The Morality of Error

While fucking off – aka wasting time – at Bookoff, a Japanese bookstore with a branch here in New York, I found a copy of Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick for a buck.

Now that I’ve read it, I have to say it: I love I Love Dick. More specifically: Part I is a bit choppy – chained to the one-word-at-a-time dissolution of Kraus’ sexual relationship with Sylvère Lotringer through a series of mutually masturbatory letters to a man named Dick, who Sylvère wants to induce to pay him to come to California to give some university seminars and Chris wants to fuck – but Part II, liberated from the chronology of this emotional mindfuck, starts moving with increasing power and rapidity until it slams, screeching, stomp-on-the-anti-lock-brakes-style into an ending that, you might say, shows what we talk about when we talk about the photocopy of love.

That second part of I Love Dick, called Every Letter is a Love Letter, brought me uneasily close to the ways I use my own text to seduce. I have long known that it is far easier for me to create a powerful physical connection while hiding behind letters and emails than it is to do so up front, in person, in the flesh. In fact, in a sense, this is why I am a writer, because writing allows me to hide my inability to be a full person in the world behind words. In person, I am often not who I am; in my writing, I am me. But, no doubt, this is a self-seduction.

In a sense, I Love Dick is a modern reprise of Kierkegaard’s “Diary of a Seducer” – though Kierkegaard, writing as Victor Eremita (the victorious hermit), who supposedly accidentally discovered this epistolic essay by a man named Johannes, triumphs in his terrible trick, seducing Cordelia and then abandoning her, whereas Kraus, writing as her non-hermetic self, crashes and burns, as Dick determinedly refuses to respond to her words. Kierkegaard knew – and Kraus does too, learning as she pursues and construes – that seduction is an aesthetic act. Seduction wears clothes (in I Love Dick, Kraus details what she wears when she finally meets Dick alone – ‘black Guess jeans, black boots, an iridescent silver shirt, the black bolero leather jacket that I bought in France. It’s what I planned but now it’s making me feel gaunt and middle aged.’) and has a hidden gestural grammar and style. You might put it this way: the bible was wrong; gestures are the word made flesh.

I Love Dick also brought me to this: I have spent most of my life selecting and pursuing various unavailable and inaccessible objects – in the book it’s Dick or the dick, take your pick – among which I myself am undoubtedly one, and so are all my book projects. I know from experience that when you do this, you repeat all your mistakes from prior attempts in hushed compression – a lifetime in six months or six minutes or six years – as if on a picaresque journey you’ve been on before and can’t help going on once more, until you incinerate your prior self and it rises from its own ashes to challenge you to get fired up enough to do the whole thing over again. In this way, you might say life is a series of self-immolating repetitions in which you douse yourself with gasoline and flick the lighter in the quest to find your self-generated inaccessible objects (and the self this self-pyromaniac quest unveils to you) over and over. Can you be charged with arson for setting yourself on fire again and again? The fucking eternal return of fucking eternal returns until you realize that life is a bunch of variations on the fucking theme of eternal return and that your eternal return is you: nothing more, nothing less, welcome home, hand me the matches, please.

Inflame me, my sweet inflammable you.

Now that I’m done with I Love Dick, I’m left with a not-yet-smoldering question: I found four errors in the book (I Love Dick was originally published in 1997; the edition I found in Bookoff was the 2006 reissue), and, given how precise Kraus is, how considered her considerations of art, texts, and situations always are, I wonder if these are simple errors or, rather, smoking guns with their own deliberate inflammatory meaning:

 

• On page 131, this sentence is missing the word ‘to’

“That I don’t want be the person who always knows anymore, who has the vision for two people and makes the plans.”

--what does it mean to take the ‘to’ out of the verb ‘to be.’ The ‘to’ implies a continuation or an aspiration – on the way to – and the verb without ‘to’ suggests a command structure in which language is reduced to shouted orders and mute fulfillment. A language of command and compliance is, of course, a language of power and oppression.

 

• On page 182, the phrase ‘Jane Bowles’ letters’ is rendered as “Jane Bowle’s letters”

--a simple typo? a sly reference to John Bowle, the 18^th century British writer who was the first to write in English on the then-unappreciated genius of Cervantes’ Don Quixote? Or what?

 

• On p. 207, the word judgment is spelled “judgement”

--could it be that Kraus spelled it that way specifically for the Dick of I Love Dick, who is British -- and Brits apparently spell judgment judgement?

 

• On p. 235, Felix Guattari’s book Chaosophy, which Kraus referred to correctly only a few pages earlier, is stated to have been written by “Gilles Dleuze”

--Felix Guattari has long been unfairly viewed as Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Plus-One’ – the phrase Kraus self-dismissively uses as she casts her eye on the funeral pyre of her life with a string of guys – Lotringer, Marshall Blonsky, Murray Groman, Gary Becker, Peter Baumann, Michael Wainwright, and, no doubt, others – for whom she did lots of things (as she says in the sentence with the first typo, she ‘has the vision for two people and makes the plans’) but who always were content to have her treated as the add-on, the date, the wife, the sex object, the fuck buddy, the monster, the less-than-necessary, the Jew, the other … the ‘Plus-One.’ And what does it mean to misspell the wrong name: Dleuze … d lousy dude who stole d credit for all d concepts of Anti-Oedipus … the loose woman in whom you can lose yourself ... the loser.

--Also, Chaosophy was edited by Lotringer and published by Semiotext(e), the book imprint Lotringer started and for which Kraus has been an important editor (division of labor: he coordinates the press’s Foreign Agents series – which included Guattari – while Kraus edits the Native Agents series) in 1995, the year I Love Dick takes place. So this could be a statement. A lashing out. A striking out. An erasure. A seduction.

-- a possibly more benign possibility: I Love Dick presents itself, in part, as a series of transcriptions of Kraus’ letters to Dick, and perhaps Kraus made these ‘mistakes’ in her letters, thus making it crucial for her to render these mistakes accurately, to embed them lovingly in the final text.

All errors are authentic. (This is what Eileen Myles is getting at in her introduction to I Love Dick, when she points out that she keeps typing 'Christ' when writing 'Chris.') Accuracy in error is a moral concept, one that Kraus evokes in I Love Dick, and one that I aspire to live by, though I have always failed in my attempts.

Let's call it what it is: assault

Even if everything announced by the White House is, or might be, a lie, we know some facts.

• We know that the President and his staff knew that his key advisor, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for COVID-19 before he headed to Bedminster, NJ, for a fundraiser last Thursday night.
• We know that he was already experiencing some symptoms associated with the virus and had already taken a COVID test before heading out on the road.

Undoubtedly, there will be other revelations emerging from the White House – and they may illuminate or obscure the details of what the President knew and when the President knew it.

But, we can say this for sure: when the President of the United States traveled and met with donors, he knew he had been exposed to a dangerous and potentially deadly and communicable virus and was himself already exhibiting symptoms, and therefore he knew that by his mere presence, he put the people he came in contact with on that trip at risk.

In fact, the decision not to immediately self-quarantine and instead to travel to New Jersey to raise money may constitute aggravated assault under New Jersey criminal law.

Here’s the relevant statute from Title 2C of the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice:

“A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he: (1)Attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another, or causes such injury purposely or knowingly or under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life recklessly causes such injury.”

COVID-19 clearly has the potential to cause serious bodily injury – the fact that 200,000 people in this country (16,000 of them from New Jersey) have died from the disease and that the president has been in the hospital since the day after his diagnosis shows how serious we know the threat of bodily injury to be. And the president and his advisors clearly knew that he had been exposed to the virus and was already experiencing some symptoms. Thus, the assault was committed, as the law says, “knowingly” and in "extreme indifference" to the value of the lives of the people he met.

Tellingly, the White House has not moved to alert all those who attended the fundraiser that they should be self-isolating and getting tested for the virus. Thus, the White House is demonstrating continuing reckless disregard for the potential bodily injuries of the people the president spoke with and who may, unwittingly, be passing the virus on to others.

Authorities disagree as to whether a president, while in office, can be prosecuted under state criminal law. But setting aside whether there’s any legal liability here, there’s a broader public question: what do we think of a president who engaged in an aggravated assault in the pursuit of money, and was abetted in this assault by others in his administration?

As a society, we rightly ask people who have committed crimes to take responsibility for what they have done. As the old saying goes, if you’ve done the crime, you should be prepared to do the time. For every single person in the White House, taking responsibility should mean it’s time to resign.

Say it’s so, Joe

 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have fallen into the Hillary Clinton trap.

Which is really the Donald Trump trap.

Biden and Harris seem to be spending the bulk of their time campaigning against Trump rather than letting us know their vision for America.

Unfortunately, as the nation learned in 2016, saying, ‘I’m not that guy’ over and over might win the popular vote, but it may not be enough to win the White House. Sure, highlighting the fact that the President minimized and mucked up the coronavirus, leading to 200,000 deaths and an enfeebled economy, makes sense. And denouncing the President’s Twitter racism and authoritarianism is entirely appropriate. But these are empty gestures if you don’t show exactly what you are going to do and how it’s going to save America.

Here’s the thing: everyone, including every single one of Trump’s supporters, knows his faults. In focusing on them, the Democrats convince no one. But they allow Trump to keep everything revolving around him.

This may seem useful if your strategy is to win back middle-of-the-road Republicans. But this is not a route to victory – because there are too few middle-of-the-roaders to matter. And forget about trying to peel off various sects of right-wingers. Anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are a COVID death cult. The white supremacist gangs called militias are pumped out of their minds, parading around with their assault weapons. And the so-called Christian right is so gleeful at the possibility of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that they seem to have signed away their own values.

So what’s an everyday Joe to do? First, Biden needs to let people know who he is. After a lifetime in politics, it may seem as if we should know this – but we don’t. He needs to demonstrate once and for all that he’s not a typical pol, twisting and turning in focus-group-tested opportunism. The President, George W. Bush famously said, is the decider – and the public needs to know what kind of decider Biden will be. We need to get a sense of his gut.

If Biden truly wants to be President, he has to start acting like one. He and Harris need to frame out, in firm, proud terms, what they will do about the biggest issues facing America. Call it a get-your-hands-dirty agenda for the first hundred days. We need to know what in their first three months in office, they will do about the following issues:

•         People are dying, both literally and economically, from a virus. Biden and Harris have to show us what they will do about coronavirus – and they should challenge the current administration to do it now, even as the campaign is progressing, because it will save lives and save the country.
•         Biden and Harris need to speak to their policies on climate change – which has scorched millions of acres in Oregon and California and, in coming decades, is sure to require drastic changes in how American does business.
•         They must speak, in serious and emotionally resonant terms, about their plans on immigration and systemic racism.
•         Biden and Harris need to travel to the rust belt and the farm belt. They must speak to working people all over the country, stating unequivocally that they will be valued in every decision they make.
•         Finally, they must promise the public they will restore our country’s reputation in the world.

If Biden and Harris think that simply shaking their heads at the things Donald Trump says and mumbling platitudes offers a risk-free route to the White House, they have gravely miscalculated – in fact, they might as well simply campaign together every day wearing matching T-shirts that say “I’m with stupid,” with arrows pointing at each other.

America is on the edge. Our institutions, the checks and balances created by the founders of the republic, are crumbling. America’s democracy is on the ballot in this election. People need to see that Biden and Harris understand this, that they have a vision that will restore and repair and reclaim the country.

Say it’s so, Joe. Make it so, Kamala.

A Scale Model of the Global Economy

 

‘Come Together’

It’s the cliché of the moment, the phrase repeated over and over as news of the pandemic gets worse and worse: “We’re all in this together.”

And yet everything around us – from fights about facemasks to frights about fascism – tells us we’re not.

It’s time to make the phrase real. Here is a simple agenda – a half dozen things the city can do in a New York minute to make “We’re all in this together” a self-evident truth.

1.            Abolish the adversarial system in housing court and make every eviction subject to extended arbitration. Eviction is the capital punishment of the housing world: the one matter from which, if the tenant loses, there is no recovery – one strike and you’re out. This is not how it should be. There were 200,000 evictions pending when COVID-19 shut the courts. Many tens of thousands are surely about to be filed when the courts allow it. Yet think about it: eviction should always be a desperate last resort. Therefore, we need a new system dedicated to the presumption that people need a home. And landlords should agree not only because it is the right thing to do during the pandemic but because, hey, as they say, “We’re all in this together.”

2.            In early March, some of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s staffers convened a kitchen cabinet to come up with policies to help the city through the coronavirus era. The report was suppressed, but one of its ideas was revelatory: create permanent affordable housing in vacant tourist hotels. In fact, the city has already moved in this direction. In late July, the Department of Social Service reported that, during the pandemic, it had moved 13,000 homeless people into hotels. The 4-star Omni Times Square now houses all the guys who used to live in the Jerome Avenue Men’s Shelter. The Lucerne, on the Upper West Side, is home to 283 homeless substance abusers who used to bunk in two group shelters in the Lower East. We have proved it’s feasible: we can have a city with no street homeless. Now let’s make it permanent. And if any of the NIMBY crew starts grousing about formerly homeless folk living it up in or next door to fancy digs (some Hell’s Kitchen and Upper West Side residents have already complained that their new neighbors are menacing), let’s remind them to show some patience and forbearance because it happens to be true that, “we’re all in this together.”

3.            In the post-pandemic future, landlords are going to have to do something with all the empty co-working spaces that no one will want to use so long as there’s even a tiny risk of viral contamination. Let’s help them out and convert these vacant co-working spaces and other obsolete open-space offices (newspaper newsrooms, for instance) into permanent affordable housing. This will not only ensure an income stream for landlords, but will guarantee that streets throughout the city will have 24/7 life. And, you know what to say if the developers demur: “Fuggetaboutit. We’re all in this together.”

4.            As people lost their jobs due to COVID-19, volunteer mutual aid groups have sprung up to distribute free groceries to desperate families. Now it’s time to hire these groups to do the door-to-door contact tracing of people who have been potentially been exposed to the virus. The city has been hamstrung at this – with more than ½ the people who tested positive refusing to disclose who they came in contact with. Mutual aid organizations know their communities and are trusted, so they will be able to do a more complete and efficient job of finding at-risk neighbors and convincing them to isolate. Plus, they understand the dangers of over-surveillance, and will not pry into people’s lives. And should anyone in City Hall balk at defunding city agencies and instead funding communities, let’s just tell them: “Come on, I thought we’re all in this together.”

5.            Education is a critical public service and the city is still improvising when it comes to figuring out how to reopen schools. How about bringing all the stakeholders into the classroom. Let’s set up a team – including administrators, teachers, custodians, the various unions, parents, students, plus ventilation professionals and public health experts – to figure out a real plan. Then empower fundraisers to ensure we raise the dollars to do it (recovery bonds? a pied a terre tax? reviving the stock transfer tax?). I mean: didn’t these politicians and administrators get the memo: “we’re all in this together.”

6.            Finally, let’s set up a system of community adjudication for non-violent offenses. As things currently stand, if a person doesn’t deal with a citation for setting foot in a park after dark or riding a bicycle on the sidewalk or walking between subway cars, a warrant will be issued for their arrest – and they will be put in cuffs the next time a cop runs their ID. Retooling this would be a great start toward abolishing the police and breaking the street-to-prison pipeline. And should the thin blue line of cops, prosecutors and judges protest, let’s give ‘em a good Bronx cheer, while shouting our common refrain: “Don’t be an oppressor! We’re all in this together!”

Once upon a time, calling New York home gave a person a sense of ownership, even if the majority of us owned nothing. Now, with these six simple actions, protestors in the five boroughs will finally mean it when they chant “Whose streets? Our streets!” And we will have provided ourselves an opportunity to rediscover the principle that has always made our city great: we really are all in this together.