Category: Uncategorized

All of the tenants woke up at once. The sun glided across the horizon like dawn or armageddon. Light pouring from each window, flooding through every gate. Lunging across the face, penetrating the eye slit. Something dense and loud shook the building. Colliding with the top floor, a meteor or a missile.

At its incipit, a collective of ambitious architects had organized the building into a maze of studio apartments. Rooms connected by disjointed hallways and corridors, rendering each space partially communal, where the path to the elevator or the lobby or the balcony was taken through neighboring apartments. The vocabulary of the collective drawing references from Deleuze and Borges. They liken their creation to the Library of Babel. Tenants are nourished by the processes of their habitat. Entering the homes of strangers becomes familiar / common. Neighbors become apparitions, distant and obfuscated bodies moving through doors and hallways.

Performance artists recreate their paths, writers and filmmakers document their encounters. The population shifts into a state of becoming. Simultaneously the subject and object of their fascination. Themselves the same strangers that they see at the ends of hallways and looking out windows. Tenants become suspicious of one another. Pursuing and avoiding. Each a part of the larger apparatus of the building. Because of this, when something loud and dense crashes into the building, into the top floor, there is no investigation.

Tenants assemble their theories about the loud crashing of the top floor, “It was without cause or purpose.” … “The installation of a new floor.” … “An extension of the landlord’s will.” … “We are without overseer.” … “There are no more consequences.” … “The visitation of a talented artist.” … “One that we have, as a group, defined as being consistent in their aesthetic and praxis.” … “The performance of their ritual.” … “Equating the building to a body.” … “Each of us a cell.” … “Every cluster of rooms an organ.” … “Each floor a system.” … “It is a break or malfunction in the veins connecting systems.” … “Blood cannot travel.” … “The collective has departed.” … “They have left us without an understanding of our environment.” … “Space is of a poetic nature, it cannot be understood haptically.” … “This is nonsense.” … “And yet it afflicts us.” … “Or we are afflicted with a hypochondriac perception of ourselves.” … “Or there is no difference.” … “Or there was no sound at all.” … “But this is not true.” … “Something has happened.”

Red light illuminates windowless hallways. Fragmented pathways connecting barren or cramped studios. Silhouettes pass one another, clinging to the edges of the wall. Circumnavigating other bodies. The floors creak at the hint of movement. Tampered wallpaper absorbs pockets of light. Someone says that they have been waking up in the middle of the night, seeing images of their mother. The void reconstructs vague memories of her complexion. It feels as if certain pathways have begun to disappear, they say, certain doors aren’t where I remember. Some hallways don’t lead to where they used to.

A tenant who pretends to associate with the collective of ambitious architects, lists the semiotic qualities of the hallway. Speculates why the lights are red, why people won’t talk to one another, why the floor creaks so much. The neighbor who saw their mother in the middle of the night says that symbols must be placed, they do not happen naturally, or as the byproduct of a degradation. If there is a signifier being signified, in this circumstance, it is the aesthetic elements of Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel, in which none of us can bear to leave, but there is no reason we should stay.

Someone says that Buñuel might live here, but it is not true. Another tenant says that this could not be true, it would be anachronistic. The layout of the floor changes. Since the sound of the initial impact, the building has felt much more lively. As if awoken. Landlines are severed by tectonic shifts. Wires stretch and unthread. Fires start between walls. Red light crawls into the connecting studios, engulfing the door frame and absorbing the natural fill.

One of the tenants takes on the facade of a performance artist. They perform the movements of the building. When they flex their leg, the floor shakes. When they extend their bicep, the walls bend. When they tense their neck, the ceiling explodes in noise and static.

Further hysterias begin to develop. Each tenant finding their own methods of converting paranoia into a tactile art. The collective of ambitious architects respond cryptically by writing a map of the text, in which each floor’s changing shape is dynamically rendered. But regardless of this, there are no departures and no changes to the migration of the tenants.

apt. no. 4006 – apt. no. 9096 – apt. no. 3619 – apt. no. 2299 – apt. no. 3584 – apt. no. 1345 – apt. no. 3436 – apt. no. 4370 – apt. no. 3813 – apt. no. 2786 – apt. no. 4735 – apt. no. 8562 – apt. no. 7263 – apt. no. 8253 – apt. no. 5782 – apt. no. 1702 – apt. no. 5257 – apt. no. 4474 – apt. no. 826 – apt. no. 4322 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1765 – apt. no. 8850 – apt. no. 1924 – apt. no. 7211 – apt. no. 1160 – apt. no. 197 – apt. no. 6382 – apt. no. 7860 – apt. no. 5286 – apt. no. 7792 – apt. no. 7394 – apt. no. 6277 – apt. no. 1158 – apt. no. 7493 – apt. no. 9853 – apt. no. 5196 – apt. no. 9277 – apt. no. 2524 – apt. no. 6494 – apt. no. 5820 – apt. no. 6129 – apt. no. 914 – apt. no. 7276 – apt. no. 2714

apt. no. 8858 – apt. no.2659 – apt. no. 4276 – apt. no. 2535 – apt. no. 2851 – apt. no. 2888 – apt. no. 828 – apt. no. 2031 – apt. no. 7303 – apt. no. 3046 – apt. no. 4210 – apt. no. 2325 – apt. no.5803 – apt. no. 9826 – apt. no. 3676 – apt. no. 2103 – apt. no. 2382 – apt. no. 3282 – apt. no. 2720 – apt. no. 1513 – apt. no. 3593 – apt. no. 8575 – apt. no. 8965 – apt. no.6969 – apt. no. 6867 – apt. no. 292 – apt. no. 108 – apt. no. 1408 – apt. no. 1631 – apt. no. 5327 – apt. no. 7254 – apt. no. 2643 – apt. no. 1188 – apt. no. 5182 – apt. no.4163 – apt. no. 9021 – apt. no. 6777 – apt. no. 8203 – apt. no. 2747 – apt. no. 9892 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1668 – apt. no. 3581 – apt. no. 7846 – apt. no. 4432

apt. no. 4006 – apt. no. 9096 – apt. no. 3619 – apt. no. 2299 – apt. no. 3584 – apt. no. 1345 – apt. no. 3436 – apt. no. 4370 – apt. no. 3813 – apt. no. 2786 – apt. no. 4735 – apt. no. 8562 – apt. no. 7263 – apt. no. 8253 – apt. no. 5782 – apt. no. 1702 – apt. no. 5257 – apt. no. 4474 – apt. no. 826 – apt. no. 4322 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1765 – apt. no. 8850 – apt. no. 1924 – apt. no. 7211 – apt. no. 1160 – apt. no. 197 – apt. no. 6382 – apt. no. 7860 – apt. no. 5286 – apt. no. 7792 – apt. no. 7394 – apt. no. 6277 – apt. no. 1158 – apt. no. 7493 – apt. no. 9853 – apt. no. 5196 – apt. no. 9277 – apt. no. 2524 – apt. no. 6494 – apt. no. 5820 – apt. no. 6129 – apt. no. 914 – apt. no. 7276 – apt. no. 2714

KNIFE

the knife to cut the beet 
from the garden the red 
dye against my skin 
the shiny metal blade 
your job is to wash 
the knife your job 
is to prevent me 
from coming close 
to the sharpness 

we took on certain roles 
in the house 
you cut the meat 
while I cut the vegetables 
the stains were varied 
yours a thin scarlet 
and mine bleeding green 
I later pulled a needle 
through cloth 

repeating colors 
with thread 
we hung the embroideries 
on the walls 
the colors fixed 
we sat on the couch 
as the colors watched 
us move one of our hands 
on top of the other’s 

your hand was usually on top 
we played 
our roles 
you walked through our hallways 
the loudest 
I resented your footsteps 
while I walked 
on my tiptoes 
towards the front door 

in the thicket 
outside the house 
you had the idea 
to chop wood with the knife 
so that it would become 
dull 
so that we wouldn’t 
be tempted 
to place it against skin

then to reveal our scars 
holding subway poles 
the inside of our arms visible 
showing off 
the knife’s traces 
red the knife 
in your jean pocket 
an unforgettable 
          shape

THE POND OF HER

The cattails in Humboldt Park almost sway, 
but they are too heavy in their longing. 
I am wearing her cut-offs 
and the angora sweater from the rummage. 
She taught me to shave my legs. 
I could only live 
by her definition of beauty. 

She lives by matching accessories 
purchased at Claire’s Boutique, 
clear skin, 
a C cup, 
plucked eyebrows. 
We’re nothing 
alike. 

The pond is too shallow for suicide. 
I would often go alone, but sometimes 
with her to watch the way her fingers 
stroked the top of the cattail. 
She would come close 
to pulling it out 
from its green stalk. 

Close to the edge 
of the park 
we could hear tiny 
voices from the swing sets. 
The pond was near 
a busy street 
where not everyone avoided 

the ducks who had left 
their element and we cried. 
Maybe we were sad 
because it was like our own 
suicides 
would have been: 
a sudden end to love.

CEMETERY COFFEE

Caffeine 
sparks our imaginations. 
Our thoughts rise 
like we wanted our loved ones 
to rise from the grave. 
We are their children who walk barefoot, 
leaving footprints in the brush. 
Our hearts are their balloons. 
They hold on by the strings 
of arteries. 

Coffee in the cemetery. 
They would have wanted some, 
with an extra dollop 
of milk like coffee that we drank 
in the church hall 
from Styrofoam cups 
when we still prayed 
and saving the environment 
meant turning off the light 
when we left a room. 

We drank coffee. The yellow 
tablecloth was a pond 
between us. My feet 
were wet in our conversation. 
She bought me gold jewelry, not realizing 
that I would have preferred costume 
even when I moved my hair 
away to show off florescent pink earrings. 
She didn’t know we were different. 
But she was the one to drift away.

COLOR

a cool piece of silk 
the soft protein 
dropped in dissolved 
alum a bridge 
the yellow weld, the pink madder 
the bright osage orange, the purple lac 
the insect constructs 
its house and it dissolves into color 
influenced by acid, alkaline, copper, or iron 

the reaction in the beaker 
fizzes towards her 
she has wanted to experience 
this connection in her own life 
to see her desire 
bubble up above her skin 
to look in the mirror 
and see herself changed 
color in her cheeks 

swatches of silk 
for her daughter’s high school science fair 
the dyes were collected from the house 
coffee grounds 
rose petals 
turmeric 
their scents in the hot water 
made her head spin 
as her daughter waited for results 

she pulled on her rubber gloves 
to manipulate nature 
the dye rinsed off like blood in water 
when she cut her finger 
chopping eggplant for your birthday 
her hair all twisted up 
and you open the box 
with the silk scarf 
lying quietly in color

PAPER DOLLS 

I am sick and I cut the parts that hurt larger. 
The heart throbs. The room is getting stuffy, 
but mother is afraid of opening the window. 
The paper dolls float like snowflakes. 
Weather finds its way inside. 
She watches me with the glistening blades 
of the scissors. The down has traveled 
to the bottom of the comforter. 
It isn’t warm anymore. My pills 
are lined up on the nightstand, full moons. 
I cut dresses and two-piece suits, fold them 
over the bodies of the dolls. In the mirror 
I see my mother’s face behind me. 
She is ready with the cold compress, 
ready with the thermometer. I am ready 
with my fever. 

A sharp electric tone screeches from the alcove of the restaurant’s drive-thru window. The girl on duty for the night shoots past the counter in a blur, engaging her headset and going through her opening spiel for the customer in the blue Chevy around back. She bobs behind the shift manager as she darts toward her register.
He adjusts as she moves closer, straightening up a bit from the slouch he’d crumpled into while idly talking to a regular customer across the counter. He cranes his neck after her, after the shape of her buttocks pushing out the faded fabric of her slacks and the equine sway of the long rope of hair dangling out of her cap.
There is something like a smile on his lips as he turns back.
The customer stands at the counter like a wobbly, misshapen idol, all Buddha belly and unnatural posture. He sips from a half-gallon paper cup, occasionally dribbling on his short-sleeve pinstripe shirt and the navy shorts that stop above his rocky knees and albino-pink legs.
“It’s the comparison I’ve heard is closest,” the man says.
Reorienting on the other side of the counter, the restaurant’s shift manager leans his compact frame against the bulky register with a faint creak of stubborn plastic. He smiles a different type of grin with half his face and answers, “You know, I hear that a lot. Most people get this weird idea about the Roman Empire. You know what people are really admiring when they say this stuff? Their engineering. That’s about the only criteria you can use to say Rome’s the greatest empire in history. You’ve got Alexander’s, or the Khans–all bigger. Hell, China was bigger than Rome for a thousand years. Rome was a flash in the pan. So if people want to make that comparison, then that’s what they’re saying. They don’t even know what Rome was, or how it worked. It’s a confused understanding of history if you ask me.”
“I think that’s what that book I was talking about said, too.”
“What was the name of that one again?”
“Um, I can’t remember exactly. I’ll look it up and tell you tomorrow,” the man stammers.
“Sounds good,” the shift manager says absently, looking past the man to the dark hanging on the other side of the front windows. “Well, I better get back to work.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I should go. I’m just gonna get a refill.”
“Sure.”
He takes the barrel from the customer’s pudgy fingers and loads it with soda before handing it back across. He gets a smile from the graying, pasty face as the older man turns and heads out with flopping steps.
“Dude, that guy is weird,” a voice booms from behind the heat lamps.
“Be nice,” the girl’s voice interjects from the drive-thru.
“He’s harmless,” the shift manager tells the cook without looking at him. Instead of turning, he punches in a sequence of commands on the front cash register, prompting it to spool out a long strip of printed tape.
“I don’t know how you talk to that guy, though. Whenever he comes in here you get talking about shit like that. It’s like you know everything.”
“Hardly everything.”
“But where you find all that out, man?”
“School, books.”
“So you’re all educated and shit,” the hefty fry cook continues while switching off the bun-toasting machine.
“Guess so,” he answers. “And don’t say ‘shit’ when there are customers around.”
The frycook cranes his neck to see around the wall of the dining room. “Oh shit, are there people here?” he asks over the sound of the machine winding down.
“Shhhh.”
“So where’d you go to school?”
“Um, I actually went to Harvard for a while, but I ended up back home here at Harvard on the border.”
“Harvard, huh?”
“Yeah, but I had to come back because of family problems.”
“Oh yeah? That’s cool. Hey, can I break down the toaster, man?”
“Way too early.”
“Come on, man. I’ll just run some buns through ahead to get us through the night.”
“Nope.”
“Dude, come on.”
“Hey,” he says, turning away from the register. “If it were my restaurant…well, if it were my restaurant then I’d be chained to it and that thought would probably drive me to suicide so then you’d be free to do whatever you wanted.”
“Huh?”
A little chirp of a laugh emanates from the drive-thru window.
“No, you can’t break down the toaster,” he says and steps over to the drive-thru girl’s register.
“That’s funny, huh?” he asks her.
“Little bit,” she tells him. The brim of the baseball cap shadows most of her face, but her lopsided smile pokes out. He hovers before her, and she cranes her neck up to see from under the hat. Her form is pretty much lost in the baggy uniform, but bits of her body push outward on the combo wardrobe of printed tee-shirt and on-the-cheap work pants: strong shoulders, breasts, and a little hip. For a moment her long face looks only doughy, but her smile widens when he looks down at her. The expression pulls up her cheeks and stretches her jowls back, giving her face some shape.
“Excuse me,” she says and steps around him.
She saunters off as he runs a report off her register too and pops the drawer open.
He calls her back up a minute later.
“The drawer.”
“What? Is it off?”
“How many twenties did you take?”
“I don’t remember.”
The frycook peers over his equipment to listen in and the other cashier wheels the sloshing mop bucket past them on her way to the lobby. He takes quick note of them and continues, “You’re ten dollars under.”
“Ten?”
“Exactly ten.”
“There was that rush earlier,” she says, peering off with her lips pinched up. “Maybe I made change for a twenty on one of those instead of a ten.”
He frowns and shoots a quick look at the others to set them back to their tasks.
“Maybe?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Any other possibility?”
“If it’s exactly ten, then that’s what it’s got to be. If it was a void I forgot then it wouldn’t be ten on the nose.”
“Alright, well, I’ve got to log it, you know that.”
“I haven’t had a drawer shortage since my first week. Sorry.”
“Just be more careful, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The drive-thru pad picks up the weight of a pick-up truck with hungries in it and she turns from him to push the button on her hip and issue her standard greeting/suggestive sell combination into the mic dangling beside her chin.
A few more orders come and go, but the clock eventually creeps closer to the mark they’re waiting on. He watches her shape in the convex mirror as she sweeps the last stray fries left in the lobby during a lull between orders. He walks past the frycook.
“Now,” he tells him.
“‘Bout time!” and immediately starts pulling apart the machine.
He walks slowly out into the lobby, but she does not look up, does not slow in her task. “It looks fine,” he tells her.
“She shouldn’t have mopped so early,” she says, throwing her head over her shoulder to indicate an absent coworker.
“It looks fine,” he repeats. “Let’s get everything stocked. I’m looking to do a record close tonight.”
“Okay.”
Soon sharp clicks coincide with sections of the ceiling going dim. The crew members loitering against the front counter straighten up and start shuffling toward the door, waiting for him to come up and unlock it.
Outside, the street lamps leave rainbow smudges on the oil puddles in the parking lot.
“You need a ride?” one of them asks the young drive-thru girl as the other workers split up and disperse toward their cars.
“No, mine’s coming,” she says.
At the door, the shift manager is fumbling with the lock. “I’ll wait with her,” he volunteers.
“Okay,” the others sound off. “Bye.”
As the others’ cars roll away, the remaining two figures–standing apart–follow with their eyes the red glow of tail lights receding in both directions until the street is calm and empty. Then both converge on the remaining car and climb in together.
“I’m sorry about before,” he tells her as he rolls the engine over.
“What about?”
“When I got on you about the money.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just that…I mean I have to be fair.”
“It’s fine.”
“I can’t treat you differently, you know. They’d catch on. Hell, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t already.”
“It’s okay, I get it.”
“If anybody found out and it got around, especially up to the district manager–”
“Don’t worry about me. I get it. You’re doing your job.”
“Yeah, but according to my job, we shouldn’t even be together. Hell according to the law–”
“Please. The law in Texas is seventeen.”
“What?”
“Age of consent is seventeen. You’re not breaking any laws.”
“Oh.”
“Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Did you really think you were breaking the law by being with me?”
“I guess not. I mean, I did know about it being seventeen and all.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t mind having a boyfriend who can’t admit he’s your boyfriend? Does your mom know about us?”
“So you’re my boyfriend?”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“I don’t care what people think,” she shrugs without looking at him. “Those aren’t my rules.”
“What aren’t?”
“Everything you’re talking about. Those aren’t my rules,” she says again.
“So you don’t follow the rules.”
“Not if they’re wrong.”
“Why are these wrong?” he asks, a surprised lilt to his words.
“What does the district manager care if we’re sleeping together? We both do our jobs. It’s none of his business. That’s why I don’t care that you chewed me out for the drawer. It’s your job. It’d be wrong if you didn’t.”
“I didn’t chew you out, did I?”
“Not really.”
He opens his mouth once, stops himself, then begins again. “I’m interested in your morality here.”
“You’ve never cared about my morality before.”
“I’m putting some pieces together here. I’m just trying to figure you out is all. You told me once you don’t go out drinking with your friends.”
“I don’t.”
“Isn’t that someone else’s stupid rule.”
“No. That’s my rule.”
“Oh.”
“I promised myself something about that.”
“What?”
She just shakes her head.
“So, didn’t you make a promise to the company?”
“Did I?”
“You signed some agreement, right? Something about company policies and all that.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the same thing as a promise.”
“Why not? Seems like it.”
“No, a promise is specific or it’s meaningless. Look at marriage. Somebody gets up one day and promises vaguely to love and to honor, but you know that most men cheat on their wives anyway.”
“Is that right, though?”
“Depends on the person. I mean, it’s not right, but it’s not necessarily wrong.”
“No?”
“Promises don’t work like that. You promise one thing and you do it for your own reasons. You don’t get up there and make some promise that covers your entire life. That’s not a real promise. It’s different if a man loves a woman and he’s still in love with her and she expects him to only be with her or something, but those are extraordinary circumstances. That’s not what most marriage is about.”
“What’s marriage about then?”
“Need,” she answers, still gazing out ahead of them as the headlights catch pedestrians and bus-stop benches on the side of the road.
“When you get married, you won’t expect your husband not to sleep around?”
“I don’t know what I’ll expect. Relationships are individual, particular.”
“Are they all about need?”
“Sure.”
“Are we?”
“Sure.”
“So you’re not in love with me?”
“No, I’m not in love with you.”
“What if I’m in love with you?”
“You’re not in love with me,” she answers flatly. He stops watching her and keeps his eyes on the road. “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” she continues after a block or two pass by. “Love doesn’t really factor into morality.”
“I had no idea you thought this way about things.”
She keeps her arms crossed as they pull into his apartment complex.
They walk up the metal stairs toward his level.
He regards her from just behind with an unsteady expression, as if uncertain of how to speak to her, how to touch her. Finally, he decides on a gesture and reaches for her hand.
She accepts, wrapping her fingers around his wrist as she walks ahead.
At the door she stops and stares blankly at the thick coats of white paint.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m just tired, I guess.”
“You want me to take you home.”
She squeezes his hand. “No, no. Let’s just get inside.”
The door creaks open to darkness. The hanging blinds that cover the sliding glass door to the eight square-foot balcony let in long slats of orange light from some cheap bulb out on the path between buildings. They act out an apparently familiar script. He passes her, crunching his knees together to navigate the narrow gap between the wide, squat coffee table and the couch against the wall with its distended cushions threatening to pour out like failed soufflé batter onto the course carpeting. She closes the door, cutting off the light behind them and leaving only those long orange lines from the other side of the room. He clicks on an old halogen lamp, the kind that used to populate college dorms a decade before, but which were responsible for enough house-fires that they’re not in stores anymore. The light’s enough to give form to the bulky shadows in front of her, the shapes of the furniture that define and overwhelm the space. Billowing brown folds of fabric hint that the sofa is stuffed to bursting with whole flights of fowl fluff, but when she swings her purse onto the side it drops stone-like into the fathoms of the cushions. He sighs and kicks off his shoes while she saunters by the stacks of books he has piled on the floor. She gives the untidy stacks an affectionate, good-to-see-you-old-friend smile and then settles into the couch herself, flipping on the TV and cycling through channels with one hand while pulling out the band from her ponytail with the other. “You want something to drink?” he calls back from the kitchen, though it’s close enough he doesn’t need to shout. She answers and in a second he is returning to her with a beer and a Sprite.
When he sits, he slides down along the length of her, settling in brick-mortar tight.
She lets the channel rest on the news and lowers her head to the crook of his neck, closing her eyes. He reaches around behind her with his free hand and begins kneading the soft triangle of flesh above her left hip. The edge of her shirt comes loose and he works his fingers down beneath the hem of her slacks. As he brushes the fine hairs below the plexus at the pit of her back, her eyes open and her back arches, bringing her head into recline.
He shifts his face to meet hers and they begin a weary disrobing. By the end they have shifted positions and he is settled back into the cushions, erect and waiting. She creeps around him on her knees, finding perch in his lap.
Her eyes close as she rocks atop him, silently.
When his grunting is finished he clutches hard at her buttocks and she becomes still, a single tear of perspiration tracing a line down the crease of her back.
They restore their undergarments but leave the rest of their clothing on the floor.
He picks up the remote and flips channels in her place.
“It’s getting late,” he says after half an hour.
“Hmm,” she purrs.
“Does your mother know about us?”
“Not sure.”
“You guys don’t talk.”
“It’s complicated, she and I. It must seem like she doesn’t care, but that’s not it.”
“What is it?”
“Complicated.”
“Does she worry?”
“Maybe some. She knows me, though.”
“Still, it’s late, I should get you home.”
“Wait,” she says, sitting up and swinging her eyes away from the flickering screen. “I wanted to ask you about Harvard.”
There’s a jerk in his neck, a start like he’s choked on something.
“What about it?”
“You never explained why you didn’t finish school there? Why you came back here?”
“Why do you think?”
“I guess I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I’m sorry, forget about it.”
“I got the grades. I didn’t flunk out, okay?”
“Okay, sorry.”
“I was drummed out.”
This time she doesn’t protest. Now she’s curious and she will let him tell it. Tell something he’s never told.
“When I got there–God, it was immediate. All the money. All those damn kids had it so easy. Here I was, scholarship kid from El Paso.”
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. I just–”
“I worked hard,” he continues, ignoring her interjection and her offer. “I had to. If I didn’t I’d lose the scholarship or lose the biggest of them. Had to keep a 3.5. I did it. Worked my ass off because I’d signed up for too many hours. It was a bitch that first semester. Always in the library because my jack-ass roommate would never let me have any peace. We ended up in a real war by the end. I was always studying. Never worked harder in my life…”
His words trail off for a moment and she watches him carefully while he goes back, then returns to her with something to say.
“There was this girl. This skinny little white girl. White girl from money. I should’ve known better, but I couldn’t help it. I was…I had a thing for her. I got her attention a little bit but couldn’t seem to get anywhere, like there was something stopping her from wanting to be with me. Then one night we were both at this party at the dorm. She was already pretty drunk when I showed up.”
“God,” he exclaims, breaking his own rhythm. “I hadn’t been out with anyone, been with anyone the whole time I’d been up there. So she and I got together. Found us a room on the floor with nobody in it. It looked like a little kid’s room. All done up in cartoon posters. Don’t know whose room it was. But she and I did it and she just kind of passed out afterwards. That was it, end of semester.”
“I flew home. Had my Christmas break.”
He shakes his head and rubs the meaty hunks of flesh below his thumbs into his eye sockets, wiping away perspiration from his brow with his fingertips as he draws his hands back down.
“Then the day before I was going to fly back, I got a phone call. I was being suspended, pending an investigation. The university police talked to the El Paso police. I was never arrested, but they talked to me. Four hours they talked to me. In the end, my suspension just became terminated enrollment and I guess that was good enough for her. She dropped the charge if I just stayed away, stayed quiet. I did some Internet searches, thinking her dad probably had some sway at the school, some big donations or something. Never found anything, though.”
He checks her with a quick sideways cock of his eyes. She’s not looking. Her head’s down, pointed at her lap where she’s rubbing her palms together real slowly. Legs and palms clasped tight in her own shadow.
“But I mean, you know I didn’t rape her. She just regretted it and talked herself into believing she never wanted it. You know?”
His pleading tone catches her attention. Her long face is drawn downward because there’s no shape to her mouth now, it’s smaller like that. Just a slit with nothing showing, barely even any peach-colored lips. She nods to him faintly and moves her hand to rest one palm lightly on his knee.
“That was it. That was my whole life ruined right there.”
“You could’ve fought it, I guess.”
“Go back there? Go back there with all their eyes on me, thinking that about me? No way.”
“Another school. If you–”
“Nah. Nah, I learned my lesson. Besides, you should’ve heard my mother. ‘Told you,’ she’d say. ‘I told you not to go up there.’ Over and over again.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I don’t talk to anyone about it. Even when I came back, I avoided everyone I used to know, everyone who knew I’d gone out there. I never wanted to explain it. That time I slipped and said, ‘Harvard,’ in front of you. God, that must’ve been the only time I’d said it in eight years.”
“You’ve mentioned it twice to me,” she corrected.
“I have?”
“Yeah.”
“Guess I mention it more than I realized.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m very sorry I brought it up. I didn’t know it would be this bad a memory for you.”
He reaches over for the drink he’d left on the table, takes a sip and then turns to her again. “Why did you want to know?”
“I was just curious about your experience there.”
“But why?”
“I was just considering it.”
“Considering what?”
“Harvard.”
“What?”
“I’m applying there.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d try for it. I know one of my friends from last year who didn’t get in, even with the Gates scholarship, but my grades–”
He laughs out loud.
“What?” she balks. His face is twisted with the smile he’s wearing, but hers is going sharp.
“Harvard? Come on. Do you know what it takes to get in to Harvard?”
She leans away, giving herself a slightly improved vantage on him.
“I was just talking about that,” she answers in a husky, almost whispered rasp.
“I mean, come on,” he continues. “It’s not like they let just anyone go there.”
She nods to him, saying nothing.
She stands, the long lean lines of her body stretched tall at the edge of the sofa. She looks down. With a quick dip she collects her clothes from the floor in two handfuls.
“What?” he stammers. “Don’t…” She is dressing quickly, slipping on her shoes while yanking the shirt down over her head. “Listen, I’m sorry. I was just saying it’s really hard.”
“No,” she says, turning to him after already starting toward the door. “That’s not what you said. You said, it’s not like they let ‘just anyone’ in.”
“But–”
She finishes shoving her left heel into its shoe and opens the door. He is still undressed.
“Where are you going? You don’t have a car, you–”
“You don’t know me,” she says, and he doesn’t recognize the tone in her voice. “I’ll be fine on my own.” The door slams.
Out of pride or shock, he does not follow her. He sits dumbstruck on the sofa for a few minutes, then fetches the remote and turns on the television. His attention snaps to the door periodically when neighbors or the wind rustle past, but no meek knocking ever draws him up from his seat.
Finally, by two, he falls asleep on the couch.
In the morning he wakes with a start, flailing his arm so wildly that he knocks over the empty beer can on the table. Seemingly unable to collect himself, he wanders listlessly inside the tight confines of the apartment, even laying down in his bed for a few minutes before rolling right back out to dress himself. He splashes something from a green bottle through his hair and starts out the door.
It’s long before opening, but when he turns the key in the lock at the restaurant and cracks the door he hears voices in the kitchen. The head manager and the morning maintenance guy are hunched over the fryer, conferring on a diagnosis.
“Morning,” his boss chimes when he enters. The maintenance guy just cocks his head to say hello.
“I just need to get something,” he tells them.
His boss waves him toward the office and returns his attention to dredging the fryer.
Inside the cramped office, he has to squeeze between desk and trash can to reach the file cabinet. He rifles through the bottom drawer, not finding whatever it is he wants.
“What’cha need?” From the floor he looks up in surprise as his boss leans against the door jamb to the office with one hand, his coffee mug in the other.
“I’m just…” he begins but lets the sentence collapse as he lifts his head up in frustration.
“I already moved her to ‘inactive.’”
“What?”
“Your little friend. She called and quit this morning.”
“She did?”
“First thing.”
“But–”
“She was a good worker,” his manager says. “She said she’d work out her shifts if I really needed her to, but that she’d prefer not to come in anymore. I told her we’d manage.”
Stooped on his knees by the file drawer, he seems to realize something all at once. He starts to open his mouth, then stops.
“Shame. But fortunately she never did work that many hours. It won’t be that hard to fill her shifts. She’d only work those three closing shifts a week. Guess that’s what it takes.”
“Takes for what?”
“To be what she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“My son goes to her school, you know. They don’t know each other, but he knows about her. Top of her class.”
“Really?”
“No contest, he told me.”
“Really,” he replies absently.
“Didn’t know that, huh?”
“No,” he answers, eyes downcast.
The manager starts to turn. “I guess she’s gone now.”
He nods, staring at the red tab marking off the “inactive” folders.
“So we shouldn’t use those records to make any personal calls.” He looks up suddenly, with a jerk, and they lock eyes for a minute. “Whatever you didn’t know yesterday is what you don’t know today.”
“Alright…sorry.”
His boss says nothing else and leaves.
Alone in the office, he looks again at the red section and then slides the drawer closed, rises and crosses out of the office, past the counter and out of the lobby.
The mountains obscure through the white morning, he stands for a moment where he stood beside her the night before, then climbs into his car and returns home.

Dale is in a cult. He is a cult member. Dale is seventeen. He is the fourth-youngest member of the cult.

Dale was born into the cult. It is all he’s ever known.

The cult is a religious cult. They worship their own god. The god that the cult worships is the 1984 film The Karate Kid, directed by John G. Avildsen.

The cult was started in 1986 by Dale’s uncle, Steve. Steve started the cult shortly after the film The Karate Kid became available on videocassette.

At first, Dale’s parents joined Steve’s cult because a few months earlier they had given Steve a large amount of money to get him back on his feet. They were worried Steve would do something stupid with the money.

But, eventually, Dale’s parents started to worship the film The Karate Kid, too, just like Steve.

Over the years, the cult grew and grew. Steve was a good cult leader, and the members of the cult were happy with the cult.

The cult met two nights a week. They watched The Karate Kid. They had pot-lucks and talked about The Karate Kid and prayed about The Karate Kid. They had Karate Kid costume parties. At the costume parties, everyone dressed up as a character from the Karate Kid, and the characters danced to music from the movie.

This part of the story has been the ground situation. The inciting incident follows.

In 2010, when Dale was seventeen years old, Steve got sick, and Steve later died. The cult got a new leader. The new leader was Steve’s oldest son, Harry.

Harry was a fanatic. He wore his facial hair in a way that made him look scary. Harry hadn’t liked the way that his father had run the cult. Harry thought that the cult should do more than just have parties.

Harry started to question whether or not the members of the cult really did worship the film The Karate Kid. Harry suspected that at least some of the members just liked the movie a lot, and liked going to the parties. 

Harry declared that there would be trials. All cult members would take part in the trials. The first trial was answering trivia questions about The Karate Kid. Harry had found the trivia questions on the internet.

Most of the cult members did fine on the trivia questions. They had seen the movie a lot. Two members did poorly, and Harry asked them to leave the cult. The remaining cult members were fine with this. They hadn’t liked those two, anyway. Those two never brought anything good to the potlucks.

Later that year, the remake of The Karate Kid came out in theaters, and then on DVD.

Harry declared that the remake of The Karate Kid was a false god that should be destroyed. Harry bought a bunch of copies of the DVD and gave the cult members hammers and lighter fluid and matches with which to destroy the DVD’s.

Several of the cult members thought that this was a bit much. They thought the remake was alright. They had gotten together, without Harry knowing, to go see it.

Those several cult members thought that the cult wasn’t fun anymore like when Steve was around. So they decided to leave the cult.

Harry declared good riddance to the non-believers.

Next Harry declared that all cult members should get tattoos. Must get tattoos. Big ones. But several of the remaining cult members didn’t want big tattoos, so several more left the cult.

Good riddance, Harry declared again.

There were only about a half-dozen cult members left. Harry insisted that these half-dozen were the true believers. Harry was right: the half-dozen cult members that were still around really did worship the film The Karate Kid.

Except for Dale. Dale had a secret.

Dale no longer worshipped the film The Karate Kid. Over the years, while in the cult, Dale had come to worship the actress Elisabeth Shue, instead.

The actress Elisabeth Shue played the character Ali-with-an-i in the film The Karate Kid. Dale was in love with Elisabeth Shue. Madly. Head over heels.

So when the fanatic Harry declared, in his biggest, boldest declaration yet, that the cult would be kidnapping all of the directors and producers and crewmembers and actors (other than Pat Morita, who had played Mister Miyagi and who had since passed away) and actresses and extras and everyone—EVERYONE!—who had been involved in creating the cult’s one true god for a grand, ceremonial reenactment, and then, when, through a series of events, Dale discovered that Harry’s true intentions, Harry being a fanatic, were not to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial reenactment but instead to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial sacrifice—a human sacrifice to the one true god—Dale decided that he must flee the cult and must himself kidnap Elisabeth Shue before Harry could get to her.

But when Harry discovers that Dale has fled the cult and, through another series of events, also discovers that Dale has discovered Harry’s true intentions, Harry sends his cult members in pursuit of Dale. To stop Dale, at any cost.

The inciting incident having concluded, the story now has a protagonist (Dale) and a conflict (Dale wants to save Elisabeth Shue, whom he loves and worships, from Harry) and an antagonist (Harry the fanatic).

Dale found Elisabeth Shue before the cult members found him. It wasn’t hard; he knew where she lived. He worshipped her and all.

Dale didn’t break into Elisabeth Shue’s house, at first. He waited for her to come out of her house to go somewhere.

Because Dale loved her so much, he couldn’t help but be honest with Elisabeth Shue. He told her her life was in danger. She walked faster. He told her to come with him. That he could save her. She told him to eff off.

So Dale broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house.

When Elisabeth Shue found Dale in her house, she told him to go away. Then she said she’d call the police. The she said she’d shoot him.

Dale tried to explain the situation. The danger she was in. But Elisabeth Shue wouldn’t listen.

But then some of the cult members arrived. They knew where Elisabeth Shue lived, too. Harry had made a big list.

The cult members made a lot of noise and broke a lot of glass when they broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house. They scared Elisabeth Shue, so she went with Dale. She brought the gun she had threatened to shoot Dale with. 

If a gun, etc.

Dale and Elisabeth Shue escaped in Elisabeth Shue’s car. Elisabeth Shue drove. Despite being seventeen, Dale did not have a driver’s license. He had grown up in a cult. Dale had gotten to Elisabeth Shue’s house by bus. Elisabeth Shue really didn’t live that far from where Dale lived.

Elisabeth Shue drove into the desert. Elisabeth Shue didn’t live that far from the desert, either.

She stopped the car. She and Dale got out. They were in the middle of nowhere. It had been nighttime when they had escaped from Elisabeth Shue’s house, but now it was daytime. 

Elisabeth Shue pulled out the gun and pointed it at Dale. Dale hadn’t known that Elisabeth Shue had brought the gun. She demanded to know who the eff Dale was and what the eff was going on.

Dale told her everything.

He told her about the cult: his uncle, the potlucks, Harry, the tattoos. And he told her about Harry’s plan. The real plan. And he told her how much he loved her. And worshipped her. So much so that he just couldn’t let that happen to her.

In a long, dramatic scene, Elisabeth Shue points her pistol at Dale and demands that Dale tell her what he loves so much about her. Dale then launches into a dramatic monologue about three tiny moments in the film Karate Kid—little moments that no one ever probably noticed ever but that Dale had watched and rewatched over and over and over again that had made Dale fall in love with her. By the time Dale finished his monologue, Elisabeth Shue had lowered the pistol.

Elisabeth Shue had been twenty-one years old when she played the female lead in the 1984 film, The Karate Kid. In the desert, with Dale, she was fifty-four. 

Despite the age difference between Dale and Elisabeth Shue, at the end of Dale’s monologue there was a moment where it was possible that they might have kissed.

But then they saw a line of cars coming quickly down the road. Dust flying.

This has been the Act One climax, which has ended on a positive charge in relation to Dale’s object of desire (to rescue Elisabeth Shue).

This has also been the Inciting Incident of Subplot A, a star-crossed love story starring Dale, 17, and Elisabeth Shue, 54.

Elisabeth Shue has a husband. She is married. When Elisabeth Shue’s husband got home from work and his wife was missing and there was broken glass on the floor, he called the police. This is the Inciting Incident of Subplot B.

The police came and did what they do, but it was all moving too slowly for Elisabeth Shue’s husband, who was frantic. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He got into his car and went looking for his wife. 

Before leaving, though, Elisabeth Shue’s husband went around back to put food out for the dog. Outside one of the broken windows, he found a wallet. A cult member had dropped it.

Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s discovery of the cult member’s wallet, which contained the cult member’s driver’s license indicating the cult member’s home address, is Subplot B’s Act One climax (a positive charge).

Subplot A’s Act One climax occurs in the very next scene when, with the cult members in hot pursuit, Elisabeth Shue has the opportunity to escape on her own, without Dale. But she hesitates. And, in an action indicating feelings for Dale (the indication of those feelings further indicated by appropriate facial expression), she goes back for him (positive charge).

In Act Two of this story the Central Plot is complicated by seven scenes, Subplot A by five, and Subplot B by three, all culminating in the Act Two climax. 

Act Two, therefore, consists of fifteen scenes, the three scenes complicating Subplot B nestled within the five scenes complicating Subplot A, those five scenes likewise nestled within the seven scenes complicating the central plot, the series of fifteen scenes ending on a one two three causal sequence of scenes from, in particular order, Subplot B, Subplot A, and Central Plot, those three scenes amounting to the Subplot B Act Two climax (Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s sleuthing leads him directly to Harry himself who then kidnaps Elisabeth Shue’s husband and ties him up [negative charge], the reader learning at that point that Harry has also kidnapped and tied up Dale’s parents) causing simultaneously the Subplot A and Central Plot climaxes (Elisabeth Shue learns that Harry has abducted her husband whom despite this new love for Dale she cares for very much so Elisabeth Shue abandons Dale to go save her husband [negative charge, Subplot A] sending Elisabeth Shue straight into the clutches of fanatic Harry [negative charge, likewise, Central Plot]), all setting up the subsequent Act III climax and resolution. 

In the Act Three climax, in which all characters and all Subplots are brought together in a single scene in a single location, said scene in said location orchestrated in Bond-villain-fashion by the fanatic Harry, Harry forces Dale to choose between his Object of Desire, Elisabeth Shue, whom, as a result of her attempt to free her husband, Harry has also captured and tied up, or Dale’s own parents. Dale ultimately decides to release Elisabeth Shue back to her husband (positive charge: Central Plot and Subplot B; negative charge: Subplot A). Elisabeth Shue and husband depart, setting off a showdown between Dale and Harry resulting in Dale’s parents being saved and Harry being defeated.

Somewhere in all that, the gun introduced in Act One is fired.

BH James, 39, writing this story three-and-a-half weeks after he was told by his wife Liz that, despite his not remembering them as such, the first four months of the year preceding by four years this year had been the worst, most perilous months of his and her marriage, BH James, over the course of those three-and-a-half months, questions wife Liz about those earlier four months, Liz generously obliging and thereby, despite the bitterness for both parties of the revisitation, helps BH reconstruct/reorchestrate the story. 

The Inciting Incident of the worst, most perilous months of BH’s marriage occurs in January, on moving day. His wife, Liz, tells him to be careful when mounting the TV. But he doesn’t listen. And he breaks it. And she cries, not about the TV, and she leaves and doesn’t come back for a long time. Negative charge.

BH writes this scene into a story titled Wiff and then swears to Liz that it’s not them.

The Act One Climax occurs in February. Liz, having put baby to bed, stations herself, as she does every night, alone in bedroom, where she will spend the next several hours, alone, while BH writes, Liz careful not to disturb BH, who frequently complains that he never has time to write anymore.

This night, though, BH comes and stands in the doorway. He has just learned that his first novel, Parnucklian for Chocolate, published one year earlier and having failed to meet any and all expectations, is a finalist for an award. A PEN award, he tells her, which is misleadingly vague but true.

Liz exclaims! emotes! attempts a hug that BH shies from. It’s not a big deal, he tells her. Don’t tell anyone.

He leaves, goes back to his desk, and she is again alone. Negative charge.

The Act Two Climax occurs in March, when BH insists to Liz—BH and Liz having just purchased a house after recently having a child and therefore having little expendable income—that he has to has to has to go to AWP in Seattle—that he’s a writer and he has to, BH however, in contrast to the previous year, in Boston, when he signed books at his publisher’s booth each of the three days he was there [his wife at home with their fever-sick six-month-old son], BH was participating in no signings, no readings, no offsite events, nothing at all in particular.

But he had to go, because he was a writer.

And when BH went (for four days) he hardly called home, barely spoke to his wife, to his son not at all.

Upon returning, BH, 36, finished the first draft of a long short story titled The Anti-Story and set at a fictional version of AWP Seattle. The protagonist of the story is a writer. Unmarried, with no kids.

Negative Charge.

BH James, 39, writing this story four years later with the help of his wife Liz, has read in a book about stories that scenes in a series should alternate in charge (positive, negative, positive, etc.). But that is not how this story goes.

The Act Three Climax occurs in April, when BH’s wife Liz makes an appointment for marriage counseling because her husband for months now has been a cold distant self-absorbed prick, clearly wishing at all times to be anywhere but in his own home, lamenting frequently that he’s not even a writer, anymore, not even a writer.

Liz tells BH about the appointment. BH, teacher, responds that he’s chaperoning a field trip in Sacramento that day. He’s doing it to help out another teacher. Liz stresses the importance of not going on the field trip. BH goes anyway, misses the appointment.

Liz makes plans to leave. Negative charge.

The Resolution occurs in June. BH, 36, teacher, is at a three-day training in Florida. On the first day, his cell phone breaks. It turns off and won’t turn back on, and it won’t charge. He tries calling from the hotel, several times. Leaves messages. Sends emails from a computer in the lobby. He walks to several stores to buy several devices that might make his phone turn on, but none of them work.

BH spends most of the three days alone in his room, reading. By the time BH arrives at the airport to fly home, he has not spoken to his wife or son for three days. He searches for the payphones, but can’t find any. People don’t really use them anymore, so they’d been removed. BH asks someone. He never asks. There is one payphone left.

When Liz answers, BH tells her the story of his three days without a phone. Then he tells her he loves her, and misses her. He asks to talk to his son. When Liz is back on, BH tells her he is coming home. BH intends BH’s statement that he is coming home to have both literal and figurative meaning.

BH tells Liz they should have another baby. By August she is pregnant, and the following April their second-born is born. Positive charge.

Four years later, Liz will tell BH, who is writing this story, that, as bad as it was, from that point on, it’s all been pretty good.

By the end of the Act III climax, Dale has achieved his external Object of Desire: Elisabeth Shue is safe. Harry is in jail. But Dale is not happy. Dale did not achieve his internal Object of Desire: the love of Elisabeth Shue.

But, in the end, Elisabeth Shue comes back to Dale (positive charge). She hugs her husband, pets her dogs, and leaves them. And in the story’s final scene, Dale comes home to find her standing, waiting, at the stairs.

At BH, 39’s, and Liz, 34’s son’s preschool graduation, as they wait for the ceremony to begin, BH and Liz have a lively debate about the location of the climax of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. BH contends that what they had written about the 5-act structure in the book they had co-authored (Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of English) was all wrong. That the whole play progresses toward the duel, after which there is only the unraveling. Liz, who knows the play better, retorts that the uncertainty is resolved in the closet scene, and the certainty is what matters.

BH cites Aristotle. Liz cites another author, who said that Aristotle got most of it wrong. BH tries to respond, but the ceremony begins.

BH tells the same anecdote in a blog post titled Rethinking Shakespeare’s 5-Act Structure, later published as an article in a magazine for teachers.

The next morning, BH James will finish this story. And the day after that, BH will be 40. 

He picks up his pen, then puts it back down.

When he picks it up again, he writes…

THE END

Travis Jeppesen is bad. The United States–born, Shanghai and Berlin-based writer, artist, and critic has been rebelling against the staid, familiar form of “critical” writing and churnalism overtaking many art publications, so often press releases by another name, by carving out a form of art writing that rises to the occasion of art itself. In his most recent book, Bad Writing (Sternberg Press, 2019), Jeppesen investigates work that is capital-B Bad, an epithet he uses as a descriptor for art that disrupts our aesthetic and moral sensibilities and thus is able to claim its title, rightfully, as art. Over the course of a month this spring, we exchanged emails discussing this goodness and badness; debating the limits and murky boundaries of art and literature; of language and image; of the individual and collective.

Above all, Jeppesen, and Bad Writing, misbehave. His criticism enlivens images and indulges the sensual and the sick. It pushes art and language to their breaking points and asks them to flex some more, all to make us reconsider how and why we should write about art at all.

Drew Zeiba: The essays in Bad Writing, if that’s even the appropriate word, were written over a relatively long period. How did this line of thinking, about b/Badness and the limits and possibilities of art writing, begin for you? And when did you realize you were writing a book? 

Travis Jeppesen: Most of the pieces were written over a five-year period, from roughly 2011 to 2016. Some of them were the direct result of specific commissions, but a big bulk of it went into my PhD dissertation (called a “thesis” in the UK), which I undertook at the Royal College of Art in London and finished in 2016. Towards the end of that period, I realized that I would eventually turn it into a book—essentially much of the criticism and ficto-criticism I was writing during these years were all interrelated, thematically. The same concerns just kept coming to the forefront, no matter what topic I was addressing. Someone said that artists who write criticism inevitably end up writing about themselves, about their own work through an examination of other subjects. Certainly, Bad Writing can in many ways be read as an elucidation of the aesthetic underlying my novel The Suiciders (Semiotext(e)), even though I don’t talk about The Suiciders specifically in this book. But The Suiciders came out in 2013, and was written over a ten-year period, so I guess you could say that Bad Writing represents an attempt to articulate what have been enduring concerns for me for quite some time. 

DZ: You open the book by talking about the current state of art criticism, which I think we can both agree is pretty depressing for a variety of reasons. Can criticism be useful, or beyond useful, —a contribution to writing in a broader sense, to literature? 

TJ: I think that criticism can be useful and has a place. As I write in the book, this is more or less my own modest effort at practicing criticism as a literary art form, trying to put criticism on the same level as the poem or the novel. Or painting or sculpture, for that matter. Criticism need not be a strictly utilitarian or, even worse, consumerist venture. I think it’s very much the writer’s responsibility to put forward a model of language usage that goes beyond being merely a vehicle for transmitting information. Criticism can come loaded with both strong ideas and an imaginative or poetic deployment of language. Criticism should be constantly re-inventing itself. 

DZ: What historical precedents are there for critical writing that is itself literature or art, that advances art rather than just decorates it—or sells it? In Bad Writing, you spend time with Gertrude Stein, treating her as one of the central exponents of Bad writing—and of writing on art as art. Still, the current uncritical state of criticism has not always been its state, and despite all of today’s bad, or let’s say uninspired, criticism, there must still be some that’s Bad, as you understand it.

TJ: This was the project of art criticism from its origins. Certainly the work of James Elkins, one of the few art historians I know of who’s researched the history of Western art criticism, reveals this. In the late 18th century, when art criticism as a modern form that we know it as today was first coming into existence in England and France, literary responses to art might take the form of monologues, often written in the voices of imaginary or historical personages (pre-figuring ficto-criticism and object-oriented writing), satirical songs, elaborate dramas, or Voltairean critique. This developed into the Salon criticism of the 19th century in France, a lot of which was written by poets and novelists. Even though the role of the art critic eventually grew to become more professionalized and hence specialized, the poet-art critic role endured well into the 20th century, from the activities of Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein in France all the way up through the New York School poets like John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara and the current great proponent of that tradition, Eileen Myles. 

DZ: That said, to what degree can the current uncritical and unliterary nature of so much art writing be chocked up to the economic conditions of the art world, and of media more generally, where more work, to feed the high-speed glut demanded by the internet, is demanded for less pay from writer-workers in increasingly precarious positions?

TJ: Well, this is certainly a major issue. The art world isn’t really the meritocracy it likes to imagine itself to be—usually it is those who are best at networking and making friends with the powerful who advance to the forefront, and those people aren’t always the brightest, the most talented, or the most original. And precisely because there is so much money in the art world, those who don’t have it are afraid to offend those who do. And, perversely, those who do have it are incentivized to downplay or conceal it; they’re more often than not drawn to the art world because of whatever aura of exclusivity they’ve projected on to it and feel desperate to belong to it, to say all the right things and show up at all the right events so that they won’t get kicked out of the club. Just bring up the topic of money at any art world dinner you get invited to, watch the displays of discomfort all around you. As I say in the book, the art world is more or less run on fear. Though that is also an obvious result of a wider malaise of the Zeitgeist, call it late capitalism or neoliberalism or whatever.

DZ: You, among other recent writers on the historiography of art history as a discipline, a textual discipline, have taken Clement Greenberg, one of Modernism’s most definitive, or at least well-known, critical voices, to task. In the case of Bad Writing, one of your sharpest critiques is of his inability “to throw Descartes in the trash were he belongs.” What is the use of a Bad writer over a writer who is very good in a traditional sense, as we might argue Greenberg was? And, in the face of that, what makes Bad Writing Bad writing?

TJ: I don’t find the Greenbergian project of formalism all that objectionable, in and of itself. Certainly the underlying ambition, trying to understand artworks in purely aesthetic terms, was useful and influential for me at a certain point. I wish more critics and curators today frankly had more of an aesthetic point of view. Instead, so much of the work that is deemed important does so because it checks all the politically correct boxes or fits some consensual agenda that has nothing to do with any perceived or alleged artistic or aesthetic value. Where Greenberg went wrong is when he went off on this ego trip, considering himself to be the chief arbiter of taste. He was also operating during a period where that kind of macho posturing in the art and literary worlds was taken a lot more seriously than it would be today. 

Some of the badness that I put forward here, as a literary or critical trope, is more implicit than explicit; that is, I also play with it in my writing, rather than just dealing with the subject of intentionality—intentional badness—in others’ work. For example, in some of the essays, I use summarization. In school, we’re taught that merely summarizing a literary work or a film is bad criticism. Instead, you’re meant to extrapolate themes and ideas in putting forth a unique assessment, throwing in a quotation here and there from the work to support your argument. (A parallel project to the texts I developed in Bad Writing was the evolution of object-oriented writing, which is essentially a re-creative art form, where you’re re-creating, in your own language, the essence of another work of art. This is quite similar to what you do when you summarize, but not exactly the same.) Through the “bad” process of summarization, I felt I was able to arrive at certain critical assessments from within, rather than coming at it from without, as more formalist approaches attempt to do.

DZ: In Bad Writing you advance a notion of what you call object-oriented writing. You also have your own subject-object neither/nor un-formation, the sobject. It’s hard to think of the phrase “object oriented” today without thinking of Object Oriented Ontology, a loose branch of philosophy in recent vogue. How do these lines of philosophical inquiry fit into your writing? What can being object oriented offer the writer? 

TJ: I deeply admire the work of Graham Harman, but I must admit I came to it rather late, after I had already developed the idea of object-oriented writing. Encountering Harman’s writing, and realizing that he was pursuing a parallel trajectory in the field of philosophy, opened up so many new pathways for my own thinking about what I was doing. I’m crudely paraphrasing here, but Harman even says, somewhere in his writings, that maybe the next step for metaphysics is to evolve towards the field of aesthetics or art-making. 

Object-oriented writing was very much conceived as a sort of metaphysical approach to art writing, and grew out of my frustration with what art criticism has conventionally become. So the idea is to infest inanimate (art) objects with agency, through the vehicle of writing. While at the same time acknowledging the inherent futility, the impossibilities, of such a task. Of, in a sense, reveling and rejoicing in those impossibilities, in that failure. 

DZ: While Bad Writing has more plainly experimental works, like the later pieces of ficto-criticism, some of the essays that at least superficially “traditional” often launch into rather unusual, unpredictable elements alongside more expected descriptive, historical, and analytical methodologies. I think of in particular the essay “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” which at first seems, if rather poetic, a straightforward analysis of the paintings of Christian Schoeler, but where suddenly we realize that you, or your words, have come to inhabit the image. The frame you are working around is “imploded” not by its irruption but in a way, by your entering it or revising its frame-ness. Your subject (that is, the object of your interest) and your own subjectivity are melded into the para-subjectivity of that thing you’re gazing at, writing on. What boundaries and boundarylessness are you invested in? And how does the particular art you’re looking at change how you write, change the way language can work with and through it?

TJ: I’m glad you asked that, because I think what art I’m looking at definitely has an influence on the way I write about it. I guess it comes down to temperament—there’s work that I’m able to “enter into” more readily than others. “The Anatomy of Melancholy” is a piece about Christian Schoeler’s work, and there’s certainly a clear sensuality to those paintings on the surface, but that sensuality is composed of a fluidity, not just in the brushstrokes, but by Schoeler’s overall approach to painting: both as a physical act and in the philosophy behind it. Certainly one sees that unity that I try elsewhere to describe as the body-mind machine, the vehicle, at play here, which makes it easy for me to “illustrate” that through the writing, not by doing the conventional thing and describing it from a detached scientific “outside” view, but by entering into the thing, by trying to become fluid like the paint; and also showing the similarities between writing and painting.

So to answer your question, I would say I’m ultimately invested in a sort of weaponized writing, that is: the deployment of writing as a means for dissolving boundaries, rather than respecting them. 

DZ: Many of the artists you feature are not only prolific, but feel invested in repetition, almost as compulsion, as fixation. Repetition, and listing, and accumulation, also become, at times, another set of Bad writerly habits you deploy.

TJ: I’ve always been a lover of repetition, down to the micro- and meta-levels; I love consonance and assonance, etc. Maybe because I was trained as a musician from the age of six, part of my perceiving or understanding has been molded by repetition, which is of course a key element of music. 

DZ: But, for all this strangeness, the book possesses a certain clarity. Or at least in the beginning portion, where the pieces take the form of more traditional art writing, before entering the frame, moving along with the art, and then departing non-fiction “truth” for ficto-criticism, which itself starts narratively and arguably becomes increasingly obscure, somehow both more fluid and fragmentary in its prose. Why this descent?

TJ: It can certainly be viewed as a descent, if you’d like. But I tend to view it as more of an ascent—where the language “rises” beyond the mere need to make sense, in a conventional way, reaching this higher plateau, where it is gradually released from the stringency of this requirement, finally graduating into “the space of no-writing.” It’s a bit like dying, if you’re wont to view dying as a beautiful thing rather than a horrible, disgusting, tragic experience. 

DZ: While the text may be difficult, in the more conceptual sense, it is a quite readable book in a physical sense: standard size sans-serif font, everything organized how one expects a book to be organized. However, throughout there are the scribbly, stylized titles and the semi-asemic strokes that are hard to read, or resist reading, at least in a traditional sense. You also make similar marks that you post on Instagram. I’d love to hear more about this drawing-writing, about reading and/as seeing.

TJ: I started doing this kind of “bad writing,” using calligraphic pens and markers, but also traditional Chinese ink and paper, many years ago. It sort of evolved organically out of my daily writing practice. I’ve always been a notebook keeper, I’ve always had to write out my first drafts by hand. Some of the pages of my notebooks would be filled with these illegible scribbles, asemic writing is what some artist/writers have taken to calling it. Once I showed a close friend some of these pages from a notebook, and she suggested that I try doing this on a bigger, more painterly scale. I followed her suggestion, and so that’s one pathway my work has taken. I’ve had a few solo exhibitions of this work, and while some may argue that it is technically drawing or painting, to me all of it belongs to the category of “writing”; it’s really an extension, of sorts, of my writing practice. 

We don’t really have this calligraphic tradition in the West. For this reason, I feel like a lot of people just don’t get what I’m doing at all. I’ve always loved the preciousness of writing by hand, and when I first began traveling to China and Taiwan in 2011, I fell in love with Chinese calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting—this great tradition that was never burdened with this Western division between “word” and “image.” In a sense, I’ve been looking for ways to re-create that scriptoral divisionlessness in my own language or tradition. So this is why I called my first big exhibition of this work (and the limited-edition monograph that accompanied it) “New Writing”: the title can have multiple meanings. 

DZ: With literary writing, Bad writing, illegible writing, image-writing, all these multifarious ways of making and crafting from and beyond language, what does the work of the writer become? Or, to put it more simply, remedially, even: what is writing?

TJ: I would define writing as play of the most serious sort. I’ve come to view language as just another material—the same way painters deploy oil paint or sculptors use clay. I’m interested in these moments, where you get to a point where one can detach a word from its meaning—and then what are you left with? Pure sound. Building blocks of those sounds, which look like sentences, but are markedly a-signifying… Though are they? For isn’t this just another way of creating meaning, of making new meanings arise from these detached signifiers?

It was that very hot summer in Amsterdam, in 1978 (?)

I had seen notices in the Dutch papers that James Baldwin would be signing books at the Athenaeum book store on the Spui.

Not wanting to miss a chance to see an idol, I noted the day and time.

I biked over on a Saturday mid afternoon, very hot and very humid, crowds and a long line, all of which Amsterdammers do not handle well.

A table had been set up under the red and white awning by the wide open entrance, near the racks of magazines and newspapers.

There was a pile of books; I wasn’t even sure which book he was there to sign and I was not going to purchase one anyway, since it would have been a Dutch translation and prohibitively expensive.

The line snaked and slowly pushed forward; soon I could see him in his chair, head bent over, signing and chatting a bit. His forehead was wet and he appeared somewhat uncomfortable, tired, and slightly distracted.

Finally I got to the table, nervous and in flustered awe, trying to collect my words and knowing I would have to rattle them off very quickly.

He gave me a slight smile that broadened a bit when he heard my NYC accent.

Rapidly, I blurted that I was living in Amsterdam and was a Dewitt Clinton High School graduate. I had been art editor of the literary magazine, The Magpie. I knew, of course, that he had been literary editor (with Richard Avedon) as art editor) before he graduated in 1942.

As if inflated with some magic oxygen, he perked up and straightened and suddenly that wonderful broad smile spread across his face. He looked directly at me with those iconic eyes, extending his hand and saying “how nice to hear that.” Then he asked about Marcella Whalen, the faculty advisor, who was instrumental in encouraging his literary aspirations.

Hearing that distinct and totally recognizable voice and being so close to him physically, felt almost magical, a sort of suspended animation.

However, the spell was quickly broken when the four people directly behind me, seeing I wasn’t buying a book, started grumbling. They raised their voices louder, peppered with some choice, caustic Amsterdam expressions, and unceremoniously shoved me out of the line and into the crowded square.