This is Stephen’s review of Megan’s book:

READ MORE >

At UC Davis, students protested nonviolently, the campus police responded, an officer casually sprayed a group of student  sitting their arms interlocked, like plants, he became a meme and, along with the police chief, was placed on leave. Many people in many places expressed outrage, students participated in a powerful, silent protest. Assistant Professor Nathan Brown wrote an open letter to Katehi expressing his outrage. The UC Davis English department has changed their website so that the header issues a call for the chancellor, Linda Katehi, to resign and for the police force to be disbanded. On a national faculty mailing list I’m on, a member issued a call to action stating, “We cannot sit this one out.” During turbulent times, writers often ask themselves, how do we write about this? How do we respond? What is our responsibility to social change? How do we participate and avoid sitting this one out? Poet Robert Hass wrote a New York Times editorial that has been widely read and lauded but he also avoided sitting this one out because he and his wife were at the Berkeley protest. As writers, do you feel a need to respond to what happened at UC Davis, or UC Berkeley, or at any of the occupy movements? Do you feel the need to physically participate in these protests? Why and how?

In 1988, I spent my month’s allowance on Guns n’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction,” and was unwittingly yet gleefully met by a stunning illustration on the inside cassette flap of a disoriented woman having just been sexually assaulted or raped. At 12 years of age, I think I understood the sociopolitical significance of the image — that it was “bad”; that rape and physical violence towards women was “bad”; that a hard rock band had a vested economic interest in conveying the image of themselves as “bad,” yet there was still a part of me, perhaps the majority, that simply, essentially, found the cotton stretched panties and exposed plump breast extremely erotic. I may have even unsuccessfully masturbated to the picture; I kept saying “this is a cartoon” to myself as I eventually grew flaccid. More than two decades later, today, knee-deep in Occupy Wall Street media k-hole, I came across a picture of a young protester, perhaps in need of some originality, reading a book that could be anywhere from Twilight to Chomsky’s greatest hits. And guess what I thought? What image immediately came into my mind. I know this is “bad,” that my adult male brain has been hijacked and permanently fucked by the images, album covers, videos, proposed by “bad” rock n’ roll boys who ostensibly were writing songs about how I felt, my unsettled and unsettling emotions, somehow, somewhat, probably not. David Bowie’s “Song for Bob Dylan” (1971) offers the lyric you gave your heart to every bedsit room / at least a picture on my wall / and you sat behind a million pair of eyes which honors Dylan’s voice as being that of his generation. Decades only happen once, but they take ten years to happen, and that is a enough time to get bored. I was born already tired of the 60s. Children dream of perfect worlds, and adults resent and lament the missed opportunities. It is touching, really. This slow dance between frowning parties that never ends. Cobain is dead, and Bieber’s voice is still of a eunuch’s, so maybe our reposed protester can only settle for a sign printed in caps, a sign she doesn’t hold, but places between her legs.

 + Wednesday night I found myself standing in a ballroom on Wall Street in line for coat check beside a librarian who was wearing a button that said “Tax The Rich.” Ignoring her button, you’d think we were the rich (and, in a way, just being invited to pretend to be rich for a night is a kind of wealth) but this was after-party for the National Book Awards and the opulent and gigantic room was filled with writers, publishing folk, and journalists. Many people in the room were a part of the Occupy Writers movement, had participated in the protests or had at least covered them.

+ Two months ago, on the first day of Occupy Wall Street, this video caught a smug gathering of the “1%” (whether just figuratively or actual) sipping champagne in a balcony just above the street, waving and laughing at the protestors as they marched and chanted. That balcony was attached to this place, Cipriani, a restaurant and luxury venue for galas and awards ceremonies and fundraisers.

+ As I walked up to the massive, castle-fortress at 55 Wall Street, I could not unlatch it from the image of the smug, clueless champagne sippers. I know that that those people did not have fangs and yellow eyes but in my memory they have fangs and yellow eyes. Now I was standing here, dressed up in a way I am not often dressed and standing among rented tuxes. I felt out of place, but all the friends I saw at the after-party felt similarly out-of-place, so our cumulative out-of-placeness, in a way, placed us.

READ MORE >