Just a quick note to let you know that I’m shifting some of my (obviously marginal) blogging activity onto another site. As witnessed here, a lot of my blogging has always dealt with socio-political and economic issues, and I wanted to create another domain where I could address those issues more fully and more purely and with less of the “personal” touch that was behind the creation of this blog (ostensibly as a means of documenting my experience abroad, although that was rarely the case in practice). Thus I’m making an attempt to separate the “personal” from the “political,” Carol Hanisch be damned, and however difficult that may be in practice.

An element of this decision has to do with my increasing uncomfortability vis the manner in which social networking (and blogging, etc.) leads to the production of self as sellable “commodity.” (For more on that, see this or this or the whole damn site really.) I feel like personal blogs, and sites like Facebook, take something that is natural and desirable and human –the desire to connect, to share with others– and transforms it into something unnatural and undesirable and inhuman. Human relation and commodification are, I would argue, inherently opposing tendencies, but social networking collapses the distinction between the two, transforming our desire to reach out and (metaphorically) touch into the desire to reach a target audience and sell – both in terms of the way the self is sold, and in terms of how these sites quite literally profit from our activity, in terms of ad revenue, etc, as a pervasive form of immaterial labor.

The upshot of this is that this blog, which was designed to reach out to you –to a community of people I know, and love, and trust– has come to seem both alien and alienating. While my own chosen community is now scattered at various locations across several continents, the attempt to address you all generically and collectively (and yet, paradoxically, personally) has made me feel rather more isolated than less. The blog form lends itself inherently to soliloquy rather than dialogue, and maybe it’s just that I’ve become more interested in real, specific, human conversation than in speaking a lot of hot air, and into thin air. While I miss very many of you, very much, you cannot authentically say “I miss you” to a blog.

I still feel like this format can be useful for addressing political issues, which by nature demand a broader audience – hence the new site. The political problems of our time are so egregious as to demand collective action and general consciousness-raising by any means necessary; and, while I have no illusions of success, I feel compelled to try to do my part. But I would like to separate out that process –as it were, my public persona– from my private and personal life. For so, so many reasons. Primarily, happiness.

This decision coincides (more or less) with the end of my séjour in Holland; I will be moving back to the States in mid-September, which will give me the opportunity to see many of your actual faces that I so actually miss. As for anyone else, I’d encourage you to keep or get in touch by other means: e-mail, telephone, or carrier pigeon. I have been better recently about my correspondence, and have largely succeeded at domesticating a pair of neighborhood doves, who might prove trainable for courier purposes.

For the rest, those of you who are interested in political analysis from a fervently anti-capitalist perspective are more than welcome to check out my new project here; the ultimate goal of that project is collaborative –to build community, in every sense– so I would more than welcome your feedback or even your writerly participation. Meanwhile the apolitical and the differently politically-abled are invited to stop by this current blog, still, when whimsy dictates; there’s a possibility I will be updating sporadically, if and when the mood takes me.

In closing, thank you, and go love life.

-Bennett

Freddie deBoer is getting a lot of attention (relatively speaking) for this post delineating what he calls the writing-out of “anything resembling an actual left wing” from the political blogosphere. A cogent and nuanced rebuttal comes from EmptyWheel over at FireDogLake, who concludes that: “DeBoer suggests we need greater ideological diversity in the blogosphere, and he’s right. But what we need just as badly is some way to articulate and mobilize the needs of the working class before our failure to govern (which the narrowness of our discourse fosters) ends up in food riots.” Meanwhile Rob Horning of Marginal Utility provides a defense, both of deBoer’s article and, more broadly, of the need to keep explicitly addressing ideology, all too often negatively contrasted against some idea of political pragmatism: doing “real” policy work versus dwelling in a fantasy realm of ideological utopianism. This is, as Horning points out, a false binary: one can (and indeed should) pursue immediate political aims while continuing to address the necessity for broader shifts in the dominant paradigm; and among other things, this false contrast also conceals the very real ideology at work within the notion of “pragmatism.”

I don’t have a whole lot to add to the debate, though all three articles are thought-provoking, and well worth examining. Shockingly (considering my usual tendency towards polemics), I found myself agreeing with all three writers. I’m with deBoer that there is indeed a marginalization of genuinely left-leaning voices within the political blogosphere, though it remains an open question whether this is a result of the usual exclusionary knowledge/power metrics or is rather an accurate measure of the left’s current socio-cultural currency. (In other words, whether a “real” left is being deliberately excluded, or whether there is simply no longer a “real” left at all.) My guess is a combination of both, or rather a vicious circle: leftist positions are effectively marginalized, meaning they have no ability to reach a larger audience, and that lack of broader range in term justifies their further marginalization, etc etc. It is indeed difficult, and frustrating, to imagine how one might get out of this nasty ouroboros.

Meanwhile EmptyLake is absolutely right that an inter-blogger turf war will remain (in every sense) an academic battle until a more meaningful connection is made between professional “pundits” and working people. The inability to reach out to that broader base for whose needs radical leftists were ostensibly agitating strikes me as one of the most profound failures of the ’60s “New Left” generation. Examining that failure, and devising new ways to support and mobilize broader social movements, strikes me as, in turn, the most important task facing those of us concerned with the possibility of a future for the Left (and, indeed, the U.S.).

And Horning is absolutely right that this effort has to operate along two tracks: pursuing immediate and relevant policy change, and also laying the groundwork for the long-term development of a body politic more sympathetic to left-leaning ideology. (In this, we have a lot of catching-up to do vis the Right.)

So that all felt strangely validating. Now: Any suggestions?

• Gulat Mohamed is a 19-year-old American citizen and college student who for the last few weeks has been detained, interrogated and abused in a Yemeni prison, apparently at the behest of American officials, without having been accused of (nor, as far as anyone is aware, having committed) any crime. The US in the meanwhile has placed him on a “no-fly” list, effectively preventing him from escaping persecution as well as barring him from returning to his home – again, without any kind of legal process whatsoever. This is what the new America looks like: a place where even American citizens, young college students just like me (and maybe you), can be indefinitely detained and even tortured without any oversight or legal process. A series of updates here, here and here.
• On a somewhat related note: While there has been a whole lot of attention to the Julian Assange accusations, and to Wikileaks in general, less attention has been paid to Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old US Army private accused of leaking  documents to Wikileaks about the Afghanistan War. In a similar pattern, Manning has never been formally charged with any crime, nor faced any legal process in either the court system or through military tribunals. Nevertheless, he has been in detention since last May and -despite being, by all accounts, a model prisoner- has been held in solitary confinement for the last six months. For six months and counting, he has spent 23 hours a day in total isolation (yet under constant video surveillance) without a pillow, a sheet, or even the right to exercise or move freely. This is cruel and inhuman treatment and by most standards torture – designed to psychologically destroy Manning as well as intimidate any one else thinking of blowing the whistle on the US Government.  It is, by any standard, unconscionable. A very good summation of the story here.
• Basically, as those last two stories both come via Salon.com, what I am really urging you is to read Glenn Greenwald’s columns. I truly believe that if we were all reading him every day we’d be having some very different discussions about the state and direction of our country.
• A tea-party backed school board in Raleigh, North Carolina is set to overturn the county’s integrated school policy, essentially overturning (or just ignoring) Brown vs. Board of Education and setting the clock back to 1950. My favorite quote: “This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma in the 1960s – my life is integrated,” said new school board member John Tedesco, who we’re all guessing is white. A detailed article worth reading in full over at the Washington Post.
• On a related note, the Tennessee Tea Party is demanding that school textbooks be re-written so that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.” Because who cared what “actually occurred” – this is history, and “his” refers to landed white gentrymen and possibly, like, 3/5 of blacks. Or something.  Qouth the Tea Party: there’s been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”Wait. They’re saying the founders had slaves?! I guess this whole “liberal bias” in the media really must be accurate. The story, here.
• And, the winner for the irony award: Justice Scalia goes on record that the 14th Amendment was only ever intended to protect the equal rights of black people – not, you know, like, women. Seriously. He says that. And then goes on to decry the “abuse” of the 14th amendment by extending its equal-protection clause to other groups. I give him the irony award because the 14th Amendment equal-protection clause was instrumental in the Supreme Court’s Feb. 2010 decision to lift restrictions on corporate spending, because corporations are persons and, as such, entitled to equal protection under the law. Justice Scalia was of course the mover and shaker behind that decision. Conclusion: the 14th Amendment was intended by our sacred 1860s founding fathers to apply only to black people… aaaaaand corporations. But not women. Or teh gays. (Article here.)

Well folks, I guess that’s enough dismaying news items for one evening. Tune in tomorrow!

Anyway, picking up the pieces after this long blogging-break leaves me with a lot of scattered thoughts and sundry minutiae that I’d been really meaning to blog about, so this first (re)startup entry will mostly contain notes towards future and potentially more substantial posts, recommended reading links, and totally inapposite details from my personal life – a.k.a. all the things you associate with quality online media. Here goes:

• Stumbled across a link to Replacement Press, a brand-spanking-new literary press with their first book out and a commitment to “new, culturally-relevant fiction for (and by) the next generation.” What’s more, they have a blog (like all the cool kids these days) and it’s filled with insightful thoughts on lots of my favorite topics like cultural engagement and online media and Roberto Bolaño. Anyhow, my point is not so much to send you towards your new publisher (though hey, if you’re sitting on that dog-eared manuscript, by all means send it in) but just that, in the midst of all the apocalyptic talk about the death of literature and publishing, I find it encouraging to see people with an obvious passion for and commitment to good literature, from fresh writers, who are doing something really cool and potentially transformative. Gives me hope, you know? And you should (again) check out their blog.

• Speaking of new literary/cultural things (well, sort of), they’re bringing back the baffler! For those of you who are as baffled by that statement as I was, The Baffler was apparently a big (as these things go) left-wing magazine of cultural and political criticism from the late ‘80s to the early ‘00s, when their offices were destroyed by fire. At that time (2001) I was sixteen and just making my way into radical leftist politics, so I sort of missed them the first time around, but I’ve been checking out their revamped site and holy shit there’s some good, thought-provoking, in-depth stuff. Especially this article which (while I disagree with some of it) is one of the best serious analyses of contemporary American literature –and its problematic relationship with socio-political praxis– that I’ve ever read. Only some of their content is available online (and rightfully so), and they don’t seem to be offering subscriptions outside the States, so if someone wants to order and then forward me a copy I would be ridiculously and eternally grateful. Maybe we could organize an exchange wherein I send you some hard-to-find European avante-garde ‘zines? Either way I really seriously recommend you go check them out and/or order a copy

• Speaking of political things, the situation here in Holland is not looking so good: the old, shitty, center-right cabinet fell, but polls for the new elections suggest they’ll be replaced by something even shittier. Particularly troubling is the enormous popularity of Geert Wilders who (for my non-Dutch readers) is sort of like the Dutch equivalent of Le Pen – i.e. a fascist, racist, islamophobic bastard. Anyway his party’s polling particularly well and there’s a decent chance that he’ll be in the next governing coalition, even possibly the Prime Minister. I can’t even tell you how insane/terrifying that prospect is and I’ve been meaning to blog about it but thus far can’t write anything which isn’t reduced to an incoherent screaming rant. But once I do (write it), I will (post), and in the meantime you should read up elsewhere, as it’s a potential sign of a broader and deeper problem in Europe as a whole (as is the recent Swiss ban on the construction of minarets, etc).

• As to the aforementioned inapposite personal details, life and graduate school continue to proceed apace. I am struggling with, and will hopefully soon write about, my lack of coherent faith in the study of literature (thought not in literature itself), and this semester’s courses haven’t been doing a lot to alter that. It seems to me like there is an underlying crisis in literary studies as a whole, like no one really knows what we are doing or why we’re doing it and, unlike virtually all other disciplines, there doesn’t seem to be any core body of knowledge. Instead the strategy seems to be to throw a whole lot of diverse (and superficially-analyzed) concepts and theories at us and hope that something sticks: a bit of anthropology here, a dash of (neo)marxist criticism there, throw in some sociology and some (totally decontextualized) linguistics and philosophy, and voilà. The result is a discipline with no coherent boundaries or definitions and a seemingly constant appropriation of tools from other areas without the appropriate background, training, and knowledge. At the same time, I would like to believe that literary studies (like literature itself) has something serious, even vital, to contribute – I’m just not sure what that is.

• In the meantime all my serious/satisfying reading has occurred (ironically) in my spare time. For those keeping tabs at home here’s an updated list: finished my re-read of Bolaño’s 2666 and then a re-reread of Savage Detectives, got 300-odd pages into William Gaddis’ The Recognitions and found it incredibly depressing, so turned back to Middlemarch for a reminder of what great, heteroglossic and psychologically complex literature can be. (A lot of rereads this month.) On the non-fic front I’ve been delighting in Marcuse (fairly familiar with the Frankfurt School but had never read anything of his – weirdly, as he’s probably the most well-known in an American context): first his short but spot-on Aesthetic Dimension and now working my way through One-Dimensional Man, with an eye towards Eros and Civilization after. Anyhow, heartily recommend all of the above with the possible exception of the Gaddis which, despite its beautifully strange style (like the twisted lovechild of Henry James & James Joyce), conveys a sadly solipsistic, isolated and deeply pessimistic world…

• ‘CSI’ Set to perform at Super Bowl halftime show: just 10 days before its highly anticipated on-field performance at the Super Bowl XLIV halftime show, the popular CBS crime drama CSI is gearing up for what network executives are promising will be a “thrilling, high-tech whodunit on fourth and inches.” According to CBS sources, the hour-long live performance on the Dolphin Stadium 50-yard line will feature the CSI cast and crew moving briskly through a tightly plotted narrative involving the investigation of several grisly murders in the greater Las Vegas area.
• Osama bin Laden abandons old “jihad” tactic, takes up crusade against global warming: “The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other side floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent,” he said, adding that Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto protocols shows that they and their corporate sponsors are  “the true criminals against the global climate.” Tapping into recent populist anger against the bank bailout, he added: “The world is held hostage by major corporations, which are pushing it to the brink. World politics are not governed by reason but by the force and greed of oil thieves and warmongers and the cruel beasts of capitalism.”

• Lancaster Mennonites launch plan to kidnap teenage girl, bring her to Kentucky: It’s a tale as old as time: A teen defies parents, plots an escape and runs away from home. Except this 14-year old didn’t want to walk on the wild side, as many teens do. She wanted to join a strict, splinter group of the Mennonite church. Three church members were arrested Wednesday for allegedly concealing the girl from her parents and from police after she ran away from home.In arrest warrant affidavits filed in the case, an unusual tale unfolds of escape plans that were to be burned or destroyed, a middle-of-the-night getaway, a change from modern clothes into Mennonite garb, a hiding place in a chicken coop and a stubborn refusal by church members to hand over the girl.

ANSWERS (with links to articles):

1. False
2. True (The Awl wonders if bin Laden is the new Naomi Klein.)
3. True

But cities today are well known for popping up in the middle of nowhere, history-less and incomprehensible. [...] Today’s cities are made up, viral, fungal, unexpected. Like well-lit film sets in the distance, staged amidst mudflats, reflecting themselves in the still waters of inland reservoirs, today’s cities simply arrive, without reservations; they are not so much invited as they are impossible to turn away. Cities now erupt and linger; they are both too early and far too late. Cities move in, take root and expand, whole neighborhoods throwing themselves together in convulsions of glass and steel.

– Geoff Manaugh @ BLDGBLG (pic from Cedric Delsaux’s “Dark Lens” series)

Years ago, on a road trip across America that maybe I’ll write about at some point, my friend Eli and I pulled into San Francisco in our oversized 1985 Ford van (complete with a bedframe built into the back – it was the classic, Kerouac-inspired trip). It was my first time visiting the city, and the first few hours were spent viewing it from the passenger side window as we drove around and around in ever-widening circles, looking for a place to park.

In the end we found a streetside space in the dilapidated slums south of Market. (For those with some knowledge of the city, I believe it was on 6^th Street, and well below Mission.) It did not look like the best of neighborhoods, and my unease was only increased when, stepping out of the van, a man idling against a nearby building suggested we give him five (or was it ten?) dollars to “watch our car.”

Walking north in (what we hoped was) the direction of Union Square, we passed through what I can only describe as a gauntlet of street people. Time paints our memory in exaggerated strokes (and perhaps what I think of as truth is only a nightmare of history) but what I remember is rows and rows of entreating faces and endless hands – hands thrusting, demanding, pleading; hands shaking in anger or like they were strung out on drugs or in remission; hands grasping at shirts and coat pockets. This sounds unbelievable, and it was: a scene more surreal (precisely because it was real) than any Dali painting.

Finally a few twists and turns (and occasional missteps and retracings) brought us out above Market, and it was indeed like two different worlds, like Market was the river Styx circumscribing the boundary between the underworld (or the underclass) and the world above, or, more accurately, like the river Lethe, river of forgetfulness which, according to certain old maps, lay close by Elysium and separated those paradisal fields from Asphodel or Tartarus.

Because Union Square was like some strange consumer paradise, with Macy’s (the flagship store) a sort of anchoring cathedral luring the world’s high-class shoppers to the alter of consumption. Stepping inside (I think Eli needed a pair of shoes), the contrast from what we’d experienced “below Market” could not have been more extreme. A giant, glowing atrium soared above us, intersected by concentric rings of rising floors from which enlightened shoppers looked down on those who’d not yet risen, and music wafted down from a string quartet or a jazz band playing (live) on some higher floor. It felt (and looked) like the Guggenheim museum, and what with the music and the bustle and the chattering crowds I half felt as if I’d stumbled into a private party or the opening gala for a new exhibition. I kept waiting for a waiter to pop round with a tray full of crudités.

And along with the murmuring mantra of “buy, buy, buy” floated a whisper, faint as a will-o’-wisp or a lullaby, of “forget, forget, forget”: Forget the grit and the grime of the outer city, which if you’re lucky you whisked by with only a glimpse from a taxi window, but even if you walked this was only a trial you must pass, all is forgotten, that world is behind you now, like a bad dream, here you are safe, surrounded by smiling faces, faces asking for nothing save to help you find the perfect dress, in the perfect size, or a coordinated accessory, perhaps a belt, a pair of shoes, some Estée Lauder?

And I said to Eli, this feels like science fiction! The only step left is to create a system of hovercrafts or heliopads from which to whisk the consumer class from one playground to another above the clamor of the unwashed masses, to make these two worlds (already splitting) divide definitively, into an aerial fairyland and an “invisible” under-city.

I even thought of writing some sort of story about it. But reading this article on “The Dark Side of Dubai” (this whole post is just a long-winded reading recommendation and a link), I realized what I’d thought of as fodder for my fiction is (horrifyingly) a vision of reality.

“It’s like they [freshman Democrats] walked in and got hit upside the head with a big jackhammer.” –Allen Boyd, D-Fla.

“It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out. I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest, and, you know, you can’t blame them.” –Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.

That’s right, folks: the loss of one Senate seat, in a special election, with a particularly uninspired Democratic candidate, is equivalent to those early Christians being thrown to the lion’s den! For the sick pleasure of the rabid masses hungering for blood! If this continues, soon Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will be thrown naked into a mud pit filled with piranhas with only a ball of string and a shiv – and only one majority leader will make it out alive!

The threat of martyrdom and/or a naked Harry Reid has Democrats abandoning ship in droves. On Monday morning Beau Biden respectfully declined to run for the Senate seat primed for him since his dad took office.  By Monday evening Obama was informing Diane Sawyer that he’d “rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” (What happened to all that hope?) Meanwhile Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark), announcing his decision not to run for re-election, informed his hometown paper: “I just began to have flashbacks to 1993 and ’94.”

Ah yes. Because the best decision when you realize you may face a tougher re-election battle than expected is to, you know, throw in the towel before the race even begins.

What’s remarkable about this collective rush for the “exit” sign is the way that the Democrats are quite literally creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: the loss of one Senate seat is an unfortunate setback that can be managed with some good PR; the loss of one Senate seat followed by a wave of resignations is a PR nightmare. And with every new retirement, the Democrats open up one more race for potential flipping (Berry was actually a pretty sure shot for re-election), thus increasing the nervousness and pessimism of the party, and leading other Democratic congress members to consider bowing out of the midterm elections (which in turn starts the cycle all over again). This is the definition of defeatism. It is irrational hysteria.

Or maybe not. Kennedy’s statement about the bloodthirsty hordes is revealing as to how this formerly populist party views the masses as a whole: as irrational, barbaric brutes thrilling for blood. This is another case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, of creating an electorate in your own image: to treat the public as hostile to your policy goals (and your very life) is to admit defeat from, if not before, the very start.
A perfect example of this mentality is shown in the party’s reaction to the election as if it were a referendum on the health care bill. Thus rep Barney Frank (D-Mass):

“I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results.[…] our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened.”

The notion that the “decididng” vote of 100,000 people in Massachusetts (a state that already has near-universal health care) should be read as a referendum on nationwide reform, or that this tiny sliver of the electorate (proportionally and geographically) should determine the status of the 40 million Americans without healthcare nationwide, is the very opposite of “respect for democratic procedures.”  It grants to a tiny minority the final verdict over a decision affecting the republic as a whole. And yet this patently absurd notion is so palatable to (some) Democrats  precisely because it effectively relieves them of responsibility. “The people have spoken!” they can cry, as they put away their attempts at “reform” with a relieved sigh.

Because the one thing that Kennedy’s quote got (inadvertently) right is how American politics are at base a giant spectacle. But the difference between the gladiator’s coliseum and the modern political arena is that now the fight is staged – the blood isn’t real. Like in a WWE wrestling tournament, millions of Americans tune in and suspend disbelief – but the ease, the gracious smile with which the Democratic figureheads raise their hands and concede defeat reveals just how much the “battle” over healthcare wasn’t real.

Call me cynical, but I believe that, if the Democrats aren’t in fact already “staging” their coming electoral defeat, they are at least looking forward to it with something less than total dismay. A mid-term defeat sets the stage for a newly urgent exhortion to vote for the party, without holding them accountable for serious reform (to things like, say, health care) until the day they (again) possess a majority in both houses of congress and a sitting president in the Oval Office. “The day will come,” the Democrats promise, but that day recedes into an ever-distant future, perpetually contingent on some magical super-super-majority that never seems to materialize. In the meantime, we have to suspend our hopes, to be “realistic.”  That at least is the message with which the Dems will appease mid-term voters. The remarkable thing is, it will work.

1. There’s going to be is a mass read of 2666! (Thanks to Rise for pointing it out.) Mass reads are those things where a whole bunch of people read a book on the same schedule and get together (via the intrawebs) to talk about it chapter by chapter. Last summer the concept got pretty big with the “infinite summer” reading of DFW’s Infinite Jest, but I have yet to try it out. But I’m totally doing this one! As are several friends! So, if you’re looking for something to fill those idle hours with meaning (and madness), I hereby command invite you to check it out. (The schedule officially starts Jan. 25th, but you have the whole week to read the first 50 pages – still plenty of time to order a copy and catch up.)
2. If you’re looking for some distraction with less serious time commitment involved, here are some book-related thingies I found interesting (and damned enjoyable) this week: a memoir cum review (mentioned in the previous post) over at the rumpus; another really beautiful memoir/review hybrid over on bookslut (must be a new trend); and a wildly funny send-up of Cormac McCarthy.
3. I’ve been meaning to blog about the following sites for a while now, but: if you’re looking for some more serious reading, of a cultural analysis bent, with references to the Frankfurt School and Merleau-Ponty, then I really, really recommend Generation Bubble and Marginal Utility. Sneriously.

People who’ve been with me a while (or with me in classes) know by now my opinions about literature, and criticism: I think the best response to (receiving a) story is to tell, in turn, another story. This is, I think, the essence of conversation, and to enter into such a relationship with a book is to be in conversation with literature (as opposed to about it). In opposition to the sort of “meta” position that criticism usually attempts to hold –commenting from a lofty, ahistorical, “objective” position about the “subjective” workings of literature and language– this approach makes the writer-as-reader a subject of/in language. Call it (to steal from Spivak) a form of critical intimacy.

All of which is a long build-up to the fact that I want to tell you a story.

A few weeks ago, inspired by a friend who had just picked up a copy, I dove back inside the covers of 2666 – almost a year to the day since I’d finished it. I’d bought the book at a newsstand in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport en route to a family wedding in Waco in November 2008, and I remember it vividly because as I stood in the newsstand leafing through the display copy I was thinking “Wow, if stacks of this dense, hyperliterary work, a book in translation, alluding to a horde of characters (real and imaginary) from a culture we know next to nothing about, filled with portentous omens… if this book can make it to an airport newsstand in the (real and cultural) deserts of the American southwest –I mean, in Texas of all places– perhaps there is some hope for us after all.” Or something like that.

But actually Texas was the perfect place to begin my daunting (mis/ad)venture into the pages of this beautiful monstrosity, not least because huge portions of the novel take place in the Sonora desert, in the city of Santa Teresa – a lightly fictionalized version of Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso. But more than that: Texas’ long ramrod highways, its razor-sharp edges, its vast distances interspersed with the occasional jarring signals of a strange civilization seemed the perfect accompaniment to the novel’s scorchingly luminescent severity.

Except that then, back in New York, toting the volume around like a sort of talisman, lugging it to and from my draining job, through long subway rides and the lonely northern winter, I began to feel like the novel was the perfect accompaniment to this city (or vice versa): both of them huge and alien, often dehumanizing or even inhuman, coldly deflecting our attempts to read in hope and meaning, and yet occasionally illuminated by a fleeting glimpse of that rarest and thus most precious of human qualities, which we call, embarrassedly, for lack of a better word, love.

One of the things reading 2666 did (strangely, since only a small portion of the book takes place in the States) was to make me fall back in love with the American landscape.

Picking up 2666 after a year’s time (a year in which, though I hadn’t touched the book, it lay dormant in the corners of my mind, percolating) I wondered what it would be like to come back to the work again. Would I be as blown away a second time, as overwhelmed and awe-inspired before the face of what I truly believed to be a masterpiece? Or would the experience (like so many things) fade with time, become a shadow of its former self, like a lost love which, once immeasurable, now only brushes you with the memory of sadness?

And at first, reading the opening pages, I felt at a strange remove, as if I was looking at the novel through a telescope, or a microscope –looking as if at a natural marvel transformed into a mere curiosity, an object of “scientific interest,” something at once more graspable and infinitely farther away. I noted (what I had missed before) the ingenious construction of the novel, the incredible weightlessness of Bolaño’s sentences, which float on and on, endlessly, beyond the point of credulity… but to see this formal construction, to pierce the façade, meant that, somehow, the magic was gone.

And then, just when I had come to terms with my disappointment, it happened. Somewhere, somehow, right when I’d ceased to expect it, 2666 snuck up on me and grabbed me by the heart, or by the balls, and wrenched me open as surely as (minor spoiler) the novel’s 300-odd victims meet their ends. Like the gasping, gutted creature that I was, I’d been hooked.

***

I left my copy of 2666 at my parent’s home after the holidays. I figured it would just be one more thing to carry to (and through) New York on my brief 48-hour visit, after which I’d be getting on a plane back to Amsterdam. Instead, I decided, I’d just pick up a new copy at JFK – there seemed to be some sort of link between Bolaño and airport bookstores, one that I felt secretly pleased to reinforce.

(Luckily, the friends I was staying with in New York turned out to own a copy, which I snuck off their shelves for the duration of my visit. I would never have made it those two days.)

And then, at the airport, disaster. Hudson News, which I’d confidently expected to possess veritable stacks of 2666, contained not a single trace of Bolaño. Not one. Not even Amulet or one of his other early novels wedged behind a pile of new arrivals; not even his one translated volume of poetry. Desperately, barely believing, I scanned the shelves a second, third and even a fourth time. Perhaps there was a separate section for works in translation? Or literary masterpeices? Perhaps there was a back room, discernible only to initiates, in which every work of Bolaño –translated or in the original; published and unpublished; manuscripts, scribbled notes, marginalia– was waiting for the pure of heart to claim it for a peso or a poem or a song?

Running out of time, I raced to the other end of the international terminal, where the map said another Hudson News could be found. It was even smaller than the first, barely more than a cubby really, and the selection of “literary” novels (as opposed to what?) was even more infinitesimally tiny: just Coetzee and Murakami, rows and rows of Murakami, they must have had every book the man ever published, usually ten or twelve or even several dozen copies, and was there really such a surge of travellers madly, desperately searching for a copy of The Wind-Up Bird that they couldn’t spare a single copy, a single inch of space to give over to what was inarguably the greatest book of the 21st century? Was there some sort of secret cabal of mustache-twirling, Murakami loving malfeasants bent on world domination, gradually overtaking global newsstands like a slowly encroaching tide, at first indescernible, but growing and growing, unstoppably, until it overwhelmed the last staunch defenders of literature, truth and the bolañian oeuvre?

The love which this book inspires is not entirely sane. (But is that not a definition of literature?) The looming reality of my 8-hour flight had seemed delightful when I imagined myself curled up with Bolaño, holding my hand through the long layover in Rome, and holding me up (and awake) on my last leg(s) back to Holland. Now the flight stood before me like a prolonged trip through purgatory or a trial of strength. The idea of picking up some other book to tide me over (fucking Murakami) seemed as alien and abominable as if, in the throws of an all-consuming passion for an unattainable man (let’s call him Tom), a friend had pushed some scraggly little fellow forward and said “look, here’s Bob, he’s nice and single and has a lovely summer home in Palm Beach. Try him instead!” Jonesing on my love for Tom/Bolaño, I’d say (the fucking truth) “I don’t want somebody else!”

Reading 2666 is insane and addictive, terrifying and awe-inspiring, tragic and joyously exciting. If there’s one thing I hope this blog will do, it’s to get you to read this book.

Anyway, somehow I made it through the endless, unimaginable hours on the plane, the antsy wait in Rome at the crack of dawn, the last few fading hours coming in towards Amsterdam Schiphol. And all was not yet lost: at the airport bookstore in Amsterdam I found a copy of 2666 and bought it and took it with me for the train ride home.

For those who are already looking to the practical ramifications and feasibility of still passing something, well – Brown has already vowed to vote against health care reform, and the likelihood of the Dems picking up a vote somewhere else seem slim to none. But let’s not forget that the Senate had already passed a bill, and the issue at this point was resolving the discrepancies between that bill and the one passed by the House. Thus, as various folks have already pointed out, the most realistic move would be for the House to pass the Senate’s (more conservative) bill exactly as it stands –which would then send the bill straight to Obama– and then afterwards to address some of the differences through budget reconciliation moves, which only require a bare majority vote. This would of course strip the bill of much of its teeth (and the House of much of its negotiating power) but the argument is that “some change is better than nothing.”

I confess to being pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. With the public option basically off the table, the bill would be mandating that all citizens purchase private health care insurance – and I have some serious concerns about a law that would force all Americans to “buy in” to a for-profit, corporate enterprise. True, there are already similar laws on the books: for instance, if you want to drive a car, you’re legally obliged to purchase auto insurance. But the difference is, of course, that one still has the right to not drive a vehicle (however infeasible that may often be in practice). And, while we are of course obliged to pay money to the government, and while I have no problem with that (in theory if not in terms of my practical poverty), being obligated to put money into corporate hands feels different, and slightly terrifying.

At the same time, this is the closest we’ve gotten to any kind of deal (however incremental) in a long while, and there’s an argument to be made for pushing something through now and then (hopefully) making gradual changes, as we did with Medicaire. If nothing else, a “yes” vote would be a gesture saying that we take the idea of affordable universal health care seriously. Then again, I think that’s pretty much what American politics has become these days: a gesture towards the possibility of a change which never materializes.