A Revolution When Whispered: A Review of Inconsequentia

Dereks Pollard and Henderson’s Inconsequentia made me belly laugh within the first five pages. I guffawed. It was embarrassing; thank god nobody was around.

Reading Inconsequentia, a collaborative effort by Derek Henderson and Derek Pollard, isn’t altogether different than reading highfalutin, high-concept books from Po-Mo darlings like Lisa Robinson and Bernadette Mayer, but it’s not the sort of book you want to whip out in a café to impress the cute hipster girl in the plaid shirt. You will probably let out a few loud, embarrassing, monosyllabic laughs here and there. Hell, you’ll probably drool a little. Don’t misread me, though; none of this is bad news. Rather, it’s testament to the gleeful abandon with which these Dereks approached the making of this book, and to the huge degree to which their effort is truly engaging.

I don’t know anything about how the Dereks achieved this collaboration. I imagine that they emailed. I imagine this only because “’invisible typewriter’” is identified as a “revolution when whispered,” and I’m fairly certain that “invisible typewriter” is a lolcatz meme. That’s the only “clue” I get, though, because the result of whatever method the Dereks employed is a strong, consistent, and very flexible voice.  In fact, that might be a generative principal of this work: the elusive “product” generated from multitudes.

people everyone

morning always

from It

creates itself

Inconsequentia arises from and seems to enact the chaos of order-making. “We sort through the making of This: / Like parents, spawning certain Things.”  It is the celebration of things, and of making them in which the book seems largely to be engaged. If the “we” in this excerpt might be read as a simple clue into the logic of this collaboration, here is a counter example as confounding as it is exhilarating: “Respond to this,” chides page forty six. “If you. You are not continuing it,” page forty seven seems to reply.

This exchange can be read as a) an exchange between collaborators, b) an admission that there has been no such exchange, c) an exchange between the voice of the speaker and the reader, or c) a hell of a lot of fun. There are other instances of things that look like multiple voices blending into one:

If you read

I am breath I am air.

I am spawned.

Convincing ploy-univociallity follows form an interrogation of the author / reader / author / world dynamic, the act of creating “It,” a product wrought of processes, but perhaps the heart of this work is its persistent sense of humanity. Inconsequentia struggles for the poem, offers it up, and asks for approval. The result is a never-boring exploration of the poetic consciousness, couched firmly in a contemporary moment, and grounded by the proximity of such wonder to the mundane.

That’s just about enough from me.  I’m not here to read the book for you, damnit. I’m just here to tell you that Inconsequentia is an important book, and that you ought to go pick it up.

Saying Just the Right Thing At Just the Right Time: A Round Table Discussion with Billy Longino, Alex Taylor, and Jenny Hanning

Weeks after weaving through the overwhelming crowds of AWP, I finally got around to tackling the large pile of books I had acquired. Black Warrior Review (BWR), issue 38.2, was at the top, and I found it to be chock full of amazing work. So, instead of concentrating on one voice to represent the whole journal, I found three unique writers who came up with three individual stories, as distinct in setting from one another as war-torn Mexico is from the backwoods of the southern United States — different, but interestingly similar as well.

What these three writers have in common is a mastery of setting. They deliver their stories with the confidence only a native character born inside their storied worlds could give; they have the ability to say just the right thing at just the right time.

In “The Burial,” by Billy Longino, we meet an albañil whose son has just been killed, and who’s been given the mission of burying his son alongside his mother’s family, in a cemetery many miles away, in a village that was “abandoned when the silver mines closed and the maquiladoras opened in the city,” a dangerous city, a city so dangerous the priest refuses to travel to them and, instead, gives last rites over the telephone line. “The Burial” is as much about interring the child as it is about the place the child is being buried — and it is the author’s language that makes both the character and the place come alive.

Alex Taylor’s story, “Spare Parts,” is likewise connected to its scenery through language. He uses a language that is both of the junkyard and . . . other. Taylor intermixes junkyard jargon — “give him a dose of Keystone and then take him to the dirt” — and intelligent descriptions that are, perhaps, smarter than the narrator himself: “What he wants is a spell to get a peek at your wang. Lute is enamored with wangs. He peruses them. The reason for this is Lute’s own pecker is a deformed oddity pinched between two of his brown fingers, thin as a cowboy-rolled smoke, the head knotty and swollen.” The narrator relies on the junkyard, is a participant in that world, and yet, he gives us an experience of that place that makes the junkyard universally understood.

Another premise all three of these stories utilize is the source of silence, of Truth, of something — and this something torments the narrators.

Jenny Hanning’s “A Family Price,” describes this silent something as a misunderstanding in our brain. She calls it “The Blink Effect”: “Of the human senses, our most powerful is sight. The human eye sees faster than the human brain can process. . . . An average blink is two hundred milliseconds, eight hundred short of a full second, maybe the curl of the tongue in preparation of saying one Mississippi. A beat behind, the brain struggles, stutters, fills in the blanks base on familiarity or fears.” Miscomprehension occurs in Hanning’s story in the same way it does in Taylor’s and Longino’s: both literally and emblematically. Each story describes itself in a physical setting, staged gorgeously, and with a tangible climax, but each story also alludes to a silent something with which the main characters struggle.

Here’s what the authors had to say:

The Lit Pub: So you’ve all been published in the same issue of BWR. Have you read each other’s stories? What do you think of the issue, of BWR in general, and how did you go about choosing to submit your stories there?

Alex: I’ve read Mr. Longino’s story but have yet to set down with Ms. Henning’s. I was quite impressed with Mr. Longino’s tale and I am honored to be in a journal with as long and prestigious a history as the Black Warrior Review.

Billy: Alex’s language was fascinating to read, it’s very acrobatic. And I thought Jenny’s interjection of “The Blink Effect” was enviable. The reason I submitted to Black Warrior Review was just because they have a consistent, unique aesthetic, visually and in the work they select, that I greatly admire, which Alex and Jenny’s work fit very well.

Jenny: I have also read—and enjoyed—Billy’s and Alex’s stories. When I submit, it’s to journals that I like to read, so it was a real pleasure to be included in BWR alongside so much interesting work.

Literary journals can be hard to pin down at times; they can have hard-to-describe aesthetics­­ — even after reading a few issues. However, after reading the three of you, I think I have a better sense of what the BWR editors (of this issue at least) were looking for. You are all three completely unique writers, and I think that is the very attribute that makes your writing attractive. You create unique worlds, and it’s only in these worlds, with their explicit languages, that the story can exist.

TLP: Can you comment specifically on the way your language (tone, word choice, etc.) connects to setting and character in your stories?

Jenny: I think that place and identity are inseparable. Where a person is from influences who they are in a million nuanced ways, some obvious and others not, but all equally defining. So, to me, character is an extension of setting—or a product of it?—and vice versa. It’s a goal, though maybe not one I succeed at, to represent a place, and through that, the people living in it, accurately. Life changing events happen without markedly changing daily life.

Billy: I agree. In my work at least, I think language is inseparable from setting. The way language presents the setting must come naturally out of the setting itself, otherwise it feels disjointed—unless, of course, that’s the point. But in “The Burial,” the bleakness of the landscape is totally consumed by the language and presented to the reader, or I hope it is anyway.

TLP: The language of your landscape, Billy, does exactly what (I think) Jenny is talking about when she says the representation of a place brings out the people of that place. The way you describe the open dessert, with the whipping sand and wind, makes me think of the hard work a man must commit himself to for the journey across that space. Your main character is exactly that man — the albañil, the bricklayer. What were your thoughts behind choosing that name?

Billy: I don’t really remember my initial thoughts. I think I might of wanted a character whose job was something old, almost Biblical, but also something day laborers still do. As for being nameless, people like the albañil are always nameless in our daily lives.

TLP: The Burial reminds me of the language in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and maybe a little of Silence by Shusaku Endo, but unlike your characters, both these writer’s main characters are foreigners struggling with a language barrier. How do you see the intermixing of Spanish and English working in your story?

Billy: I don’t believe that any actual barrier exists between the United States and Mexico beyond the metaphorical, and I think, at least, the languages represent the illusory nature of the border in their spillover. Being white and a native English speaker in the neighborhood and town I grew up in, I was a minority. To me, Spanish has always been symbiotic with English. They seemed inseparable. It’s just what I heard every day of my life. So, for me, the intermixing of the two languages represents the complex cultural connections between the U.S. and Mexico that are largely ignored by certain political elements in this country — the same politicians building that fence-simulacrum across empty desert. Language merging is a force of intercultural systems, to which no borders exist. Sorry, I’m a little obsessed with this.

TLP: Interesting. So the Spanish wasn’t so much an insertion into your work, rather, the mixture of the two languages was native to your landscape?

Billy: Right, to think of the Spanish as being inserted is to think of it as something that doesn’t belong, when in actuality the English is really what doesn’t belong in this story, as the only one who speaks in English is the man in the church, unless you count the narrator too. But to answer the question, Spanish shouldn’t be something seen as alien in our culture, or our literature, or something inserted, which implies a sort of invasion, but something that is an intrinsic part of the daily lives of many of us in this society. Spanish and Spanish speaking people shouldn’t be seen as living on the margins of American narratives.

TLP: Alex, “Spare Parts” has a language all its own as well.

Alex: I write about people whose common everyday idiom is infused with poetry. However, it’s the poetry that has either been neglected or maligned as being evidence of ignorance. I am influenced by Zora Neale Hurston, who saw the value of the common speech patterns used by the poor and uneducated. Further, my characters often employ language that is inseparable from the rhythms of the natural world. They are noticers. They observe the metaphors inherent in the land and speak accordingly.

TLP: That’s a gorgeous way to see language. Can you recommend a work by Hurston we should all read?

Alex: Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mules and Men are the best examples of Ms. Hurston’s flair for the colloquial and the way she makes it transcend local geography.

TLP: I mentioned before that your narrator seems both of the junkyard, and aware of the world outside it. He seems uncomfortable with the situation at the junkyard, and at the same time he seems familiar with the whole scene. Can you explain his inner conflict?

Alex: Well, he’s trying to be absolved of his past sins by returning to the junkyard that’s operated by a man he tormented as a boy. I think a lot of my characters tend to wrestle with guilt. I don’t view it as an entirely unhealthy emotion, guilt. Rather, it seems to indicate a richness of soul.

All good characters have complexities.

TLP: Jenny, let’s talk about this Blink Effect you got going on. Two pages into “A Family Price,” you pause to give us a definition of it before continuing on. How do you see this specific explanation working in the story?

Jenny: I think that the pause and explanation needed to be there for the story to track.  And, it’s interesting, to me at least, that we say, “Seeing is believing,” when we can’t trust our own eyes, or, on a larger level, our initial perceptions. It’s disorienting when you misinterpret something, respond to the misinterpretation, then have it corrected, and have to re-sort your reactions. It reminds me of how memory operates.

TLP: Some people might say memory has a way of attaching itself to the landscape as well, just as much as language might. What do you think?

Jenny: I agree, absolutely. A place can hold an experience, and when it’s revisited, what happened there can feel just as fresh or raw, even years later. That may be a cliché? — but it’s true! Sensory details, I think, play a large part in a landscape’s ability to recall events. All the unique qualities of a place contribute to how it’s remembered and become triggers for memory.

TLP: That’s definitely the way in which I see landscape, by how I’ve seen it before, what I was doing then.

Alex: The place I come from is burdened with memory. A friend of mine was riding over his farm one day and spied two bobcats sitting on a log at the edge of a field. A rare and exciting scene, as bobcats are notoriously elusive. As he was recounting the moment to me, he said, ‘If I hadn’t spent all my life looking at that piece of ground I wouldn’t have noticed those two cats.’ This is indicative of the attention my people pay to their surroundings. They stare long and hard at things as seemingly mundane as fallen oak trees, and they learn to remember the lay of their land so that any change is noticed immediately. I call it a burden, this looking and this remembering, but that may be inaccurate, in so much as ‘burden’ indicates hardship and toil. Perhaps what I mean is my people are wardens of memory. They are tenants of recollection, working on shares for the place that has held them close and kept them safe.

Perhaps our memories trap a place in time as much as they enhance the landscape.

TLP: The pause you give, Jenny, to explain “The Blink Effect” isn’t the only time we hear that tone of voice. We also here about the way deer pause in headlights, and how we mistakenly call the smell of gunpowder cordite. These explanations seem to be a function of the narrator. Why did you decide to narrate this story from a bystander’s perspective?

Jenny: I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I can see what you’re saying. In my mind, those asides or pauses are the same narrator as the “I” in the story, trying to give context for his experience, rather than a true bystander perspective. We describe things through comparison to clarify them, but how do you describe something that defies comparison?

You definitely wouldn’t have been able to work with that idea of the indescribable if you were to put it in the brother’s perspective. It’s interesting how the same story can be told so differently through point of view. I think it’s that silence­­ — that miscomprehension — at the end of your story that really sticks with you.

TLP: Billy, there’s a certain stages-to-silence that happens in your story as well. In the beginning, the albañil tells his son about God. Then, once the son is killed, the albañil refuses to talk about God. Lastly, in the end, the man in the church puts a finger over the albañil’s lips and prevents him from defending God. What do these stages of silence represent?

Billy: I’m not sure I can begin to comprehend what silence means in Mexico these days. Silence is sanctuary; silence keeps you alive. But silence terrifies us; we think it’s unnerving or whatever. There is a paradox there that is sad and beautiful. Then there is the act of being silenced and what that means. The albañil couldn’t even tell God what he had witnessed. The son is silent through the whole story because he is dead. And, of course, God is silent, too. I hadn’t really thought of this before. It’s interesting.

TLP: Maybe that’s the point of stories like the three of yours, they leave you something to ponder in the silence after reading.

Billy: Thinking-in-silence is something everyone needs and do not seem to get enough of in the information age. That’s the great thing about short stories, as opposed to TV shows, you’re not immediately bombarded with more stimuli as soon as it ends, except what’s coming from your subconscious. Thankfully there’s no algorithm to implant an advertisement for low cost tombstones after my story in BWR.

Thankfully! (yet).

TLP: Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts with us! Any last comments or reading recommendations?

Billy: Thanks.

Alex: Thank you for your time. Everyone should read Suttree by Cormac McCarthy and A Childhood: The Biography of A Place by Harry Crews, and I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay. Both Mr. Crews and Mr. Gay passed away recently. I hope their work becomes more widely known in the future.

Jenny: Thank you for the opportunity to talk about BWR, and writing. I’d love to make to recommendation: “Hot Damn” by Martha Stallman. It was the winner of this year’s Playboy College Fiction Contest, and is one of the most simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking stories I’ve ever read. It’s definitely worth tracking down.

There Is A Strange Magic At Work Here: Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Equal parts history lesson and modern American comic-book epic, infused with the tragic voodoo magic of the Dominican Republic, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Waois, simply, sprawling. Junot Díaz presents his sophomore effort, a literary whirlwind (and this 11 years in the making following 1996’s much-heralded story collection, Drown), with grace and aplomb. The novel follows ghetto nerd Oscar, fat and girl-desperate in Northern New Jersey, the only Dominican in the New World with no game besides Dungeons & Dragons:

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto.”

The novel follows Oscar’s headstrong sister, Lola, a runaway and independent. The reader is whisked away from 1990s New Jersey to the Dominican Republic of generations past, exploring the narrative of Oscar and Lola’s mother, the narratives of their grandparents, of those who lived through the era known as the Plátano Curtain, a time when Rafael Trujillo ruled the country mercilessly. For 30 bloody years Trujillo controlled the Dominican Republic as one of history’s most ruthless dictators. And it seems his hold has lingered long after his 1961 assassination: this is the fukú, the curse that has preyed on the family.

“That’s our parents’ shit,” reasons Yunior, the novel’s (main) narrator and tour guide, Oscar’s one-time roommate, Lola’s one-time boyfriend. It is Yunior — who first appeared way back when in Drown — who makes this book what it is: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It is his voice that carries the narrative, all the narratives, and it’s a near-shame to have to unmask Yunior this way, as if robbing the reader of the surprise artistry that is inherent in this voice.

But it must be said: Díaz is nothing short of masterful in his treatment of the womanizing Yunior, Oscar’s foil by most accounts. This only becomes clearer as the novel rockets on, becomes clearer still on second and third reads, how Díaz adroitly layers this characterization into the story, as this voice moves from omniscient narrator to flesh-and-bone character. Such care the author has taken with this voice, and an easy voice it would be to overkill at that, charged as it is with comic books and street Spanish. But this is why The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a modern American masterpiece, because therein lies the real story.

This is a novel as far-reaching as it is intimate, from the Dominican to New Jersey, from generation to generation, an immigrant epic. There is a strange magic at work here, as the reader discovers soon enough that Oscar is not long for this world — but that is nearly beside the point.

TC Tolbert's Interview with j/j hastain

TC Tolbert: The first thing that strikes me about your work is the expansiveness of it (both literally expansive — utilizing the entire page, orchestrating white space in long past the presence of common — and tonally expansive, expansive in address). Can you talk to me about that? What’s it like in your head?

j/j hastain: Sure. I would say that my work is an engagement with expanses — with existing spans as well as with the wanting to exist but not yet existing (which is what a divergent seraph is). Not sure if the work is always expansive (that to me feels like an ethical judgment that can be made / named best by those who are involve themselves in the work based on how it makes them feel — to me expansiveness has to do with an inherent, felt transgression or trespass (by sensation) of given forms and structures / strictures / strictnesses. It has to do with what excess feels like. So there is integrally a pre and a post in expansives (not necessarily linearly) — like “this is the cup” and “this is the cup over-filled by red liquid.” The red liquid is the cup’s (as an element) expansiveness) but my work is certainly not reductive or dogmatic, that’s for sure!

But — I want to thank you for saying that you experience my work as expansive. That is so beautiful to me!

I will speak now to what you refer to as “tonally expansive” and “expansive in address” — I think that what you are asking about is “who” I am talking to and “how” I am talking. The “who” is the the movable site where my you (the elemental that I can continually converge with) can be divulged — can deluge all over me (and you if you want). This “who” is an always future aggregate that is moxie. Mixed. Becoming. A “who” that is dependent on my (and your?) gesture to bring it from states of capacity into extant and autonomous form. Yes — there is alchemical chivalry to this. There is the ongoing impetus of the lover.

Re the “how” of my talking. I am interested in sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form. I really do feel in my body (which is also a form that I have coaxed into existence in order for it to feel authentic to me) that to coax is to be able to interact well with the materialities as motile-sites that can be turned into suites. Into places we can exert and exercise and exhibit our corpuscle suits and as we strive to make neoteric sutras.

I enjoy working with space as emotio-spiritual content in conjunction with working with the words, the sounds that the words make audibly as linkage, and the way that the words (which are also sounds) look in a space (which is what a page or a body is). So a sensory inebriating aesthetics. I am saying that in a room that has a balance space can be as important as other extant physicalities. Plus, I feel that space is a great ally (always rooted in potential to become________) to already extant forms.

There is also something to say here about the materiality of space already being rooted in mystery — specific in its capacity but indeterminate re its form/s — and so, hopeful for me in my maintenance of identities that are indelibly gestural and based in volition. I am saying selvage as suture. Selvage as inherent impetus toward furthering_______.

TC: There are moments when the breadth of your work seems to have no end, you incorporate photography and collage in at least two of your books, you are a musician, teacher, activist, and a gospel singer! Is there a relationship between your trans identity and movement across genre?

j/j: Thank you for bringing this up. I will talk about this aspect of my work (body, performance and page) in the context of both what I refer to as the inter (between-ness of inhabitations) as well as compositional power to provoke accurate kismet.

For me accurate kismet will always be a mixed zone. I believe that an autonomous mixed zone will always need multiple methods of being coaxed. Instigated. Stimulated. For this reason I try to touch (through and to) page by way of many approaches. Yes, photography, sound, collage, music, bent activisms and even embodied song. Information rubbing against information (non-homogenous-ly) is how monsters, hybrids, gorgons, Frankenstein’s, etc (inhabitants of the inter) are made. I believe in these because they are my offspring and because they are my lineage and because they are my community. We are abiogenetic species — infinitely capable of holding our we. I have guarantee here (amidst the inter) that I will be unconditionally held.

I work with variations in form and genre (visual, audible, textural etc.) so that the work can function less like a line or an apparatus (slave?) to historicities (that in a big way leave the movements and materialities of my queer body out of view / representation) and more like an umbra (the darkest part of a shadow) being fucked (coaxed) toward new versions and variations of luminosity. By luminosity I mean mystical illuminations and non-dogmatic revelations. I mean evolutions and increases in animateness — I mean making queer pages as additives to queer space (of which my body is). When I refer to luminosity, I do not mean polarity or war between traditional representations of dark and light as duality.

Queering language is not a new notion in the context of current socio-cultural and modernist writer-ly conversation. However the ways in which I am interested in queering language emphasize that the language itself have a vigorous autonomy — that it have agency. In this way there is no “use” and much less “refuse”(lost ones) because excesses in the forms, are parts of the now-autonomous bodies that the forms are. They can keep their parts. They can exert cuts over their parts and emerge as blaring powerhouses of authenticity. Autonomy / agency of the language is integral to my gesture because it is a primary way that I can ensure that through the composition processes new materialities are being created with the needed utilities and technology (within their forms) for their own continuance.

I find that autonomous language does lessen my loneliness. Does increase proximities. Does add community to community.

In recent studies researchers of the pineal gland have discovered that in serious seekers the bones in front of the pineal gland become thinner and more pliable, while in usual subjects there is severe calcification on the bones in front of the pineal gland. Many mystics believe the pineal gland to be the third eye. I want my work to instigate orgasmic states for the third eye — to engage deep, beloved relations to the infinite capacity (in the physical body) that the third eye is. I believe that if I can make the third eye’s beloved outside of the body as pages, unforeseen cosmic information might bleed through the merges and ecstasies that occur by way of such feral types of breeding.

My trans / genderqueer identity does have a lot to do with my movement across genre. Across space. My identities and my pages sort of biomimic each other regarding this. They incite each other further. For me, pages are post-human-birth essential organs that appear via mystical holarchies. As interactive kiln. I am happy to attempt to speak more about my trans / genderqueer identity in the context of current societal delineations, but I think I need another question from you in order to do so. For me there is not a general delineation between aspects of my identity. I guess in the same way that I work to stimulate and provoke the mixed zone I spoke of above, I am whole, partial, fractured and endless within the mixed zone of my physiological, psychic and sensory realms.

TC: Talk to me about self-care. And doing vs being. I have a friend who always reminds me, “we aren’t human doings, we are human beings.” I really struggle with this. As an artist, I love and need to create in a variety of fields. As a trans person, I also feel a kind of responsibility toward my community — a need to be visible, and lay whatever groundwork I can. There is also something in here related to Alice Walker’s idea that “activism is my rent for living on this planet.” Do you feel any of that? How do you navigate these things?

j/j: How beautiful is this question! This notion of Alice Walker’s “activism. . . .” All of this makes a lot of sense to me. I hear in this the desire to work to make balances. A sort of living Feng-shui for the selvage and its many relations. There are expectations and there are so many needs aren’t there? Our bodies and their gestures are so needed. We need each other and we need ourselves. Oh glorious myopias of need!

For me there cannot theoretically be a difference between “doing” and “being” because on the level of my body if there was a “being” that could be separated from “doing” I would necessarily have to believe that there is some sort of inherency (state of rest?) that is natural for me. For me that is just not true. I feel the most natural in induction. In engagement. In motion. In morphology. I have actually struggled a lot to work this in my body on the level of cells, because I feel like I am even “doing” when I sleep / dream. So — there are not really states of rest. I guess that this is valuable because stasis is not an option in such exertion, but it is also true that often it makes me feel like I am a bit far off from models of “health” re the human plane. I am aware that much of this answer is because I do not feel like I am cosmically indigenous to this plane of existence. I have always felt disparate here which has meant that I am always in a position / poise of action toward. Composing composite belonging. Reaching for else.

For me, to be in a body as a motile identity, is a constant work and activism.

What I love about the self-care part of your question is how it makes me ponder / wonder about all of the things that self-care could mean. My initial response is something like this — I engage self-care by bridging with elementals from this plane by chord. This is how I can feel myself as part of a reverberative imperative inherently of earth. I am saying that even though I do not identify as inherent to earth until I make myself such, that does not mean that I am not as desperate as anyone who is inherent to earth, to find (or compose) homeland.  I participate in homeland as an always future site, by way of my dependence on “you” in order for me to make harmony with “you.” “You” could be a tree, a bird, a page, an image, a story, a sound, a personage. It is fusion between a you and a you that makes harmonics possible. Harmonics (in the context of my fusions) means offspring. Means a third thing that did not and could not have existed before the convergence of yous.

Then when I think about what you might be asking regarding self-care I wonder if you are asking me if I drink jasmine green tea in the mornings or if I sleep long on the weekends or if Tracy makes love to me in our Beloved (which is our non-dogmatic faith practice) in the ways I need (from kink to role play to extreme emotio-spiritual connection) or if at age 18 I broke away completely from my parents and my Mormon upbringing for the sake of my sanity or if I walk during my quotidian work day in the wild, overgrown trenches of Colorado and to these my answer is yes!

I guess it is that to me self-care does not feel different from care for a you (“j/j, will you write a recommendation of my book for Lit Pub?” or “I have to turn in this paper on hybrid forms in an hour, will you look at it and help me”) or from composition of books or from finding ways to fulfill stages (performance work, political activism) — and all of that extending for the sake of upholding, sits in my body in the shape of the word cull.

I am overwhelmed and overjoyed with the vitality of all that must be done.

TC: Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about Judith Butler — her idea that “gender is performance.” And the theorist in me is really, continually, excited by that idea — but the trans person in me feels like it somehow undoes an element of authenticity in relationship to my gender identity. I wonder how you think about these things — how performance plays out in your lived experience as well as what you hope to accomplish on the page?

j/j: I just want to start this answer by saying how beautiful you are and how this authentic articulation of the complexities of how you can and cannot integrate this particular theory is of value to me. I think here about the beautiful poem (was that in Drunken Boat?) that you wrote about Leslie’s face being held down in cop shit after Leslie had been raped. I think of how gender is existing actively (between Leslie’s F-M / Drag King masculinities (not socially “acceptable”) and the cops’ Bio Male masculinities (socially normed/privileged) and the enactment of de-masculinization) in that situation and I have to say that I do think that gender is performative there but not necessarily “performance” (in the ways that Butler’s quote could connote diminutivity if not careful to clarify).

I am saying that Leslie is certainly not performing Leslie’s gender like a costume is animated when put on, but later taken off. This is not play time. This is not “wow, wasn’t’ that a great show!” It is not trying on divergent forms for the hell of it. It is not entertainment of an audience. This is gender as gesture inseparable from the heart that keeps the body and its gender/s going. Heart in the way that I am referencing it is not necessarily one core of a body. I think that there is literal heart in each of our cells (those nomadic elementals) — a sort of inarguable mystical consciousness — and that heart in each of those cells vibrates and fills the cells with information. I have no doubt that if Leslie tells me that Leslie’s gender (the orchestral relation of Leslie’s cells?) is_______, then that comes from Leslie’s mystical meta-consciousnesses and should not be argued with.

I also think that it is totally appropriate for a person’s gender/s to evolve. With the evolution of genders and identities and anatomies, comes need for accurate application of names. Comes need for accurate pronouns. Relations also have names. All of these are integral in my opinion. I am saying I will call you what you call yourself. Period. And, please call me what I call myself and you will have made a non-debatable home for yourself in me.

So — gender to me is performative but perhaps not “performance” (“performance” which if not clarified could imply a beginning and an ending / a limit). However gender’s performativity does not depend on an audience. Meaning my gender is not something that I perform on anyone else’s stage. It is not something I perform for “you.” In the context of my gender I do not depend on any “you” or social delineation in order to be able to state / enact myself. It is instead “my body is my stage and this is what happens here.” So performative like the bird’s movement of their wings is performative. As in — action is needed. This is how we “do” / “be” what we are. I believe that my gender needs my action in order to specify itself by way of my body. I believe that I collaborate with my gender/s in order to articulate / express my gender/s as authenticities and aesthetics in space.

Judith Butler also said that “there is no psychic core” but instead a “copy of a copy for which there is no original” and that I do not agree with. Though I do agree that it is not particularly useful to try and singularize / limit the mass of any selvage and relations into some demarcating or delineating point — I also believe that in us there are many “psychic cores” and that expression / exhibition of these cores allows (or forces, if needed) socio-cultural forms and strictures to broaden to hold our myriad. I am saying that I do not believe that there is no such thing as authenticity because there is “no psychic core” — but instead I feel that the myriad psychic cores allow authenticity and originality to exist in the future. Post stimulation. Post activisms of naming and touch. How beautiful to think that my gender/s need me. Need my loyalty and volition in order for them induce changes (based in my inarguable authenticities) in outdated socio-cultural strictures, limits and biases.

TC: And finally, it seems to me that your work strives toward creating a textual body, that these are not individual poems so much as they are organisms.  Does this feel accurate to you?

j/j: Yes! That is very true. Not individual poems. Organisms moving together toward (a sort of ongoing chordal politic) species. An open system capable of response to incentive, reproduction, advancement, expansion. Always moving in conjunction. Always configuring and sustaining the milieu and deeply inclusive homeostasis. A dependable, divergent stability.

2.

TC: No, absolutely not — your work is not at all reductive or dogmatic. But you talk about an “inherent transgression or trespass” and that has to do with “what excess feels like.” Keep going here. I’m definitely picking up on some ethical implications of your work. Does your work threaten? If so, what?

j/j: Yes. The work itself is an inherent transgression of normative historical strictures / stipulations — transgresses the status quo in terms of content and poise regarding content (contact).  The work is trespass of the confines and limits of the pre. This may be the pre of my own past. This may be the pre of outdated outlooks or forms regarding social appropriateness in such and such genre or in such and such ideation etc. There are certainly ethical implications in my work — but as my loyalties are not binary these ethics are not nourished by singling out any one aspect of a polarity and siding with that aspect while demonizing another.

I am saying that the work is its own self-induced alterity so that it can engage (and offer) the countless aspects and desperate densities of matter. I guess it is sort of like ‘what are the ethics of continually crossing an infrared bridge?’ — so, those ethics are not currently extant (though they are I think, implied by matter’s current planar configurations and potentials) and must be built built built! The building of the ethics of a continual crossing like this — an elemental that is always flickering both in and out of form — is a cosmic chivalry. Increases portal. Induces slippage and lovely destabilizations regarding what is generally modeled for any being in society / culture.

It is important to me that spaces for new emancipations are continually being generated. This is key to the way that I focus on composition of variant ethics, because I want to ensure that there are emancipatory spaces that will couple with the paces of any accelerated evolutionary processes. I take responsibility for generating these (though I am not the only one doing this kind of work) emancipatory spaces. It is part of my identity to do so. It is important to me that we as beings have the ability to have agency regarding being freed as well as regarding what we are being freed from! I am saying that just because there are groups rallied in support of or against _______ or _______ (without discounting any of those endeavors, here) it is integral to me that a being be able to decide where and how they want their energies directed so that their emancipations can feel most authentic — whether working with Occupy Wall Street, hurling energy toward a socially extant movement or (like the 4-5 million Sadhus of India) sitting near the Ganges nude with one arm held up toward the sky for many years until that arm has become calcified — sweet Sadhus who by Viragya “desire to achieve something by leaving” trespass the limits of the flesh to achieve Mokhsa (liberation).

Regarding “threatens” or not. Certainly my work is a threatening of anything that would cripple the myriad authenticities or impose stasis on the moving cipher — on mystery as a primary, leading force. Certainly there is a threatening of the illusion of collective linearity or sameness / oneness.

I would say that my work threatens but does not need to be perceived of as threatening. As I said in  our bodies are beauty inducers (Rebel Satori Press) you have to want to experience it in order to feel the occult — like on the level of trance or hypnosis, you have to want to be altered in order to experience altered states.

TC: I’m curious about your process of “sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form.” Because there does seem to be a limitless quality to your work — in that, as I read through your books there are very few times that I think I’ve come to the end of something / anything. And then you talk later about “selvage as suture.” Which, to me, implies that the body is both a site of injury and a site of healing. I feel like the limitlessness of your work has something to do with your body and this “maintenance of identities.” Am I way off here?

j/j: Not way off. You are right on here! Thank you so much for your gorgeous intuitions!  As far as sculpting limitless verse / anti-verse to coax the ethereal swells into material form — this activism of tending to ethereal traits by way of human form is always both disjunctive and intercessory. The process of this involves a sort of divergent divination / haruspex (hence the presence of sound and image conjunctions in the work — these thaumaturgical stirring and strumming wands) working with the thicknesses of phrases and curvatures, then carving them into neoteric shapes by way of a slow whittling (by echolocations / reverberation of many types). So, I would say that there is always this working with an extant bulk (a moment, a feeling, a memory from this plane or from another, a sensation, an idea, a gnawing, a bruise that I cannot remember where I got it from, etc.) and whittling it to a previously unforeseen specificity that allows some sort of crossing to occur. The point though is to get an it specified — not to make a thinness (due to whittling) out of anything, because this work of mystery shares lineage with wishes and a wish is never thin or brittle.

I think that to specify for the sake of ______ is always a loving and generous act.

I appreciate your picking up on the fact that there is no “end of something / anything” in my work. This is true. It is much more about inhabiting the inebriation of the pages themselves. Their shapes are to be considered like any other personages are (having an integral place in the pageant / demonstration that form is). I have a dear friend who cuts up my books and puts them in a locket that is worn over the heart. I have another dear friend who reads them then burns them. I have another dear friend who taught one of my books to her class and when she asked me how I wanted her to teach it, I said that my desire was that the class participants inhabit it as if it were theirs from before. That they not treat it like something of the upper white towers of intellectualization and instead like “your firmament spills into the shape of your room” (Diane di Prima). Like their own satchel. This meant that the members of the class cut up the book. Colored in it. Graffitied. Wept into its pages. Glued in family portraits. Smeared dirt on it. Dirt and fruit pith. It stood in as a compassionate position (rather than imposition) for them. A friend. A holding. And that is so fucking fulfilling to me!

When a you inhabits the pages you are adding ethereal lipids to them which gives them more galactic weight — makes them more existent. Evident to themselves. This relieves them. I am saying that when you enjoin with the shapes that have been whittled to these specificities, there is less lack. Less disparateness. I am saying that the pages are dependent on you and they are dependent on the trees that are their ancestors / predecessors and that they would hurt if they could not have you with them inside of them. Yes, this is a formula for a new eros. A new way to merge.

As far as selvage as suture is concerned, yes — the body is at once a “site of injury and a site of healing” (thank you for saying that. That is so beautiful!) so what is there to be done about that? There is so much to be done! So many fulfilling emancipations to be had and felt! The it is always partially complete and still in need of being compelled — therefore, I believe that to make a layered lace arc that it is not possible to see the beginning or the end of (have you ever seen this kind of a supernumerary rainbow? — constructive interference is what makes the thickness / vastness of the arc so complex and the complexity is what makes the color spectrum so varied and rich) so that healing (suture) can be an activism-continuum that we engage both before and after imposition/ injury (which is bound to occur in form due to chaos). I am saying that to embody selvage as suture is to allow us active stance within the limitless potentials that that non-ending lace arc is — rather than having our senses of selvage be mere reaction to exterior impositions regarding that chaos. Lace is always procreant.

Also the fact that a non-ending arc (like a rainbow is) may or may not actually be a circle, and oh the deific excesses that that mystery makes possible!

The limitlessness of my work is interested in maintenance of the many identities — in constantly fluenting the indeterminacies of  the variations — in spawning a space so vast and intricate that it can hold any of the facets as they spill forth as materiality in need of being specified. This is an ensuring that any of the variegations of identities will be welcome and can have home made for them. I am saying that I will live to construct the garden because I had to make myself belong in the garden, even if I am not entirely Adam or Eve — even if I am not entirely from planar earth. However, this garden is not only mine. It is ours. It is the indelible, life-giving and life-taking situate of a true, admixed collective. Of a we.

TC: You spoke about an “autonomous language” and I’m wondering if you are implying that language is inherently autonomous or if this is the function of queering language? Does it have and exert its own agency and / or desire? Are you concerned that the autonomy of language might actually limit a trans/queer existence rather than expand it? 

j/j: I see this in a few different ways. I think that as a cosmic entity, language is extant (because it has been made and because it continues to make contact possible). For this reason I do think that it inherently has autonomy. I do not think that language is only how it is utilized in any current socio-cultural space or stricture.

I also think that language is inherently dependent on us inasmuch as we engage it. So — language’s inherency is autonomous and dyad. Benefits from bindery with the extensions of another elemental (human, robot, letter dug up from where it was buried hundreds of years before).

But in the context of queering language I think that it is possible to enable / enhance more agency on the part of language. To actually make space for the language to experience / exert its varying emancipations just as we (as personages) seek and provoke them. I think that in the creation of lover-like spaces with language, the language (like with a human lover) will express desires related to the particularities of how it is being merged with. I am saying that I think it is possible to incite (which is co) and then hear (which is experiencing its autonomy) language’s moans and cries. A page is embodied language’s moans and cries made visible and though presented in visual form this information still goes into the body by way of sound and feeling.

In my work with language there is always a sort of disjunctive lyricism that comes forth from these lover-like spaces. There is no doubt for me that this particulate, disjunctive lyricism is the result of an equitable collaboration (merge) between myself and language (both with our autonomies and with our need to converge).

Now, there are certainly animate blends also! Places in the convergence that it becomes impossible to decipher one from another. We must not discount those because they to me are the places of deepest thaumaturgical awe —

I am not concerned that the autonomy of language would ever limit a trans / queer existence. I have only ever felt language enhance those realms for me. I think that the way that persons (with their objectives based in the limits and strictures that are a result of fear) can use language (which is imposition and not inherency) could be the only way that language would ever stand in the way of any (including trans / queer) emancipations or embodiments. I am saying that it is possible to draw a third box and put a check in it and then name that box (“gastropod mollusk”), at the doctor’s office when they ask you to indicate: 1) Male 2) Female re “gender” (we do not even need to go into here, how gender is different than birth sex and how M/F re gender is a ridiculous question for a doctor to ask). That it is possible to shout that the categories that we are given are not enough. To act on what we have given and force it into something vast enough (or specific enough in whatever ways are needed) to hold us. Do I think that bureaucratic uses of language regarding trans / queer identities are profoundly disheartening and revolting in their archaisms and outdatedness? Absolutely. But I am also saying that language itself is in my opinion, a cosmic inherency and there is no reason that one inherency (language) would block out another inherency (trans / queer identity) without it being marionetted by fear or limit, which is really what war is.

TC: I love this: “I find that autonomous language does lessen my loneliness. Does increase proximities. Does add community to community.” I don’t want you to explain it. I just want you to know that I love it. Also, this: “We need each other and we need ourselves. Oh glorious myopias of need!”

j/j: Just something to add here. I see my own gender / embodiment variations as my community — as more than sole or only.  I see your (any you) gender / embodiment variations as community. I am talking about gender excesses and gender ecstasies and sweet supplenesses of embodiment, not about gender confines or binary-based categories. In this way engaging language in order to exhibit / express those variations only strengthens them. Makes them more extant. FYI — I currently identify as a post-embodied-masculine femme queer. Effeminate monstrosity. Post-stigmata vixen / vulpes. Meaning I have had to cross so many times (full transitions) to get here. Meaning trans motilities. All of this always to accelerate and intensify the felt it, by whittle, synthesis and integrations. I believe that these are how vitality is made and I believe that embodied vitality is a choice. Is my choice.

There are yet to be pronounced pronouns that must be mined and mine them, we must!

TC: Also, I love what you’ve said here about the performativity of gender existing outside of audience. That the doing is being made manifest. Is language a part of that for you? Is your language gendered? Can language exist outside of that?

j/j: Yes! Language is certainly a part of the performativity of gender for me. My language is not gendered (I do not think that inherently language is gendered, but instead is galactic in its capacity and so will express itself in many ways including genders) but my language is certainly my gender! Yes, my language is my gender! My language is my future body and its qualities spun by luminous loom now, by way of my own volition.

TC: What is a question you wish you were asked?

j/j: I would love to be asked to talk about my husband-wife Tracy. Or to be given the opportunity (which I now have) to name her here in the midst. I would want to talk about Tracy in the form of a statement of amorous and passionate thanks. To name the bindery that we are in — this profound relation that keeps me here. I hope that this comes off like I am madly in love with her. I hope in it is implied the depth of my commitment to her and to the monogamous relation that we have been upholding and nurturing for 5 years in this life and whole lifetimes in many other planar incantations. It feels integral to name her here because I really think I would have left this planar reality a long time ago were it not for her continual unifying (vivifying of me) with me and opening my spectrum about what it can mean to be in love in the human plane. Oh the reverences and restitutions! All of the ways of being more and more deeply revealed. Flecks of light across the top of a geode. That gorgeous heart sting that happens when we go so far back into fucking that there is literally no longer any back to me (“the miasma of night is between your legs”-Jenny Boully). So many vigorous and radical ways of straddling the threshold between the human plane and the cosmic infinitum by way of co-practicing Chod.

A kismet beast amidst so much kinetic jam.

3.

TC: Alright, I can’t help it — every time I turn to the first page of new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk I laugh out loud. There’s a playfulness (on many levels: visually, sonically, referentially) in this book that I haven’t fully recognized in your other work. Talk to me about the play — where it’s located, and where do you hope it goes?

j/j: Hmmm. It is so interesting to me that you laugh. What a great thing for me to hear! I would say that there certainly is not an intent on my part to provoke a pre-determined response but I think it is true that new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk is an interaction with the libertine and the monk aspects of form, content and embodied movements.

For this reason the first page of the book the alpha and the omega for a cyborg is a sexy and sort of “fuck-you” confidence-based statement that I imagine many queers rooting in as tone related to status-quo expectations and impingements. I can see how this piece would bring pleasurable response. With it (an openness and an admitted origin in the divergent/ deviant—meaning ‘I self-name as such which means if you name me as such the name is already mine so exteriors do not have power over me’) as the starter of the book it becomes possible to feel how Jill Magi talks about the deviantness of the book: “holding j/j hastain’s new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk, I can feel my body push away from its disciplined and well-groomed version of itself; my pulse quickens, readying my system for a revitalizing intake. So as with certain religious reading practices, I take this book [and] open to any page.” I am saying that perhaps what is bringing that response from your body and heart and mind is how the very first moment of narrative / anti-narrative / other-than narrative is a cyborg saying ‘there are phallic cores in the center of the earth that are and are not biological (they come from earth but are not “destined” or stasis as phallus (masculine?) and in fact appear in form by way of a reoccurring and unstoppable dripping (effeminate?) underground. This locates the book in ulteriority from the moment that it is opened and perhaps there is a letting in the body of the reader regarding that. A sense of relief.

All of this makes me think of how George W. Crile insinuates (in The Origin and Nature of the Emotions) how often laughter and crying in somatic realms are interchangeable — “why they often blend.”

Regarding play. I think it is very true that there is play in new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk. In the same way that we spoke of earlier in this interview this is not play that should be disregarded or taken lightly. This is not us trying on our genders for fun. We are not fucking around. It is play / performativity of the movements as we cross. It is embodiment of our bolds. It is keeping ourselves loose enough that the most information possible spins through us (loom). It is shamanic ritualist play. The play of the philosopher’s stone (Cintamani in Hinduism and Buddhism). The play of induction toward varieties of rejuvenation that connect to enlightenments of many kinds. I need to say this again — you have to want the occult in order to experience it. This is the play required in order to inhabit the occult.

There are full sets of chromosomes in each cell in a body. Chromosomes are inherent coils of DNA and they are responsible for animation of cells. There are many genes, sequences and governing structures within cells. Some cells (gametes) are sexually procreant. The amass of information that I include here regarding cells is directly related to my composition process re new forms and meditations for the pressurized libertine monk. These meta-works (cell-poems) are certainly gamete. They function by way of reproductive adrenalines. Impetuses toward constituting new aggregates. The gametes (meta-components within my compositions) mingle (by magnetism and synchronicity) together and deep, recombinant fusions take place. The result? Uncanny collages provoking a new collagen. Nomadic, flexing globes.

TC: One kind of humor I was recently reading about is the humor of the “unexpected future.” I feel like you are mapping out a future of poetry, love, and gender here (no pressure!). Is the future of poetry / love / gender lighter? More fun?

j/j: I would say that the ways that I work with “unexpected future” are not about lightness necessarily but are certainly about letting. About opening the body (as a form) to its many potentials which certainly demands lubrications (the “blend”) of and by way of somatic states.

This “unexpected future” that you speak of reminds me of Lyn Hejinian’s statements about how the brain wants surprise ignitions (this is not exactly how she said it but something to the effect of). I think that there are unforeseen and awaiting successes that become inherencies when we can engage the many aspects that are required for us to stay here in / as the future we pursue. I am saying that a “future of poetry, love and gender” is what I must compose in order that there be space for myself (and thereby others) on planet as future. We are making our we by way of demanding of form, that it echo us. That it have space enough in it that we can be our authenticities here. That it have images of us in it. That it account for our variegations and our imaginations and our bodies. I don’t think that it is pressure to be a part of that evolutionary arc (I think you are doing it in your own way/s as well by way of your amazing projects — Casa Libre en la Solana /  Trans / Genderqueer Anthology / Read Between the Bars/Made for Flight) — I am grateful for your naming your experience of my engagement in that way and I take pride in it.

TC: Is it possible to do a tarot reading for an apparition or a phantasm?  Have you done one?  What is the role of divination in your work?

j/j: I love this question. Thank you for asking it. Divination is definitely core to my compositional praxis. I engage a necessarily (but not in any way that is singularizing) deep, seeping and continual relation to divinities. For me god/s is inherently multi. Non-delineate-able. Does not benefit from being stricted or kept still in any way. The god/s that I work my divinations by way of are variant, inebriated, autonomous ferals. In fact I would say that I am engaging a practice of composing relational gods by embodied metonymy. Think of a creaming accordion that is always making sounds and motions — inherently dependent on its surrounding aspects (other ulteriors) in order for it to make more relational gods. A song is a relational god. A page is a relational god.

As queer querent it is important to me that my pages are oracles. That my books are aggregates of oracles (“beautiful sharks [that] have lace-clogged gills” -Jenny Boully) This is extispicy by way of images. So, not ceremonially slaughtered animals but ceremonially (sonically) disemboweled or enabled (animated re glavanizations) images. Axiomatic intelligences and energetics rendering themselves elementals on an always tilting verge.

Applying a Surgeon's Blade to Everyday Life: A Review of Joseph Michael Owens's Shenanigans!

With a title like Shenanigans!, I was expecting a lot of mischief in this collection of nine short stories by Joseph Michael Owens. I was surprised, then, to find a touching relationship at the center of the stories, a connection warmly rendered between the book’s main character, Ben and his wife, Anna. Commonplace becomes setup for epiphany, only the epiphany is more like a softly whispered melody,  gently inviting readers along. At the same time, the prose bursts with vigor, painting inanimate environments in ecosystems of exuberance and melancholy — there is a joy in the writing that revels in vivid details. The first story starts, “Contemptibly,” with “a hair — not one sprouted from Ben Palko’s own largish pores — floats, follicle, and all, atop the khaki-colored surface of his steaming cup of white-hazelnut creamer.” Even though contempt weaves itself gracefully in and out of the story (including the disturbing, but hilarious, climax), what’s even more fascinating is the peek inside Ben’s head working in IT as a data entry specialist and how the plot becomes a metaphor for the nightmare of corporate life.

Ben’s dogs play a big role in the stories as in the case of, “We Always Trust Each Other, Except for When We Don’t.” Outwardly, it’s about clipping the toenails of his Hungarian Vizsla, but a question of canine trust comes into play and becomes a commentary on the threads that tenuously link man and nature together. In, “Winsome Mshindi,” the eponymous greyhound, “bless his ninety-one-dog-year-old heart, makes the cut on that bum shoulder and chest-plants into the ground at roughly twenty-five miles per hour.” I’m struck by the image of this proud dog trying to, “collect himself,” shrug off the pain, but finding it too much for him, eventually giving in with hoots and yelps. It’s a visceral sequence filled with angst and pity. John Steinbeck had a gift for bringing animals to life in his novels. In this particular story, Winsome jumped off the page and onto the bed right next to me.

“Musings in the Mountains,” was one of my favorite in the collection. Ben bikes up the Colorado’s Rocky Mountains alone and realizes he’s unprepared. “The air gets colder as it gets thinner. Clouds begin rolling in and flecks of rain spit erratically against the carbonite lenses of my sunglasses.” Getting higher, he realizes, “It could be an illusion precipitated by the lack of direct sunlight in combination with the shade of my tinted lenses, but I’m pretty sure my skin is turning a bluish-purple from the cold.” He fears hypothermia and takes recluse at the Visitor’s Center. The buildup is suspenseful and I cringed at the thought of him having to ride down by himself. Fortunately, Anna comes to the rescue, surprising Ben whose heart flutters, “Like the first time we’d ever met.” Of course, when she expresses her concern, he jokes about it with, “faux macho bravado.” Their playful chemistry is endearing and a perfect example of the wonderful dynamic Owens crafts between the characters, never forced, always in a natural progression.

Dynamics and time are one of the central themes in the collection, especially in, “Boxcars and Bomb Pops,” when Ben is reflecting on a story/anecdote that he meant to write.

And that was going to be the real point of the anecdote: that something like waiting on a train out in stale, roasting, middle-of-nowhere kind of heat was just life’s way of telling the two men, the two of us — plain and simply— to stop rushing around everywhere all the goddamn time because really: what’s the hurry?

Indeed, what is the hurry? Owens takes the time to scrape away the veneer and apply a surgeon’s blade to everyday life. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Lasagna,” is an anatomy of a fight between Anna and him. But it’s also about the ambivalence of language, the inexplicable capacity people have to talk about one thing and mean another. What I appreciated about this story was that there was no resolution, no makeup scene. Confusion is the focal point, frustration is the theme.

Situational humor provides quirky insights into human behavior as well as laughs throughout. “Curiosity Doesn’t Discriminate,” is one of the more surreal stories and involves a dead horse in a barn, whereas, “Ninjas! (…in the Suburbs?)” contemplates a mysterious neighbor who Ben had, “previously mistaken for an oafish and bruising pummeler who likely dealt with unlucky transgressors only through the brute, Mephistophelian machinations of his meaty fists,” but, “turned out to be actually quite lithe,” with nunchakus. I could envision every motion, every swing through the details — Owens has a gift for painting with words, drawing from a splattered canvas that gets finer with each added contour. These are abetted by footnotes that provide information and act as wry asides. One particular note describes, “Symptoms of freedom,” which, include:

. . .vomiting, dry mouth, constipation, diarrhea, suicidal thoughts, heart burn, incontinence, itchy or watery eyes, irritability, changes in mood or behavior, sudden itchy rash, hair loss or runny nose. If you experience any of these symptoms, please stop taking your medication and call your doctor immediately.

The final story, “The Year That Was. . . And Was Not,” is the tale of their engagement and is as epic as they come, involving life, death, family, love, sacrifice, and mortality. It’s the longest of the stories and a brilliant end to a compelling collection. Owens does something special with both his characters and his readers; he builds relationships and invites us in to help bridge the gaps. After the story is finished, their words, their actions, their images reverberate and linger. There’s a moment where Ben decides to pick up a third dog despite it being against the rules of their apartment. It’s a spur of the moment decision, and I enjoyed the interaction he had with Anna. Just recently, my wife wanted a dog. I thought it was a bad idea in our current situation and we vacillated back and forth. Finally, we happened to be passing a pet store when she noticed a miniature pinscher she absolutely adored. I initially said no, but then remembered the scene in the collection:

Puppies are fantastic — wonderful — especially before you take them home with you. They are an awkward and bumbling mess, innocent and eager, excited to romp around maniacally before falling asleep. . . When they are still at the kennel, or the pet store, or the breeder, before they are yours, they are close to perfect as they ever will be.

Ben and Anna talk back and forth, wondering how their apartment manager will respond. Eventually, they end up adopting a third dog and the scene evokes the depth of their affection for one another in all that’s said and unsaid between the two.

At the pet store, I thought of the story, saw the ‘perfect’ puppy, and relented. And now, we have a third member. It’s rare when I can say a book tangibly affected my everyday life. Joseph Michael Owens does this with almost every scene in his book, and in this case, I have a little puppy to thank him for it.

The Highest Classes of Saints are Reserved for Purely Imaginary People: A Review of Kyle Muntz's VII

This may or may not be off topic, but I’m not much for the modern trend of biography and memoir. As interesting as some people can be, I spend enough of my day with facts. When I read I much prefer the dark possibilities and speculations that only fiction can provide. Or, at least I imagine that such fictional possibilities are more interesting than things actually happening in the world.

This caused me to have some initial interest in Kyle Muntz’s VII. I admit, my aversion to actual biography makes the idea of fictional autobiography particularly amusing. The idea struck me as intriguing, and I only became more intrigued as I read this story of a possibly demented playwright, Edward, from a Europe of a past that never was.

After all, those who’ve heard of the Church of Discordia know that the highest classes of saints are reserved for purely imaginary people because they are more capable of perfection than real people. I thought that fictional autobiography would similarly have the possibility to be infinitely more interesting than the biography of anyone who ever lived, not being limited to things that actually happened and all.

Though, I must admit that this was just my initial reason for being interested in VII. As I read I found many more reasons for being interested. For one thing, the book is like a dark dream, twisting and shifting in unfathomable and often surreal ways. Just consider one of my favorite passages from when the main character, Edward, goes to the castle of one of his patrons:

“But what is this place?” I asked. “Wandering for only a few hours, I have gone many inconceivable places. How is it possible?”

“You do not know?” The Baron slapped his fist upon the table and brought his wrist to his mouth, eradicating the foam there. “You are aware, correct, that I am a rich man?”

“Absolutely.”

*

He leaned backwards to belch. “I am so wealthy that I have purchased all the world!”

“What do you mean?”

“My castle,” he said, “is not a single construction, but rather a compound of structures, originally separate. They were combined, by magic, to one building—and that intersection of place, unified so as to be passable from within, is my castle. It is so immense that one could wander for years and never go to the same place twice.”

*

“How is this possible?”

He threw up his arms once more. “It is not!”

Frankly, I found the writing in VII to be strangely reflective of the character. Often, the character himself is just as dark and twisted as both the prose of the novel. He is violent and debauched, and that is likely some of his finer points. The plays he writes apparently illustrate even more darkness dwelling within him. A passage from a pamphlet regarding one of Edward’s plays that accompanies one of the autobiographical sections demonstrates this amply:

In a vague sense, the play chronicles of the sexual adventures of an unnamed character I will call The Fool, a garish character donning decorative mask and eccentric shifting costume. Like the playwright’s recent work, the narrative mirrors, to an unrivaled extent, the aesthetics of a dream. None will deny the strength of the man’s pen, but it has fallen to such depravity that only the most despicable mind should take note.

*

The Fool stands before the doors of an immense castle. A ring of women surround him, garbed in thin sheets of white material. When he requests admittance, the women reply that he will be shown inside only if he is capable of pleasuring them all. He readily consents. Thus, the shrouds are cast into the air, and the women—girls, really—proceed to fellate him, one at time, for many minutes.

When one thinks it can go on no longer, the doors of the castle burst open, and the Master appears, riding atop the statute of a phallus, pulled by another group of attractive young women. In anger, he questions The Fool as to the nature of his present visit.  The Fool does not answer aloud, but whispers his response into a maiden’s ear, for it to be relayed to his intended recipient. Suddenly, the Masterbursts into laughter, leaps to the ground, throws off his robes, and sets into the women himself.

From the side of the stage, a shadow appears, clad all in black, and begins to whip them. Their cries of pain coalesce into something like music. Abstract dancing begins. The Fool, producing a cord of steel orbs, inserts them unspeakably into one girl as two others service his eager nether region. The Master, still laughing, orders his person covered some species of nefarious jelly.

Not being one of a person who thinks I need to be able to like a character, I was fascinated because I didn’t like Edward. He is depraved and strange, and utterly captivating.

Now, I would not claim that I completely understood VII. I definitely enjoyed reading, but I think this is a very complex work that demands multiple readings to be able to fully appreciate all the complexities woven and hidden within. I am reminded of works like Thomas Pynchon’s V. and Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless and think enthusiasts of either would find VII to be an interesting pairing with such works, or would simply enjoy VII completely on it’s own.

Either way, whether you are familiar with such unusually fluid and shifting works as V. or Empire of the Senseless, I would recommend checking VII out. It may be a complex read, and may have the tendency to disturb you on occasion (which was just another plus as far as I was concerned, but not everyone is me), but there is some highly impressive writing going on here. You really have to read it yourself to be able to get a grip on it.

Transmedia Remedies for Social Networking Ills: A Review of Jesús Ángel García's badbadbad

Jesús Ángel García is nothing if not ambitious. A poet, musician, novelist, stage performer, documentarian, and arguable sociologist, he pretty much participates in every form of art there is. And, judging by his Facebook page and the official site for his debut novel, badbadbad, he’s also the king of self-promotion.

But then again, if you’re proud of what you’ve done, why not tell everyone you can about it? And the entire multimedia project that is badbadbad (more on that later) is definitely an incredible accomplishment. A provocative, humorous, musical, and ultimately poignant adventure, the entire endeavor equates to a sum more brilliant than its parts, and it’s a great example of how García’s artistry is vital to the current literary landscape.

Before tackling the other components of the package, the novel itself deserves attention. Perhaps taking a page from Vonnegut (specifically, Breakfast of Champions), García places himself as the protagonist (and thus, blurs the lines between fiction and reality, author and character). Narratively, the story unfolds as García recounts events to his brother (whose fate is suggested by never officially specified), and story-wise, well, there’s a lot going on.

Essentially, badbadbad tells the story of a man who balances sin with salvation as he tries to bring order to his life and help others in need. By day, García is the webmaster of a website devoted to a cult run by an elderly, clueless reverend and his Southern Belle wife, codenamed Good Charlotte. However, behind the scenes, the website is really home to “fallenangels,” a sort of dating site for sexually/morality-deprived individuals. Throughout the misadventures of redemption, partying, religious encounters, and sex, we’re constantly told about García’s ex-wife and infant son, whom she kidnapped and is keeping from García. With motivation that’s equal parts paternal, vengeful, and homicidal, we watch as García inevitably gets closer to settling the situation.

There are several reasons why badbadbad appealed to me. Firstly, it’s covered in obscure musical references, which, to a music journalist, is inherently fascinating. Somewhat akin to American Graffiti, almost every scene in badbadbad features music in the background, and the way García refers to people by code names brings Green Day’s American Idiotand The Who’s Quadrophenia to mind.

Naturally, as García commits sinful acts at night and represents God during the day, he is interested in criticizing the way we let religion affect so much of our lives. He fills the novel with concise commentary, such as when he observes how similar various Christian institutions are. He says:

They sparred over public policy, moral values and what seemed to me like nitpicky differences of opinion on how to read the same damn book.

Exactly.

Also, and perhaps most importantly, the majority of badbadbad examines how social media allows us to masquerade under false personae and replace true intimacy and connection with fantasized, immediate gratification. García becomes a self-righteous savior as he sets out to show damaged, perverse women how valuable they truly are. Now, as someone who prides himself on being a true romantic, I can appreciate García’s notion that conversation and comfort are even more special than mere copulation; however, ironically, he really only serves to enhance the problems that these girls have by indulging in their insanity, which definitely makes him a more rounded and complex character.

Beyond the novel, Jesús Ángel García realizes his badbadbad holy trinity fully with a complete soundtrack and documentary. The former is an interesting companion to the novel; composed and performed by García alone, it’s a rugged rock opera on acoustic guitar (think Led Zeppelin III with George Thorogood on vocals). While the songwriting isn’t spectacular, García’s musicianship is (he’s a fantastic guitarist), and it’s very cool to hear musical references to themes and characters in the novel.

The documentary is broken into five parts (“Fear,” “Hypocrisy,” “eIntimacy,” “Sexual Morality,” and “Self Destruction”), and it features interviews with a few dozen people at several locations. It’s truly fascinating to hear their honest opinions and brutal confessions on topics that the novel addresses, such as social networking, Americanism, sex, drugs, altruism, self-actualization, and pain. Most of all, it effectively conveys how united we are as a species; we share many of the same hopes, fears, and experiences, and it’s easy to feel connected to the interviewees as they speak. Really, this film is an award-worthy artifact about modern social issues.

More than anything, the badbadbad project represents a progressive movement for what constitutes and contributes to art. While each of the three elements is worthwhile independently, the way they complement each other is very special. Also, the way García challenges the conventional structure of a literary work (primarily, that it exists alone, without involving multimedia accompaniment) is an exciting innovation. There’s plenty of good within badbadbad.