like romance novels and happy endings, this might not be your cup of tea. If you are into horror, anthologies and want to read something different than the norm, hit your local Barnes & Noble or visit Amazon online.

—Geofree Capodanno, Enter the Caveman

The most depressing, unbelievable, gore-soaked, abusive, disturbing and generally unacceptable stories you’ll ever hear, and they’re all TRUE! ... ugly, disturbing and unapologetic. Definite stocking-stuffer material for the nihilist on your list."

—Andy Swist, Campblood.org

In Tales of Woe, John Reed assumes the role of a modern day Crypt Creeper and shares tales of shocking horror and absurd tragedy. The stories are nearly as strange as anything E.C. Comics ever published. ... Except, unlike the Crypt Creeper, the stories John Reed tells are all true.

—John Struan, Superpunch

The stories are dark, disturbing, disgusting, and horrid...yet I couldn't stop reading! From the first story of a baboon mistaking an infant for a meal, to the story of what albino humans are used for in Tanzania, to the tale of a man having too close of a relationship with animals. ..this book is a great read (if you can handle it).

—Rhonny Reaper, Dollar Bin Horror

Tales of Woe is a depressing and harrowing success. ... I must warn you, however. Tread that road carefully.

—The Mike, From Midnight, With Love

Stories are so dark that they cast no light. Don’t expect happy endings here.

—Lauren Betesh, West Side Spirit

Reed, like the ancient Greeks, brings catharsis to the reader through observation of others' suffering so that we may feel better about our own lives (and relatively trivial burdens) ... Before you pick up that next horror novel, I'd suggest Tales of Woe instead, because sometimes reality is scarier than fiction.

—David Gutowski, Largeheartedboy

—Marc Patterson, Brutal as Hell

All The World’s A Grave:

I had just decided to name my new play “A year Without Shakespeare,” to express my weariness with the recurring unimaginative return again and again to the Bard. Then I came upon John Reed’s NEW/old play, and I feel fired up! What a dramatic re-imagination is herein offered us!

—Richard Foreman

The literary Trick of the Year!

—Page 6, New York Post

I can’t quite believe “All The World’s A Grave”: Such an Original idea.

—Ian McKellen

It’s a shrewd, gutsy remix that brings the conscience of Shakespeare to our troubled times.

—Spalding Gray

An inspired bit of bricolage ... This “remix version” of Shakespeare proves fascinating and entertaining. Reed clearly loves the Bard. His pastiche contains many of Shakespeare’s best passages, which are always a delight to reread. More impressive, though, Reed fashions from this familiar material a story containing enough surprises to delight even those well versed in the Bard.

—Jack Helbig, Booklist

What's destabilizing—and often wildly comical—is not just the rude mash-up of characters and settings violently plucked from their canonical sources but the way in which the power of Shakespeare's language flickers uneasily, surging and hissing and fizzing out only to revive and fade again as the words play against their new contexts.

—Christianity Today, Favorite Books of 2008

We haven’t experienced this much haughtiness since college!

—Timeout New York

A proven Thomas Edison ... sophisticated fun.

—Allan Jalon, Huffington Post

Reed caramelizes the Bard’s plays into a great and terrifying world ... a dizzying feat of writing and scholarship, and uncannily contemporary in its brew of constant trouble.

—Lynne Tillman

This is the Frankenstein's monster of Shakespearean tragedy. It raises the Artistotelian emotions of pity and fear to a new level as the audience agonizes over the uncertainty of which catharsis John Reed's play is heading toward.

—William S. Niederkorn

Reed has brought music's remix culture to literature with stunning results.

—David Gutowski, largeheartedboy

All the World’s a Grave alerted the world to a timbre of postmodern genius never before seen in American letters.

—Rami Shamir, Evergreen Review

This send-up of the bard is both new yet familiar; by using a literary form of montage, Reed plays with our understanding of some of the best known characters from Shakespeare's oeuvre and creates a work that is eerie in its timeliness.

—Finn Harvor, Rain Taxi

The language is Shakespeare's, but the drama that unfolds is as fresh as the blood on the stage.

—Fictionwise

The resulting story is both familiar and fresh, and the characters are energized and enlightened. Reed’s juxtaposition allows him to give added depth and dimension to characters. .. Shakespeare fans can expect classics, like Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy or Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” lament. But Shakespeare fans will have particular fun catching all the familiar Shakespeare lines that come in surprising contexts. It’s not Juliet, for instance, who cries “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, oh Romeo?”

—Scholarsandrogues

With all the cleverness of Touchstone and the mischievousness of Puck, Reed has boldly reimagined the Bard by cutting, pasting, puzzling, and rearranging Shakespeare's own words and characters into an entirely new play. ... Reed has tapped into that muse and produced a re-envisioned Shakespeare that proves to be both provocative, substantial, and entertaining.

—hipsterbookclub

A new and invigorating interpretation ... electrifying and comprehensive.

—Zoe Rosenthal, BatesStudent

Duh Whole:

John Reed excels in the realm of the strange.

—San Francisco Examiner

Philip K. Dick, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs and T.S. Eliot come crashing together!

—Jason Pettus, CCLaP

Reed skewers our early 21st century (edgy, tragic, absurd) with a marvelously precise wit.

—Faren Miller, Locus Magazine

Satire at its most inventive and buoyant. ... It would have made Boris Vian grin and Lewis Carroll blush.

—Donald Breckenridge, Brooklyn Rail

Well-done, MTV, for publishing this terrific skewering of … MTV.

—William Georgiades, New York Post

A caustically brilliant satire ... as brainy as it is base, destructive as it is innovative and sweeping as it is sophisticated.

—Graham Reed, Los Angeles Journal

Philip K. Dick got nuthin on John Reed!

—Laura Albert / J.T. Leroy

Charming but obnoxious.

—Lisa Nuch Venbrux, Popmatters

A Still Small Voice, Sonnets (in progress):

John Reed exploded my concept of a sonnet.

—Erika Anderson, Electric Literature

John Reed has woven a historical novel about hope and love that is touchingly told; A Still Small Voice verifies that if one has true faith in what one desires, anything is possible.

—Suzan Sherman, Bomb Magazine

A Still Small Voice has discernible power. … Truly magnificent.

—Randall W. Allred, Civil War Book Review

Reed shows real brilliance.

—Neil Chethik, Lexington Herald-Leader

John Reed’s A Still Small Voice is a beautiful and poignant novel. It lives in the details, which are so vividly and authentically right that they become part of our own personal experience ... our own memory. Reed has distilled and concentrated the Civil War into the joys, sorrows, and faith of a girl coming of age during a dark and dangerous time.

—Jack Dann

First-time novelist Reed leads us poetically through ... two decades, setting vivid details of the Civil War against the passions of a girl saying goodbye.

—Glamour Magazine

Who would have thought that a 21st century Yankee could write such a lovely book about the 19th century South? John Reed’s prose style is a heady mix of restraint and exuberance. In A Still Small Voice, Reed combines the attentiveness of a naturalist, the factual accuracy of an historian, and the compassion of, well, a really good novelist.

—Matthew Sharpe

With gorgeous writing and a powerful sense of history, John Reed makes a stunning debut. You'll fall into this remarkable novel from the first sentence. Reed is a heartthrob of a writer, and A Still Small Voice shines with his passion.

—Molly Peacock

sonnet

Art, Text, and Art & Text

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:00:19 -0400

12th Street: Who Is Your Audience?

12th Street: Who is Your Audience?

12th Street is running a series on this. I contributed an equation, which tracks who one's audience is through the drafting process …

Audience Equations for Myself (and/or anyone who is interested (in terms of a something intended for publication)):

Draft 0: Taking notes, not sure what it is, experimenting, etc.

Audience = self. (No rules, no boundaries, no structure, no worries. Not all projects have this draft; if you can, begin at “draft 1″)

Draft 1: A draft is defined as a whole unto itself: it can be read through and it more or less makes sense; a writer usually gets about five of these before the project loses focus.

SUBJECT	2002	2012	STALEMATE	EXPLANATION
BIG PRESSES	✓			My first novel had come out with Delacorte, and there was a frenetic race to publish books about 9/11, and I had an enthusiastic and reputed agent, and it looked to me like Snowball would find a place at a big house. Then, the lawyers chimed in—the best guess was that parody was no longer protected speech in the United States. If anything, since 2002, the people of “big publishing” become more politically engaged. But traditional venues for book coverage—newspaper coverage, for example—are scarce in number and those venues that do remain are pinched and heavily reliant upon advertising, which necessitates ad-friendly content (the right demographic, the right message), which further pinches what books the newspapers will cover—what stories can be told.
SMALL PRESSES		✓		I had always held out the hope that Snowball would find a place in paperback at a big house. We did get a few offers—but we always thought we could do better. Melville House, which was just establishing itself when Snowball came out, is now a lauded entity (Snowball is lucky to have them), and distributed by Random House. Overall, the small presses have a much better reach than they did in 2002—perhaps the best reach they’ve ever had. The caveats: there are legions of them, and many are publishing material that is, uh, not good. Of course, that’s a problem with presses of every size, and it’s very difficult to argue with any trend that localizes arts.
DISTRIBUTION	✓			James Sherry, the publisher at Roof Books, knew that the challenge for Snowball would be distribution. We naively thought we could address it, but our schedule was too ambitious. We ended up distributing with SPD, Small Press Distribution, which is now one of the leading options for small presses. In 2002, the obvious best option was PGW, Publisher’s Group West, which offered a realistic alternative to Ingram. In 2006, PGW went into bankruptcy—caused by mismanagement. Not only did the bankruptcy leave the monolith, Ingram, the sole proprietor of major distribution, it cost publishers like McSweeney’s and Soft Skull whole seasons of earnings. Of course, ebook, direct, online retail distribution, have all become realities—but the lockdown on major distribution has become more pronounced, and is without doubt the single most horrendous thing about contemporary publishing.
BOOKSTORES	✓			When Snowball’s Chance came out, despite the media attention, placement in B&N was a continuing battle. People walked into the store carrying newspaper clippings. Then, when Snowball sold out before the pub date, B&N didn’t restock. Perhaps rightly, the store that ordered the most books—I haven’t since seen so many of my books in one store—was St. Marks Books, about a block from my apartment. While the small presses have penetrated the remaining big bookstore (B&N), the small bookstores are vastly reduced in numbers, and less likely to offer alternative perspectives on culture—rather, most small bookstores have become “better” versions of the big bookstores, their list is more selective, their emphasis more literary, but it’s the same span of books you’d find in B&N.
ONLINE BOOK SALES		✓		2002, online book sales were still speculation. What mattered to Snowball was bookstore distribution. But if Amazon wasn’t yet significant competition, it was looked on, quite accurately, as the threat to in-person retail it would become. Online books sales, not just through Amazon, have allowed for a major change in what can be published. “Outliers” are possible, and books with specific demographics can distribute directly to their markets. Books can be printed one-at-a-time. Huge steps in the history of human knowledge.
EDITORIAL			✓	James Sherry, who edited Snowball, is a brilliant editor. I’m afraid the kind of work he did on Snowball isn’t something that one would be likely to see today—not at a big house, and not at a small house. Book editors edit less. But in terms of magazines, journals and whatever other literary venues, there are excellent editors, and more of them than ever. I’m finding myself writing numerous essays—stuff I couldn’t have dreamed of doing in 2002. (Including this piece for Ed Nawotka at Publishing Perspectives.) The essay is in a period of Renaissance, and online editors have been disencumbered of the costs and responsibilities of print.
THE WRITING ITSELF		✓		In 2002, you went to the bookstore and looked around. Now, people make their choices, and their choices are influenced by what they see online. Those who are able to resist the constant temptation of propaganda and idiocy are able to employ the internet to inform themselves on subjects of interest and personal aesthetics. It’s that population of people—among the what? six million writers?—that has raised the overall quality of U.S. creative writing. With distribution as is, however, there’s not much evidence of that in the marketplace.
STATE OF NARRATIVE			✓	The traditional venues of book coverage—major newspapers, etc—are flailing to attract advertisers. Their readerships are shrinking, so they tell advertisers they have the “right” demographic. People who buy, who buy to be, who value money, who value the making of money. To attract the right demographic, editors, for example, gear their content to sync with the desirable demographic. In finding that demographic, the venue further shrinks its audience. Vicious circle. Snowball isn’t telling the story it’s supposed to tell; it’s not a “coming home” story. (“Coming home,” the comedy of Greek drama, is the go-to story of the marketplace. You participate in culture, you “buy in” and you find happiness.) I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but I’m guessing that Snowball, as in 2002, is more likely to see political coverage than books coverage.
ECONOMY OF WRITERS			✓	Advances have gone down, payments for journalism/reviews are laughable or not there at all—and yet there are new opportunities, ebooks, interactive, etc, and being a writer, it seems to me, isn’t the act of immolation it once was. Maybe that’s just me, of course—it could be my unfailing optimism. Go buy a copy of Snowball and join me.
DEMOCRACY OF LITERATURE			✓	Email me and we’ll talk about it. jr @ johnreed.tv That’s the up side. The internet makes discussion, even radical discussion, a plausibility. Without the internet, I doubt Snowball would have participated the way it has. (I can’t tell you how many people tell me they’ve read the book, people who I quickly realize are just saying they read the book, which is heartbreaking, but I suppose they’ve heard of the project, or they wouldn’t bother to lie about it.) The downside to democratized arts: the normative conversation is dull, facile, and filtered by servile and/or oligarchical thinking.
BOOK COVERAGE	✓			For the reasons touched on in “Big Presses” and “State of Narrative,” traditional book coverage is diminished—in word counts, in number of venues, in overall scope. But there is the internet, without print costs, which has revived long form criticism. When Snowball came out in 2002, longform criticism was dying. I wonder if the new edition of Snowball has potential, as a lede or otherwise, for longform essays. Maybe. I’m planning to write four or five long essays about Snowball, Orwell, and Animal Farm. (This is one of them.)
READERSHIP		✓		Readers can find what they’re interested in. They’re more informed about what they’re interested in. They can tell other people about the things they’re interested in. They can “network” based on what they’re interested in. All this was just starting in 2002. Now, it’s part of how we live and experience books.
LITERATURE IN EDUCATION	✓			Blind, unthinking hero-worship is characteristic of an educational system dominated by a cultural hierarchy. “This is great because we told you it’s great.” It’s not surprising that in our ever more atavistic and conservative creative economy, the bullying in U.S. education has only gotten worse. It’s difficult for me to see much of an upside, have much optimism, about the academy’s mind-numbing approach to “classics.” At least I no longer have the sense that I’m in total isolation. Attacking classics, whether it’s Jonathan Lethem or Zombie Jane Austen, has become a category—and it’s a badly needed conversation.
SELF-PUBLISHING		✓		The same day I talked to Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, about the Snowball paperback, which would make me about .85$ per book, I talked the to “curator” of an ebook series, which would make me 1.70$ a book. And the ebook would only be 15,000 words. Snowball is about 35,000 words. The downside to self-publishing: self published books are self published (the overall quality is often very low) and if you don’t understand the book business, if you don’t have a highly specific and active market—the unicorn vampire market, for example—you’re probably killing your baby.
LITERARY CULTURE		✓		In 2002, I had very little awareness of thriving literary communities outside New York City. Now, I know for a fact they’re all over the place. Local arts, local writers, local collectors, local readers. Deeper thinking and the engagement afforded local communities. And these communities aren’t just a geographical occurrence—communities are forming around interests, passions, common causes.
COPYRIGHT	✓			While the copyright claims against Snowball, i.e. those of questioning the legitimacy of parody, are no longer viable, in the last ten years, we may well have seen the birth of perpetual copyright. Uh, for large corporations that is.
PARODY		✓		2002, it looked like parody in the United States was over. But by a miracle—an American miracle—parody was staunchly defended by a conservative Supreme Court. Furthermore, the U.K. has set about reviewing its stance on parody (they want the income that comes with the full dose of parodic entertainment, The Daily Show, etc). Snowball, threatened by the Orwell estate in 2002, is not currently under any legal danger in the United States—and the debate on parody in the U.K. points to (hmm would it be all right if I ended patriotic?) one of two outcomes: either a U.K edition of Snowball, or the continuation of a total inability of U.K. entertainment to compete with upstart Americans.

JohnReed.org | John Reed

Texts

Art & Politics

The Believer

Paris Review Daily: Animal Farm Timeline

Paris Review Daily: Circus and the City

Vice: The Golden Age of the Cockroach

Bomb: The Tragic Last Stand of the Skyhorse Clan

Slate: This is Not Art

Paris Review Daily: Times Square Show Revisited

Publishing Perspectives: 2002 vs. 2012

Out Magazine: Where Are All the Angry Young Men?

Bomb Magazine and DB Art: Whitney Biennial 2012

Bomb Magazine: The Eye-Popping Spectacles of Stuart Sherman

the Rumpus: The Politics of Narrative

In Earnest

Cassius's Storybook, part two

Cassius's Storybook

The Good Men Project: My Last Fight

Largehearted boy: All the World's a Grave

The Good Men Project: This is Not a Toy

Eliza Goose

Brooklyn Rail: How Arthur Phillips Stole My Bike

Los Angeles Times, my version: "The Two Types of Assholes"

Largehearted boy: Tales of Woe

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/12

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/11

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/10

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/9 2

Paper Magazine: Valentine

In Jest

Vice: Don't Pay Friends for Sex

Work Wonders

No News Today: Ergonomic Armageddon

Workabells

New York Press: Kill All Artists

Brooklyn Rail: Shitty Mickey

Curriculum

What Matters When We Talk About Shakespeare

Outro: All the World's a Grave

Brooklyn Rail: How Arthur Phillips Stole My Bike

Brooklyn Rail: Praise the Bard

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/12

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/11

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/10

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/9

Penguin Books Guest Author: All the World's a Grave, 9/8

Talks with Persons of Interest

Vice: Seka

Art in America: "To the Letter," Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey

Rain Taxi: "Talking Animals"

Bomb Magazine: Charlie Smith

Brooklyn Rail: Frederic Tuten

Bomb Magazine: Ann Lauterbach

Brooklyn Rail: Stephen Graubard

Brooklyn Rail: Karen Liebreich

Brooklyn Rail: Paul Auster

Correspondence

Sonnets, Key

Sitemap

Ana

Encomium

Art, Text, and Art & Text

12th Street: Who Is Your Audience?

Klemens Gasser “Antigone Things”

the Believer: Peter Neumeyer, Edward Gorey in Floating Worlds

the Rumpus and Critical Mass: Jonathan Lethem’s "The Ecstasy of Influence"

Art in America: MetaMaus

the Daily Beast: To Be Young Was Very Heaven

the Rumpus: "Who Is Ana Mendieta?"

Brooklyn Rail: Davis Schneiderman

31 Books in 31 Days: Kay Ryan

Popmatters and Bomb Magazine: "Drawings from the Gulag"

Art in America: Charles Burns

Wall Street Journal: "Jacobs Beach"

Los Angeles Times: "Smilin' Ed!"

Art in America: Malcolm McLaren

Art in America: Michael Kupperman

Artforum: Jason Rhoades

Art in America: Do the Math