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THE MODLINS
Potentially a sinus lift, which is where the gums are peeled away and the bones of the jaw artificially grafted, millimetre by millimetre. This was essentially the same thing prescribed by dentists back home, only in this case he wrote down the prices as well, in neat columns like a receipt from the grocery store. DEAD INDIANS: TOO HEAVY TO LIFT You don’t have to look far in North American culture to find Dead Indians. ‘Dead’ as in the idea of something that never really existed. From film characters to rodeos and sports teams’ mascots—even in how Native leaders represent themselves to the white world—buckskin and a feathered headdress are ever handy signifiers of Indian authenticity. In this excerpt from his new book, The CONSPIRACY OF BROTHERS: THE MURDER OF BILL MATIYEK On October 18th, 1978, Bill Matiyek was murdered in a gangland-style execution in a Port Hope bar. Conspiracy of Brothers, the classic true crime book, tells the story of rival outlaw biker gangs in small-town Ontario and the murder that thrust them into the courtroom. THE SECRET OF THE IMPOSSIBLE STAIRWELL Live. •. Cut to a dingy stairwell. Kevin, ascending one flight of stairs, explains that the stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Rafael Nelson Avoganda. He reaches the top, turns the corner, and suddenly reappears at the bottom of the lower flight of stairs, leading up to the landing that he appears to have just left. THIS PORTENTOUS COMPOSITION: SWAN LAKE'S PLACE IN SOVIET When Swan Lake premiered in Moscow in 1877, it was not considered a great success. The story is a dark one, even by the fantastical standards of classical ballet. It centres on a young prince, Siegfried, and a woman, Odette, who has been turned into a THE YEAR IN UGLINESS What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2017? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. I knew this year would be strange when it started off with my failed kidnapping. Picture: my friend and I in Joshua Tree at sundown, knowing no one and asking the wrong man the wrong questions at wrong time. LATCHES OF BEING: A USER'S GUIDE TO ANNE CARSON 12) But maybe the most important thing to watch for while reading Anne Carson is evidence that the “latches of being” are coming undone. “Latches of being” is a phrase Carson coins to describe the work of another poet, the ancient Greek writer Stesichoros. Of him, she writes, “Stesichoros began to undo the latches. ON MICK JAGGER, MOCKNEY ACCENTS, AND BEING A CHAV On Mick Jagger, Mockney Accents, and Being a Chav. By Linda Besner. There’s a lineage of middle and upper-class British pop stars, actors and chefs who’ve affected a Cockney accent as part of their persona—whether opportunistically or as a form of tribute. Then theChav came along.
HOW CLASS CAN SCREW UP RELATIONSHIPS A new study suggests that one overlooked root of relationship problems is social class. While cross-class marriages like the one between Downtown Abbey’s Lady Sybil and the estate’s chauffeur, Tom Branson, might not be overtly scandalous anymore, the renegotiation of values they entail isn’t confined to the fictionalized 1920s. 'REAL CHILDREN IN EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES': AN INTERVIEW Since his 2001 debut novel River Thieves, Michael Crummey has woven together Newfoundland’s rich and often ignored history with fiction.His latest novel, The Innocents (Doubleday Canada), took years to begin and was written almost out of compulsion after a trip to an archival library. The novel follows two young siblings, Ada and Evered, following the death of their parents and baby HAZLITTLONGREADSFICTIONINTERVIEWSSUBMISSIONSABOUTTHE STRANGE LIFE OFTHE MODLINS
Potentially a sinus lift, which is where the gums are peeled away and the bones of the jaw artificially grafted, millimetre by millimetre. This was essentially the same thing prescribed by dentists back home, only in this case he wrote down the prices as well, in neat columns like a receipt from the grocery store. DEAD INDIANS: TOO HEAVY TO LIFT You don’t have to look far in North American culture to find Dead Indians. ‘Dead’ as in the idea of something that never really existed. From film characters to rodeos and sports teams’ mascots—even in how Native leaders represent themselves to the white world—buckskin and a feathered headdress are ever handy signifiers of Indian authenticity. In this excerpt from his new book, The CONSPIRACY OF BROTHERS: THE MURDER OF BILL MATIYEK On October 18th, 1978, Bill Matiyek was murdered in a gangland-style execution in a Port Hope bar. Conspiracy of Brothers, the classic true crime book, tells the story of rival outlaw biker gangs in small-town Ontario and the murder that thrust them into the courtroom. THE SECRET OF THE IMPOSSIBLE STAIRWELL Live. •. Cut to a dingy stairwell. Kevin, ascending one flight of stairs, explains that the stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Rafael Nelson Avoganda. He reaches the top, turns the corner, and suddenly reappears at the bottom of the lower flight of stairs, leading up to the landing that he appears to have just left. THIS PORTENTOUS COMPOSITION: SWAN LAKE'S PLACE IN SOVIET When Swan Lake premiered in Moscow in 1877, it was not considered a great success. The story is a dark one, even by the fantastical standards of classical ballet. It centres on a young prince, Siegfried, and a woman, Odette, who has been turned into a THE YEAR IN UGLINESS What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2017? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. I knew this year would be strange when it started off with my failed kidnapping. Picture: my friend and I in Joshua Tree at sundown, knowing no one and asking the wrong man the wrong questions at wrong time. LATCHES OF BEING: A USER'S GUIDE TO ANNE CARSON 12) But maybe the most important thing to watch for while reading Anne Carson is evidence that the “latches of being” are coming undone. “Latches of being” is a phrase Carson coins to describe the work of another poet, the ancient Greek writer Stesichoros. Of him, she writes, “Stesichoros began to undo the latches. ON MICK JAGGER, MOCKNEY ACCENTS, AND BEING A CHAV On Mick Jagger, Mockney Accents, and Being a Chav. By Linda Besner. There’s a lineage of middle and upper-class British pop stars, actors and chefs who’ve affected a Cockney accent as part of their persona—whether opportunistically or as a form of tribute. Then theChav came along.
HOW CLASS CAN SCREW UP RELATIONSHIPS A new study suggests that one overlooked root of relationship problems is social class. While cross-class marriages like the one between Downtown Abbey’s Lady Sybil and the estate’s chauffeur, Tom Branson, might not be overtly scandalous anymore, the renegotiation of values they entail isn’t confined to the fictionalized 1920s. 'REAL CHILDREN IN EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES': AN INTERVIEW Since his 2001 debut novel River Thieves, Michael Crummey has woven together Newfoundland’s rich and often ignored history with fiction.His latest novel, The Innocents (Doubleday Canada), took years to begin and was written almost out of compulsion after a trip to an archival library. The novel follows two young siblings, Ada and Evered, following the death of their parents and babyHAZLITT
Potentially a sinus lift, which is where the gums are peeled away and the bones of the jaw artificially grafted, millimetre by millimetre. This was essentially the same thing prescribed by dentists back home, only in this case he wrote down the prices as well, in neat columns like a receipt from the grocery store. THE REALITY OF TELENOVELAS A new book on Televisa by Brooklyn-based photographer Stefan Ruiz (called, like the studio itself, The Factory of Dreams) offers on-set snapshots of starlets reclining on stiff-looking lounges and of moustachioed toughs wielding Marlboros—uncompromising (and slightly overacted) caricatures of gender and class. THE YEAR IN UGLINESS What were we obsessed with, invested in and plagued by in 2017? Hazlitt’s writers reflect on the issues, big and small. I knew this year would be strange when it started off with my failed kidnapping. Picture: my friend and I in Joshua Tree at sundown, knowing no one and asking the wrong man the wrong questions at wrong time. NOT A LAND TO BE MASTERED To find the Oji-Cree people of Summer Beaver First Nation, a scattering of 400 souls in Ontario’s boreal forest, you must first lose your own bearings.Abandon your compass, it won’t guide you. They may share residency in your province, and perhaps hold in common certain pieces of ID.An OHIP card, a driver’s licence. But their Elders were born in the bush, which troubles the paper trail. JONI MITCHELL’S FORGOTTEN OPUSES Joni Mitchell’s Forgotten Opuses. For the past few weeks, Canadians have witnessed a tidal wave of Joni Mitchell tributes. Toronto’s Luminato Festival marked her 70th birthday—prematurely, as it’s actually in November—with two concerts of artists performing her songs. Those concerts proved elegantly reverential, with carefulattention
AFRICA IS PEOPLE
Chinua Achebe, Nelson Mandela said, “brought Africa to the rest of the world.” Poet Jackie Kay called him “the grandfather of African fiction.” In commemoration of Achebe, who has died at the age of 82, we publish his essay “Africa is People,” from his 2010 collection,The Education of
CULTURE AND CORPORAL PUNISHMENT These studies rarely account for the variable of culture, however, which helps determine the feelings children attach to the experience of being hit by a caregiver. A 2006 study found that corporal punishment was acceptable in 41 schools across four states in India, the most common forms being hitting with hands, or pulling hair andears.
MEXICO: LAND OF THE JAPANESE PEANUT Many of the people I saw eating them did so with lime juice and hot sauce. Some years ago, a writer for the newspaper El Universal addressed this question in a very succinct way: “The Japanese peanut is Mexican.”. It was invented in Mexico City by Yoshigei Nakatani in 1945. So, yes, it is Mexican. 'MY ONLY REAL LOYALTY IS TO THE TRUTH': AN INTERVIEW WITH Jean McConville was never seen alive again. New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe found his way to this story through the obituary of Dolours Price, a former I.R.A. terrorist, who claimed that Jean McConville was an informer for the British army, and was executed by the Unknowns, a paramilitary unit of the I.R.A. Price claimed that theorder
ELLIOTT SMITH IS SAD, LIKE YOU The first time a girl ever called me pretty, she was absolutely stoned. Jessica from math class told me that my lips were beautiful, that my hair and my eyes were beautiful, and she handed me her headphones and asked me if I had ever heard the music of ElliottSmith.
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Molar City
By Tom Thor Buchanan It’s hard to imagine how truly full of dentists Los Algodones is. They are everywhere.Interview
'Oral History is Its Own Source': An Interview with Sarah SchulmanBy Kelly Roberts
The author of Let the Record Show on AIDS activism, gossip, andcollective memory.
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The Children of DzhankoyBy Maxim Osipov
A very Russian turn of events: no solutions, but the trouble passes—so why bring it up?MOST
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03.06.21
‘Pain is a Thing You Get Used to Navigating in Art’: An Interview with Michelle ZaunerBy Naomi Huffman
Talking to the author of Crying in H Mart about trusting your memory, how writing a book is different from writing a song, and art as anarchive.
> In 2014, as her mother was dying, Michelle Zauner didn’t make any > art. This was unusual; as a kid, Zauner wrote fiction—”just > little stories”—and learned to play music. She frequented open > mic nights in Eugene, Oregon, where she grew up, and called her > first solo project Little Girl, Big Spoon. After college, she > fronted Little Big League, a low-fi emo rock band from Philly; > Zauner sang about suburban malaise, disappointing relationships, and > unfulfilling sex in a deceptively melodic, plaintive voice that she > sometimes worked into a hoarse scream. She had just begun writing > songs for a new solo project called Japanese Breakfast when she > learned of her mother’s diagnosis, late stage intestinal cancer, > in 2013. Crying in H Mart (Knopf), Zauner’s memoir about the > months she spent caring for her mother before her death, is a > confident exploration of the nuances of grief and a forthcoming > account of an often graceless mother-daughter relationship. Zauner, > who is Korean, recounts a fairly untroubled childhood: she tagged > along with her mother on trips to Seoul to visit family; to the > markets where they searched for their favorite Korean snacks and > fare; to restaurants where they attempted to out-eat each other. > Zauner’s songwriting skills prove impressively adaptable to > memoir; the most pleasing sentences in the book are her heady and > layered descriptions of these meals. Reading them might have been as > gratifying as an actual meal, if the subsequent hunger wasn’t also > a reminder of how bodiless mere words can be; a sentence, > unfortunately, is not sundubu-jjigae. When Zauner reached > adolescence, an ineffable gulf opened between her and her mother. > Her mother became controlling; Zauner began acting out. A series of > increasingly painful confrontations resulted in Zauner moving out of > the house. Later, she struggled to fulfill the role of caretaker to > her ailing mother, how to sit with her grief and its disturbances. > She toured with her band, planned a last-ditch trip to Seoul, and > rushed a wedding to her husband Peter, experiences she now views as > attempts to postpone dealing with her mother’s certain passing. > Recounting this, Zauner affords herself no mercy; she writes > honestly of her guilt, the selfishness of grief. After her > mother’s death, Zauner forged ahead with music. She recorded two > albums as Japanese Breakfast, Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds from > Another Planet, both incisively personal works that include > meditations on grief, loss, and the arbitrary but absolute nature of > death. Japanese Breakfast’s third album, Jubilee, comes out this > week. Aptly titled, Jubilee is a stark contrast to the band’s > earlier works, and underscores Zauner's formidable range as a > songwriter and musician. With Crying in H Mart, she proves she’s > an assured artist who has accomplished a new form. Our > conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Naomi > Huffman: How was the process of writing your memoir different from > writing songs for an album? Michelle Zauner: Two things were > discipline and regimen. I told myself, it’s going to be crap. > It’s going to be crap for a while. I decided I was going to write > a thousand words every day. I feel like that’s an act of > forgiveness in itself—like, it’s a thousand words every day, how > could it possibly be good? It’s going to be complete, nonsensical > garbage, and that’s OK. Up until I turned in the final draft, I > was truly devastated. I’d lost perspective; I felt as if I’d had > this vision of myself, and I was three steps below the intellectual > I want to be. I kept saying to myself, This is just who you are > right now. This is an archive of your skill set at this moment. This > is the best you can do right now. You spent five fucking years on > this and you need to let it go. There’s a sad, cold, hard look you > have to take of yourself as an artist—this is just who you are > right now. You’re gonna get better. Even though I’d never > written a book, I had completed other larger creative projects. You > know, I don’t love the first Little Big League record. I think > I’m a much better singer, much better composer, and much better > producer now than I was in my early twenties. I was twenty, > twenty-one years old. But I’m still proud of what I made, and > ultimately I’m not embarrassed by it. Art is just an archive of > who you are at that time in your life. How does the experience of > releasing a book differ from that of an album or a song? Do you have > the same anxieties? With songs, it’s so vague! There’s > so much to hide behind. People can interpret things in so many > different ways, and it’s wild what people think some of my songs > are about. I have this song called “Essentially” and there’s a > line, “Love me asexually, love me like someone else’s wife.” > And someone interpreted it as like, me wanting to have an affair, > which is clearly not what that line is about at all. So I feel like, > , I can’t get hurt, in a way, because there are so > many different ways to interpret a song. Whereas there’s nothing > to hide behind in this book. If people misunderstand you, it’s > your own fault. I was really nervous about this book coming out in a > way that I’ve never felt about a record. It’s very naked. It’s > me as a person, whereas in music, there’s a more fictional version > of me that I’m presenting. But it’s also been really fulfilling > in a way I never anticipated. The feedback I’ve received has been > really beautiful and moving, in a way that I’ve gotten a taste of > with music, but it’s deeper. In the book, you describe feeling > disgusted at your own impulse to write about your mother, to > transform your grief and her suffering into a project. Having now > completed the book, and seeing it celebrated, do you still feel some > disgust? I wanted to include that moment because it was a real, > striking thought that I had. It was also a moment of taking a really > critical look at myself. It’s honestly very hard to showcase your > own flaws in memoir. It’s so important, and it’s so unfair not > to do that to yourself when you’re doing it to other people in > your life. I knew that these moments were something I had to find > and expose—you know, what things was I at fault for? Because I was > writing about things at fault in my father, my mother’s friends. > It’s very hard! I never want to admit that I was wrong. I > think I was disgusted with myself because we were in the middle of > it. You need to just be there. You need to not make it easier on > yourself by making it into a project. I didn’t write or make any > art for like nine months that year. It was a really foreign thing > for me because that was all I knew, that was the only thing that > gave me a sense of meaning and purpose. But in that place, in that > moment, I was like, this is not the time for anything. You don’t > get to have anything right now. It was what I envied my mother’s > friend Kay for so much. She completely gave up all sense of self to > be a subservient caretaker. And I really struggled to do that, to be > honest, and I had a lot of shame and guilt and regret about that. I > don’t feel guilty about that now; most of my guilt was just that I > knew I needed to spend every waking moment being there for my mom > and not protecting myself with a project. How do you trust your own > memory? That’s a good question. I think you have to accept that > it’s never completely reliable. With any work, any document, > memoir especially, it’s subjective. It’s going to be > misremembered. I think you just have to try to present yourself > critically, and the other people around you as generously as > possible. A lot of that happens in revision. Many songs on Japanese > Breakfast’s previous albums deal with pain and grief, and Crying > in H Mart is about learning from tremendous loss and suffering. But > so much of Jubilee is about expressing and finding joy. Listening to > it is relieving. Do you find it easier to make art from suffering? > What was it like to write songs about joy? I don’t think it’s > easier to write about pain, but it grants a kind of > self-seriousness, like this is a valid topic to write about, and I > think I felt I needed that validation when I was younger. I felt I > needed to prove myself, to prove I had endured enough to be a > serious artist, and I don’t feel that way anymore. I think it’s > a natural impulse , it’s a salve to help > temper it. Pain is a thing you get used to confiding about and > navigating in art. It’s something I’ve done since I was a > teenager writing about heartbreak and rejection. One of my favorite > songs off the record is “Kokomo, IN,” because there’s just no > pain there at all. It is pure sweetness, and I loved it. It was > easy. It was fun. It’s my favorite song on the album. Even writing > it, there was no anguish. It came together very easily. It was a > sweet story, and I didn’t think it needed any agony. I feel like I > can do whatever I want now. Are there other writers who tackle grief > that you look to as guideposts? There’s a type of grief in > Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping—it happens in so many ways. > Especially when you examine the siblings’ grief and how it impacts > them. It makes me think of my father and I, how our grief affected > us in such very different ways. There was this other type of grief > that happened when we began separating from one another. Robinson > explores grief in such nuanced and devastating ways. I also returned > to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild—I think because we have the same > editor. And there are similarities , too. She’s > this woman who seeks out an alternative form of therapy to help her > through her mother’s death. I think you could write that book off > as a Reese Witherspoon movie or whatever, but parts of that book are > incredible—I mean, when she eats her mother’s ashes? That scene > will haunt me forever. It’s really gross and intense, and so real. > I also really loved Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom. > She’s Korean, and it’s told from lots of different perspectives, > and again there’s a kind of nuanced grieving that isn’t > necessarily about loss. Especially toward the end of her life, your > relationship with your mother seems to change to become a true > friendship. Was it important to you to portray it that way? That was > a heartbreaking part of that experience. I think it’s pretty > common for adolescents to have pretty tumultuous relationships with > their parents and then be able to return to them as adults as > friends, or a type of friend. It was unfortunate that my > relationship with my mother was turning a corner and I could see > that a lot of the things I’d hated her for I was able to actually > appreciate in this new way, with some distance. And I think she was > able to appreciate me in this new way with some distance. I think > our relationship would have been really wonderful. I so wish that my > mom could be around for my thirties. It was important to me to show > was so devastating in part because our relationship was > getting to a beautiful new chapter. There’s a line in the book > where she says, “I’ve never met someone like you,” and I felt > like that was a real turning point for us. Maybe she was like, OK, > maybe you’re not going to grow out of this thing that I was trying > to protect you from, maybe this is something I should be supportive > of and let you have. At the same time, there was a part of me that > was like, “Maybe you were right about 95 per cent of the things > you warned me about.” Now that I’m older, I can see why > she was the way she was in a way that I just couldn’t when I was > younger. You’ve also written recently, for Harper’s Bazaar, > about your relationship with your father. Your writing about your > mother bears a sense of tribute, a spirit of eulogizing. How were > the stakes different writing about your dad, who is still living? > There’s less time to understand exactly how I feel. You know, my > mom died almost seven years ago, and I’ve had more time away from > that experience—and have spent more actual time writing about it. > My estranged relationship with my dad is pretty new. It’s harder > for me to approach it with the compassion with which I approach > writing about my mom. But I also think it’s less straightforward. > , there’s not much to argue about with > actual grief. I don’t fear people misunderstanding the book. > Making the decision to be estranged from my father is more up for > debate. People have more of an opinion about it, and that makes it > scarier. It’s complicated. I’m still very emotional about it, > more sensitive about it, weirdly. Someone wrote a think piece about > that talked about how I wasn’t > being fair to my father, and it freaked me out. You know, the New > York Times reached out to him . He’s > supposedly read the book—I don’t think he actually did—but > they got a quote from him, and I was really upset. I felt like I had > been so generous in what I had been willing to share in both the > interview and in the book. I had created a boundary they still felt > they needed to cross. So, something I had been really excited about > became this shameful, devastating thing. Since that happened, I > think I’ve realized I’m not ready, or I need to become a > stronger person, or I need some more distance from it. I feel a lot > of guilt still, which I was able to let go of with my mother. Over > time, maybe I’ll have a better understanding of it. I recently did > another interview with a writer who told me she wrote about things > she was scared of, that writing was a way of unscaring herself, > facing her fears. Do you find that to be useful? I do. I think > that’s why I wrote that Harper’s Bazaar piece. Knopf and my > agent were both like, Are you sure you want to come out with this > right before your book comes out? My thought process was that—it > really scares me. I was really scared of putting it out in the > world. But it was also exciting, because I thought that was why it > could be really good. I’d never seen someone talk about this, and > I think a lot of people probably go through it. This girl I know > wrote to me this really long story about her father, who, after her > mother passed away, did a very similar thing, and it really put a > strain on their relationship. Even after I had that horrible think > piece written about how unfair I was , and which I felt > so misunderstood and fucked up about, getting that message made it > so worth it, knowing that someone else was so fucking lonely and > confused about this experience and got some comfort from it. I think > that’s what drew me to writing this book in the first place. I was > able to purge a lot of feelings. It was less about fear, maybe, and > just that I was fucking confused. It was a whirlwind of stuff that > had happened in a six-month period of time and I needed to write it > down to make sense of it. There was a real feeling of, like, I need > everyone to know what I went through. I felt like no one could see > or know what I had went through unless I put it down in this > particular way. That, more than fear, was what propelled me—what > “propelled” me? —what was the force behind this book. > What are you writing now? I don’t want to do anything for a while. > Between the album and the book and the soundtrack I’m putting out > later this year—it’s been such a whirlwind of press. I’m > getting ready for tour, and lots of stupid livestream videos, and > I’m trying to just not have a project for a while. I’d like to > write some shorter, fluffier stuff—something that’s not like, > unpacking trauma. My UK press person was like, we’re trying to > pitch some stuff, do you have any ideas? I pitched an idea about a > short essay about my relationship with chess. Like everyone, during > the pandemic I watched The Queen’s Gambit, but when I was younger, > from fourth to seventh grade, I was a big chess player. I went to > clubs, I like, saw a Russian tutor, I went to tournaments and stuff. > I think a lot of people go through this experience of like, > they’re naturally gifted at something but they’re not > exceptional. Confronting that early on in your life—like, when you > get to that ten percent of the top people , it’s > impossible. My father- in-law was almost a professional soccer > player and didn’t quite make it. It’s like the gymnast who’s > extremely talented but then suffers an injury or something. Those > types of first loves, I think of them as little deaths in our lives, > and I’m curious how they impact people, where they live inside of > us. I’m also interested in having something in my life that is > just pure hobby, because everything I’ve done has become, weirdly, > my job in some way. So I’ve started playing online chess and > really enjoying it. But they didn’t want it! They were like, Can > you write about your estranged father again? I don’t want > to! I want to write about my Russian chess tutor. I feel like I’ve > unpacked enough trauma for a lifetime. Now I can write something a > little gentler and cuter.Interview
03.06.21
‘Oral History is Its Own Source’: An Interview with Sarah SchulmanBy Kelly Roberts
The author of Let the Record Show on AIDS activism, gossip, andcollective memory.
> Here’s what I would have done in pre-COVID times: I’d have left > my apartment in Brooklyn and biked over the Manhattan Bridge, down > Allen Street, past the Bluestockings book store, until I reached > Sarah Schulman’s East Village apartment. The building is an old > six-floor walkup, and it’s made up of a mix of old-timers who have > been there for decades and inexplicably well-to-do > twenty-somethings. Sarah would leave the door slightly ajar for me > to enter and, after a warm hiiiiii come in, she’d remind me to > take off my shoes. But today we talk on the phone. We’re talking > about her new book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act > Up New York, 1987-1993 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Let the Record > Show is the culmination of nearly forty years of activism, > journalism, nonfiction writing, fiction writing, filmmaking, and > oral history work. The book synthesizes 188 interviews that Schulman > has collected along with Jim Hubbard and James Wentzy over the past > twenty years in the ACT UP Oral History Project. In contrast to > historical accounts that privilege a unified, authoritative > narrative, Schulman approaches her political history with a > novelist’s understanding of the complexities of character, action, > and consequence. As much as possible, she sets the scene for ACT UP > members to describe their participation in their own words. But > neither is she a distanced, objective observer: she was a > participant-witness, and her own experiences—particularly as a > reproductive rights activist and a girl reporter—shape her > analysis of ACT UP’s political history and significance. At its > height, ACT UP NY drew in 500-700 people to the Monday night > meetings, and there were dozens of affinity groups working > simultaneously on a wide range of projects, campaigns, and actions: > making needle exchange legal in New York City, establishing housing > for people with AIDS, ending insurance exclusion for people with > AIDS, and changing the CDC’s definition so that women could get > access to benefits and drug trials, to name just a few. Let the > Record Show preserves the spirit of ACT UP’s single statement of > unity and purpose: “The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power is a > diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and > committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.” By and large, > her work shows, this description was true. Sarah Schulman has been > described as one of the most “underrated” writers in the US and > (ironically) as “the lesbian Susan Sontag.” She’s always been > out in her work and has always featured queer—especially > lesbian—protagonists. Forty years into her career, though, we may > be having a long overdue “Schulmanaissance,” as Emily Gould puts > it. Having published twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, she is > one of our most formidable contemporary intellectuals and an > essential recorder of queer and activist histories. I first met > Sarah in a discussion about her book Gentrification of the Mind: > Witness to a Lost Imagination. The conversation challenged me > intellectually and politically. As our conversations continued, I > came to recognize this feeling of gratifying challenge as part of > the Schulman-effect. Sarah is a talking encyclopedia of queer and > New York history. Our conversation spins through many of the people > and events that propel the book. Because I am always running to > catch up to ideas she has been formulating for decades, I never > leave our conversations in the same place I started. To talk with > her from across a queer generational divide is to receive something > simple but transformative: information and responsibility. Kelly > Roberts: You aim to record ACT UP members in their own words. The > book is organized around people and experiences, not strict > chronology. How did you arrive at this structure? Sarah Schulman: > The way that I write is that the discovery is in the writing, so I > don’t usually know things before. And I’ve written a lot of > formally inventive novels, and I’ve been looking at experimental > film for thirty-something years. The first realization came when Jim > did the film , and we went to funders. > They said, to do a documentary film, you need to take five or six > individuals and take them on a journey. And Jim said, “no, we > can’t do that, because that’s not what happened.” So I already > knew from the beginning that it was going to be the history of the > group. Then I realized I couldn’t tell it chronologically because > it wouldn’t be accurate. So much happened simultaneously and > overlapped, and that is what made it work. Many ACT UP members had > died before you started the interview project. How did this absence > influence your approach to the book? Not only had many people > died, but every woman with HIV had died, except for one. So what I > did was, I recreated what I call “a landscape of disappearance and > apparition,” which are these remembrances of people who died. But > they’re not uniform. I wanted the form of the book to reveal and > express some of the emotional experience of being in ACT UP. That to > me is the point of formal invention. It expresses experience instead > of describing it. Some of the remembrances are quite long and > detailed and some are very brief. And that’s how it was in ACT > UP—somebody might die who you knew well, and somebody might die > who you talked to once. Why did you approach this political history > at the level of character? To just say that the group did something > doesn’t explain what happened—you have to say what the people > did and how they understand it. So there’s two parts: what they > say they did and how they understand what they say they did. Oral > history is its own source. It’s not a proof of anything except > what people said. But there’s a collective energy to that. > Previous histories have focused on like five people; I mention 140. > I tried to say even just a few words about who they were before > their experiences in ACT UP, because then you find out quite a bit. > People come from some very interesting, different places, and that, > I felt, was significant. If history takes place in personal > experience and interpersonal relationships, how did you navigate the > line between gossip and history? Well, what’s the difference? Good > question. I think we’re used to histories that don’t take > relationships into account, and those histories are incomplete. This > is not the first popular history. But because of the gay aspect, > there’s a dishiness to everything, there’s a camp quality or > aesthetic. And relationships are verrrrry important. There’s a > book, Personal Politics by Sara Evans, about how the feminist > movement came out of the civil rights movement. I read it when it > first came out, and it put relationships in the forefront as motive > for political insight. But most histories don’t do that. What did > you think were some of the difficult histories here? The theft of > ACT UP money, dishonesty about status, and the working relationship > between Gay Youth and NAMBLA —those come to mind. I’ve already done like fifteen > interviews. No one has mentioned . Well, maybe once. > But it shows overall that this was not respectability politics at > all. It was extremely messy. It was very human. I mean it’s about > people dying. It was a very vulnerable, bodily event occurring > within a highly sexualized and abandoned community. There’s a lot > of humanity, and I’m just showing it. There’s a desire to punish > and repress contradiction and pain and all of that. I guess that’s > part of what’s called respectability politics, and I think it’s > destructive. Did coming back to this book after writing Conflict Is > Not Abuse help to clarify the shape the book needed to take? I think > it’s the other way around. People in ACT UP were doing the right > thing; the government was doing the wrong thing. When ACT UP tried > to make the government do the right thing, we would get arrested. So > that’s the structure of Conflict is Not Abuse: that when you > resist something that is unjust, then you become stigmatized and > punished. So that was a lived experience. At one point in the book, > Garance Franke-Ruta says that conflicts turned inward. You have this > section of archived notes from the “Tell It To ACT UP” > newsletter—a place where people shared opinions and criticism > outside of the regular meeting space. You called it Twitter before > Twitter. Did these alternative lines of communication and inward > reflections lead to productive conversations? Well, I think what > Garance says is that she thinks we all went crazy. And I would agree > with that. It depends. I mean some of them are anonymous. But I > think the people who really could express themselves clearly on the > floor did not use TITA. It was the place for people to speak who > didn’t speak on the floor. “Tell It To ACT UP,” you know, what > I think is the most interesting thing about that section is that the > things are all written by people who are not in the book. It’s a > whole new group of people. Who are these people? Many of these > people I don’t even know who they are. So it’s like it was a way > for people who were not leaders to express themselves. There’s > always a movement between the daily grind of organizing and a > historical spark that allows a movement to take off. What allowed > ACT UP to gain momentum in these years? The zeitgeist is a big > factor. AIDS is identified in 1981. In the first five years, 40,000 > people die. The government does nothing. The gay community is > abandoned by familial homophobia. People are totally in chaos. Then > there’s the Bowers v. Hardwick decision where the Supreme Court > upholds the sodomy law. So you have this community that needs help > from the government, and they’re being told that anal sex is still > illegal. There are demonstrations, and you have a political airing > of a certain anger in the midst of all of this death and state > oppression. There’s the action by the Lavender Hill Mob, where > Marty Robinson and Michael Petrelis dress up in concentration camp > uniforms and scream at the CDC. Then Larry Kramer gives a very good > speech. The SILENCE=DEATH poster had gone up a few weeks before. > Then people are like, OK, let’s do it. The longer history is that > some people who came to ACT UP had been in previous political > movements. Movements are not discrete. Gay movements are usually > understood as coming from nowhere, because gay people in previous > movements were usually in the closet. But nevertheless, gay people > come from these previous movements. People came from student > movements in Latin America, from Black movements, from sectarian > Leftist movements, the reproductive rights movement, the women’s > peace movement. Those people came in with very specific skills that > really influenced and informed the structure of the organization. > How did cultural and social scenes around ACT UP play a role in your > work? In the 1980s, every part of the apparatus of power is white > and male: the art world, the media, the government, the private > sector. If you look back at the art element of ACT UP, if you look > only at galleries, you only get white males. But if you look at > things like nightlife or performance art in Asian gay clubs, then > you get people of color and women. Those milieus were stratified. > The Clit Club and Meat, which was the men’s night of Clit Club > that was held in the same space, were both run by people of color > who were in ACT UP, and they became extensions of ACT UP in a sense. > In many ways this is a how-to book: how to do recon at the stock > exchange, how to xerox fake IDs, how get the right screws to unhinge > the Statue of Liberty for a banner drop. What are some of the most > important practical organizing lessons here? The most important > lessons are: don’t use consensus—have radical democracy, > big-tent politics, and simultaneity of response; direct action, not > social services; theory emerges from the action, not before; and you > have to create your own solutions to problems instead of being in an > infantilized relationship to power. Women and people of color: do > not waste your time trying to have consciousness raising for white > people and men—just marshal their resources to get your projects > accomplished. What have you seen that’s been effective recently > and why? I don’t want to answer it that way. Let me say what > resonates now, what’s interesting. In ACT UP, there were 148 > chapters, but they were not coordinated. You could be in ACT UP, and > you could really do what you needed to do. You didn’t need > permission. It wasn’t like a political party. That’s sort of > what’s going on now with the anti-police violence movement. Each > city, each community, is having very a localized response to police > violence, is producing its own local leaders. The media is not > covering those local leaders, and they’re not covering the local > strategies and demands. But they’re different from place to place > and milieu to milieu. And that’s the right way to do it. In > Gentrification of the Mind, you said that you predicted the big era > of gentrification would come to an end, that we’d be able to > historicize it. Right, because of the crash, 2008, yeah. I was > completely wrong. Right. Where do you see the era of gentrification > now? Do you think that with a growing emphasis on local actions and > multi-issue politics, more people are beginning to imagine a > political future on different terms? Well, gentrification is very > complicated right now, because, in New York City, for example, > there’s a lot of empty real estate. But because the prices won’t > come down, it can’t be accessed. So, we have empty storefronts, > empty offices, empty apartments all over the city that nobody can > afford. So that’s where government needs to step in. It’s not > like there’s no housing stock. I don’t know. I don’t know what > the post-COVID thing is. But looking at the New York mayoral > election I think is a very good barometer. The outcome will tell you > where we’re going. You follow the contradictions of an > Insider/Outsider strategy, where some people get inside and have > conversations with people with power while other people exert > pressure from outside. Well, sometimes people who are inside are > also outside in the streets screaming and getting arrested too. But > because of the demographic of power at the time, the only people > that people in power could identify with were people from their own > class, race, and gender. So those are the people who were able to > communicate with each other, but the thing that gave them legitimacy > was the power of the outside. Jim Eigo describes this very well. I > juxtapose three campaigns. I show T&D going into meetings with pharma, sitting at the table. > Then I show the women’s campaign that couldn’t get a meeting for > two years. Then I show the drug campaign, which was total > chaos—people stealing, people OD-ing, everything. I raise the > question, if the rest of us were the ones who went inside, would we > have gotten anywhere? I think that’s a totally legitimate > question. Tell me more about experimental trial 076 for pregnant > women with HIV, to track mother to infant transmission. There are a > lot of moving parts here about race, gender, and consent, and it > sparked debate about strategy and values. There’s a lot of things > going on there. One is that the population involved was mostly poor > women of color who were HIV positive and who were pregnant. Some > didn’t find out they were HIV positive until they were pregnant, > and many felt guilty. That is a force that makes people agree to be > in a trial that could save their child from AIDS, but it could make > it impossible for the woman to take a new class of drugs. To be a > good mother, you sacrificed your life for your child, right? But is > that consent? This goes back to the early reporting I did on > pediatric AIDS, where infants born HIV positive, who were mostly > people of color and poor, were put in placebo trials. I thought that > both of these things were wrong, because I had been in the > reproductive rights movement. I had been in the anti-sterilization > movement, where women—this same group of women—in previous > generations were sterilized against their will. The issue of poor > women of color having real consent was something that everyone who > had been in the reproductive rights movement was very sensitive to. > And then there’s this other issue of women as “vectors of > infection,” which we had already seen with sex workers. Women were > seen as “vectors of infection” to men or children, not as people > with AIDS deserving of treatment. There’s also the fact that those > women were not getting any healthcare except by being in a trial. So > there’s that, which is completely real. There’s no such thing as > good medicine in the United States, so you’re in situations that > are absurd. Sharon Tramutola says that for some people in ACT UP, > government neglect was new, while other people always “knew the > system stunk.” Ray Navarro was also critical of the “drugs into > bodies” slogan because it didn’t take into account historical > oppression. How did the debates about treatment and access > anticipate the way the HIV/AIDS crisis looks in the present? Early > people, like Vito Russo—who didn’t have health insurance—they > were more radical. They came from gay liberation, and they had a > vision of healthcare for all. “Drugs into bodies” came with the > second iteration. They had access, they had insurance, they had good > doctors. Moisés Agosto-Rosario discusses this, Sharon Tramutola > discusses this, Rick Loftus discusses this. But it’s hard to say. > ACT UP did the best they could, and they accomplished an amazing > amount of things. But they couldn’t overcome capitalism, that’s > really the punchline. In your conclusion, you share your own > difficulties with gender biases in healthcare and consider the > legacy of the campaign to change the CDC’s definition of AIDS to > include women. What is the significance of that campaign? That in a > way is ACT UP’s most far-reaching success, because today any woman > in the world with HIV who takes a drug, is taking something that was > tested on women. After the Thalidomide scandal of the 1960s, > pharmaceutical companies were sued, and women were banned from > experimental trials. It may not be to the extent that we wish, and > there are still different problems of viral suppression in woman and > men, but that change now affects every HIV-positive woman in the > world. But as Terry McGovern points out, in timelines of AIDS > history, they show Rock Hudson, but they don’t show the CDC > definition change. You conclude with “the enduring relationship of > AIDS,” keeping the physical, emotional, and political aftermaths > of this moment tied together. What narratives were you working > against? I was following César Carrasco. He’s talking about the > myth of resilience: just because people are alive doesn’t mean > they survived. There’s the loneliness of that generation, and many > people of that generation have had drug problems, and many are > depressed. He also talks about the Latino Caucus, he names like > twenty-five people. And he’s like, why couldn’t you ever see us? > We were there! And I end up in this phlebotomy lab with this nurse > who’s my age, and she’s also a veteran of AIDS, and there we > are. Or my acupuncturist. You know, we’re these old people, and > we’re these veterans of AIDS, and we have private conversations > about what we experienced. And that’s where it ended, because > that’s where it is. This is a 700-page book with no unnecessary > page. There’s much more to discuss. What was an under-represented > or under-theorized ACT UP action or campaign that excited you when > you were writing the book? The solidarity with Haitians is so > important, and that overlaps with housing. That’s incredible. The > fact that gentrifiers became housing activists because they were > personally affected by AIDS—that’s amazing. I love Santa has > HIV, the action at Macy’s by Action Tours. I mean who has heard of > Action Tours? But they did all these crazy actions, with Jamie Leo > dressing up as a priest, and the police thinking he actually is a > priest, and he’s screaming. All of that, I love all of that stuff, > and I’m so happy to be able to show it. And Karin Timour and her > amazing insurance campaign—hundreds of thousands of people have > gotten insurance because of this woman that no one’s ever heard > of! What was important for you in writing this work, and what has > surprised you in its reception? I don’t know. I’ve been writing > about this, doing this, my whole life. I started writing about AIDS > in 1982, when I was 24. Now I’m 62. This is an ongoing part of it > all. The most annoying thing that people have said is “you > foreground women and people of color.” That is completely false. I > simply say what they did and what white men did. That’s it. I > would say that’s the predominant misreading. The thing with me is, > I’m a novelist, so my nonfiction books work cumulatively. There > are tropes and arguments that build as you read. I actually work > with the form of nonfiction. There was a book called Parting the > Waters by Taylor Branch, and it was an analysis of the strategies of > the civil rights movement. I read it when it came out, and it really > influenced me a lot. There are certain books like The Rise and Fall > of the Third Reich, Parting the Waters, there are these histories > that can only be written by people who have some kind of proximity > to the events, and otherwise it gets lost. And I hope that this is a > book like that.Interview
01.06.21
‘A Woman Tells War Differently’: An Interview with Kim EchlinBy Nathania Gilson
The author of Speak, Silence on a writer’s responsibility as a witness, the unexpressed history of war, and carrying a feeling of home while witnessing the world. > Kim Echlin’s fifth novel, Speak, Silence (Hamish > Hamilton) explores what war does to women, and seeks out the > stories that exist, decades later, behind the frontlines: in homes, > courtrooms, and offices. At the turn of the millennium, Gota, a > Canadian travel journalist and single mother, accepts a job to write > about the annual Sarajevo Film Festival. It’s a welcome > opportunity to pursue some light travel writing and reconnect with > her long-time love interest Kosmos. Soon enough, though, Gota’s > trip turns into something much more significant: uncovering the > fallout of the Bosnian and Yugoslav wars, which took place between > 1992 and 1995, and witnessing a landmark international tribunal on > war crimes against women at The Hague. Inspired by—and containing > material from—the Foča case at The Hague, the novel blends > unchanged courtroom testimonials from women who survived war crimes > with a fictional account of life as an outsider in early 2000s > Bosnia. After Gota arrives in southeastern Europe from Canada, she > finds herself in a love triangle with Kosmos and Edina, who runs a > documentation center to record the statements of women who survived > the war. Edina also happens to be Kosmos’s true love, but she > eventually makes friends with Gota when she becomes the subject of > an essay Gota is writing on the tribunal. The trial at The Hague, > which happened in 2000, lasted nine months, and the mandate by the > International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) > lasted from 1993 to 2017. Judges were appointed from 52 nations and > 900 people from around the world worked in the courts. An > international team of lawyers and researchers also travelled around > the world to find women—refugees of the war—who found the > courage to revisit those memories and testify in court. By drafting > statutes, listing crimes, and then persecuting those crimes, > legislative change began to take shape. Although rape had long been > considered a violation of human rights, it hadn’t yet been > criminalized or considered a crime against humanity. These trials > helped set a new precedent. The women—survivors whose lives > changed historically, politically, and socially—were burdened > with an inter-generational legacy of physical and emotional trauma. > By being given the opportunity to voice their experiences in court > and on the record, those responsible for crimes committed were held > accountable. Speak, Silence has been a decade in the making, > involving travel, consulting with women who had lived experience of > the war crimes, and reading thousands of pages of testimonies from > the trials. “To be able to write about these war crimes means > having an awareness of that line between research and the truth > that's already on the record,” Echlin tells me, speaking from her > home in Toronto about the process of separating experience from > knowledge when writing about war. “But it’s also about the > empathy needed in order to enter into the imaginative space when > you're creating a novel.” Echlin and I also spoke about how long > it takes for change to happen, having visceral proof of your culture > being erased, and who gets to be remembered as heroic. Nathania > Gilson: What was your research process for this book? Kim Echlin: > The research for a book like this is intense. I’ve been working on > it for 10 years. In the early days of the research, it was focused > on finding out about the International Criminal Court (ICC). There > were a lot of Canadians involved in these courts as interpreters and > case managers. And I am of a generation that watched this war on > television. I had a small child when this war was being broadcast, > too. So I had a long association with the region. When the trial > started, I became fascinated with what was happening because this > was absolutely groundbreaking jurisprudence. For the first time in > human history, according to the law, war could not legally be fought > on a woman's body. And when I understood the magnitude of the shift > of consciousness around this, I thought, I really want to write > about this. So I visited The Hague. I saw the places where the > trials took place and talked to prosecutors and case managers there. > And a very transformative moment for me was a visit to Sarajevo and > Bosnia. I traveled with a former soldier who had also been a former > UN driver and was now running a tourism group focused on war > tourism. His company was called Funky Sarajevo Tours: Breaking > Prejudice. This man had lost his own brother in the war. He had > survived the war, gotten his family through the war, driven for UN > researchers, and was now continuing to be a kind of living memory of > the war for backpackers who were coming through. He's a marvelous > man. And then the other person who came on that trip with me was a > case manager from The Hague. He met me there and traveled with us. > We went to see the places that are mentioned in the novel; > Karaman’s house was one of them. I > also had the opportunity to visit The Association of Women Victims > of War—the NGO that works on prosecuting perpetrators in Bosnia > and gives information to international courts. I met with its > founder, Bakira Hasecic, there. That visit helped me learn about how > the research was done in terms of gathering the women's stories that > were then selected for the court case in The Hague. What was it like > speaking with the women who’d lived through this period of time? I > was very conscious of my responsibility as a witness in not being > part of any form of retraumatizing or exploitation of the women’s > stories. I only worked with Bakira, who herself was a war survivor. > I got the rest of the stories from the trial transcripts. There were > 2,000 pages of transcripts for this trial. These women had already > told their stories and told them in some detail. I didn’t feel it > would be worthwhile to ask them to repeat what they had already put > on the record. Through the process of writing this book, how did > your understanding of the legal system change? The Foča trial was > in the year 2000. The primary shift of consciousness embraced by > that trial is that sexual assault and war is now legally classified > as a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity is now also > part of the legal definition of genocide. By starting to put those > things together, you get a different pressure on war to respect the > rules of war: what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. This seems > contradictory but it's actually part of our international legal > system. If we're to look at the fact that sexual assault and war is > now a constitutive part of genocide and a crime against humanity > when we look at what is happening among the Rohingya people, or > China's northwest Xinjiang region, where women are being > systematically sexually assaulted in order to perpetrate this > genocide against Muslims in the region, and in a number of African > countries, too, what we see is that while we have the law in the > books, we are still not enforcing that law. There’s two important > things to remember: we have the law on the books, and we can think > about enforcing it globally. Twenty years is a long time to wait > for change to happen, but it's not 2,000 years. I’m thinking of > people who might be too intimidated to engage with the subject of > war crimes in fiction. Just as many of us have read The Iliad. We > read it as a work of art but we also read it as something that > describes war and how people felt about war at that time. In > contemporary writing we can strive to do that as well—we can > strive to recreate war in an imaginative space. This isn't epic > poetry but the novel can help people better imagine what we're > actually trying to think about. There are lots of poets, writers, > and thinkers you quote in this novel. One of them is Virginia Woolf, > toward the end of the book: “The public and private worlds are > inseparably connected. . . .the tyrannies and servilities of one are > the tyrannies and servilities of the other.” How did you decide > whose voices to channel to bring the ideas in this book to life? > Virginia Woolf is just a perennial favorite of mine! But that quote > is so central to the thought change in this book because what it > does is it brings this book into our own households. If we haven’t > experienced war firsthand, we have definitely experienced tyranny > and servility in our own homes, and in our communities. That allows > us to imagine what it would be like in the public sphere. It allows > me to connect with you, it allows me to connect with a Bosnian > woman, it allows me to connect with a weaver from Northeast China. > It gives us the point of reference where we have all experienced > this core condition that allows bullying, war, or the different > kinds of degradation that happen among humans if they’re not > conscious. There are lots of vignettes going back to the main > character Gota’s childhood. Lots of scenes retelling fictionalized > family history. I wonder: why was it important for you to keep the > small details of everyday life in the book? Gota, when she reaches > back through the generations, understands that in her own family she > comes from a woman who was sexually assaulted and who dies during > childbirth. It's an experience that we can't say is over there or > far away. If we look carefully at our own stories, we're likely to > see that there are shared points of reference. Also, in the court > cases, it's important for the prosecutors to look at the expression > of genocide through three generations of women. In a genocide, what > you're doing is destroying past memories, the present, and the > possibility of a future. That’s why in the court case, they > constructed it around three women in the same family to have some > visceral proof of the attackers trying to wipe out their culture, > not just individual women. In Gota’s own story, she has a long and > unexpressed history of war and how women have lived > and coped with war in their own lives, even though she hasn't had it > in her generation. Her parents both experienced the second World > War. The idea was to ask the reader to consider that war is not so > far away from any of our lives. If we peel off some of the layers in > our own stories, we're bound to find it in our lives. What was your > interest in having travel or movement be such a big part of the > story? I think that the contemporary world is very interconnected. > And there are many people in the world now who identify with many > places in the world. Gota is able to travel quite easily for > education, or just to go to Paris to live for a few years to get > away from home and so on. But the other side of international travel > is actually international displacement, such as Bosnian women who > are forcibly displaced. The thing that connects them both, is that > wherever these women go, the notion of home that they have is > carried inside them. It's not a geographical place. Gota, she > carries her feeling of home inside while she's out witnessing the > world. Edina, the Bosnian woman in the book, goes home. She’s very > courageous, but her mother and daughter can never go home again. > They decide to live in Vienna. That's actually the true story of > most of the women who testified: they've set up in different parts > of the world. And the city where I live, Toronto, is a city where > 50 per cent of our population speaks a language other than English > or French at home. So when we step outside our door, we can—if > we're open—hear stories from all over the world. Many of these are > people who have been forcibly displaced. In a contemporary setting, > the idea of a story taking place across many places has become quite > familiar to us. You were trying to reflect the world we actually > live in. The other thing is the very idea of the International > Criminal Court, where you have legal representatives from around the > world. Over 123 countries were represented. The trials themselves > are international. They reflected an international consciousness > that was fairly new. They had to write laws specifically for these > courts so that everybody had the same rules and procedures. And > they're very careful that judges come from all of the participating > countries, and that prosecutors and defense lawyers come from > different parts of the world so that this is truly an international > reflection: what can we agree as a human species that we want the > law to be? What do you think are some of the stereotypes of being a > war reporter? How does Gota rise above this or challenge the public > perception of journalism, in the novel? Gota’s not really working > as a journalist before she starts covering the court case. She's not > really covering a war—she's covering a court case—because she > has a child to look after. So the question is: how does a single > woman who has a baby, keep working? She has a relationship with the > wonderful Jaques Payac, her editor at the magazine where she works. > He’s an amputee from his time as a war journalist. And he > understands that she can't do the kind of journalism that would > require her to be on the ground for long periods of time because > she's a mother. So, he gives her this to do instead. It's light > travel journalism. But then she has this alter ego, Joe de Pone, > when she's writing the serious pieces about what she really sees > when she's on these trips. Pone means penance and Jaques Payac has > given her this name for her serious work that invokes the idea of > doing penance: if you're going to go and witness the world, you also > need to do penance because you're watching from the outside and > you're not subject to it. She is deeply aware of this. When she goes > to cover the trial, she's doing it from the point of view of a > Torontonian or Canadian or Westerner who is watching a trial that > affects her in the sense that it's about crimes against women, but > she's also doing it from the point of view of her friend, Edina. > It’s not so much reporting on the trial as it is writing the story > of the trial from this double optic of a crime against her gender > and a friend who's been victimized by this crime. So there's more at > stake. Gota’s connectedness to the story is defined by the fact > that she's writing it as an essay. She has no aspiration to be > objective. She wants to tell the story of this trial as she sees it > with the consciousness of her friend woven into it. When I worked as > a journalist for a national public broadcaster, the guiding > principle was that you aim for a form of objectivity knowing that it > is impossible because we all come from our own biases. Have any > stories in the book been based on historical events that have been > off the record? All of the court details are on the record. The > novel is a fictionalized version of these transcripts which I read > very closely. So there’s no manipulation of voice or changing of > voice in these court transcripts at all. They're very, very close to > the original. In fact, anyone can go online and look up > “Kunarac Trial transcript.” You'll then find the transcripts > that I based my own court transcripts on. I was highly conscious of > not wanting to change either anyone’s testimony or the legal > process that happened. Even the forms of argument that happen in my > novel are the exact forms of argument that took place during the > trial. Anyone can verify that. There’s this really great line in > the book. One of the counsellors says it to reassure a woman who’s > scared to testify: “A person must be loyal to who they are, no > matter what happens.” I’m not sure if it’s from a transcript > or fictionalized, but I loved that line. It took me back to the > smallness and everydayness of living with the consequences of war. > One of the things I worked on during the writing of this book was > taking The Iliad as a classical model of an overstory. A woman tells > war differently. And she tells more through the details of daily > life, and through her preoccupation with her children and her > relationships. It's not that it's not the view of war that comes > from generals. I noticed that in the book, too: seeing the > documenting of war, or war crimes, as a job. But then also realizing > that at the same time people who are living with the aftermath of > these experiences still have things, or people, that they care > about. The meals they cook. The music they listen to. Things that > keep them going. And how you portray a woman who survives as heroic > because we don't traditionally think of these women as heroic. The > women themselves have insisted that they not be called victims. They > wanted to be called survivors. And then I wanted to show them as > heroic, not only in their ability to survive but in their ability to > be strong enough to tell this story, which is so full of shame. In > The Iliad, we don't consider it shameful when Hector’s corpse gets > dragged through the dust and is disemboweled. It’s so graphic: > there are descriptions of blood spilling out and broken bowels. This > is considered heroic poetry. These women said, our bodies are as > worthy as any soldier. And we have the courage to tell exactly what > happened to us. Which is what happens in the court case. I only used > small fragments of it in the novel, but throughout 2,000 pages of > documentation and testimony in the court case, those women described > precisely what happened to their bodies. This is heroic. And this is > breaking all the prejudices and boundaries of shame. This is them > saying, we deserve for our story to be told and put on the record. I > think a lot of what holds people back from speaking up is whether > that behaviour, or their response to it, would be considered > acceptable. Should it have happened in the first place? That is a > huge part of the courage and the testimony of these women. Because > a lot of these women, their families rejected them after > their experiences. Their families didn’t want anything to do with > them because of the shame. These women were even willing to risk > being rejected or not being believed. Some of them never were able > to go home to families after this. How did those women > rebuild their lives? Many of them lost most of their family. They > couldn't go home because there was no home to go . The war had > burned the farms. It’s hard to start over in the same place, > psychologically, when so much has been lost. So, instead, people > decided to start new lives to the best of their abilities. This > happens here in my own city, Toronto, where people come and begin > new lives out of difficult beginnings. Often, it’s to benefit the > next generation.Interview
26.05.21
‘Nobody’s Going to be Having Any Moral Epiphanies’: An Interview with Patrick Radden KeefeBy Matthew Braga
Talking to the author of Empire of Pain about the value of editors, the family name as a brand, and the feeling of getting your hands onthe hot docs.
> There is a harrowing scene midway through Empire of Pain (Bond > Street Books), every sentence slick with danger and dread. It is an > April morning in 1995. Inexperienced workers at a New Jersey > chemical plant have been tasked with mixing volatile chemicals they > scarcely know or understand. And on this particular day, the mix > goes terribly wrong. “The chemicals were smouldering and bubbling, > like the contents of some infernal cauldron, and emitting this > sickening, noxious smell,” the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe > writes. Temperature and pressure begin to climb. A chemist later > compares the brew to a hydrogen bomb. Soon, the smell is so > overwhelming, so odious, that it becomes clear something must be > done. Seven men go back into the plant to try to clean the mess up. > Radden Keefe’s description of the chaos is so visceral that I was > immediately reminded of a particularly distressing moment in > HBO’s Chernobyl, when members of the cleanup crew race to shovel > radioactive debris off the ruined reactor’s roof. Inside the New > Jersey chemical plant, a similar threat is unfolding: urgent, > palpable, and invisible to the untrained eye. As the men inside the > plant begin to empty the smouldering vat, the mixture begins to > hiss. Then it explodes. Five people died, forty people were injured, > and incredibly, the owners of the facility felt no responsibility at > all. As Radden Keefe recounts repeatedly over hundreds of > meticulously researched and detailed pages, for the Sackler family > this is something of a theme. Empire of Pain is a book about > dynasties and legacies, about cycles repeated across time and > lineage, and the lengths that powerful people will go to hold onto > their power. It is a story about a name, and how for decades, the > Sackler name adorned countless museums and schools across the world > while obscuring the source of their immense philanthropic wealth. It > is a story about OxyContin, the powerful opioid created, marketed, > aggressively sold and defended by the Sacklers, and the opioid > crisis they helped create and sustain. It is a story about a family > more concerned with status and standing—with how they should be > perceived, be remembered—than the impact of the drugs from which > they made their fortune. It is a story shrouded in secrecy and > obfuscation, one that starts with Arthur Sackler, born in 1913. > Radden Keefe has made a career out of finding the messy truths at > the heart of sprawling mysteries, of pulling the most thrilling, > revealing threads. Empire of Pain is based on a story he first > wrote for The New Yorker. Last year he hosted an eight-part > podcast that asks: what if the CIA wrote the Scorpion’s hit metal > power ballad “Wind of Change”? Denial is a frequent theme, and > the stakes are often high; Say Nothing, his last book, was about > the Troubles and the IRA. His writing is vivid, gripping, and hard > to put down; he knows how to tell a compelling story, how to put us > inside people’s heads. That skill is of particular importance > in Empire of Pain—a book whose main subjects were not merely > reluctant but unwilling to speak with the author. Thankfully, Radden > Keefe does not share the Sacklers’ penchant for silence, and spoke > with me via phone late last month. Matthew Braga: I saw on Twitter > that you had come down with COVID. How are you feeling? Patrick > Radden Keefe: I'm fine. I'm better. Thank you. I was sick last > week, right around the time the book was published. So I've been > kind of isolating. I'm sitting in my backyard right now, away from > my family. But my symptoms are not bad at all, and I'm actually out > of isolation tomorrow. So I'm fine, thank you. Say Nothing came out > in 2019. Wind of Change came out in 2020. Now you have Empire of > Pain. It's an incredible amount of output, and as someone who > frequently feels like I'm not being productive enough, or writing > enough, or publishing enough, I wonder if I could ask you: how? It's > been a busy few years, definitely. But it's a little bit misleading, > because Say Nothing took me four years, during which time I didn't > take leave from the New Yorker. So I was working on this book on > the side, but I basically had a full-time day job. And then when > that came out, I decided to write the Sackler book and do Wind of > Change pretty close in time. At that point, I realized I couldn't > stay at the New Yorker. I had to take a leave. I like having > different projects so that if I hit a dead end in one, rather than > just kind of mope around and feel sorry for myself, I can turn my > energies to another one. So it was really helpful for me to have the > podcast going while I was working on this book, particularly because > the podcast is just so fun and collaborative, and the stakes felt > lower. Are you saying that you don't ever still mope around and feel > sorry for yourself? Oh I do . Believe me, I've been feeling > very sorry for myself for the last week with my extremely mild case > of COVID. But I think the pandemic affected different people > differently. And for me, what it did was it just kind of wiped the > slate clean in terms of plans. And that ended up being an > opportunity. I had not a lot going on, I couldn't leave my house, > and by an excellent coincidence of timing, I had done a lot of the > research already. So really all there was left to do was just write > the damn book. Secrecy figures prominently in Empire of Pain, and > also in Say Nothing, Wind of Change, and the work that you've done > previously—secrecy in terms of worlds and occupations, but also > secrecy as a human trait. What it is about secrecy that fascinates > you? Why is that a well you keep returning to? I don't really have a > good answer for it. It's funny, because in my writing, I am always > looking for these rosebud moments in the lives of characters that > help explain who they are. And I stumbled on that moment when Isaac > Sackler tells his son the importance of a good name. He > knows it's the most important thing. That becomes this key that > helps me understand them. But I'm not as good at identifying those > moments in my own life. Some of it is probably a stubbornness on my > part where, if there's something I'm not supposed to know, I want to > know what it is. But I'm also interested in the dynamics of secrecy > in a community, in a family, and even on a national level. I'm > interested in the stories that people tell themselves about the > choices they've made. I want to know the story they tell themselves > when they look in the mirror. You can also ask those kinds of > questions about a nation looking at its own history and how it > accounts for choices that have been made at a national level. You > mentioned that rosebud moment of Isaac Sackler conferring the value > of a good name. I was so struck by how good of a frame that was to > look at the family through. It’s so simple, but so powerful in its > simplicity. When do organizing principles, or threads like that, > typically emerge in the process? Was that something that you had > very early on? Or was that an “ah-ha!” moment later on, like you > had with Say Nothing? It was fairly early on in my research. I > don't really have a technique per se, other than to just do as much > reporting as possible, and to report as widely and as deeply as I > can. And I know those details when I see them. It's my favourite > thing, honestly, certainly professionally and possibly in > life—that moment when you're in the midst of reporting and then > there's just this thunderclap moment when you discover something. > And in that case, I knew that Arthur Sackler had donated money to > have this library with the Sackler name at Tufts University in the > 1980s. Arthur didn't give all that many interviews in his life, and > I thought I had them all. But it turned out that there was this > newspaper at Tufts that had done a special issue in which they > covered the opening of this Sackler building. Arthur gave a one-page > interview—this is, like, something on microfilm, and I think I got > somebody to PDF it and send it to me—and in that interview Arthur > tells this story about his father. And as I was reading it, I knew, > “This is it. You have to tell the story early in the book.” > Because it explains this kind of bizarre family attribute that you > then see manifested over three generations. That idea of a name and > the legacy it can confer, the values that it can confer upon the > wearer… once you started thinking about that as a frame, did you > start to look at your own world differently? Your own family > differently? Your friends? Oh, that’s so interesting. I don't know > that I did. I have an extremely common name, so I don't know that I > ever had any sort of particular sense of a name as quite the > talismanic thing that it was for the Sacklers. What I became very > aware of after discovering that story about Isaac is you start > seeing this theme played out with different Sacklers. They talked > about it in this way that just seems very weird. I’ve never known > anybody to discuss carrying a name in quite that way. There's an > analogy that I didn't really think about much when I was writing the > book, but which a number of people have raised since the book has > come out, which is Donald Trump, and that idea of the name as brand. > On the other hand, it wasn't far into the book before the > dysfunction of the family in HBO’s Succession popped into my > brain, and I'm glad to see it was mentioned in the book as well. Do > you have the sense that the world of Succession is even on any of > their radars? One thing that I puzzled over in this book with the > younger generation of Sacklers was how anybody could be so > un-self-aware. I imagine they would watch something > like Succession and think that it couldn't possibly have any > comparison to them, because they're all very serious people who are > really brilliant and bear no resemblance whatsoever to the pampered > idiots in that show. The funny thing for me was three sources, > totally independently, compared the experience of working for the > family and the company to living inside that show. Denial has always > been a subject I've been very interested in. And part of what's so > intriguing to me about the Sacklers, as personalities, is that they > believe that I'm wrong, and that The New York Times is wrong, > and The Wall Street Journal is wrong, and The Washington Post is > wrong. And the 49 states that are suing their company are wrong, and > the congressional investigators are wrong. And all the books are > wrong. And all the studies are wrong—that they're just terribly > misunderstood. By the end of the book I was left with a feeling of, > well, if everything up until this point hasn't spurred some > introspection—if even the arrival of this book doesn't spur > introspection—then what will? I think that's exactly right. In > recent years there's been a very slight recasting of their public > persona, their kind of public posture on this issue, where they're > saying, “Oh, we feel great compassion. We care about the opioid > crisis. It is very regrettable that there has been a loss of life > associated with our product”—all this kind of carefully scripted > stuff. And what I found so revealing is I got these private emails > from just a few years ago—like 2019, 2018, where privately, > Jacqueline Sackler is saying, “our family’s done nothing > wrong,” and Mortimer Sackler Jr. is saying, “the so-called > opioid crisis.” Their willingness to cynically recast the talking > points, just to the degree that they think is necessary—which is > to say, like, “We accept no responsibility, we make no apologies. > But opioid crisis, sad”—inclines me to think that nobody's going > to be having any moral epiphanies anytime soon. I just don't think > they're capable of it. You combed through so many documents for this > book. The Sacklers also wouldn't speak to you, wouldn't answer your > questions. What was different this time, compared to some of the > work you've done in the past, in trying to peel back those layers of > secrecy? It actually wasn’t that different. The idea of a big, > formidable reporting project in which there's a story that I want to > tell that a variety of people who are characters in the story would > prefer that I not tell—that actually is pretty familiar territory > for me. One big thing that was different in this case was… I often > think about Robert Caro, who published a book about reporting and > writing while I was working on this project. And he has a line in > that book, where the advice that he gets as a young reporter from > some seasoned old newspaper man is, “turn every goddamn page.” > And it was funny, because I thought about Caro turning the LBJ > archive. Like, there’s millions of pages! It’s a daunting > prospect. And I was in a similar situation with this where, usually, > the problem is you want, as the lawyers call them, the hot docs. You > want the hot docs. You want to get your hands on the hot docs, and > there's never enough that you can get your hands on. In this case, > there were too many. It was overwhelming the amount of paper, and it > led to some really crazy, truly crazy moments in terms of reporting. > How so? At the risk of exposing what an obsessive maniac I am… at > a certain point fairly late in the game, I was close to done with > the book, and a source that I knew—a lawyer, who had been involved > with some litigation involving Purdue—called me up and said, “I > have 40 boxes of documents that I want to share with you. I'm going > to send them to your house.” And I got very excited at the > prospect of 40 boxes of documents. But the Sacklers had sent me > what's called a litigation hold, which means that a lawyer > representing the family basically said, “Look, we're probably > going to sue you. So don't destroy any of your files, any of your > emails, any of your text messages, any of that. You need to hold on > to everything until the day that we sue.” I had this conversation > with my wife and I said, “This guy is gonna send 40 boxes of > documents to the house, and we can never throw them away.” And she > was just like, “No, we cannot have 40 boxes of documents that we > just carry around with us indefinitely into the future. That's not > an option.” So I decided to go fly to the place where this guy > was—that way I could just go through the documents and they > wouldn't be in my possession—find what I needed, and then come > back. This is during the height of the pandemic. I spent four days > going through these 40 boxes of documents. And in the end, I didn't > use a single thing from any of them. But I also couldn't not go > through them, you know what I mean? Like if I hadn't done it, I'd > still be wondering now if there was some amazing little golden > nugget that I overlooked. The only way to figure that out is just > through brute force. It’s through turning every goddamn page. > We're talking about stuff that is very heavy on research, very heavy > on time. In this particular case, you have legal threats from the > Sacklers coming at you as well. I've been thinking a lot about how > folks are leaving jobs and going independent and starting > newsletters and going direct to their readers. I know you've been a > freelancer, and you also know how difficult it is to be a > freelancer, and I wonder, would you be able to do the kind of work > that you are doing today without the support of your editors? The > backing that you have of the institutions that you work for? Yeah, > not at all. Personally, I'm so grateful for my editors, that I think > I'd be very nervous about doing anything where I didn't have a > really astute editor coming in after me to protect me from myself. I > feel incredibly lucky to write for The New Yorker—both in the > sense of, the people that I'm working with are so resourceful and so > smart and make everything I do so much better. But also because > there's just a level of institutional support, that in the case of > the initial Sackler piece, yeah, it would have been very hard to do > that without my boss David , my editor Daniel Zalewski, and > our general counsel at The New Yorker, and all the fact checkers, > and everybody willing to stand by this piece of writing that made > some very powerful people very angry. And similarly with Doubleday, > they've been incredibly supportive since the beginning. I think the > Sacklers probably won't sue. But if they did, I'm confident that > Doubleday would be amazingly supportive through that process as > well. So I don't take for granted for a second the kind of > structural institutional advantages that allow me to do this work. > None of this is easy. And I'm not alone. I have very good supportive > people and resourceful people in my corner. In the book you detail > the level of obfuscation the Sacklers go through—certainly Arthur > Sackler—to obscure their various business ventures, the > connections between those ventures, the conflicts of interests, the > subterfuge. Would that be harder to pull off today? I think it would > be harder. Yeah. It would be a lot harder. I went through the files > of the Kefauver investigation , and I was just kind of amazed that, > in some of their internal reports, you have these senate > investigators from this pretty powerful committee. And they just had > some very baseline questions, where they were just saying, “Who > are these brothers? What's the scope of the stuff that they > control?” And I think that today, when you think about accessing > corporate registries and looking up identities that are associated > with particular addresses and so forth, there would be a level of > easy checkability that would probably make it hard to obscure things > to the extent that they did. That doesn't mean to say that they > wouldn't still be able to keep things pretty obscure. I mean, Arthur > Sackler had all these weird relationships where he would put > frontpeople in instead of himself, and he had all these handshake > deals, and that kind of stuff is not, I don't think, any more > legible today with the Internet and various databases for reporting > than it would have been back then. But I think in terms of the kind > of baseline questions, like, “Who’s this family? Where do they > live? Which businesses do they control? Here's this strange building > on 62nd Street; how many corporations are registered there?” Those > types of questions I think would be easier for reporters to answer > today. And congressional investigators. In a similar vein, I wonder > whether the ability to burnish your legacy in the same way would be > harder today? Would it be harder to build a legacy like that If you > were starting today? If you had started in the ’90s, let's say, or > the early ’00s? I don't know. What strikes me as significant, > though, is that with the Sacklers, it was kind of an open secret. > When I reported on the Sacklers in 2017, I was not the first person > to report that they were the owners of Purdue Pharma, this company > which had pled guilty to felony charges and had been so intrinsic in > helping start the opioid crisis. The truth was out there for anybody > who wanted to Google. And that was true in 2003, when Barry Meier's > book came out. It was true in 2015 when Sam Quinones’ book came > out. But even then, at a time when you had the Internet and stories, > if people cared to look, connecting the family to the opioid crisis, > they kind of managed to sort of stay above the fray. They had no > problems at any of the institutions. After my piece came out in > 2017, The New York Times contacted 21 cultural institutions, and > there wasn't a single one that put any distance between themselves > and the Sacklers. So I don't know that it's gotten that much harder. > Honestly, what really started bringing about some accountability in > the philanthropic sector for the Sacklers was Nan Goldin more than > anything else. And Nan Goldin is kind of lightning in a bottle. The > idea that you would have somebody happen along who was a revered > artist whose work really meant something in that world, who was > recovering herself from an OxyContin addiction, and who, because of > her experience during the AIDS crisis, had this history and taste > for and talent for activism… it's hard to dream up a more > threatening scenario for the Sacklers than Nan Goldin. Do you think > the names would have come down if not for her? I don’t. I think my > piece had an influence. And there was an Esquire piece that came > out at the same time. And I think that made a difference. And I > think that when the state of Massachusetts became the first state to > individually sue members of the Sackler family, that made a > difference. But I also think that it was Nan's willingness to be the > skunk at the garden party and actually show up at the Guggenheim and > show up at the Met and show up at the Louvre. And has that had a > knock-on effect? I remember around the same time I started to see > other artists say, “Okay, well now we have to do the same for > exhibitions and galleries that are funded by oil and gas money,” > for example. Has that ripple effect played out? This is the big fear > of the institutions. And I actually think this is part of the reason > the institutions have, in many cases, been reluctant to take any > bold steps when it comes to the Sacklers. They're worried that if > you start introducing an ethical litmus test to any money given to > arts organizations the arts might dry up altogether. And I think you > have started to see hard questions being asked. To what degree are > these types of institutions complicit in reputation laundering? To > what degree do they end up effectively co-signing on some of the > really repulsive behavior of the families and businesses that donate > to them? I don't, for a second, pretend that these are simple > issues. But I also feel as though we are living through a moment in > our culture in which this question of naming and legacies and the > kind of prerogatives and institutional approval that money can buy, > are being re-evaluated almost in real time. For all the people > affected by this crisis, people who have lost loved ones to opioids > who have struggled with addiction, what do you hope this book will > mean to them? After my piece in The New Yorker came out in 2017, I > started getting a lot of mail from people who had lost loved ones, > or who had struggled themselves with OxyContin or other opioids. I > got more mail about that piece than I've ever gotten about anything > I've ever written. And there was a pretty consistent strain in a lot > of these notes where people were just saying, “Thank you for > helping me understand the forces that my loved one was up > against.” With Purdue and OxyContin, there's this whole notion of > the drug abusers—as Richard Sackler called them, the reckless > criminals, the scum of the earth. And I think that's a powerful > idea, the idea that it's really entirely about the kind of personal > moral character and choices of individual consumers. And I also > think that's bullshit. I think that in the case of OxyContin, you > see lots and lots of people who had ready access to the drug > recreationally because it was flooding their communities, or who > were prescribed the drug in a doctor's care and found that there was > a sort of undertow, that they just couldn't control themselves and > their relationship to that drug. And if I can tell a story about the > huge juggernaut that those people were up against—between the > pharmaceutical company and all the pharmaceutical reps, and the > deceptive marketing, and the FDA being asleep at the switch, and the > Department of Justice not doing its job to hold the company > accountable in 2007, and on and on and on—that when you array all > of that systemic corruption, I think there are some individuals who > just don't stand a chance. And if that can bring some comfort to > people, that would mean a lot to me.Interview
25.05.21
‘Science Has to Have a Relational Connection to the World’: An Interview with Diane WilsonBy Sarah Neilson
Talking to the author of The Seed Keeper about the tragedies of modern agriculture, and restoring Indigenous foods to communities as one way of healing historical trauma. > The title of Diane Wilson’s sophomore book and debut novel, The > Seed Keeper (Milkweed, 2021), is already evocative on its own. > Seeds are powerful both in physical and metaphorical forms. These > small, dry vessels of genetic information carry profound memory, > they store the energy that will allow them to grow and provide > further nourishment, and their resilience across time and space is > unique. It is from these dormant but indefatigable seeds that Wilson > draws inspiration for her characters, novel, and life. The Seed > Keeper follows Rosalie Iron Wing, a Dakhota woman who, at the > outset, doesn’t realize that seeds are a big part of her > inheritance. Rosie, which she goes by, loses both of her parents and > comes of age in a brutal foster system. Finding relief and escape in > a summer job detasseling corn on the Meister farm, she sees John > Meister, the calm and steady white man who has inherited the > generations-old farm from his family, as an acceptable way not only > out of a life that doesn’t appear to have much to offer her, but > onto and into the land she feels drawn toward—“on a farm that > once belonged to the prairie.” As the story follows Rosie’s life > as a wife, mother, and, finally, seed keeper, it also tells other > stories: of ever-increasing divergence from a relationship with > nature (in the form of corporate agriculture), and of Rosie’s > ancestors, women who carried and cared for the seeds on which they > had come to be mutually dependent. The Seed Keeper is a beautiful > ensemble story about family, grief, reverence, and what it means to > live with, not just off, the land. “These seeds carry our stories; > they are witnesses to their own long history on this land,” Wilson > writes. Her knowledge of and love for plants is palpable in her > writing, as is her longtime work with nonprofits working toward > Indigenous food sovereignty—she is a board member of the Native > American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA). I spoke with Wilson on > Zoom about agriculture and food, capitalism, memory, and what it > means to come awake by fire. Sarah Neilson: I wanted to ask you > about the tension, or maybe not even tension but parallel existence, > of the ideas of “wild” and “domesticated.” The two show up > both literally and metaphorically, in people, animals, and plants. > There’s a line where Rosalie, who is pruning in an orchard, > narrates, “While my father believed that any plant not grown in > the wild was nothing more than a weak cousin to its truer self, my > years of caring for these trees had taught me differently.” Do you > think there is a tension between these ideas of wild and > domesticated? What does it mean to be or hold wildness? Diane > Wilson: The night before my book launch with All My Relations > Arts, there was a night of traditional storytelling. This was > actually one of the themes that came up in an old story and it has > to do with that idea of wildness. These plants, these seeds, have > agreed to surrender their wildness in exchange for a reciprocal > relationship with human beings. That made us mutually dependent on > each other; we care for the seeds, they help care for us. So it's a > really interesting tension and dynamic that happens between plants > that survive on their own in the wild, and then plants that have > agreed to be in relationship with human beings. That’s a big theme > in the book. The storytelling event had three different > storytellers. They told Lakota, Dakhota, and Ojibwe stories about > how corn came as a gift. These were stories that were told with such > reverence that people understood no matter when these stories were > told, what generation was hearing them, that corn was a spirit > being, was a sacred plant. The reason why it is so important to > indigenous communities is because it really helped people survive. > Because with weather and the unpredictable nature of hunting and > gathering, and, in any season, as a farmer, things can go wrong. > Corn was a stable plant. It was a source of food that really helped > communities survive. So the reverence is there for those plans. > There’s also a difference between the way that a character like > Rosalie approaches farming or gardening, and what agriculture means > in a settler context. I think, the way it exists in its dominant > form, even “organic” or “sustainable” farming involves more > manipulation of the land than it can reasonably take over time. Do > you agree with that? What are your thoughts on the meaning of the > word “agriculture” and what a mutually beneficial relationship > with land and plants can look like beyond that word’s confines? I > think the big question I was trying to ask, or hopefully encourage > readers to ask themselves, is about this relationship with seeds. > That's why the seeds opened the book reminding us of that original > agreement. They gave up their wildness—this is a huge thing—and > came into our lives to help us survive and support our children. > That relationship began to shift when settlers moved in; they > brought a very different worldview about that relationship with > plants and animals and water and soil. In Dakhota, we say Mitakuye > Owas’iƞ. That means we're all related. So I have to literally > regard the soil; when we use the term mother earth, it's a literal > relationship. Meaning, to treat that soil with the same care and > respect that you treat your own mother. So you see the shift when > the settlers came, and over time, in particular, as we moved into > corporate agriculture, that there was a mind shift to viewing > plants, animals, soil, water, air, as commodities. It became > something that could be bought and sold. Profit and loss entered > into these equations that were all about relationships in life and > partnerships in order for human beings to live. That's when I think > we really lost sight of what that original relationship was intended > to be. I think there's a part of farming, the subsistence farmers > back in the day when people were taking care of their families and > rotated their crops and took care of their animals, that had more in > common with that Indigenous worldview. But where we've gotten to now > with corporate farming, it's all about that commodity viewpoint. > That's what I think is just tragic in what is considered to be > agriculture today. That is really the big question of the book, is > to look at how that relationship has evolved over these generations, > and what does that change mean for us as human beings. Yeah. I > really loved how in the book, the corporation was named Mangenta, a > not-so-subtle nod to Monsanto. Not subtle. Not subtle. I think a lot > about capitalism and how food and land don't really mesh with > capitalism, but people keep trying. I was wondering about your work > with NAFSA and what it means to you to seek food sovereignty and > food security outside of the capitalist framework. Oh, it's such > rewarding, beautiful, joyful work. I've worked in two nonprofit > organizations over the past 15 years that are all about restoring or > supporting native communities to reclaim their sovereign food > systems. What I didn't realize before I started that work was how > much people have been controlled over hundreds of years through > food. The way food is manipulated, the way hunger is used as a tool > and has been used to control native communities, and not just native > people—hunger is a huge tool. At one point, earlier in my writing > career, I realized that I could actually tell the history of what > happened to Dakhota people in Minnesota through what happened to > their food. So, in the commodity foods that native people were given > once the reservation system was put in place, and really what that > did to the health of native communities. Then you link that to the > health crisis that many communities are facing today with diabetes, > heart disease, which made people so vulnerable to this pandemic. I > look at restoring these Indigenous foods to native communities as > being one of the most profound ways we have of healing historical > trauma, and it's a joyful way to do it. Plants are beautiful. > Gardening is nurturing and restorative, and who doesn't love to > share a good meal? One of the most potent parts of the book for me > was, again, something true that happened, which was that Dakhota > women sewed seeds into their clothes in order to ensure that mutual > survival you talked about. Can you talk about your approach to > writing such an important aspect of the story not only historically, > but that directly endures today? I heard that story probably close > to 18 or 20 years ago when I was participating in the Dakhota > Commemorative March. That was before I really got involved in the > food sovereignty work, but it made such an impact on me to think of > the sacrifices those women made and their determination and > commitment to making sure that those seeds survived for future > generations. As I moved into doing the food sovereignty work and > realized how much we owed to the women and people like them who made > sure that these foods were preserved for us today so that Dakhota > corn—so many of these seeds have already disappeared—but that > Dakhota corn was preserved by enough families that it's now being > grown out again by a local nonprofit called Dream of Wild Health. I > have those Dakhota seeds to grow out in my own garden. To me, it's > all part of the same work. I can work for a nonprofit and have an > impact that way. I can write books that then share it through > stories that enter into people's imaginations. Then I can grow it in > my own garden so that I can have that experience myself of what it > means to take care of those plants. So my approach to writing that > kind of historically based scene is to try to enter into the > experience of it as deeply as I can. When I plant that corn in my > garden, I bear in mind those women and their actions. I was so drawn > to the way you layered complex relationships between characters and > complex relationships with land. For example, Rosalie and John have > a very layered relationship with each other and the land where they > live. Can you talk about shaping their narrative and relationships > to each other and the land where they both felt they belonged, in > different ways? To me, their relationship really embodies a lot of > what I have heard or felt or observed in Minnesota, in that tension > between when European settlers moved into Minnesota and then after > the war, the treaties were abrogated and that > small reservation was actually taken back. But before that time, the > Dakhota lived across the entire southern half of Minnesota, and well > beyond that. So in a Dakhota historical sense, all that land is > still homeland. It's still the place where ancestors are buried, > where they've had this thousands-of-years-old history of belonging > to that place and knowing it intimately, and then to have people > come in and basically displace you from it. . . .it brings us back > to capitalism again. You put a price tag on a piece of land and then > you own it. It gives a different sense of entitlement. This was > something I really was trying to convey through the book, was this > bumping up of worldviews that are so different in the way they see > the world around us, the relationships, and they just keep bumping > into each other. How do you reconcile that? How do you reconcile the > Dakhota sense of having homeland for thousands of years, and then to > be removed from it, and then to come back, but basically having to > purchase your land that was your homeland, and to have people with > that entitlement. To me, that is so complex. Another part of the > book that really struck me was the exploration of what wakes the > seeds: water, fire, light. There’s a line where Gaby says to > Rosalie, “Fire is a purifying force in the world. It cleans > forests of dead wood, sterilizes as it scorches, and consumes us all > if we let it. Some seeds need fire to sprout. What if you’re that > seed?” Can you talk about this line, and the idea of embracing the > different ways that seeds begin to sprout, both literally and as a > metaphor for your characters? It's always funny to reflect back on > when you wrote something and you're just kind of flying along, and > then be a little more analytical about it. What I was thinking about > in that moment was that sometimes we respond to stress in ways that > force us to take action or to come awake. I think of Rosalie, who > was orphaned at the age of 12, and then put into a system where you > are basically shut down, in a sense, and then to move into a > marriage where she had hoped to find safety, just a safe place to be > for a while. But, it's in what is an alien system. It continues to > press her down in the sense of keeping her in that dormant state. So > with Rosalie's family, I see this long line of women who have been > seed keepers and who have really endured so much through their > lives, through boarding schools and everything else, and here's > Rosalie who is potentially the end of the line. The family has > almost died out. She's lost connection to those seeds. She doesn't > even know they exist. She's lost connection to her family. So I > thought of her metaphorically as that seed that requires that fire, > the intense stress, in order for it to germinate and then take > action and begin to blossom. I want to stay on the idea of embracing > the fire. What does fire as a purifying force mean to you and how > does it intertwine with the idea of protection and preservation? > There's a scene about a fire and the seeds. I actually had that > dream, where there was a fire, and I dreamt that I was carrying > those seeds, that they’re what had to be protected. I thought > about that later, that those are the instincts that these women had, > the instinct to protect your food source, no matter what, because > you didn't have a Costco, you didn't have Cub, you didn't have > social services or food shelves or anything else to rely on except > yourself. Fire, to me, it's got the two sides of it. It's the > simultaneous purging and cleansing, but it's also destructive. But > then you see what happens after a fire out in the forest and the > deadwood's gone and all of a sudden, there's all these wildflowers > coming up. I love that. I love that cycle of renewal that happens > with fire. That was a really key element in the story. There’s a > part in the book where Rosalie’s father says, “You can’t have > science without caring about how it’s used.” He was talking > about astronomy, but it applies to everything on earth. I think > about the way science is kind of this siloed thing in academia and > institutions. What are your thoughts about using care in science and > having care and science be together? Because I think sometimes, at > least in settler frameworks or institutions, they're not really > talked about in the same sentence. Yes. To me, that's Western > science that has made that very arbitrary distinction. I think the > extent to which we can consider ourselves “objective” is > something of a myth because we bring all of our filters, we bring > all of our experience, and while I believe you can have a rigorous > process that really does your due diligence in research, it's never > separate from who you are and it's never separate from everything > around you. So that Western understanding of science is very > different from an Indigenous understanding of science, which is all > about place. There is a great book called Native Science by Greg > Cajete. It's one of my favorite books. I've got it underlined, I've > got it marked up. He talks about the metaphoric mind. He talks about > how science has to be relational as well. You can't take it out of > life and its context with everything else around it and say, > "There's just this." That's why I think technology has gotten so out > of control, because it never takes into account what's going to > happen in the future. It doesn't take into account the consequences > of it, meaning some of the pollution or the using up of resources or > nuclear power, when we think about waste that's going to last for > thousands and millions of years. That's unethical in my mind. What > you've done is borrowed or poisoned the future for your > grandchildren. That's not right. So science has to have ethics. It > has to have a relational connection to the world around it. That > book is just a beautiful way of understanding science. That's my > foundational book. Where are you finding hope or joy or inspiration > right now? Plants, seeds, food, anything to do with the outside > world. To go out and garden, to have my hands in the soil, to walk > out the door in Minnesota in March and hear birds singing, because > our winter is very, very quiet. So to hear birds singing as they're > returning on their migration, and the fact that when all that > craziness was happening, the political coup and everything, they > didn't care. The birds keep singing. The world around us is just > profound in its disconnect from what humans get so excited about. I > think of that as a really good check and balance for our priorities. > Writing, reading, working with native writers: those are all joyful> places to me.
Interview
19.05.21
‘Activists Are Seen As the Enemy’: An Interview with JeffVanderMeer
By Naomi Skwarna
Talking to the author of Hummingbird Salamander about propagandizing animals’ supposed desire to be eaten, writing loners, and yard owls. > “We had a bit of excitement,” says Jeff VanderMeer as I log in > to our Zoom call. “An immature hawk just landed on the bird > feeder,” he explains, lifting his digital camera towards the > computer screen to show me. VanderMeer speculates that the young > hawk was learning to hunt, but had yet to absorb the finer points of > stealth. Animal behavior is one of the lenses through which > VanderMeer, the prolific, Florida-based “weird fiction” author > explores the familiar, yet more confounding, behavior of humans. > VanderMeer is best known for his Southern Reach trilogy, which > includes the novel Annihilation, adapted into a 2018 film by Alex > Garland and starring Natalie Portman. He has published more than a > dozen other novels and books, including anthologies of science > fiction edited in collaboration with his wife, the renowned > publisher and editor, Ann VanderMeer. His new > eco-thriller, Hummingbird Salamander (McClelland & > Stewart), follows a middle-aged tech executive, wife, and > mother—dubiously named “Jane Smith”—as she descends into a > risky mission instigated by the mysterious activist (and possible > bioterrorist), Silvina. A near-extinct hummingbird triggers a > cascade of events that may very well bring Jane’s (and > possibly the) world to an end. What seems like a corruption of > Jane’s normal life quickly becomes an awakening, a frequent theme > in VanderMeer’s work, which often deals with speculative, uncanny > manifestations of the climate crisis and environmental destruction. > As in Annihilation, sickness has a clarifying effect > in Hummingbird Salamander; fever that burns clean as it burns down. > On a day when a young hawk attempted to blend in with VanderMeer’s > backyard birds, we spoke about surveillance and paranoia, writing > about/through a pandemic, love as a possible human flaw, animals > begging to be exploited, and secret autobiography. When I apologize > for going over our allotted interview time, VanderMeer gamely says > he has nothing much to do today. “Well,” he pivots, “I do have > to go outside and feed the birds.” Naomi Skwarna: The novel > features so many massive and high-stakes topics—wildlife > trafficking, eco-terrorism, climate change, security and > surveillance. How did you come to connect these different subjects > through the mystery of Silvina? Jeff VanderMeer: I had this idea of > a character saying, “assume I’m dead when you read this,” and > an image of a hand holding a taxidermied hummingbird. Everything > came out of that. We’re living in an accelerated capitalist system > that depends on things like surveillance. The window of what’s > acceptable for activism has shrunk. I wanted to comment on the fact > that the way we talk about the environment and activism has changed > because activists are seen as the enemy by governments. They just > passed a law in Florida with regard to Black Lives Matter that now > means that peaceful protests may result in ten years in prison. > Early in the novel, there are several allusions to a coming pandemic > and then later on, references to a surge of pandemics. You never > name COVID or even place the story in a particular year, but I > wondered how the global pandemic affected your realization of the > book? I was actually writing and rewriting up through the pandemic, > and keeping in mind that there was a lot of election stress that was > already leaking in without the pandemic. All of that created a sense > of claustrophobia and paranoia that I was trying to channel. > pandemic is definitely in there emotionally, but I was also wary of > being too specific, because everyone has their own experience of > what the pandemic is. I wanted to allow the reader to bring their > own experience of it to the novel. We’re all still making sense of > it, so that felt like a mistake to be too specific, but it also felt > wrong for it not to be in there. It going unnamed fits with the way > Jane draws certain characters in broad strokes for anonymity. > There’s something very pointed about keeping the pandemic > anonymous. Oh yeah, definitely. I do this a lot. > In Annihilation the characters’ names are never given, and > in Borne it’s like the city itself is the anonymous part, with > the characters being in sharp relief. I find the idea of a certain > distance very useful. And yes, the things that are named more > precisely, it does make them stand out, like you said. Related to > the idea of contagions—I thought it was interesting that Jane, as > she’s drawn deeper into Silvina’s mission—refers to what’s > happening to her as an illness, and the hummingbird is a “terrible > catalyst” for that illness. I’d love to know how you picked the > hummingbird and salamander as these catalysts? At one point I was > thinking that there would be more pieces of taxidermy, but that > began to feel like some kind of weird scavenger hunt. I narrowed it > down to just the hummingbird and the salamander specifically because > the hummingbird has a long migration that covers thousands of miles. > It’s very indicative of a certain thing about the climate crisis > for us too, which is that the hazards of that journey are much worse > with so much human development, and changes in temperature and > climate; and then the salamander because it breathes through its > skin and is extremely vulnerable to environmental pollution. It’s > also fairly stationary, so they felt like opposites in a sense. > Neither of the species in the novel is extinct. I didn’t want to > use an animal that was totally extinct in reality because part of > the hope of the novel is the fact that there are real hummingbirds > and salamanders still out there, and their situation > is our situation, whether we realize it or not, in terms of if > we’re going to weather this crisis. I asked a friend of mine, the > biologist Dr. Meghan Brown, to create the hummingbird and the > salamander, their whole life cycles, so I could react to that. It > really was quite interesting to take someone else’s work and > incorporate it into the novel. How did the two of you determine what > the hummingbird and salamander would be like? I needed a hummingbird > that migrates from the Pacific Northwest down to Argentina, and the > salamander also had to be from the Northwest, with a larger mythical > version of it. That was based on having read a lot of stuff about > Bigfoot legends, but around giant salamanders in Northern > California. I didn’t expect that I would use too much of writing, but it was so beautiful. Especially with > the hummingbird, Jane gets hooked on the mystery in part because of > learning about it, and thinking about the hummingbird being special > to Silvina. I think they’re sometimes called, > like, flying gems or flying jewels? They’re so small and > delicately beautiful. Finding that hummingbird would feel like > finding a profound treasure. Absolutely, that’s also the > thing—the contrast between them. There are some quite > brilliant-looking salamanders, but that’s not really what you > think of. I think we relate more to hummingbirds because we > encounter them more often, and because they have very sharp > personalities. They’re always checking you out! Here in the garden > in Florida, they’re always periscoping up to the walkway and kind > of scanning me before zipping away. The salamander has more of a > primal or prehistoric quality. On the subject of relating to > animals—you quote at length a non-fiction book from 1938 > called Oddly Enough: From Animal Land to Furtown. I couldn’t > believe it was real! The passages you quote are truly deranged. > It’s actually over my shoulder right here. It has these weird illustrations of animals, all of them > happy to be turned into fur, wearing tuxedos. It’s really a very > creepy book. It made me think of advertising that features animals > who want to be eaten. They’re basically winking and beckoning you > towards them, begging to be devoured. It seems like an outlier when > you first read it, and then you realize that this propaganda still > exists in the world, where we try to get animals to tell us that > they’re okay with us exploiting them. I found this book in a used > bookstore in Minneapolis, about ten to fifteen years ago, and in > some ways I didn’t want it in the house, but in another way, I was > like, I know that I’m going to use this in something because > it’s already suggesting fiction. It is fiction in its way. The > reclamation of nature is thematic in a lot of your writing, and > here, it comes with the possibility of eco- and bioterrorism. Jane > is initiated into Silvina’s cause, while simultaneously learning > the truth of her family’s history, which in her case is touched > significantly by poverty, mental illness, abuse, and dementia. I was > curious to know how you would like a reader to think about the way > these particularly human issues fit into the grander narrative of > humans exploiting our environments and natural resources. I don’t > know that they do. Here, I think it impacts how Jane responds to the > initial message from Silvina, more than it has to do with the > foreground of the novel. I do think that there’s something useful > in the contrast between Jane having grown up on a farm, with that > background, and the fact that she’s a security analyst within a > high-powered, high-tech world. The main thing for me is that I have > to follow the individual character’s quirks as I see them. > There’s also stuff in there—like, I once received letters from > my first real writing instructor—she was absolutely amazing—but > she wound up in a situation without enough care where she had the > same kind of symptoms as Jane’s mother. I would get letters from > her where I was a character, like she had re-imagined me as somebody > else. It was deeply horrifying and moving, and I had all these > emotions about it because she’d been so important to me as a > writing instructor. Another thing that was fairly unique about that > relationship is that she was more-or-less giving me creative writing > instructions on the side, because she was in a different department. > The university I was at had a very misogynistic creative writing > department that I wanted no part of. I could see the damage coming > out of it on some of the other students, and they’d tell me about > it. So there was also this aspect of getting tutorials from someone > who didn’t need to be giving me that. It was a very precious gift. > Sometimes there are things like that, which you’re trying to work > out the meaning of, so you put it in a different context. I’ll > probably write a personal essay about that whole situation someday, > but for now, a lot of autobiography in different fragments and > contexts often gets into my fiction. People don’t much remark on > it because it’s kind of a secret autobiography; it’s not really > something that you would know automatically has some connection to > me. But it feels important to the underpinnings of certain > characters. On the subject of his early writing, and borrowing > wisdom from the movies: When I was a very young writer, and fairly > arrogant, I didn’t realize that you need to leave some imaginative > space—like I said about wanting the reader’s experience of the > pandemic to come, but not forcing it on them. When you’re just > starting out, of course, you’re kind of a control freak, but you > don’t necessarily have control over your technique. Another thing > that I didn’t realize until later—and I learned this from Karen > Joy Fowler—she’ll write the scene, and then she’ll leave it > out. She realized that the echo of it is still somehow in the book; > the ghost of it’s still there. That seems very cinematic to me. I > am a big fan in general of stealing things from cinema and acting > classes, in terms of creation of character. Oh, can you give me an > example of some technique you stole? For this novel, just trying to > imagine the physicality of the character . She’s a really > big person, you know, she takes up space and, in some ways, she > enjoys that. So I had to think: how does someone like that move > through the world? They don’t think about certain things after a > while, but maybe they’re reminded every once in a while of that > physicality. Little things like that. Jane is a vulnerability > analyst and part of her work involves “anticipating flaws in the > human element.” Then she leaves that world and ends up as a sort > of detective and vigilante. I wondered, where do love and intimacy > fit into Jane’s characterization? And in the case of this novel, > would they be considered flaws in the human element? I do often > write about loners and people who are just fine not having that much > connection. I think to some degree, the biologist > in Annihilation is a little like that. But I think part of this > novel is Jane looking back and trying to make sense of all this. > Whether Jane thinks she’s protecting , I don’t think > at the end of the day she’s able to make sense of whether she’s > done the right thing there. Or whether she has an impulse to both > protect them and distance herself from them. The short answer is > that she is, in a way, trying to jumpstart her life, out of a > situation that for a lot of us would be the ideal, but that for her > is not the right fit. Deep in her psyche, she knows something is > wrong in the life she has. And that’s also probably why she’s > somewhat reckless at conventions, why she’s reckless about > pursuing this thing. I personally know some people who look like > they wrecked their entire lives from the outside, only to reform > them later in a way that makes sense to them. And the reason that > they wrecked their lives is because they recognized that eventually, > it was going to kill them inside in some way. I have a final > question for you. I read that you once worked with a group to band > saw-whet owls, and I just want to ask if you personally held one. I > did hold one, and I couldn’t believe how incredibly tiny it was. > It’s really the tiniest bird. We have a barred owl down in the > yard. You have an owl in your yard? Yes! This house hugs a little > ravine, and the upper level is way up in the canopy because of the > slope. So we have this hilarious thing where I’ll turn the corner > on the walkway, and there’ll be a barred owl in a tree, like 20 > feet away at eye level. I’m surprised, but the > owl’s really surprised. Owls are very good at looking surprised.Interview
18.05.21
‘As a Female Recluse, I Took My Reclusiveness Very Seriously’: An Interview with Helen OyeyemiBy Ilana Masad
Talking to the author of Peaces about not forcing lessons in fiction, building stories within stories, and having an uncertain relationshipwith the truth.
> Helen Oyeyemi’s novels and stories are never simple narratives; > they often include stories within stories, questionably real > apparitions or places, and ambiguities galore. Ambiguity isn’t > something we seem to like much these days. Uncertain times (although > what times have ever, really, been certain?) seem to evoke in us a > need to be certain, a desperate desire to have some fixed things in > the midst of all the unknowns. Yet there is pleasure to be found in > ambiguity, in uncertainty, in letting go of the belief that there is > only one truth, one reality, one way of seeing things. There’s an > existential kind of joy in wrestling with the gray areas and letting > them remain so. At least, that’s how I’ve always felt when > reading Oyeyemi’s work: joyfully along for the ride, letting her > questioning narratives unspool without answers, finding satisfaction > in the telling itself rather than the resolution. Oyeyemi’s latest > novel, Peaces (Hamish Hamilton), is—there’s really no other > way of saying it—a romp. That doesn’t mean it isn’t serious, > because it is, but it’s also fun, twisty, surprising, and > sometimes tender. Largely narrated by Otto, who has just taken his > partner Xavier’s last name (Shin) in lieu of a wedding, the novel > follows the pair as they take a non-honeymoon honeymoon aboard a > privately-owned passenger train. The train’s owner, Ava Kapoor, > could be considered a recluse, as she’s been living on the train > for some five years, but she’s not its sole occupant: her > girlfriend, Allegra, is one of the train operators, and another > woman, Laura, lives on the train with them as well. Over the course > of their strange ride, Otto, Xavier, and their pet mongoose get into > all sorts of shenanigans that test their relationship, how well they > know one another, and unearth something—someone?—shared in their > past. Meanwhile, they learn that Ava needs to prove her sanity a few > days hence in order to receive a large inheritance bequeathed to her > by a former employer. Despite the fact that she lives on a train and > plays a theremin, Ava appears rather on the sane side—except for > the fact that she’s never been able to see that former > employer’s son, Přem. I recently spoke to Oyeyemi, who lives in > Prague, via Zoom. Ilana Masad: I loved Peaces so much. Could you > tell me a bit about the title and how you arrived at it? Helen > Oyeyemi: I think it's probably connected to the epigram. So the > epigram is this poem by Emily Dickinson about thinking that peace > has arrived, or that one has arrived at peace—but there's always > another frontier to arrive at. It’s a sense of ongoing war. And > instead of peace, it's a sort of illusory lull between battles. I > think that's maybe what relationships are. A kind of a bleak view on > relationships, but also on arriving at any kind of certainty in > terms of perception or existence or any of the things that we're > trying to deal with as human beings. And just packing it all into a > one-word title. I’ve noticed your novels—and stories, > too—becoming more openly queer over the years, and in this book, > we probably have more queer couples than not. The characters’ > sexuality isn’t at the center of the story, but would you speak > about how you’ve been making these choices that seem to make the > characters’ queerness, as Rita Mae Brown might say, the least > interesting things about them? I don't know if I feel like I can > call them choices. I like that Rita Mae Brown quote, actually, > because just writing from a sense of what is normal, if that > makes any sense. It doesn't feel deliberate. With every book, it's > almost like sending out a party invitation and seeing who decides to > show up in response. And then whoever shows up is just in the story. > It's definitely happened that way with all types of sexualities and > people. I like having people in my stories who just kind of don't > need to name themselves or even identify themselves. They can just > be in the story. I feel like that's very important. I wouldn't call > it a choice, but I feel like it's also important to not exclude. I > don’t really have the words for it. I’m struck by this notion of > sending out an invitation to a party and seeing who arrives. Does > that reflect anything about the people you surround yourself with, > that you invite into your own life? Very much so. I think because > I'm quite an alienated person, I never have any sense of belonging > to a group or a sort of tribal mentality. It’s always very much > about an individual connection. So it's almost like > building—building one's own family or one's own crew of friends, > but it's person by person. If you meet someone who on paper has the > same characteristics as your best friend, that really doesn't mean > you're going to like them. You just don't know until you're actually > together. We talked a bit about the epigram by Emily Dickinson. Ava > is described as “some sort of recluse. Though apparently not the > sort who was averse to lovebirds.” Many of us have been taught > that Emily Dickinson was this shy, depressed, sad recluse. And Otto, > the book’s narrator, says, “Even though I know several , and even though I understand that for five > out of seven of the female loners I know, it’s truly their choice, > the next female loner I meet never benefits from these other > friendships I share, because at the moment our paths cross I > instantly revert to Oh God, what ails this person??” What it is > about the myth of women living and being alone—I say myth because > Ava, like Emily, isn’t really alone—that you were thinking > about when you wrote this book? I am, of course, a female > recluse—the nun life is my life. But you kind of go through it in > your own head, where you're like, What is wrong with me? Why do I > need to be alone so much? Is that okay? And it’s something that I > bought into about Emily for a long time. It's actually interesting > how over time, biographies of her have gotten a lot more subtle and > more nuanced. And you'll see the ways in which she's actually played > with other people's perceptions of her. So things she would > do—like making gingerbread for her nieces and nephews and lowering > it in a basket, and refusing to appear in rooms, and her doctor only > being able to examine her by watching her walk across the corridor > (like, he wouldn't even come to the room!)—I felt like she really > pushed the limit. Kind of like, Okay, you think I’m a recluse, > I’m going to give you recluse. I feel like, for a long time, > people took that seriously, and only now, in the current framework, > are we realizing that she was actually having some jokes with people > as well. So for a long time, as a female recluse, I took my > reclusiveness very seriously, and I've only recently started to > realize that it's okay, and that it's not indicative of a pathology. > It's maybe just neurotypical difference or something, something > that's just as human as the other ways of living. It’s something > that I wanted to play with more and more in writing. Your last > book, Gingerbread, has a long central section that’s a story > within a story. Mr. Fox also plays with stories within stories, > stories deconstructing other stories. And here, in Peaces, we have > these littles stories each character tells, stories that slowly > unfold and make connections with people. Would you tell me how you > think about structure and stories within stories in this novel? I > feel like the whole stories within stories approach is part of what > I think of as my big project as a writer. Ultimately, what I want to > do is to try and find out what stories are actually made of, why we > believe them, why they take hold of us, and why no matter what we do > to try and control the story, or even to create a story, there's > some element of it that is just wild and almost seems to make > itself. And also, I guess, whether stories are our friends or our > enemies. I just have a lot of questions about what stories are, and > the only way to try and interrogate or possibly persuade stories to > reveal something about themselves is to make all these provocations > and assaults on them, and try and unpack them and unpick their seams > and see if they react. Will the story bite you back? Sometimes it > does, and then you do sort of run off, but then you come back and > have another approach. So I think that in Peaces, in particular, > there was an interesting new angle in that you have a character who > almost is a story, and is trying very hard to move out of storyhood > and into personhood, and is somehow being prevented and limited > by... well, mainly by Ava. I found Ava so inscrutable. I kept > wanting to see if she would wink or something. I really couldn't > figure out what she was doing with this whole, There is no Přem. I > honestly couldn't tell you the answer to what is going on there. But > at times I was like, Can you really see him? Like, what are you > doing, Ava? What are you doing to this poor Přem? And then other > times I just thought, I know whatever's going on in this group > dynamic is interesting. And it's something to do with stories and > stories about a story about a person, a kind of hall of mirrors type > investigation. I don't know if I’ll ever work it out as a writer, > but just trying to work out what stories are made up of, that’s my > jam. The book doesn’t deal overtly with politics (which is not to > say that there aren't politics in it; we could probably argue that > everything is political), but I do think it’s interesting, as we > see the world grapple with what stories are as well and how stories > can unmake nations and peoples, to have this kind of relatively safe > space in which stories can unmake and remake and connect. Do you > find yourself thinking consciously of the politics of the moment as > you write? Not for this particular book. I wrote Mr. Fox, and I > felt like I spent a lot of time explaining to people that it was a > fairy tale. And then with Gingerbread, I felt like I spent a lot of > time having explained to me that it was a fairy tale. I was > like, No, I'm actually writing about the year that I wrote it in. I > started writing it in 2016—we'd had the Brexit referendum, we'd > had Trump elected. It was an of-the-moment book of somebody trying > to wake up from the neoliberal nightmare. But everyone was > like, It’s so whimsical, and I was like, No, but it's life, > this is actually life. With Peaces, I'm not trying to do anything > otherworldly or whatever. I think it's casually asserted that this > is just the world that we're in. And it’s a relationship book, a > kind of, what if you broke up with someone and they didn't accept > your breakup and then sent you onto a train and punished you for > a train ride kind of story. There's an objection > on behalf of this —that turns out they all have in > common—who is just like saying, Look, I'm not just a stop on your > way to the perfect relationship, I didn't cease to exist just > because our relationship ended. There were a lot of thoughts about, > I guess, not trying to use other people as an experimental lab for > whatever persona you want to have in a romance. Which I think Xavier > and Otto had both been guilty of in the past. > ways in which we are casually criminal in our love lives. That’s > such a great term, “casually criminal.” One of the most > satisfying things to me about this book is that we have villains, of > a kind—but we’re not actually sure who they are. Is it Přem, > because he’s insinuated himself into everyone’s life? Is it Ava, > because she can unsee people to alarming degrees? It’s kind of all > about perspective. How do you see the relationships between these > characters, and do you think there’s a single or central > antagonist in the book? No, I think the interesting thing is that > it's all almost entirely situational. Because if you look at it from > Přem’s perspective, everyone on that train is an absolute > bastard. They’ve all mistreated him. But they're actually pretty > good to each other, when they're not in relationship to him. So what > does that mean? I think I had, especially in heartbreaks in my early > twenties, a really difficult time separating someone having been a > very bad lover to me, or not the right lover to me, from them > actually still being a good person. It was that real struggle where > you’re like, No, you’re evil. But thinking about it > objectively, you know that that's not true. And that > feeling like a burden you have to take on yourself. Nobody else can > carry it—you really have to work through that in real time. Ava is > the character in the novel whose sanity is in need of being > tested—legally, in order for her to receive an inheritance— I > love the idea of a sanity test. Do you think you would pass a sanity > test? Because I don’t think I would. No, me neither! That’s part > of why I’m so interested in her! I also feel like none of the > characters in Peaces, really, would pass a sanity test. And the > world of the train that they're inhabiting is also not entirely > sane. There are these things that make a kind of surreal sense on > the train and that people don't comment on, which makes me feel as a > reader like, Oh, well, I'm supposed to think that this is kind of > normal, even though my brain is telling me, Wait, but that can't > happen. So I’m wondering, what draws you to writing these > psychological fissures in your characters? I think that what's fun > is the fact that no one comments on makes it really ambiguous as to whether or not it is real. I > think everyone on the train’s probably afraid to ask Ava about > anything because she can immediately nix things. She can say, No, I > don't see that. And then suddenly it's not real, right? So the best > thing is just to never discuss it. One time my sister came to visit > me in Prague and we were walking around this market and this clown > started following us. We were just really chill, and then at some > point, my sister looked at me and said, “Can you see this > clown?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And she was like, “Oh okay, > good.” I felt like that was a moment where we both confirmed that > the clown was actually following us, because either one of us could > have been the only one who's just being followed by the clown. And I > think it’s like that. The whole atmosphere is very > edgy and shifty in that way, where people just sort of hope that > maybe if they don't talk about it or put it into words, then it > doesn't have to become an issue with a capital I. This may be an odd > question, but all your books bend reality in some way—by which I > mean, they bend the nature of the so-called logical, rational, > Western notion of reality. What is your relationship to reality, I > wonder? How do you feel about it? Hmm, fairly relaxed. I don’t > know, everything is just real to me. I don't feel like I've > encountered anything and just thought, well, that's unreal. It's > more of a question of truth for me—I feel like things can be real, > but then is that true or false? I'm more interested in that. It's > difficult, because I wouldn't say that I'm really a truth > seeker—that’s kind of bad, but I kind of like the mistakes, I > like the misunderstandings, I like the confusion. I sort of > characterize Otto as chaotic neutral and Xavier as lawful neutral. > And I feel like Otto just takes any opportunity to confuse anyone or > to say, On the other hand, could it be this—and I feel like > that’s very much me as well. Which means that you need to be > roughly aware of what the truth is so that you can mess with it. But > it's not that I'm directly seeking it. I'm more interested in other > things, I guess. That makes sense to me. I feel like each of your > books is like a coin that's always being rolled on its edge and > never going to fall one way or the other, so you never know if it's > going to be heads or tails. Yes. And I would like people to be > comfortable on that edge of just not really knowing for sure. That's > actually how life is like. We don't know. I heard you say in an > interview once that the more books you’ve written, the more > you’ve let yourself stop thinking about “the message” of the > book, as it were. Would you tell me more about this? About how you > used to think about “the message” and how you’ve moved away > from that? I feel like looking for a message is something that I had > had drummed into me from studying English literature at school and > stuff. I feel like they would present us with a story and say, this > is what the story means. And I would like it less for the meaning > that had been presented. It’s part of why I got so super excited > about fairy tales when I started reading them for myself without > looking for a message. I was looking at them aesthetically and > structurally and in all of these ways that have nothing to do with > some didactic thing that you're supposed to take from it or some > life-improving lesson. I just feel like letting stories go wild in a > way is what we're meant to do as the receivers and tellers of > stories. Stories as a freedom-generating element is the best way for > them to be in our lives. Maybe? I don't know—that is also handing > down a message about stories. In the initial books, I think I was > sort of depressed by the way that they might be read. I was kind of > like, Oh, this is the message that people are going to take from > this. It's just about becoming less self-conscious, I think, > overall. And, finally: I’m always curious to know what my favorite > authors are reading. I know a lot of people haven’t been managing > to focus much on reading during the pandemic so if that’s true for > you, I’d love to know what you’ve been watching. There's a > really good K-drama right now about psychopaths. I'm not quite sure > what the storyline is, actually, but I love it. It seems that this > guy has had a brain transplant and the brain that he's received has > the frontal lobe of a psychopath. So he can now think like a > psychopath without being one, but it's also very confusing for him > because he's now incredibly violent. So I hope that works out, I > hope he doesn't kill anyone. In terms of what I've been reading—I > this book by Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore, that > she wrote in the 1970s about a community living on houseboats > along the Thames. It’s a very, very short book and the > characterization is just stunning. This guy is kind of a > professional gigolo and he can't tell the difference between his > friends and his enemies. All he knows is that he responds to them in > a certain way because they demand something of him, and if it's not > transactional, then he thinks that they're his friend, but actually, > they're his enemy. It's the most sad thing, but also the most > beautifully crystallized way of getting to the heart of somebody and > how they relate to the world and to other people. I just love > Penelope Fitzgerald and this was one of her books I hadn't read> before.
Interview
17.05.21
‘You Should Wear It Because No One Else Is Wearing It’: An Interview with Christian AllaireBy Isabel Slone
The author of The Power of Style on clothes as cultural signifiers, Indigenous ribbon shirts, and pushing past the performativity of representation in fashion. > In the introduction to his debut book, The Power of Style (Annick > Press), Vogue fashion and style writer Christian Allaire asks, > “Can fashion or beauty serve a greater purpose than just being > visually satisfying?” To me, fashion has always been a liminal > space—a gravity-free interzone where lawlessness coincides with > infinite possibility. It is a site for dreaming with reckless > abandon, a funhouse mirror that reflects one not exactly as they are > but how they want to be. Of course, fashion and beauty can serve a > greater purpose than being visually satisfying, I thought, but does > it necessarily matter? In his book, Allaire makes a compelling > argument that it does, highlighting traditional styles such as > Indigenous ribbon work and colourful hijabs that belong to the > earthly realm but also inspire the lucid dreams fashion is meant to. > The book also illustrates how creativity can form in the margins; > though Black hair has been maligned and prohibited throughout > history, the example of a man braiding his hair in the shape of the > Microsoft Windows logo feels like a symbol of lightness and > possibility. The Power of Style is an impactful book that urges > individuals to claim their own power through the medium of fashion, > whether anyone else gets it or not. It celebrates stepping into your > own power, owning your style, finding yourself, and being unafraid > to share it with the world. Isabel B. Slone: When you first embarked > on this project, what did you hope to create? And how different is > the finished product from what you had initially intended to write? > Christian Allaire: This book has been three years in the making. > Initially, Annick Press reached out and asked me if I would be > interested in working on a book with no topic in mind, so I really > had to think about it. At first, I wanted to write all about > Indigenous fashion, because there hasn’t really been a proper book > devoted to covering Indigenous fashion yet. But I began thinking > about cultural fashion in general and how different cultures use > clothes to express their traditions, and I realized that I wanted to > explore a bunch of different cultures, not just my own. That’s > kind of how the book shaped up. It was written for teens and young > adults, so I thought it was a good way to introduce them to the idea > that clothes can be something more than just what you wear—it can > be a cultural signifier. Where did you first encounter this idea > that clothes can be more than something you wear? Growing up, I was > always surrounded by traditional Indigenous regalia stuff that is > worn to powwows or special ceremonies—pieces that have really > great meaning. I’ve always known that clothes can have a deeper > purpose than just being pretty but I never really partook in that > side of my culture. I didn’t dance in powwows or wear traditional > regalia. I actually didn’t even become interested in learning more > until way later in life, probably within the last five years. I wish > I was encouraged to do it as a kid. That’s kind of why I wanted to > write the book, because I didn’t have anything like it encouraging > me to embrace that side of my culture. And now you’re leaning into > it! I was obsessed with the ribbon shirt you describe having > custom-made by your aunts. Thank you! Yes, last summer during > lockdown, I decided I wanted a traditional Indigenous ribbon shirt > made. Ribbon shirts are typically worn at powwows or for special > ceremonies; it's meant for special occasions. My grandmother made me > one when I was a kid, but, as an adult, I had yet to own a piece of > regalia, and felt it was time—especially as I attend so many > Indigenous-focused events. My mom and aunts designed it and sewed it > for me. Each colour of the ribbons on my shirt represents something > (my elders' favorite colours), and, on the back, an embroidered > crane represents my clan. I love the smaller details too, like > abalone shells used on the buttons. It occurred to me while reading > that you’re really toggling between two themes throughout the > book—breaking boundaries and appreciating your culture—and those > two different themes are actually one and the same when you consider > how exclusionary and oppressive the fashion industry has been > historically. There’s a really exciting movement beginning to take > hold where people are taking ownership of their cultures and > traditions and flipping and twisting them into something new. A lot > of the Indigenous designers I spoke with use ribbon work, similar to > the shirt I had made, in their designs. They’re still using the > same techniques their grandmother used but are doing them in really > cool and modern ways and using them to create pieces you’d see on > the runway. I think it’s important for tradition to survive and, > in order for that to happen, you have to update it and make it feel > new. That’s what a lot of the subjects in the book are doing. > Within the past five or so years, there’s been a huge push to > “diversify” the fashion world. But I think that focus tends to > have the opposite effect than it intends to because it leads to > coverage where the only interesting thing about a person is their > race or how they identify, which just feels really scummy and > tokenizing. Do you think we’ll ever get to a place in fashion > where identity is no longer placed front and centre because it > isn’t considered novel anymore? I think we’ve made a lot of > great strides towards diversity and representation in the fashion > industry but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. > What I’ve learned over the past year is that people should not > need the influence of mainstream pop culture to feel comfortable > with their culture. I get it because a way I’ve felt in the past > is, “I don’t see my friends or my favourite stars wearing it, it > must not be cool.” It’s easy for kids to be a sponge and want to > do what they see other people doing. But what I hope people take > from this book is that you should rock your cultural or traditional > wear however you want, because it’s unique to you. You should wear > it because no one else is wearing it. I think it would be great for > mainstream fashion to embrace all cultures but, at the end of the > day, it doesn’t matter. Totally. Representation is a trap because > it doesn’t work to actively dismantle the hierarchical social > structures like capitalism that have led us to this point. Even if > there are an equal number of Black models in a runway show, what > issue does that solve? Representation addresses the symptoms of the > problem instead of cutting the rot out at its core. The way fashion > has been approaching inclusivity and diversity has been pretty > narrow. There are so many more ways that culture could be included > in the conversation that isn’t happening. Like, instead of just > hiring BIPOC models—which is so important, don't get me > wrong—why not also include underrepresented people behind the > scenes too? In your design teams, marketing teams? It would be great > to see smaller brands be included in the main big fashion calendars > too. But, I don’t know, there are a lot of smaller designers doing > their own thing and creating really amazing work who don’t even > want to be part of the mainstream fashion calendar. They don’t > want to be sold at Neiman Marcus. That’s not their dream. I think > the industry is changing a lot and how we tackle addressing > "representation" needs to change, too. It needs to happen in every > facet of the industry—and not just in the performative ways. Could > the answer be for fashion media to embrace and champion these > designers who don’t aspire to mainstream success? Or is the answer > accepting the fragmentation of the fashion world and just pursuing > exclusively what you’re interested in regardless of whether it’s > popular or visible or not? I do think media coverage is something > that is needed. Again, up until five years ago, I didn’t even know > who any Indigenous designers were. I didn’t know who was making > stuff and that’s because no magazine or news outlet was covering > them. Even now, with the diversity push, we’re only starting to > see the biggest Native American designers get coverage—and > they’ve been doing this for 30 years. It’s kind of crazy. Media > representation is important and still has a long way to go but > we’re finally starting to see it happening. And I think the small, > niche designers would appreciate being highlighted. Of course, > you’re right. How else would a wider audience find out about them? > Amidst the pandemic, it seems to me that fashion has become this > arena where people are more comfortable playing and dressing in ways > that feel more true to themselves, whether that’s sweatpants every > day or wearing heels to the grocery store. What role do you see > fashion playing in our society going forward? I think because > we’ve had nowhere to go and nothing to dress up for, it’s made > people think a little more critically about what they wear. For > some, it’s purging their wardrobe of things they just don’t wear > anymore and, for others, it’s paying more attention to the story > or the details behind the things they buy. A lot of my friends want > to know more about where their clothes are coming from, how > they’re made, and who is making it. There’s been a general > increase in awareness of how our clothing is made, for sure. Going > forward, I hope that will allow for a new crop of small, homegrown > designers who are making really thoughtful pieces to take off. Do > you approach fashion in that way? I agree that the ecosystem of > fashion will only continue to grow smaller and more niche. Sure, > people looking at pictures of Harry Styles wearing Gucci and other > big brands will continue to thrive. But the way things are now > reminds me of fashion blogs in the early 2000s—everyone has their > own tiny following of people they’re speaking directly to and they > don’t need mainstream recognition for what they’re doing. Their > audience has naturally gravitated towards them; they’ve found each > other and that’s all they need. Even the buzziest brands right now > are small labels: Emily Bode, Christopher John Rogers. Neither of > these are huge labels. I think that, across the board, we’re > seeing people begin to appreciate the art of smaller labels and not > require a designer brand name to assign value to a piece. > Absolutely. How did you decide on which cultural traditions you > wanted to include in the book? I want to be clear that it’s not an > all-encompassing book. There’s no way I could have included every > culturally significant garment in the world, as much as I would have > loved to. It really came down to making sure there was a good > variety, with enough different voices and cultures. It’s also an > extremely visual book—younger audiences tend to soak in visuals > more than they do words—so I veered towards picking traditional > items that are really vibrant and beautiful to look at. The book is > written for younger audiences. What do you think adults can take > away from it? What I hope any reader learns is that, if they have a > unique cultural background, they’ll feel confident and proud to > embrace it and explore it through fashion. And even if you’re > white, you can learn about other people’s stories and learn how to > embrace fashion in a different, more holistic way. I mean, I > didn’t know anything about the cosplay world when I started > writing this book—that was totally new to me. I just hope to be > able to offer a quick glimpse into other people’s lives,> basically.
Interview
12.05.21
‘More Than Identity, Queer is an Action, a Location’: An Interviewwith Arisa White
By Sarah Neilson
Talking to the author of Who’s Your Daddy about the translation of dreams, occupying edges and margins, and why language is not innocent. > Poet Arisa White’s new lyrical memoir, Who’s Your > Daddy (Augury Books, 2021) is a pencil box full of questions, and a > lot of sharp answers. Or maybe they’re best described as > discoveries, or observations, or fragmented memories. A memory of > hiding behind a blue door, of being chastised for not separating the > letters “LMNOP,” of a street corner burning with life while a > man turns and walks away. “Who’s your daddy?” White writes. > “A portrait of absence and presence. A story, a tale, told in > patchwork fashion.” She asks: “Am I a site of abandonment?” > Who’s Your Daddy arose from a decision, in White’s thirty-third > year, to reconnect with her estranged father, who lives in Guyana. > Growing up in New York, White parsed her memories of him, but whose > memories were they? And were they of him? As an adult, facing the > confusing and painful intimacies of the relationships that come with > adulthood, White grows increasingly interested in questioning what > the word “father” means, the influence it has on her life, the > presence of its absence. She began with a project called the dear > Gerald project (Gerald being her father’s name), soliciting > letters from people writing to their fathers or father figures. She > received an artists’ grant to travel to Guyana, where the hope was > that she would meet her father, but the plan, either way, was to > document the lived experience. White did meet her father, an > experience rendered in Who’s Your Daddy, but the real crux of the > story is the elegant ways in which the writing leans into questions, > an embrace of exploring relationships of all types, a reckoning with > love and grief and anger. Arisa White is a prolific poet and artist, > and her skill with words is unparalleled. Who’s Your Daddy is > brief in length but long on the power of syntax, metaphor, and > economy of space. Passages in this book are transporting and utterly > profound. I spoke with White on the phone about paternalism, bodies, > queerness as an action rather than an identity, and the > non-innocence of language. Sarah Neilson: Can you talk about > the dear Gerald project, how that evolved over time, and how this > book grew out of that project? Arisa White: dear Gerald is the > first iteration of Who's Your Daddy. It started when my mom asked > me if I wanted to write my father Gerald in Guyana. That year was > the year I turned 33, my Jesus year, so it was interesting that it > all happened at that time. I didn't know what I would say to him. > What do I say to someone who I haven't had a relationship with? My > last memory with my father was running away from him and hiding > behind a bedroom door. So I went to poetry. I started writing > epistolary poems to make language for how I was feeling and to > populate the distance with some sound, some expression toward him. > Basically, I would document my days. I was living in Oakland, > California, at the time, and started to make connections between the > San Francisco Bay Area and Jonestown, and began researching the > history and culture of Guyana, and paying closer attention to my own > memories. After nearly two years of writing epistolary poems, I > applied for a grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. My > project proposed a self-publication of one hundred copies of dear > Gerald for which I would exchange for letters written to estranged > and absent fathers, and patriarchal figures. I received letters from > men who were in San Quentin, one came as far as the Philippines, and > some students from Evergreen Valley College created a documentary in > response to this question of who’s your daddy. I also facilitated > community-based letter-writing workshops, and this was during the > 2016 election, so people had a lot to say about our legacy of > forefathers governing our daily lives. The last component of the > grant was a trip to Guyana to meet my father and give him a copy > of dear Gerald. I’m there for two weeks, documenting my time in > the country, keeping notes and observations about what I’m > watching on television. I collect newspaper clippings, pamphlets, > record my nightly reflections on how the day went and what I am > feeling. So, I had all of this new material as well as the actual > experience reconnecting with my father, of being in his body > presence and recalibrating with this father frequency that gave me > life—which is its own kind of expression that still feels > inexpressible. I want to latch on to what you said about your Jesus > year, because I’m curious about the role of God and religion in > the father narrative, and how it influenced or influences your > thinking about what the word father means. Once you pay attention to > a word and its resonances, everything starts glimmering. At the > time, I was doing historical research for my middle-grade book that > I co-wrote called Biddy Mason Speaks Up. A lot > of times, I was hitting up against the word paternalism in the > context of the institution of slavery. To me, it shakes the body > loose of all of its illusions. That had me thinking, as well, about > the notion of God and how it’s put to a male body. I began to > wonder, what are all of the mechanisms in the technology of > God-making that's operating? It's operating in all of our > institutions, it's operating as a system of control and enslavement. > It's fascinating to follow the words and what they get attached to. > My father, during my visit to Guyana, requested that I take care of > him. He could feel empowered , because there are so > many structures supporting that thinking. It's like tradition; this > is the role of the daughter, this is the role of the Caribbean > daughter. It was a moment that just really began to shake loose a > lot of the illusions and narratives and myths that are woven in all > parts of our lives that we have to constantly confront, and ask it > questions, and learn how to say no to it, and be really embodied > when we arrive at that place of confrontation so we don't fall for > the bullshit. I want to talk to you about the body, because this was > a very corporeal read for me. One of the most striking passages was > when you described a dream in a letter to Gerald: “Before us, a > city glints, your right nostril comes into view—a fine-etched > keloid web, I touch and something is lit in me. Your irises pitch > black and a mouthfeel silence where a bond used to be.” How do you > approach writing the corporeal aspects of a story or a poem, > especially when it's so rooted in family? What I'm noticing is that > folks are recognizing something in my skill set I'm doing > intuitively, so I'm trying to figure out how to articulate it. > Number one, that passage you read, that's an example of one of > the dear Gerald poems coming into Who’s Your Daddy. A lot of > that happened. And that was actually a dream. When I have dreams > like that, they're so etched in the body. It's a visual texture and > it imprints, and I have to figure out the wordscore that > approximates it. I say wordscore because I want to emphasize the > music and the sonics and the resonance that has to match the > original imprint. I'm trying to also honor what I saw. When I'm > translating a dream, I'm using language and its musicality to cast > it back up again for the reader. So, I'm paying attention to sound, > but an inner listening of sound, you know? It's like, we have the > word insight but we don't have insound. It’s a similar thing. > The queerness of the book is also very rooted in the body, but > beyond that, it was also conflict in your queer relationships that > in part spurred you to reflect on love and relationships and how > Gerald influenced your approach to them. In what ways do you think > queerness as an identity or as an ethos informs how you approach > this self-understanding, and maybe also how you approached Gerald? > I'm one of seven, and my mom is one of seven, but a lot of folks > would think that I was an only child. And it's because of the > quality that I have to be singular but multiple at the same time. > So, I think in that way, I've always been on this angle, and that > angle has created an optic for me, which I translate to be as > poetic. So, when I realized that I could call myself a poet, that > felt like the most queer thing. Like recognizing my creative energy > and the ability to absorb and be sensitive and then move people, I > believed that was something strange. I do find some pleasure in > operating from a place of defamiliarization in the way in which I > occupy my body. I'm a tall, Black woman and when people meet me they > expect some level of aggression, and then they have my voice. Or > they'll meet my voice first and then they arrive at my body and > there's always this sense of surprise. I think even, too, the > lineage of Black feminist thought, growing up in a family where I > had the presence of an aunt who was out and visible and would have > her lesbian friends around, and a sister who has developmental > disabilities and she is so extroverted. She would just go up to > folks and speak in her own talk and I would translate those sounds > to, “She wants a Charms blowpop or Laffy Taffy.” That boldness > from her was inspiring as well as terrifying for me, but that terror > was also intriguing. And my mom was a Rastafarian during my early > years. Like me, her and my stepdad were weird and strange and > vegetarian, and had dreadlocks in the '80s when it wasn't cool. > Black folks, and my family included, shook their heads at us. In > that regard, I've been occupying the edges and the margins. If > Gerald was a stranger to me, I was a queer. More than identity, > queer is an action, a location. It's a constant paying attention to > the ways in which things shift and change and connect, and being > able to create with that, make it usable. And to then use it for > ourselves, to go deep and begin to uncover where it hurts and where > it shines. Doing the work of uncovering, asking deep questions, and > being willing to be more and more vulnerable until you start to > bloom for yourself. Not needing to hide behind degrees and > identities and the roles we play so we can function in the machine. > Those things are like narratives too. They are narratives that we > tell ourselves, that are told to us. And we need to break them every > time. And as a poet, the breaking is creative—arranging it again > and again so I can feel it in the body. I think without poetry, we > can't make our way out of rhetoric. Poetry reminds us that language > is material and it's operating all of the time for an intention and > a purpose and a meaning. It is not innocent. There’s a line where > you refer to your memory as “musk and incense,” which evokes > something ethereal, scented, but not really tangible. How did you > work with memory in this book, your own and others’? I'm working > with it creatively and poetically, and definitely taking my poetic > license with things. I’m also learning how to identify the energy > of certain words and images so that I can make these things resonate > throughout the book. So that was another element with thinking about > memory, the glimpses of it, the way it shimmers, memory as being, a > star within our (personal) constellations. To make it look like a > thing, it’s going to require a living body with their own > imagination to construct it. The last section of the book was > essentially the inspiration for Who's Your Daddy. Once I had the > travel notebooks, I had letters from people, the work was > broadening, expanding. I was thinking about how to do more. I was in > residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and > I was there with the art and I was noticing the royal blue, the > cobalt blue, blue as water, river, blue as royalty. That started to > trigger memories about the blue door that I stood behind as a little > kid hiding from Gerald, and then leaping to Guyana, its translation > being “the land of many waters.” I started to write Who’s > Your Daddy in this prose citation style because I needed to > accumulate voices to make sense of this journey as well as this > absence, and what it means to think about myself as absent-of. Then > to train my brain to essentially think of presence. It's interesting > creatively when you're working on something for a long period of > time, you notice the ways in which we center our absence. It is like > we're creating these holes in ourselves. The trip to Guyana, being > in this museum, a visual space, while the writing was all coming > together taught me how to go backwards and also how to go forward. I > started to think about memories connected to blue. My mom told me > this weird dream she had when I was in Guyana, about Gerald, in this > royal blue suit and “mashing down the back of his shoes.” It was > perfect how things started to fall in place. It felt like an > affirmation for being more present in my self, in my origins, > embracing my many parts, and allowing myself to play. And because I > played, I took some bold creative risks in Who’s Your Daddy: I > have an orange bird guiding the narrator to a star ceremony by the > Atlantic, all which is orchestrated by the force of my bleeding > uterus. It's so many things like that, but it was just the truth of > me and I think those are the most queer elements in the book. > Towards the end of the book, you touch on this question that I think > is an existential question for a lot of people, maybe all people: > What if no meaning is made? What meaning do you make with, or of, > this book? How do you embrace that inevitable mystery of life that > keeps us from making meaning of everything we might want to make > meaning of? I don't have a problem with that because I use it > creatively. I don't want it to go away. I feel that each book > teaches me something craft-wise, makes me a braver poet, and > sometimes a braver person in my dynamics with other people. It also > softens me. It's a softening in that way that comes with time and > age and having to put something out in the world after much > rigor—physical, emotional, and financial—everything’s put to > it. So I think it just leaves me with feeling like, art is so > necessary and what do people do who don't have this, who don't put > their creative energy to use?Interview
13.04.21
‘This is Not a Book That is Enthusiastic About Humanity’: An Interview with Carrie JenkinsBy Anthony Oliveira
Talking to the author of Victoria Sees It about books as mirrors, institutional violence in the academy, and misanthropy. > Deb sees the world as Victoria sees it. Then, one day, in the middle > of the Cambridge academic term, Deb is gone—as though she never > existed at all. Victoria Sees It (Strange Light) is the debut > novel from Carrie Jenkins, whose previous and ongoing scholarly work > (she is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at the University of > British Columbia) wrestles with love, relationships, and the systems > whose gravities shape and deform these bonds. Turning the lenses of > this formidable apparatus to fiction, Jenkins now casts an > experienced, jaundiced eye upon how harrowing a horror academia can > be for any young person—particularly for a woman whom the > institution’s exploitative logics have deemed is both sufficiently > attractive, and sufficiently vulnerable, to fall within the field of > its predations. The novel follows Victoria’s isolated childhood > into her friendship (and perhaps tender first love) with fellow > college student Deb—only to wrench that rare and delicate > connection away, apparently without explanation. The lady vanishes, > and our scholar-detective is left to sift a proliferating, senseless > collection of clues—glittering baubles and sinister graffiti > littering campus, ancient codices and useless secret societies for > the idle rich, a helpful police-officer-turned-love-interest, > lubriciously assiduous professors—that cannot seem to be made to > cohere into any reasonable whole. It is an audacious, unsettling > book, culminating in a series of dark twists that ratchet its > initial intrigue towards a neo-gothic crescendo of madness and > paranoia, as Victoria struggles to orient and assemble meaning while > captive in a world whose categories and coordinates have been > rendered deliberately unfair and malevolently confused. There is, > Jenkins suggests, more than one way for women (especially poor, > queer women) to be made to disappear. Anthony Oliveira: Thanks so > much for chatting with me, and for this book. I think I am firstly > curious about how you would you describe its project—how > do you see it? Carrie Jenkins: Well, I think it's a psychological > thriller, though it took me a while to arrive at that. > Thematically it’s concerned with isolation and mental health, and > the gendered aspects of both of those things. It's concerned with > academia and power. And it's trying to do all this in a way that's > quite intimate and humanizing. I really wanted Victoria to be able > to speak to us directly, and to as it were trap people in her head > with her, so that we get a perspective on the things that she > struggles with, including mental health. And other people's > conceptions of that, and the isolation that results when those > conceptions do not work. I wanted her to speak from her real > experiences of those things, and humanize them. A lot of writing > about mental health fails to give us the first-person perspective; > we have a lot of third-personal, diagnostic, medicalized, language, > which can be useful in certain contexts, but there is something that > is really missed by the wayside, which is the humanity of living > in a world where you and/or it don't quite line up with > expectation. What, to your mind, were the seeds of this project? Or > maybe another way: at one point, you say “Books are just > mirrors.” What is this book mirroring? The first sentence, not the > prologue, but the first sentence of the main book, “My mother > stopped talking when I was born,” was there very early on, in the > first pass of the first drafts. That was the origin, in my head, of > Victoria's voice. A lot of what followed from there was just me > figuring out why—what does that mean, what is that sentence > tapping? This is one of my first attempts at writing fiction at all, > and it began with that sentence and Victoria's voice. I wanted to > consider this idea of cyclical progress, or lack of > progress—things changing but still staying the same. I return > endlessly to this theme of something shifting or changing—perhaps > generationally, or over time, only to discover that it hasn't really > shifted at all. And passing this broken cycle on to the next > generation. The way that I ended up writing Victoria, the > protagonist… her life is following my life around, to a large > extent. So there are a lot of twisted mirrors of places and > situations that I've been in or been familiar with, that she then > goes into and now has to deal with. Fairly early on I started trying > to lean into trusting my subconscious or semi-conscious processes to > come up with something that was, in many cases, sort > of reality-adjacent. And I ended up with this twisted, > semi-digested, semi-conscious horror, this grotesque version of my > reality or real situations, like a funhouse mirror. I feel like > Victoria, in a number of ways, is a case of but for the grace of > fate or whatever, go I—she is in really bad situations that I, > very easily, could have ended up in. This book is full of the > mirrors of my world and my reality as I've understood it, or as I > understand it. The obvious proximity to your own life—the > specificity of sight and smell, is very present and striking in the > book, even without flipping the cover to compare Victoria’s > journey to your own bio. Was that hard? Deciding how much of your > life to let seep in, when the character’s biography is so close to > your own? It is a weird experience because partly it made things so > much easier to just let Victoria follow me around, but it is funny > how the memory betrays you—my copy editor found many moments > where, for example, a specific song wasn’t released that year, > etc. Which was itself interesting, but it was always intentional > that Victoria does a lot of the things that I have done, but is not > me. From the first sentence, “my mother stopped talking when I was > born,” that's not true of me. My mother didn't stop talking when I > was born. It became about just letting these, these things, twist, > twist themselves, and then land where they wanted to land. Victoria > is me—and of course she isn't. This text is so much about > institutional violence, and I wanted to ask specifically about the > book’s interest and horror at the violence of academia. What is > this book saying about the sort of insidious and ancient evil of the > academy? That agelessness, specifically, seems to obtain when you > talk about Cambridge especially—these august and enduring > edifices… It is so strange—right, because that's where a lot of > their power comes from—that sense that these forces have been > there, for all intents and purposes, forever, without possibility of > changing. This is one of those cyclical things, the book’s themes > constantly feeling like, oh, this time academia has solved its > problems, and now there is no more racism and sexism and > colonialism. And of course, that's never what's actually happened; > these cycles of apparent progress enter a retrograde phase, and > those trapped in them wonder whether you're really going in a > straight line, or just round and round in circles. I think everyone > who has been in an academic department meeting knows that feeling: > that it's just a dance, you just go around, around the steps. And > there's very little sense of possibility of ever breaking out of > that. I really had the sense, when I was 18 years old—very > bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and naively optimistic—I really > did believe some of the we've sorted out some of the problems in > academia now, and it’s going to be much better. We were supposed > to be inheriting a much better academic institution, but… You have > a scene in which a senior female scholar dismisses a very urgent > concern from a student and then turns around and gives a lecture > about how things are not as sexist as they used to be… Yeah, and > there is probably some truth in that too, right, because she is > probably in her mind comparing it to something much more > explicit—literally being told you cannot be here, the kind of > overt sexual harassment in front of everybody that is relatively > rare now, thank goodness, although not completely eliminated. But > you didn’t solve the problem, you didn't know to look below the > surface and understand the swirling undercurrents of it, and how > those go around in circles, even though it looks like the river is > flowing. You didn’t consider how you can get caught up and sucked > under. As much as the academy emerges as this crushing force in your > book, the literary canon does too. There is a horror on the part of > Victoria, who is constantly quoting and footnoting the > canonical—usually male but not always male—writers and actually > complains at various moments that she can't stop doing that. Right, > and it's not entirely academic stuff, because there's also quite a > bit of pop culture too, but yes, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes… it > is a lot of figures, I think, of the hyper-rational. I don’t > know—I’m just the author—but I feel like one of Victoria's > obsessions, one of the things she struggles with, is understanding > how to manage emotionally within her world. And so she uses > “hyper-rational” thinking as a form of anesthetic, sometimes, > and the canon provides for that very readily: it provides lots of > logic puzzles, and problems that you can get completely lost in if > you want to write without thinking too much about the actual world > and its problems. So there can be this avoidance tactic. To a large > extent, academia can do this, writ large, with the world's problems, > but also individuals can do this with their own lives—you can send > yourself down a rabbit hole of academic inquiry in order to avoid > looking at something you really don't want to look at. I think > Victoria does some of that, and I think that the canon of academic > philosophy lends itself to her as a mode of doing that. A lot of her > choices speak to that same inclination: to just wrap yourself up in > the intellectual life. One of the figures you use throughout as the > model of how that isn't going to work is Isaac Newton—there's the > version of you that wants to pursue the rational and that wants to > pursue the science, but who is compelled simultaneously compelled to > pursue something that exceeds the rational, that reaches beyond it, > and is in some ways destroyed by it too. Absolutely, yes—I’m > absolutely personally obsessed with Isaac Newton. He does represent > that kind of sanitizing in the rational, in the scientific, to the > detriment of the attempt to find something that is actually better > or beyond that. But also was at peace with that irreconcilability; > he thought the search for these mystical, magical things was just > part of understanding the universe, understanding creation. It was > all one project for him. I’m fascinated by that. There are a whole > bunch of Easter eggs in Victoria Sees It, and lots of them have to > do with what look like complete sets that are actually missing a > piece, or sequences that actually the repeat, but then get thrown > off the cycle in some way. I don’t know if this counts as a > spoiler or not… I think you're the one who decides > that… So Victoria goes searching for her missing friend, and she > goes to four different locations which are symbolic of four elements > of earth, air, fire, and water. And does not find what she's looking > for in any of them, and this fifth element of the missing piece of > the puzzle keeps haunting her. One of the things I'm wrestling with > in the book, wrestling with rather than trying to say, but > specifically wrestling with is that question of the fifth piece. > Is it real? Is it something we could actually find? Is it something > that we've written out of the history, because it wasn't tidy enough > to be squared away with the other four? And if that is something > we're doing because we're scared of what it would be if we saw it, > if we found it, if we acknowledged it—and what kind of shape would > the search for it take? These are the things that troubled me, and > which found their way into various thematic structuring principles > of the book that are not supposed to be highly visible in the final > version. They're more like the process left behind, as a residue. > When you mention edited texts and sanitized versions of biographies > and missing pieces (as with, for example, Newton), my mind turns to > your book’s queer themes. We see your protagonist react almost > physically when the word “lesbian” drops, for example. I just > wanted to ask how you think the queerness of the text hooks into > that larger theme of the missing and unspoken, or how much you were > thinking about that as like a major motif in the piece. As I say, > I'm just the author, and I don't really claim authority on how > important it is as a theme, but as I was writing it, it was really > just how it is, this is what and how that character is. But I think > it also helped to flag more of the toxicities, and the unspoken > parts of what was going wrong. When the word “lesbian” comes out > for Victoria, for example—the only time she's heard that word is > kids being bullied at school. That was just a term you would call > someone when you're putting them through a kind of social death. So > she's never really had to come to grips with the possibility that > that's a word that applies to her for real and it's not a slur. And > that there's parts of her, her relationship with her friend before > the friend goes missing, that are clearly suggestive of a bond that > could be queer, but she hasn't been given tools for thinking about > that as an option. And it really literally takes a woman coming up > to her, and very explicitly saying, I'm asking you on a date > now, for the penny to drop. And as I was working with the book I > realized that it gave me useful material for revealing some more of > the ways in which this stuff is pretty toxic—the gendered, sexist, > misogynistic aspects of the character’s world come through much > more explicitly. With the character’s queerness, it becomes almost > about the silence around it. That's the clue, and the fact that she > doesn’t talk about it, and that she can't even really hear the > word lesbian without viscerally flinching. The institutional > oppression is almost secondary in that case; it becomes a function > of hetero-normative patriarchy writ large. When you look back on it > is, was this a detective story? Was this a ghost story? It is so > much about hauntings, but also so insistent on finding its way > through to the rational. What, when you look at it, what was this > book about? It is funny but honestly, the kind of book that I like > to read is not very much like this one. But there is a kind of book > where I don't exactly like to read it, but I do feel this immense > sense of relief when I get to the end of a book and I feel > like, oh, somebody else gets it as well. And so I hope it's one of > those books where—and I don't think this will be a universal > feeling—but where the right people, when they read it, and get to > the end, will think, oh, someone else notices this stuff, oh, it's > not just me, which is kind of like the relief I get from reading > Kafka or something like that. I have to say, my experience with > academia was not dissimilar to Victoria’s and perhaps yours, and > there were many moments in reading in which I thought, oh my god, I > have had these exact thoughts, I have seen this exact scene, I have > witnessed and had this breakdown. I think that’s sort of > everybody's autobiography that's been through that particular > wringer, through this process of what I think is really > fundamentally a pretty toxic institution. These are funhouse mirrors > that you don't really have to twist very much to get to their horror > story. But I think it also speaks to people who have not been in > that situation: to shine a bit of a light on some of this stuff that > happens in usually quite closed rooms, and behind closed doors. Some > of the ways that academia is abusive and toxic tend to be pretty > hidden, and I'm not sure how much awareness there is of the > intricacies of how it functions. Your refrain throughout is why is > no one noticing that this is happening—there is a way that these > institutions, the operations of this whole universe of power > mobilize to gaslight you, to leave you wondering: how is this > happening to me and why am I being made to feel like the mad one. > Yes, towards the end of the book these themes of madness erupt: how > to deal with yet another imposition of the institution and > environment and labels related to Victoria’s state of mental > health, and none of the categories are healthy ones for her at all. > I feel very bad for her because she does go through a particularly > useless set of mental health professionals; it is possible to > imagine very good ones who might actually have been able to help > her, but she doesn't meet them and that is unfortunate, but it > happens to people—happens to a lot of people. And so, all of the > categories that she's offered just do violence to her; they don't > support her, they don't help her to understand herself or anything > else. And this only leads to further, and more lastingly permanent, > isolation. The universe that Victoria has to live in is very > unstable—for her, even basic elements of reality are not really > very well-defined, and they seem to be liable to change at any > minute. There is a moment where Victoria says “I am not a > misanthrope.” Is this a misanthropic book—is that distinction > important to you? Well, it's not… this is not the view of, like, > someone who's a huge fan of humanity. Victoria has got this kind of > detached thing going on—she says, and I think she means this, > “I didn't have any friends in school, but it’s not like there > was something there that I wanted or that I didn't have.” It > sounds bad but she didn't actually want that. When she zooms out, > she's able to appreciate some of humanity's achievements, but up > close everything gets twisted and messed up once you get into the > details of how life actually plays out. And I think there's a > feeling throughout of constantly zooming in and out, missing the > bigger picture or missing the details or not being able to reconcile > the very large and the very small. To her, somewhere in between all > of these bits, something is wrong, is missing, with humanity and > the universe that it is creating for itself. “Misanthrope” > isn’t quite right, but she ends up with this very detached > perspective, which I think is probably closer to the book’s own > worldview. This is not a book that is enthusiastic about humanity.Interview
07.04.21
‘The Work That Hadn’t Been Done Was Bringing These Men to Life on the Page’: An Interview with Elon GreenBy Andru Okun
The author of Last Call on writing difficult-to-read books, true crime, and finding queer community in ’90s piano bars. > During the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic inflicted a harsh toll on New > York. By ’97, more than 60,000 people in the city died of AIDS. As > Elon Green writes in Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and > Murder in Queer New York (Celadon Books), “Death was a constant > hum.” Green’s debut recounts the lives of four men who were > part of the queer community during this time. They were also > uniquely connected by a different tragedy, each murdered by the same > serial killer. “The Last Call Killer” was known for targeting > queer men in some of the places where they felt most safe: the gay > piano bars of Manhattan. Last Call chronicles these bars, which were > essential to the formation of the gay community during a time of > rampant anti-queer violence. Police were of no use in responding to > these assaults, and the AIDS crisis was still largely misunderstood. > When the bodies of gay men started showing up in trash cans, yet > another fear was introduced into the everyday lives of gay people. > “From the beginning, I viewed Last Call as a work of history with > crimes and investigations holding it together,” Green tells me > over a recent phone call. While his book is difficult, it provides a > careful record of an era that deserves to be documented. I spoke > with the author at length about how he pieced this story together > and why he felt it was so necessary to tell. Andru Okun: Last Call > examines a string of murders of queer men in New York City during > the 1990s. You write that these killings were largely forgotten and > that you became “obsessed with the lives of the victims.” What > are some of the factors that contributed to this obsession? Elon > Green: When you write about someone famous, it’s very easy. > There’s a lot of existing material. I’ve interviewed Mavis > Staples four or five times, and if I ever want to find out what she > was doing in June of 1962, I can figure it out. Part of what was so > exciting to me was that these guys were basically a blank slate and > it would take a tremendous amount of work to reconstruct their > lives, and doing so would be incredibly satisfying. Also, I think if > you look at anyone’s life closely enough you can see something > interesting. With these men in particular—one man was in finance, > another was selling computers, another was a sex worker, another was > a typesetter; you had men who were closeted, men who were out; one > who was in the military, one who had AIDs—there was just this > astonishing panorama of gay life in these four guys. That seemed > like a real gift because that meant I had a lot to write about. The > murders you cover stretch back nearly thirty years. I’d like to > hear about the process of researching this book and tracking down > sources. What I started with were chunks of the trial transcripts. > At the beginning, I had to buy it piecemeal from the retired court > stenographer. She charged me thousands of dollars for some of the > transcript, and she remembered the case very well. Eventually, I > became acquainted with the prosecutor in the case and he sent me > everything. That transcript provided the bones for the narrative and > I was able to put together an outline of events. As I was going > along, I interviewed people that I found in the transcripts, whether > they be family members, detectives, co-workers, people that found > bodies—if they were involved in any kind of way, I wanted to talk > to them. Then, of course, there was some newspaper coverage. I was > just piecing the story together from whatever I could find. Once the > book proposal sold, then I went everywhere. I was getting > handwritten notes from detectives. I was trawling the LGBT Center > archives. I had acquaintances of the murderer send me letters he had > written from prison. As far as the sources directly impacted by > these murders, how have they responded to you writing this book? So > far, very positively. As far as I can tell, none of them are being > blindsided. I was very upfront with what I was writing; I’d > sometimes send them chunks of the book and read it to them. I > didn’t want them to be surprised by anything, and if an issue was > going to be raised I wanted that to happen before publication. A > couple of family members have read it, and it > wasn’t an easy thing to do but they got through it. The fact that > they finished this book seems to me a pretty extraordinary thing, > because I can’t imagine doing it myself. The book is probably hard > enough to read if you don’t have a personal stake in the story. I > do think some parts of this book are difficult to read, but not > because of the way it’s written. If I did it right, the whole book > should be difficult to read. You detail a lot of painful history. > Did you feel at all apprehensive about telling this story? No, it > felt so necessary to do it. To strip a story like this of its > historical and political context would be malpractice. In answering > the question, “Why doesn’t anybody know about this case?” you > have to talk about what was going on in the city and the country at > that time. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic; queer New Yorkers > were being assaulted to such a degree that it was basically legal to > do it—there were basically no legal repercussions—and there was > an indifference to their lives. Writing about this felt like not > only something I wanted to do but something I had to do. One of the > reasons I spent so much time on the nightlife is because it had > never been written about in any real kind of way. The bars and clubs > of that era, if they were written about at all, it was only through > the prism of AIDS. Because, to some degree, the events in this book > center around the piano bars, I wanted to make it clear to the > readers (and to myself) why people enjoyed going there and what > their role was in the life of the city. I wanted people to be able > to see these men having a good time. The story of Michael Sakara, > a beloved regular of one of New York’s piano bars, was > particularly heartbreaking. You put a lot of time into understanding > the lives of these murdered men. Can you talk about how you > approached writing about them? They were already victims; that was > their role in the coverage. They had been reduced to that victim > status. To me, there is no point in writing something (especially a > book) if you’re just going to regurgitate what’s already been > done. The work that hadn’t been done was bringing these men to > life on the page. The larger, loftier thing I had envisioned doing > was to figure out why they ended up where they did, to understand > what brought them to New York at that time. So true crime is not a > genre I’m necessarily drawn to, I don’t exactly feed off of > it… I don’t like it, either. To some degree, this book is a > reaction to how I feel about the genre. Right. So as a journalist > writing the story of these men’s lives, which tragically include > these extremely violent crimes, how do you decide which details are > necessary to tell your story? Yeah, that’s a good question. Very > early on in the writing, I was erring on the side of putting in > everything I could about the crimes and their aftermath. I just > wanted to be thorough. I sent the first chapter to my friend David Grann and he said to me, look, this is not a CSI > episode. You don’t have to give the reader so much blood and guts. > Along with that, I increasingly thought of the family members and > friends of the victims. Whenever I was writing something, I’d ask > myself if it needed to be in the book and how would they react when > and if they read it. When it came to describing the conditions of > the victim’s bodies, I decided I was only going to give the reader > enough information so that they understand the damage that was done. > I’m not going to elide any information that meaningfully changes > the situation, but I’m not going to overdo it. I tried to be as > minimalist as I could, and my understanding from the reaction to the > book so far is that it’s still extremely gory. Yes. It is gory, > but it seems like you were intentional about what to include, which > seems like a difficult process. Very much so. I showed chapters to a > pathologist to make sure every little description was accurate. I > did not want anything gratuitous. The era you’re primarily > focused on was a difficult one for gay men. You mention that The New > York Times avoided writing about gay life and AIDS for years. How do > you think mainstream media’s treatment of queer communities > impacted prevailing attitudes toward queer people during that time? > Oh my god, it’s incalculable. There’s a reason nobody gave a > shit about AIDS. Of course, the Times wasn’t the only paper that > didn’t give a shit, but they were certainly the most high profile. > People care about what they’re told to care about, and if The New > York Times and 60 Minutes weren’t covering AIDS, that just > wasn’t getting on people’s radar. And if people didn’t care > about AIDS, they also didn’t care about all the things that > rippled out from it, like the assaults and murders of queer > people. I was fascinated by your writing on the Anti-Violence > Project. Would you talk about this group and the circumstances that > lead to their formation? AVP kept coming up in the coverage. Their > role was basically to prod the police and the media into taking > these murders seriously. They were keeping their own sort of > dossiers on each of the victims. The more I learned about them, the > more I felt that they had to have their own chapter. They’ve been > this miraculous organization for forty years, and they were on the > front lines of keeping the city bureaucracy honest. The reason I > wrote about AVP and the conditions that produced them is because, if > I didn’t do that, then the reader would not know what the stakes > were, what the conditions were for queer life in the city. The > reader wouldn’t understand these murders didn’t get > attention—even within the gay community—because they were not > unusual. There were so many deaths and assaults that four over a > span of three years is basically nothing. To be able to convey that, > I had to tell the story of AVP and the story of what they were > fighting against. What you’re saying reminds me of your piece > last year for The Appeal on the pernicious whiteness of true crime. > There’s a line where you write, “True depravity is deadly > repetition.” People have asked me why these murders didn’t get > more coverage. Increasingly, I think part of it is that there are > tons of murders in any given year. In New York, the numbers have > been drastically diminished since the ’90s, but you’re still not > hearing about all of them or even most of them. I’m willing to bet > most murders aren’t covered in the newspaper. So it shouldn’t be > a surprise to anybody if murders are not covered. Quite frankly, > I’m grateful for the coverage that was there. Certainly, that > these victims were perceived as gay was a large driver of the lack > of coverage and the lack of interest in these cases, but it’s not > entirely the problem. Tell me about the “gay panic” defense and > what you think this legal tactic tells us about the criminal justice > system. The “gay panic” defense basically meant that you could > claim that someone of the same gender had come on to you and that > you got spooked, so you assaulted or killed them. It was a legal > rationalization and it was extremely common, going back to at least > the ’50s. To me, it just said that the legal system was looking > for a way to not care about anti-queer crime. Part of the evidence > for that is that they were for so long ill-equipped to handle these > cases. The Manhattan DA’s office under Robert Morgenthau had to > bring people in from the outside, including the Anti-Violence > Project, to teach them how to prosecute these cases. Right. At one > point you write about it as “a new kind of crime.” I would > argue that it essentially was, because even if something is > technically on the books, if it’s not being treated as a crime > then it’s not a crime, at least to the people who are being > assaulted. If it’s not being treated as a crime, it may as well > not be. I appreciated that this book didn’t center the murderer, > Richard Rogers. But when you learned about him, did you get any > sense of why he may have committed these murders? I talked to a > behavioral profiler; he basically said that motive only means > something in the case of a single murder. Once you’re a serial > killer, you’re just doing it because you like it. People keep > asking me, “Why did Richard Rogers do it?” but there doesn’t > have to be some grand explanation other than that he wanted to. > I’d be surprised if it was more complicated than that. Between > that probability and the fact that he never took responsibility for > these murders, I just didn’t give a shit about Richard Rogers. But > you did want to interview him, right? I did, but it was mostly due > diligence. I mostly wanted to talk to him to check some biographical > details. The extent to my indifference to him was that in the > original proposal in the book there wasn’t even a chapter about > him, and I only wrote about him to fill in a narrative gap. On an > emotional level, I cared about the victims, and I didn't care about > him. I have tried to treat him with as much humanity as I’ve > treated everybody else but, if I’m being honest, he doesn’t> matter to me.
Interview
01.04.21
‘You Need a Lot of Stamina to Make Comics’: An Interview with PaulPope
By Jean Marc Ah-Sen
The cartoonist on analogue versus digital art, post-punk rock musician Rowland S. Howard, and his idea for a “Tao of comics.” > Paul Pope, the self-styled “comics destroyer,” has long > understood that creation is an act of displacement—a “sum of > destructions,” as Picasso famously put it. The annihilation of the > empty page when overlaid with balanced grids and figures is an > extension of this destructive impulse and, in Pope’s graphic > design book Pulphope: The Art of Paul Pope, he expresses a desire to > discard all “inflated and worn-out edicts which serve only to keep > the medium of comics in stasis.” This pursuit of comics’ kinetic > future has taken him far afield. In 1995, after self-publishing > books such as Sin Titulo, The Ballad of Doctor Richardson, and the > Martian science fiction gangster-epic THB, Pope accepted an > invitation to work for Kodansha, Japan’s largest publishing > company. Producing eighteen pages of art a week, a workload that > most comic book artists strive to complete on a monthly basis, he > returned to North America with a workhorse mentality towards comic > strip production. Marrying the Japanese and European traditions of > manga and bande dessinée with a uniquely American ethos, Pope > released three graphic novels with DC Comics—Heavy Liquid, 100%, > and the blockbuster Batman: Year 100, a dystopian thriller set a > hundred years after the caped crusader’s inception in 1939. > Pope’s one-man wave of artistic destruction even found entry > points in the fashion and film worlds, where he designed two seasons > of a capsule men’s line for DKNY, and worked for several years > with Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment to > develop a feature film adaptation of his young adult comic series > Battling Boy. In addition to the conclusion of the Battling Boy > series and a secret project that will be announced in late 2021, > Pope has been mulling over something called a “Tao of > comics”—a protreptic in the comic arts that, in addition to > establishing the “rules” of the form, will lay out practices to > sustain the cartoonist’s singular lifestyle. I spoke with Paul on > the phone to discuss the protean nature of his work, the mentorship > of younger artists, and his love of Australian post-punk musician > Rowland S. Howard. Jean Marc Ah-Sen: I like this idea of the > “Tao of comics” you’ve been talking up lately, because it > seems to go beyond the ambitions of drawing manuals or academic > elaborations of the comic form. Am I right in thinking that the book > you’re planning isn’t in the vein of How to Draw Comics the > Marvel Way or Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art? Paul Pope: > This notion of the Tao, the way I see it, is an attitude towards > living that is benevolent and open. That’s the way I feel when I > read Lao Tzu. To become a cartoonist, I didn’t go to SVA or > Pratt—I was trained in traditional painting and printmaking and > art history. The teachers mostly didn’t think comics or even > illustration were art. My early masters were the late Pheoris West > and Charles Massey of Ohio State University, life drawing and > printing professors respectively. I wanted to learn hands-on > technique from them. I wasn’t interested in conceptual art. It > mattered to me if I actually could draw anatomy and paint. I spent > eight years doing figure drawing, painting with Pheoris, learning > how to stretch canvases, lithography, and silkscreen with Charles, > etc.—learning the technical details about the science of art. > “Why do you change your ink out every six months?” “Why do you > use this type of brush?” The Tao I want to write will describe not > only tools that are good, but also how to live in a holistic way so > you can maintain the lifestyle of an artist. As I’m getting older, > I am more conscious of that, since you need a lot of stamina to make > comics. There are all kinds of social reasons why people drop out of > the arts, or pitfalls along the way that might be spider holes, > rather than good career or lifestyle choices. Rather than tell > people, “You should do this, you should do that,” the Tao is a > poetic questionnaire. I know it sounds kind of grandiose to say I > want to write a Tao of comics, but it’s more like “a way of > comics,” not “the way of comics.” Especially as we move more > toward a digitally-oriented society, I notice younger artists asking > me questions about simple analogue tools like brushes and inks, that > sort of thing. So I’d want to codify that in some sort of book. > Are there certain core values that have informed your work over the > years? A lot of my tastes are Modernist sensibilities and I consider > myself a pop artist too. As far as core values go, I think we have > to have room for storytellers and picture-makers without blinders > on, but we’re in a kind of revolutionary phase in time. I > think—let me start with this: critical thinking, skepticism. The > tyranny of social media is we’re given things we’re supposed to > believe in just because they’re written. It isn’t natural, it > isn’t the way people have always thought or discovered things. We > have one group shutting down another group, this group against that > group, and vice-versa. It’s a turn-off because, as an artist, > I’m interested in exploration of ideas, in free inquiry, and in a > long-term call and response with other artists and, at large, with > people out there. People I respected growing up were Milo Manara, > Moebius, Guido Crepax, Hugo Pratt. You absorb their work and do > something to respond to it. I want people to remain critical. Talk, > debate, challenge ideas. If you don’t like something, formulate a > response to it rather than just try to shut it down. That’s the > discourse and, without it we don’t have society. That’s the > temperature of the culture right now. If everybody cools down a > little bit, it’ll be better. Do these ideas translate as you work > across mediums? Can you incorporate the same principles when > you’re doing non-comics work, like the print-making you do with > Nakatomi, Inc. or when you designed the end credit sequences for > Netflix’s Altered Carbon? They’re all different rhetorics, but > when it comes to animation, screen printing, illustration, they all > have rules—fuzzy rules let’s say. So I think you want to learn > the language first. As a visual artist, I think that the skill set > you might bring to animation versus screen printing versus comic > book storytelling—they’re all different yet related. It’s > important to find the things that are specific to the subgenres or > the submedias, and how they all kind of relate to the larger > picture, which is visual storytelling or the graphic arts. With the > likes of Stan Sakai, Colleen Doran, and Jeff Smith, you came out of > the American independent comics/self-publishing scene in the early > ’90s. Can you talk about breaking into comics by starting Horse > Press as opposed to the more traditional route of sending samples to > comic publishers and signing work-for-hire contracts? When I got > into comics it was the early ’90s, and it was right after the top > artists from Marvel and DC splintered into their own company and > formed Image Comics. It was like, “Okay, you can be an artist > outside of a corporation?” That was exciting. There were also > self-publishing examples with books like Dave Sim’s Cerebus and > Jeff Smith’s Bone. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was already huge. > It doesn’t take a lot of money to start publishing, especially if > you work in a printing shop like I did. I cut a lot of costs by > doing my own pre-production work in-house. So I read a couple of > books on how to self-publish and it was a business model that > actually made sense. Considering I was in my early twenties—I mean > my rent was 189 dollars a month and I lived on baguettes and hummus > and coffee—it’s kind of strange I was able to do this. That’s > how it started for me. As an artist still using analogue > materials of paper, pencils, ink, and brush, what do you make of the > popularity of digital platforms for experiencing comics, and of > comics being made digitally? Has the digital revolution levelled the > playing field for creators, or created more challenges in > publishing? I don’t think it’s levelled the playing field > because we still have to have fundamental art skills. If you look at > Western art examples, the eye will still see representation of a > body. You can say this person has a certain style, but we still read > this as a body or as space, which I consider to be formalistic > ground rules of picture making. Most comics, whatever the style or > subject, rely on figure/ground imagery. The thing I always think > about, because of the career I’ve had and maybe because I started > drawing before computers were useful for making pictures, is I > prefer to make tangible, analogue drawings made out of archival > tools on paper. They’re able to last beyond our lifetimes. The > life of the art is longer than the life of the artist, usually. > I’m always a little bit perplexed about making digital art for its > own sake because there’s no document—there’s a digital > document, but not an artifact. That’s why I was calling myself a > Modern artist before because there’s a body of work that’s left > behind. I wouldn’t want to have anything that was only digital, > although I do work digitally all the time. In my case, it’s > technical rather than creative. I mainly scan art I drew and send > digital files to the publisher. I’ll start with a pencil and a > blank piece of paper, and work that way. What’s your opinion on > the mentorship of new artists? You developed friendships with comic > luminaries Moebius and Frank Miller, who looked at your work at > various stages in your career. Do you think that built into the > conception of what an artist does is the understanding—I don’t > want to use a loaded term like “responsibility”—that they > engage with the next generation, and carry on a tradition of > technical, maybe even philosophical instruction? Not necessarily. I > think it depends on your personality, really. I know that I’m not > the type of person that wants to be a teacher. The one time I did > teach was at a month-long residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts > in Florida. I told the students, “You can come to me with > questions, I’ll suggest exercises that we can do, but I’m not > going to grade you.” Everybody walked away with a different > lesson. I’m more interested in presenting questions and letting > people find their own solutions. While I was studying with Pheoris, > I also had an epistolary relationship with Alex Toth, and he would > tell me things like, “No, you’re doing this wrong, it needs to > be like this.” It was pedantic. I prefer to have a mélange of > styles where you pick things up from manga, from comics, from > literary essays, from art history, wherever—different things that > come together because you’re not working in one rigid tradition. > Eventually, your style percolates. As I got older, I got to know > Bill Sienkiewicz. Even though we’re close in age, I consider him a > master beyond my level. We’ve drawn together many times and I ask > him questions as we’re working. It’s truly a dialectic. He will > say, “Maybe this works, maybe that doesn’t work.” The openness > of it is much more in my spirit. Your work has reflected a deep > connection with music. You’ve done promotional artwork for bands > like Heavy Trash, Thee Hypnotics, and Metallica, you illustrated the > last piece of writing Dee Dee Ramone ever published for > Spin magazine, and you were going to direct a music video for the > Tea Party at one point. Are these projects a way of recharging > before you go back into comics work, or a way of signalling your own > personal tastes? I’ve had three or four chances to make music > videos. I’m sure I could have hit a home run, but there’s never > any money in it for the budget. The era of big music videos seems > like it’s passed. Even small videos will lose you money. It’s > like you show up at the batter’s cage and there’s no bat, to > continue this clumsy metaphor. Earlier on, working with bands, it > was about flagging my interests, but then you ask yourself how you > can make something new. The thing I’ve discovered about the > musicians I’ve met is that a lot of them draw. There’s this > universal handshake that happens between musicians and whatever I > am—a graphic artist or a cartoonist. A lot of them either went to > an art school or read comics and science fiction. You meet in this > neutral playing field. The strange thing about comics is there’s > no sound—we always make sound effects, things that suggest sound > and action, but it’s really just a piece of paper. And music has > no visual element in itself—the recording is just sound. I think > there’s always been a secret fraternity between graphic artists > and musicians. I’ve been interested in carrying that forward. You > were saying how Rowland S. Howard’s music, especially in Crime & > the City Solution and These Immortal Souls, is something you return > to often for inspiration. What is it about Howard’s career and > tragic end that resonates so strongly with you? When I was a > teenager, the Birthday Party was still together—Nick Cave’s band > with Rowland S. Howard. There were hidden elements in Howard’s > guitar playing that I had to discover later, everything from Gene > Vincent, Dick Dale, to Les Paul—in short, the history of reverb. > There’s this kind of Byronic thing that post-punks had that I > liked where it was kind of romantic to be emaciated and wistful. > Because he was Australian and his music had this reverb-heavy sound, > it always made me think about space and the desert. The music was > full of imagery to me, had this romantic, wide-space sound. I could > see ways that it related to Sergio Leone and Moebius—“big > picture” pictures, as it were. You took a trip to Egypt and the > Middle East two years ago that galvanized your work and recalibrated > what sort of relationship you thought was possible with your > audience. Can you talk about the experience and what it did for your > outlook? From what they told me, it was the first time an American > had come to headline a comic convention in North Africa, > specifically Egypt. They were so welcoming, which is interesting if > you think about where we are in history—going as an American pop > artist to meet other Egyptian pop artists. I don’t know if I’m > going in the right direction with this thought, but they had a lot > of questions about comics and bande dessinée. Many never really had > a chance to meet people from the West who did this, so I was just > available to talk, like an ambassador of comics or something. > There’s a strong French comics tradition there too, which is cool. > Lots of late-night discussions about craft and intention, stuff like > that. The work there is definitely more politically active because > of the time and the place. There’s tons of screen printing, > anthologies, and flash art. Some artists were coming from Lebanon. I > met a number of artists who had been arrested and put in jail > because of their work. I think with the ubiquity of comics today, > it’s easy to forget that there is and always has been a history of > iconoclasm within the medium. Fletcher Hanks, Spain Rodriguez, Art > Young, George Herriman, June Tarpé Mills… Especially here in > North America, where we have laws protecting satire and parody, and > there they don’t. It’s easy to even fall > into a net where you didn’t intend to do something that was a > parody of the government, but over there it will still land you in > jail. It was pretty profound to see that firsthand. It really made > you rethink the power of the pen, so to speak. It really felt like a > cultural exchange. It changes the intention of making art when you > realize it’s actually a political act. I’ve always thought there > was a humanistic and political dimension to your writing, asking > questions about where society is heading, usually in relation to > technology, personal freedoms, and authoritarian government powers. > Well, I infuse my work with things I find relevant as a science > fiction writer—which is what I consider myself to be. I just > happen to draw, rather than make prose. The thing with science > fiction is that it’s predictive literature that’s concerned with > where society is going, as opposed to “capital F” Fantasy, which > seems to me to ask questions of balancing right and wrong, good > versus evil, and where we are in the moment. I think the big > questions right now would be about artificial intelligence, the > relationship of digital technology with the government and media, > longevity, and the questions of how we can preserve our lives beyond > the human life scale, the ecology. Those are worth writing about > because those are real things and they’re there. What do you think > about the artist or writer who does not engage along these political > lines? Is the apathetic or apolitical artist relevant to an audience > increasingly engaging with these subjects? I kind of agree with the > notion of ars gratia artis. Art for its own sake is fine. I don’t > think the artist has any special responsibility to respond to > anything in society. You can just make a pretty picture. And by > “pretty,” I don’t mean to denigrate the value of an > aesthetically pleasing piece of art. Some artists are very strident > politically, but when it comes to aesthetics, I think an artist can > just make their art. Nobody even needs to see it. That being said, I > think, by its very nature, science fiction does respond to concerns > about where we’re going as a people, and that’s a social issue. > You almost got the chance to adapt A Clockwork Orange for the > now-defunct Vertigo mature readers imprint of DC Comics, which would > have paired you with comic and TV writer Grant Morrison. How were > you going to approach a book with such loaded audience expectations? > Did it incorporate the infamous last chapter that was omitted in > Kubrick’s film where Alex DeLarge is legitimately rehabilitated > and wants to start a family? I’d been wanting to work with Grant > Morrison for a long time, and at one point they were attached to > adapt it at Vertigo. I think they’re one of the great writers of > our medium. We’d almost worked together a couple of times—I seem > to remember there was talk about doing a third year of All-Star > Superman with different artists. They don’t remember talking to me > about it, but I remember discussing it. When A Clockwork Orange came > to me, I said, “Why don’t we recast this as an American story > and put it in Los Angeles or Detroit? I won’t draw it, but I’ll > help find an artist from Los Angeles to do it, and rephrase > everything so the dialogue isn’t going to be a Nadsat mish-mash of > English and Russian—make it an up-to-the-minute LA hip hop thing > where Alex is a kid from LA and speaks with that vernacular.” > Editorial shied away from it. I didn’t want to do a literal > adaptation, as much as play with the theme and update it. I love > this dystopian story about an attempt to cynically rehabilitate a > rebellious, troubled kid who eventually, tragically learns to love > the system. I was against adding the final coda with grown-up Alex. > But I don’t know if the original text is contemporary enough to > make sense to young people now, so that was my suggestion for how it > could have been done. But as for a literal adaptation, Kubrick’s > film was already perfect, I think. Your art is very large—you draw > on 19x24” artboards as opposed to the American standard of > 11x17”. Your art rep has described your pieces as having real > “wall power.” What are the advantages of working in these > dimensions? Before I got into comics, I was studying what they used > to call monumental painting. I was looking at Anselm Kiefer and Mark > Rothko, Frank Auerbach, artists that would cover an entire wall. > When I learned to draw, the action point was my shoulder and, later > on, as I got more precise, it was my elbow. When I get into detailed > stuff for comics, it’s my wrist and, beyond that, it’s the tips > of my fingers on my drawing hand. When I started making comics > professionally, I had to estimate what size I should work at and ask > myself: how large is the actual drawing for print? Because I was > already studying painting in college, I was thinking about making > big wall-sized landscapes or images. It was comfortable to work > large because I was already doing big paintings. I still draw > standing up. It’s funny now because it’s changed the way people > think about making comics pages. Most everybody working in comics > now has read How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, and it’s full of > unnecessary rules and standards that people over time have followed > because Stan Lee said it is so. There’s no reason comic book > original art needs to be 11x17”. Your linework has changed over > the years, and still shows signs of further evolution. In the > ’90s, you were working almost from an animator’s tool > kit—channelling archetypes and expressive simplicity. Then your > line got more detailed, complex—the rendering got to be more > rugged. Were these changes intentional, or inevitable stages of > progression as you mastered the craft of composition, design, > etc.? To bring it back to Howard and expressionism for a second, I > want to make sure that the art has integrity and responds to the way > I feel. Rowland’s music is full of cues which relate back to the > artists he studied, yet he built on what he discovered and twisted > it into something new. There are times when I feel the art should be > more rugged, as you say, or expressive, more times when it should be > meticulous. So depending on the project or drawing I’m working on, > it might change. For Battling Boy, for example, I’m trying to > channel Jack Kirby and classic comics and kids’ stories. To me, it > feels like the story requires a style that’s a little more art > brut. If I’m doing a commission of Lone Wolf and Cub, which feels > like it should be a little more traditionally fine, I’ll make the > linework in a classic Ukiyo-e-style. Original comic art sales are > finally catching up with the fine art world, but you decided that > you wanted to channel some of that revenue into philanthropic > causes. What made you want to get involved with the NAACP during the > pandemic? I’m fortunate to be in a place where I have a really > good art rep, Felix Lu. Every year, his roster of artists has a > think tank about where to contribute a portion of our art sales > revenue. This last year, with everything that’s gone on with Black > Lives Matter, we raised a lot of money for the NAACP Legal Defense > Fund, and then also because of Felix’s personal history—having > lost his wife—assistance for families surviving cancer > rehabilitation through the Paltown Development Foundation’s Lu > Family Fund. I never thought I’d be able to do that as a guy > making comics. There’s this classic notion of how a person should > be in society and, according to Aristotle, it was what he called > arete—which is his concept of athlete, artist, and saint. In my > own ways, I’ve achieved some of those things I guess, but I > wouldn’t with a straight face call myself a saint. But to be able > to help other people without asking anything in return is a good > feeling, I’ll say that. You alternate between creator-owned, > auteur-style projects, and big corporate properties whose > decades-long essences you have to distill—I’m thinking of your > stints on Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Inhumans, > and, of course, Batman. Are you writing to different imagined > audiences, or is it more about finding properties that you can > reconcile with your sensibility and broader goals as an artist? > Yeah, the latter of the two. I like what Clint Eastwood said: “One > for me, one for them.” So when I work on something that we might > call mainstream, whether it’s Spider-Man or Batman, I try to get a > sense of what’s the demand. Then I’ll write within the > boundaries of the genre limitations and try to hit the bullseye, but > go way above the bullseye. That’s always been my attitude. And > then when it’s time to write something small and personal—well, > I wouldn’t go to Warner Bros. with the idea of a Tao of comics. > They wouldn’t touch it. You released new editions of your breakout > books Heavy Liquid and 100% with Image Comics—recoloured for a new > decade and a new audience. What’s your attitude towards > maintaining your backlist? I imagine it’s not just a question of > simply keeping the titles in print. When DC Comics moved to Burbank > to be closer to their parent company Warner Bros., they went through > their backlist and dropped a staggering number of properties. In my > case, DC comics returned the rights to my Vertigo books, and I was > able to take them to Image Comics. I consider those works to be > cyberpunk, dystopian, near-sci-fi things and I think they still have > an audience. The books have all remained in print, they’re > published overseas, and those books are able to carry over as a > placeholder as I’m finishing my new stuff. I’ve been out of the > public eye for a while, just working—stealth years—and I got > trapped in the Hollywood maze for a little bit, so returning to the > roots for me is getting back into comics again. You’ve got > multiple books on the go right now. Total THB, colour and > black-and-white collections of your unfinished Mars sci-fi epic, a > Jungian dream book for Dargaud called Psychenaut, the second and > final installment of the Battling Boy series, and a top-secret book > so big that it may eclipse everything you’ve ever done before. Can > you give an update on the statuses of the first three projects? THB > can’t happen until Battling Boy Vol. 2 is finished, which is with > the same publisher—First Second Books, a division of Macmillan. > That’s in our contract. Those books are aimed at young adult > audiences. Psychenaut has kind of been on hold for a while. It’s a > book about dream analysis, dream therapy, so it’s very personal > and revealing. I wanted to rethink how much I wanted to share. > It’s almost finished. That’s something that’s going to happen > for my French publisher Dargaud. I have a couple of new things in > the works that I hope to surprise people with in the next couple of > years though. Your most recent project was a reimagining of Algernon > Blackwood’s The Willows and Other Nightmares for Beehive Books’ > Illuminated Editions series, which has a curatorial component > because artists are invited to illustrate passages from a book in > the public domain. What is it about Blackwood’s body of work that > compelled you to engage with it? He was a precursor to H.P. > Lovecraft. I like pastoral writing a lot. When an author can depict > something that’s as static and seemingly tranquil as nature can > be, and on top of that add an element of supernatural horror, it > makes the work really interesting. The thing I love about The > Willows is that most of the novel is just about two guys in a boat > going down the Danube. Moving depictions of the water and trees, and > this extra dose of phantasmagoria. There’s no monster that pops > out from behind a tree or some zombie crawling out of the ground. > The horror is all psychological. It’s a type of horror we don’t > see a lot of today. Lucasfilm wanted you to decamp to Skywalker > Ranch and design spaceships for a sizable block of your life. What > was the experience like? It was thrilling and weird. After I did > Batman: Year 100, I went through this strange phase where I was in > Hollywood a lot, meeting directors and studio heads, working on > projects. This went on for a few years. I had done some artwork for > one of the Star Wars: Visions books, so I was on George Lucas’s > radar. I went up to the Ranch and did this presentation for the > directors and crew, not knowing it was a job interview. It was still > fairly early in the game with Battling Boy Vol. 1. They told me, > “We have a LucasArts job to offer you, but we can’t tell you > what it is unless you accept it.” It was shocking because I had to > finish Battling Boy no matter what—I had contracts that I > couldn’t drop. We were standing behind the Ranch and a deer walked > out of the woods. It was such a surreal moment. This was in Marin > County on a hill in the springtime. The deer looked me in the eye > and then went on his way. It felt like the spirit of Battling Boy > was telling me I have to keep on the path that I’m on. So I said > no. I only found out later it would have been work on the animated > film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask > this, but weren’t there rules about how you were to engage with > Lucas? You can’t look him in the eye. Don’t touch him. Don’t > call him George. Don’t ask anything Star Wars-related. This is > kind of common for people on that level of celebrity. They prime you > for those kinds of meetings. Comics began quite literally as a kind > of gutter-medium, but it was only through years of advocacy, > scholarship, and the establishment of the canonization of comic > books—its touchstones that crossed over outside of the direct > comics market—that this reputation was rehabilitated. What are > your thoughts on a “comics canon,” and what would be included in > it? I guess going from the beginning, I’d say Windsor McCay, > Charles Schulz, Walt Kelley, Robert Crumb, Alison Bechdel, Frank > Miller obviously, Hergé, Moebius, and then we could go into Japan > and stuff like that. Make it country by country maybe, or tradition > to tradition. I think, in a more general sense, as our culture’s > becoming more visually literate, the value of comics as a visual > storytelling medium is becoming more valuable. When I was a little > kid, I remember unsuccessfully trying to convince my grandfather of > the value of Carl Barks’s Donald Duck comics. But I don’t know > if I should be the person to say what should or shouldn’t be in > the canon. If we looked at the top 100 comics, what I can say is > that it should be international at this point. This goes back to > Harold Bloom and the Western canon, which is an idea that I believe > in, to an extent—we have a bedrock of certain works which make the > foundation of the canon, which are required reading, and that can > change or adapt over time. But the further you get into the > industry, you think more about making work, making money, bills, and > less about what should or shouldn’t be considered a great comic. > If I like it, it’s great. Every few decades, some doomsayer > muses on the death of comics… It always dies. It dies every couple > of years because they kill it. They declare it dead, and it comes > back. Are there measures the industry can take to maintain its > durability against attentions being split between streaming services > and video games? Is Hollywood’s compulsive strip-mining of comic > book properties enough? Some of my younger friends are more used > to listening to music on Spotify or other streaming services, or > selecting various random MP3s out of order. I’m not sure either is > better, but I’m more used to listening to tracks in the order the > artist intended. Album sides. There’s always going to be a schism > between the delivery system and the message. I don’t quite know > what the answer is. Art never dies really, expression never dies, > and I think the kind of people that talk about the death of comics > are critics. They’re doing it to get a response out of people, to > stay relevant. It just seems stupid because it’s no less dead than > speech is dead. It’s people speaking to each other in elaborate > cuneiform. That’s all comics are.* Load more
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