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It’s No Use, Everything Is Fucked: An Interview With Ben Brooks
To celebrate the release of Ben Brooks’s superlative new novel(la) AN ISLAND OF FIFTY, he and I corresponded across the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean via electronic mail.
MLP publisher J.A. Tyler has graciously offered to give away a free copy of Ben’s book to the commenter who gives the most interesting answer to this question (apropos Ben’s book): What would you miss most if civilization were to be dismantled?
Interview after the jump…
HIGGS: I’d like to begin by asking you to offer a few words about the recurring quotes from Derrick Jensen’s ENDGAME, which seem to act as a framing device for the book. (For readers who might be unfamiliar with Jensen, he’s a nonfiction writer and an activist who self-identifies as an anarcho-primitivist.)
BROOKS: Jensen writes with immense clarity and grace on the problems of civilization. Exploitation, deception, degradation; the contamination of breast milk, the destructiveness of dams, on pollution, on CIA torture manuals, all of it he writes beautifully about, but what I think sets Jensen apart from other ecological revolutionaries is his proposed solution; taking down civilization through violence. He not only condones but encourages the use of violence in the fulfillment of this goal (“love does not imply pacifism”). AN ISLAND OF FIFTY I think is partly born out of the differences between this and the way that I think. I agree with Jensen about the problem and the only solution that ever would have any effect, only difference is that it feels for me that the solution is unachievable, and while I admire his enthusiasm for blowing up dams and taking down telephone masts, I’d only ever see such action as statement-making or ‘fun’ or something, rather than actual steps toward a genuine solution. This ‘fuck it’ attitude I think dominates AN ISLAND OF FIFTY.
HIGGS: When you say “fuck it attitude” do you mean to characterize AN ISLAND OF FIFTY as nihilistic? Or do you see it somehow proposing alternative solutions to the problems of civilization Jensen identifies?
BROOKS: I don’t think its nihilistic or that it suggests alternatives, only that there are no workable solutions left open to us and so we are left with that whole ‘eat, drink and be merry’ type philosophy to live with. We can’t expunge these problems so we should ignore them and let the results swallow us as they will inevitably do, as the characters in the book are, as some day some unlucky generation will be. Oh the Melodrama.
I thought for a while about more directly contesting that resistant element of Jensen’s thinking by having characters run about destroying features of civilization as Jensen would have us do, but the truth of such a situation would simply be that these characters would be eaten by the authority, as we would be were we to try such things. The only acts of resistance in the book are futile I think.
HIGGS: Okay, I want to come back to that idea of futility, but before we get too caught up in content, I want to ask you some questions about form. To start with, could you talk a little about the way you use font size? Here’s an example:
Marsha lays paths & tears them up.
The mill is in sight.
Eyes are wretched chunks of light.
I carry in my palms her heart & it throbs with the pulse of a lion. She drinks oxblood on the island. There is a mill on an island. I am weary but my feet pulse with the throb of a chariot: ONWARD.
Marsha talks of beauty with the Hotelier. He is African-American. Watch his gargantuan jaw swell with words.
They stand beside the marble monolith, beside the mill, beside the chariot, beneath the charioteer.
The charioteer, the hotelier claims, breathes saffron & lives within the trunk of a great oak. He bites into the claws of crabs & washes taste away with woodbines. He pays for cold coffee skinned girls from the ships to gyrate against his spine.
Marsha feigns horror & lifts her skirt. She draws the cross over her breast. The blades of the mill begin to show cracks & the orphans grow restless. People are checking out. There is a small man in the mill who spins thread & bloodies his wrinkled fingers.
One day they will fold, his mother says.
Let them die, he tells her.
BROOKS: I guess I just use font size like writers use exclamation marks or short sentences or something. Like, just do what you will with words to achieve a desired effect. Maybe it’s the mark of a bad writer that I have to repeatedly alter font size to get across what I want on top of the content, or maybe not, I couldn’t tell you. Sorry, that wasn’t much of an answer.
HIGGS: You began to touch on one of things I was wondering about, which is whether or not you use different font sizes for effect or for aesthetics. Are you saying that you use them to indicate levels of importance, or levels of narrative voice, or…?
BROOKS: I don’t think it’s for aesthetic value, but I may be wrong. Like subconsciously I may be thinking ‘this looks cool as hell, I’ll play like this has some meaning so that I can keep it.’ Really though I’d say it was to add dynamic to the narrative. You know how when you see someone read and the pauses and volume changes can really influence your perceptions of a piece of writing? It’s sort of trying to bring an element of that across into personal reading. I wouldn’t say it strips the reader of freedom to interpret though, maybe adds to it in some way.
HIGGS: Yeah, I get that. I like that. I think it’s really interesting: attempting to bring the oral into the written, bringing performance into the text. This approach seems like an important aspect of your particular voice as a writer, given that your other book, FENCES, also uses font-shifting. Is this a method you just intuitively produced, or was it inspired by something?
BROOKS: I can’t remember a particular trigger but I wouldn’t say it was intuitive because I produced a few things before FENCES that didn’t have the font changes. I think they came after I decided to stop trying to emulate people I liked and just to write, maybe that means it was intuitive. I feel as if I’m being unbearably vague and failing to answer anything.
HIGGS: On the contrary, your answers make sense to me. I think writing is a slippery practice, and talking about writing is never as easy as it seems it ought to be. Maybe we should switch gears a little bit. There’s this line on page 41 that keeps coming back to me, the line is: “Fingers will grow into the circles of history.” With AN ISLAND OF FIFTY, I get the sense that you’re interested in creating a world that is both like our world and unlike our world, both familiar and unfamiliar, both connected to and separate from our historical reality. Does that seem accurate?
BROOKS: Thanks, yea the act of writing is such a private thing. Talking about it is sometimes like trying to explain why you like certain types of porn, to a degree it seems that a lot of the time answers that authors give concerning why they make use of certain devices etc boil down to ‘I just do’ and any discussion of this on their part is not justification for it but an analysis of its effects.
That’s pretty much it. I think the world in the book is a sped up, simplified model of our own development, with lots of elements represented symbolically. Like you said there are familiar aspects, these tend to be the more comfortable moments, and the less familiar, more often the violent or uncomfortable ones. As a nerdy middle class white kid I know that this is true for me but not true globally, which is why in the book there is a counterbalancing of the two types of scene.
HIGGS: Earlier you talked about how the only acts of resistance in the book are futile. If that’s true, I wonder if you think differently about acts of submission in the book? Or about acts that seem neither resistant nor submissive? To put it another way, I’m thinking about how the book engages with nature, the ways in which many of the characters are building or creating things, taming nature, and I’m wondering if you see AN ISLAND OF FIFTY as portraying civilization itself as futile, if creation itself is being called into question, or if the futility is reserved to acts of resistance?
BROOKS: Whether or not something is futile depends obviously on what you hope to accomplish by it. If you are aiming to rape a planet for everything it has in order to create huge amounts of things nobody needs, then civilization is not futile. If you are shooting for happiness (read happiness as successful human interaction, hot sex, being close to the planet and skinny dipping, and not as being told you need something and then selling your time to get it) then civilization is futile. The way a system needs be structured in order to foster civilization is inherently in contention with the natural world, us being natural beings with natural desires (excluding those that we are fed) means we require a symbiotic relationship with nature in order to be happy. So civilization is futile in that respect. The creation of a futile system against which all opposition soon becomes futile means that we’re a bit fucked.
So back to the book, I think that near enough all of the acts in the book are futile. The characters that drive industrialization fail to become happy, the characters that submit fail to become happy, the characters that resist fail to become happy. You can create civilization but it won’t make anyone happy and it won’t be sustainable. I think that is what the book is saying.
HIGGS: In terms of your writing process, did you begin with these ideas about civilization, industrialization, futility, etc. Or did you begin with words and follow them until they led you to the ideas?
BROOKS: I had to think about that one for a while, good question. When I started writing the book I think I was far more open to possibilities of resistance and change but about midway through I became disillusioned and thought something like ‘it’s no use, everything is fucked’. So I did come in from the off with some ideas about how fucked up everything was but it took a good chunk of writing to provoke me into thinking about those ideas more and reaching some sort of conclusion.
Just was wondering whether you thought this was all insane and extreme? You’re culturally critical in your novel (apparently, I haven’t been able to read it as yet), how far does that extend?
HIGGS: No, I don’t think what you’re saying is insane at all. I am, as you mention, personally uninterested in political activism – but, that said, I am quite interested in extreme ideas, extreme actions, and I am very respectful of passion in all its forms and guises, even when it manifests antithetically to my own. For example, one of my friends turned me on to Derek Jensen a few years ago and although I’m uninterested in returning to nature or destroying capitalism, I dig what he’s doing, I respect it, and I find much of his writing fascinating, relevant, and provocative. In terms of AN ISLAND OF FIFTY, I think you’ve succeeded in producing an interesting example of a text that can for one reader (me) resonate powerfully on a purely aesthetic level and can for another reader (someone who’s interested in cultural concerns) resonate powerfully on the level of critical engagement. When you say that it took you a while to reach a conclusion, do you mean the conclusion for the book or a conclusion to your questions about the efficacy of resistance?
BROOKS: Both. The conclusions about the efficacy of resistance and the pro-active destruction of civilization came midway through the book and as a result the conclusion of the book changed. I had a sort of crisis where I thought the whole first half of the book had been rendered useless by this and I briefly considered stowing the thing away, but I didn’t. I had to really rush the last part out though, because my immediate reaction to the realization was very visceral and I was worried it would start to fade. Like fade from ‘oh shit, there’s nothing we can do’ to ‘ha, we can’t do anything’. And I think to a certain extent it has.
A slight tangent perhaps, but can I ask about your views here. You said you were uninterested in a reversion to nature/the deconstruction of civilization? Is that because you see any attempts toward this as futile, because you are content with the way things are or because you see a different way of advancement?
HIGGS: Let me preface this by admitting that I am probably going to sound like an asshole, but here goes: I’m uninterested in a reversion to nature because 1) I don’t like nature, and 2) I like the cushiness of civilization. I like my coffeemaker. I like my car and my computer and I like book stores and going to movies and concerts and the ballet and art museums and civilized shit like that. I don’t want to hunt and gather — I want to order Chinese food and drink Malbec. I don’t want to piss in the woods or take baths in the river. I don’t want to wear clothes handmade out of rawhide – I have very sensitive skin. Does this mean I blindly assume that since life is pretty good for me it’s pretty good for everybody else, too? No. Does this mean I’m ignorant of the plight of others, that I deny the global exploitation of workers? No. I am against suffering. I am against cruelty. But the bottom line is: destroying capitalism sounds awful because (i) it wrongly supposes there’s a simple solution to a complex problem (ii) it sounds like a lot of work, and a lot of work means I might not get to watch LOST, so fuck that. I’d rather watch LOST than destroy capitalism (even if the finale irked me), (iii) it could potentially lead to homogeneity and homogeneity, for me, is the ultimate enemy. Difference, not sameness, should always be our paramount value. This is a slippery slope, I understand, and it might sound especially terrible to the liberal ear, but I would venture to say that those who espouse socialist ideology do so from the safe position of understanding its impossibility and therefore risk nothing by their espousal. That’s my gut reaction. My intellectual reaction would be to cite Zizek and talk about how action has gotten us nowhere, now is the time for inaction, now is the time for theory rather than practice, look at what Lenin did after the first revolution failed, and so on. But really, part of my reaction is probably directly related to the fact that I am a lousy selfish cynical American, which maybe manifests in my writing somehow – I’m not sure? Which makes me wonder if you feel like being British (is that the proper nomenclature: British? or do you prefer English?) informs your writing, perhaps in terms of your particular cultural or historical position? And also, do you feel like AN ISLAND OF FIFTY is engaging with a particular literary tradition, British or otherwise?
BROOKS: I don’t think you sound like an asshole. That was a good answer. I think my attraction to a reversion to nature rests also on the fact that it would bring people together, even though I’m a cynical twat and don’t like a great deal of people anyway. All that stuff you listed I’d be reluctant to lose also and I’d only do it if I could guarantee something better, some success in resistance, which I can’t, so that’s why I’m not naked in a forest planning to blow up dams right now. But I also think that above those things it is people that make me most happy. A lot of the times those things just get in the way.
Those things also only make us happy because we have been raised with them. If we were raised like you said in forests, jumping about in rivers and spearing fish, then the idea of sitting watching LOST for an hour would seem fucking horrific dull.
Also I’m not particularly sure about how smoothly these theories would translate into practice for me personally, I haven’t had much chance to test myself yet. But I wouldn’t say that renders the theory useless, just difficult.
I think it has, but not because I’m British (British is fine by me). It’s because I’m middle class, white, and at grammar school. If I lived in America and kept the same sociodemographic credentials I think I’d pretty much write in the same way. It’s just being afforded time to write and dwell on things like drunkenly fucking a fat girl or hating civilization or whatever. But I’m not sure what ‘way’ of writing is. Not going so arrogantly far as to say it’s unlike anything else just I couldn’t point out anything I thought particularly resembled it, or that it particularly resembled. Saying that, it found a comfy home at ML press and I guess shares certain stylistic traits with some of the other writing that comes out of there.
HIGGS: Aw, you’re too humble. I wouldn’t hesitate to go on record stating that AN ISLAND OF FIFTY is a creation unlike anything that’s come before it. Furthermore, I’d argue that this book only solidifies what I had been thinking after reading FENCES, which is that you’re seriously clearing new paths for the form of the novel, and I hope others recognize your significant contribution. But let’s talk about MLP for a minute. How did you get hooked up with them? And how would you describe their particular stylistic traits?
BROOKS: Oh, thanks. I’m really glad you liked them. I think we’re at a time where a lot of people are really starting to do new and exciting things with words, and I’m flattered that you’d see me as a part of that. You are doing exciting things also.
I think one of the things that really typifies ML Press work is that it tends to be very stylistic, the way the words fit together is beautiful, but still there is a definite, very human, meaning behind it all. That’s quite broad though, the work there is diverse. I remember someone saying on Giant comments once that J.A Tyler’s writing tended to put aesthetics over any actual meaning. I think that’s stupid, ignorant, more aggressive adjectives. I think that with writing like J.A’s the meaning is often so much more concentrated than in more traditional ways of writing that you have to adopt that sort of tumbling aesthetic in order to squeeze out the chaff.
As for me, I mentioned on my blog that I had recently completed a novel (THE KASAHARA SCHOOL OF NIHILISM) and J.A Tyler asked to look at it for consideration in the ML novella series, which then only consisted of Molly Gaudry’s WE TAKE ME APART. While he was reading that I finished AN ISLAND OF FIFTY and sent it to James Chapman at Fugue State who offered to publish it if I didn’t find anywhere else. Then J.A turned away TKSN because he felt the narrative wasn’t clear enough and I sent him AN ISLAND OF FIFTY which he liked and took on. Then James Chapman read TKSN and offered to put that out on Fugue State, which it will be, and I am supremely happy for that. Also, I feel like I just told a hugely long and dull story, sorry.
HIGGS: Not dull at all. And I’m glad to hear you’ve got another book on the way – congrats! Now let’s close this thing out with a question I often think about but never get asked: who is your ideal reader?
BROOKS: Really fit, easily led girls. Because apart from that I have no clue. I’ve never thought about it. I’m not even so sure about what it means. Anyone willing to listen I guess. It feels like I’m dismissing that sort of, I’m not, I just don’t know how to field it. I never think about readers really, unless I’m speaking with them.
You’ve never been asked? Okay Chris Higgs, who is your ideal reader?
HIGGS: Haha! Brilliant. My ideal reader fades in comparison. Thanks, Ben.
BROOKS: Thank you Chris, this was fun.
AN ISLAND OF FIFTY
by
Ben Brooks
Tags: an island of fifty, ben brooks
i want civilization to be dismantled.
I do too but then there’d be no drink specials
Lotion and Tweezers. W/out those I would pray for Apocalypse.
Air conditioning. It’s really hot in Texas.
commodity fetishism.
Kleenex.
I can live with compost toilets and all that, but life would be hard for me without clean pieces of soft paper to blow my nose on.
Awesome interview. Reading it, Chinua Achebe’s argument against ‘Heart of Darkness’ came to mind, that it was racist as it produced too much of an ideological binary between Europe and Africa. Though Conrad claimed he was criticizing colonialism, Audre Lorde argued that using the language of the colonial power to criticize that colonial power only serves to reinforce and even strengthen colonial ideology. Great thoughts on civilization, Ben and Chris.
What I’d miss most would be the privileged position of discussing the end of civilization as inevitable, rather than the retrospective aftermath of that inevitability.
That and Oreos.
Excellent interview. Excited as hell to read this one.
This sounds weird but, if civilization were to disappear, I would miss the books like this that, in one way or another, make a comment on that civilization. For better or worse, the vitriol (not necessarily in the case of Ben Brooks) directed towards civilization or aspects of civilization is some of the most refreshing stuff out there. However, of course, my desire to read critiques or comments on civilization undermine my desire to really change those flawed aspects of civilization. Angry but apathetic. But blah blah blah.
I thought FENCES was one of the most exciting books I had read in a really long fucking time. I can’t wait to read this one.
i would miss hating on the ideology of cushy capitalists
presupposing “civilization,” in this case, includes the structures of the world, i would miss architecture
aw man the eradication of the strike-through tag totally ruins my comment
i want civilization to be dismantled.
I do too but then there’d be no drink specials
Lotion and Tweezers. W/out those I would pray for Apocalypse.
i would miss the square to-go boxes of chinese food.
i’d miss men. some of them. without civilization they’d murder and eat each other and the last of them would go after the women but we would find a place to hide underground and wouldn’t surface until the last man dropped dead. then i’d feel a relief like i never thought i could feel. but in the midst of the blissfulness of finally feeling safe i would miss the good ones that tried and failed to escape the chaos of the savagery that surrounded them.
Air conditioning. It’s really hot in Texas.
commodity fetishism.
Kleenex.
I can live with compost toilets and all that, but life would be hard for me without clean pieces of soft paper to blow my nose on.
i’d miss HTMLGIANT, obviously
Awesome interview. Reading it, Chinua Achebe’s argument against ‘Heart of Darkness’ came to mind, that it was racist as it produced too much of an ideological binary between Europe and Africa. Though Conrad claimed he was criticizing colonialism, Audre Lorde argued that using the language of the colonial power to criticize that colonial power only serves to reinforce and even strengthen colonial ideology. Great thoughts on civilization, Ben and Chris.
What I’d miss most would be the privileged position of discussing the end of civilization as inevitable, rather than the retrospective aftermath of that inevitability.
That and Oreos.
aw c’mon guys whatever happened to the idea that it was literature that could bring down the state? the one place that the hegemony can’t touch us? and above all, where small press can subvert the hive mind of popular art?
writers are the ones that are supposed to have both the energy to subvert and the imagination to create new possibility. and RE: Zizek, he has taken the (I would say “narrative”) task of envisioning what the future will be like in light of the current apathy towards the obvious evils of capitalism.
in anthropology, work has begun to frame a “anarchist” critique à la the now dominant marxist one. can’t the same happen for literature?
now I am sad
Bobby Alter? On HTML Giant? This is something I’ve never witnessed.
Maybe I don’t come here often enough anymore . . .
Excellent interview. Excited as hell to read this one.
this is maybe my first time, it pushed a button in me
also I forgot my entry comment for a free copy
the answer is:
LITERATURE, duh
without civilization we’re back to cave drawings and/or ESP
If it meant no more mattresses then I would miss mattresses.
yeah, and few people really want to live in Plato’s cave
and anyway, yeah i was really surprised to see the words “Bobby” and “Alter” appear here–out of nowhere
i miss your internet presence (i miss lamination colony too)
This sounds weird but, if civilization were to disappear, I would miss the books like this that, in one way or another, make a comment on that civilization. For better or worse, the vitriol (not necessarily in the case of Ben Brooks) directed towards civilization or aspects of civilization is some of the most refreshing stuff out there. However, of course, my desire to read critiques or comments on civilization undermine my desire to really change those flawed aspects of civilization. Angry but apathetic. But blah blah blah.
I thought FENCES was one of the most exciting books I had read in a really long fucking time. I can’t wait to read this one.
i would miss hating on the ideology of cushy capitalists
presupposing “civilization,” in this case, includes the structures of the world, i would miss architecture
aw man the eradication of the strike-through tag totally ruins my comment
cool interview. especially enjoyed the comparison of explaining writing choices to explaining one’s taste in porn, and also, “I’d rather watch LOST than destroy capitalism.”
if civilization were dismantled, i think i’d most miss the rewards. ie, getting an A for good work in school, an award for community service, a college acceptance, a raise, a publication, beating a high score, etc. all the little “social constructs” that keep me going on the path that society (civilization) wants me to. of course, i pretend to resent these things because they “condition” and “rob me of my free will,” but really, what the hell would i do without them as motivators? civilization provides these motivators. and the motivators provide a context to view myself in comparison to others, and without that ability (and the self-conscious pressure that comes with it), what would stop me from just sitting around and eating candy/masturbating all day?
thank god you’re here.
i would miss the square to-go boxes of chinese food.
i’d miss men. some of them. without civilization they’d murder and eat each other and the last of them would go after the women but we would find a place to hide underground and wouldn’t surface until the last man dropped dead. then i’d feel a relief like i never thought i could feel. but in the midst of the blissfulness of finally feeling safe i would miss the good ones that tried and failed to escape the chaos of the savagery that surrounded them.
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Interesting interview. I don’t think “resistance is futile,” but this book sounds fabulous nonetheless.
I would miss falafel wraps, rough sex in air-conditioned rooms, and online literary journals.
i’d miss HTMLGIANT, obviously
aw c’mon guys whatever happened to the idea that it was literature that could bring down the state? the one place that the hegemony can’t touch us? and above all, where small press can subvert the hive mind of popular art?
writers are the ones that are supposed to have both the energy to subvert and the imagination to create new possibility. and RE: Zizek, he has taken the (I would say “narrative”) task of envisioning what the future will be like in light of the current apathy towards the obvious evils of capitalism.
in anthropology, work has begun to frame a “anarchist” critique à la the now dominant marxist one. can’t the same happen for literature?
now I am sad
Bobby Alter? On HTML Giant? This is something I’ve never witnessed.
Maybe I don’t come here often enough anymore . . .
this is maybe my first time, it pushed a button in me
also I forgot my entry comment for a free copy
the answer is:
LITERATURE, duh
without civilization we’re back to cave drawings and/or ESP
If it meant no more mattresses then I would miss mattresses.
yeah, and few people really want to live in Plato’s cave
and anyway, yeah i was really surprised to see the words “Bobby” and “Alter” appear here–out of nowhere
i miss your internet presence (i miss lamination colony too)
cool interview. especially enjoyed the comparison of explaining writing choices to explaining one’s taste in porn, and also, “I’d rather watch LOST than destroy capitalism.”
if civilization were dismantled, i think i’d most miss the rewards. ie, getting an A for good work in school, an award for community service, a college acceptance, a raise, a publication, beating a high score, etc. all the little “social constructs” that keep me going on the path that society (civilization) wants me to. of course, i pretend to resent these things because they “condition” and “rob me of my free will,” but really, what the hell would i do without them as motivators? civilization provides these motivators. and the motivators provide a context to view myself in comparison to others, and without that ability (and the self-conscious pressure that comes with it), what would stop me from just sitting around and eating candy/masturbating all day?
thank god you’re here.
Interesting interview. I don’t think “resistance is futile,” but this book sounds fabulous nonetheless.
I would miss falafel wraps, rough sex in air-conditioned rooms, and online literary journals.
I’d miss, sort of ashamed to say, civilization. I’d miss tissues that jump out when you take one of their friends out, I’d miss the absence of mess provided by toilets, i’d miss tennis.
outdated travel guides.
wow
yeah
didn’t realise it until 3 comments ago but i’d miss “pet doors” (and in particular being able to easily find out everything i ever wanted to know)
got this one in the mail yesterday. is a great book.
i’d miss not having to kill for food. we would have to relearn how to stalk pigs.
The things people say that nobody hears.
Time.
I’d miss, sort of ashamed to say, civilization. I’d miss tissues that jump out when you take one of their friends out, I’d miss the absence of mess provided by toilets, i’d miss tennis.
Rousseau-style belief in a mythological ‘Noble Savage’ seems awfully jejeune by this point, when we’ve seen Year Zero upon Year Zero… whether some of us want to gaze upon and admit our own capacity for such phenomena or not. The possibilities of human nature were understood and dissected far more accurately by Sade than by Rousseau.
outdated travel guides.
wow
yeah
didn’t realise it until 3 comments ago but i’d miss “pet doors” (and in particular being able to easily find out everything i ever wanted to know)
got this one in the mail yesterday. is a great book.
i’d miss not having to kill for food. we would have to relearn how to stalk pigs.
Bobby, I think that literature differs at its ground from the anarchist project of, say, anthropology in a number of key ways. Primary is that literature is not, or ought not to be, an organ of direct social criticism or political action (two terms which should not, under any circumstances, be conflated or regarded as identical); the political possibility of literature, or of aesthetics, does not remain the property of literature “as such,” i.e. novels, poems, essays, whatever. Anything whatsoever would be a potentially “bellestristic” political object, from a Walter Benjamin essay to Rick Moody’s Twitter story to whatever, your dad dying in the dining room, to a general workers’ strike. Anthropology is a potentially anarch-istic cipher of literature; literature is an anarchic cipher of anything whatsoever, behind and ahead of the law, but potentially not before–neither facing nor interpellated by–the sovereign potential of the law.
i’d miss pesticides and my VHS copy of the movie “Rad”
what level of dismantling are we talkin’ about
if someone ate my cat or something i would miss my cat
Time.
I love the questions and answers. I’m excited to read this one. Chris asks important questions and Ben holds his own.
If Sasha’s ideal readers are fit easy girls, then MLP should put it in its mission statement that this is what its authors have in common.
ahaha that’s your ideal reader too?
Rousseau-style belief in a mythological ‘Noble Savage’ seems awfully jejeune by this point, when we’ve seen Year Zero upon Year Zero… whether some of us want to gaze upon and admit our own capacity for such phenomena or not. The possibilities of human nature were understood and dissected far more accurately by Sade than by Rousseau.
read this this morning in a sitting. something about the font stuff, i always kind of think, intellectually, that its gimmick, but then something about it pulls you in as you read it, makes it dynamic like ben says, and is what made me interested in fences. great stuff, looking forward to more in our futures.
Bobby, I think that literature differs at its ground from the anarchist project of, say, anthropology in a number of key ways. Primary is that literature is not, or ought not to be, an organ of direct social criticism or political action (two terms which should not, under any circumstances, be conflated or regarded as identical); the political possibility of literature, or of aesthetics, does not remain the property of literature “as such,” i.e. novels, poems, essays, whatever. Anything whatsoever would be a potentially “bellestristic” political object, from a Walter Benjamin essay to Rick Moody’s Twitter story to whatever, your dad dying in the dining room, to a general workers’ strike. Anthropology is a potentially anarch-istic cipher of literature; literature is an anarchic cipher of anything whatsoever, behind and ahead of the law, but potentially not before–neither facing nor interpellated by–the sovereign potential of the law.
i’d miss pesticides and my VHS copy of the movie “Rad”
what level of dismantling are we talkin’ about
if someone ate my cat or something i would miss my cat
Unfortunately Alec, your argument remains opaque to me. The [strictly rhetorical] question I posed was “can’t it exist?,” and rather than answer “yes-or-no because…” you rather explained how things are at the present time, in both your initially dubious “is not, or ought not to be” belief and in the greater artistry of your comment. By taking the stance of the popular commodity-fetishist response to the idea of resistance, mirrored as much by CH’s laborious preface to the question–“I am probably going to sound like an asshole…”—and BB’s respectfully honest answer “I’d only do it if I could guarantee something better, some success in resistance, which I can’t” as by the vast majority of [first-world] people who do not associate a war or oil disaster or taxes with their own physical ability to affect ideological change— by taking this stance, you are simply elaborating on my suggestion that in the current state of literature we are not interested in the idea of embodying resistance in our own creativity.
The humanistic, anthropological, political, economic, and altogether ideological writings of primitivists or anarchists (or Marxists or anyone else [or both scientific positivists and Christians—the sense of an organized progress towards an a-historical or supposedly utopian state is very similar in such belief systems)], regardless of whether they are militaristic or terrorist or not, employ the mechanization of those types of romanticism or anxiety that I argue we can equally align with the creative task and product.
These and other imaginative structures (even if heavily influenced by “Western” or first-world systems of interpretation and understanding) are then adopted as rubric-lenses by critics, of which ethnographers are certainly one type, and in turn fabricate greater abstract structures: anything from so-called world-systems to so-called culture to so-called poetics (or even grammar) to so-called literature or to so-called revolutions.
I am openly willing to admit that my own writing, as with my habitual or day-to-day ideology, is typified by a strangely comfortable feeling of “it’s no use.” I completely agree with Ben Brooks that the “fuck-it” stance is definitely divorced from a nihilistic one. And still I wonder as to how a more anarchistic or resistant literature could be formulated. I for one believe it can—a belief based on my own personal experiences of slavery to pay-day, coupons, synthesized sugar, political rhetoric, and advertisements for commodities. The “fuck-it” attitude in writing, in my view, is more aligned with the beautifying/generalizing/passive project of tourism than that of criticism, and I think that that could change if anyone wanted it to. I compared anthropology to literature thinking that, at the end of the day, both can constitute only semiotic, and not physical, analyses or projects in the face of reference. That’s how I supposed that if one could change, the other could too—in my own romantic imagination, of course.
I love the questions and answers. I’m excited to read this one. Chris asks important questions and Ben holds his own.
If Sasha’s ideal readers are fit easy girls, then MLP should put it in its mission statement that this is what its authors have in common.
ahaha that’s your ideal reader too?
read this this morning in a sitting. something about the font stuff, i always kind of think, intellectually, that its gimmick, but then something about it pulls you in as you read it, makes it dynamic like ben says, and is what made me interested in fences. great stuff, looking forward to more in our futures.
Unfortunately Alec, your argument remains opaque to me. The [strictly rhetorical] question I posed was “can’t it exist?,” and rather than answer “yes-or-no because…” you rather explained how things are at the present time, in both your initially dubious “is not, or ought not to be” belief and in the greater artistry of your comment. By taking the stance of the popular commodity-fetishist response to the idea of resistance, mirrored as much by CH’s laborious preface to the question–“I am probably going to sound like an asshole…”—and BB’s respectfully honest answer “I’d only do it if I could guarantee something better, some success in resistance, which I can’t” as by the vast majority of [first-world] people who do not associate a war or oil disaster or taxes with their own physical ability to affect ideological change— by taking this stance, you are simply elaborating on my suggestion that in the current state of literature we are not interested in the idea of embodying resistance in our own creativity.
The humanistic, anthropological, political, economic, and altogether ideological writings of primitivists or anarchists (or Marxists or anyone else [or both scientific positivists and Christians—the sense of an organized progress towards an a-historical or supposedly utopian state is very similar in such belief systems)], regardless of whether they are militaristic or terrorist or not, employ the mechanization of those types of romanticism or anxiety that I argue we can equally align with the creative task and product.
These and other imaginative structures (even if heavily influenced by “Western” or first-world systems of interpretation and understanding) are then adopted as rubric-lenses by critics, of which ethnographers are certainly one type, and in turn fabricate greater abstract structures: anything from so-called world-systems to so-called culture to so-called poetics (or even grammar) to so-called literature or to so-called revolutions.
I am openly willing to admit that my own writing, as with my habitual or day-to-day ideology, is typified by a strangely comfortable feeling of “it’s no use.” I completely agree with Ben Brooks that the “fuck-it” stance is definitely divorced from a nihilistic one. And still I wonder as to how a more anarchistic or resistant literature could be formulated. I for one believe it can—a belief based on my own personal experiences of slavery to pay-day, coupons, synthesized sugar, political rhetoric, and advertisements for commodities. The “fuck-it” attitude in writing, in my view, is more aligned with the beautifying/generalizing/passive project of tourism than that of criticism, and I think that that could change if anyone wanted it to. I compared anthropology to literature thinking that, at the end of the day, both can constitute only semiotic, and not physical, analyses or projects in the face of reference. That’s how I supposed that if one could change, the other could too—in my own romantic imagination, of course.
Congrats a.prime – Ben selected your comment as the winner. Email me your mailing address here: jatyler@mudlusciouspress.com.
Anyone else who wants a copy, email me at the above address and I’ll give you an htmlgiant comment discount.
Thanks all,,,,,,,,,,,
[…] Those bitches at HTML Giant have a great interview with Ben Brooks. […]
Those who seek the dismantling of civilization
[…] June 6, 2010 i’ve been reading HTMLGIANT for several months. i read it everyday. on Friday i decided to finally comment on a post because: MLP publisher J.A. Tyler has graciously offered to give away a free copy of Ben’s book to the comm… […]
Congrats a.prime – Ben selected your comment as the winner. Email me your mailing address here: jatyler@mudlusciouspress.com.
Anyone else who wants a copy, email me at the above address and I’ll give you an htmlgiant comment discount.
Thanks all,,,,,,,,,,,
Those who seek the dismantling of civilization
chubby teen-aged girls wearing “pink” labeled sweats.
when has literature ever brought down the state?
uncle tom’s cabin
Palace of Dreams, Ismail Kadare
it changed the state. it never brought it down.
big difference.
if you literally mean a work of fiction bringing down a state (as opposed to literature where evidence is abundant: bible, koran, communist manifesto), i guess you take a technical win. i can’t think of an example of a book that has caused time to stop. but it seems like that standard sucks all the meaning out of what alter is saying above by rhetorically undercutting it, not by disproving his call for a literature that intervenes in an undoing way. if the wider argument you’re making here is that fiction is useless politically unless it can bring down the state whole force, i think that just conflates an ideal that fuels the imaginative fire of political literature with some sort of cost-benefit analysis of its effects, which is such a stale way of seeing it, misses the very literary dimension in the thing. like, with uncle tom’s cabin. if you go by how the constitution and the arrangement of american electoral democracy came out of the civil war transformed, then it changed the state so radically as to have brought the state’s relation to power down in practice. it ruptured the state in secession and then the ‘remending’ entirely altered the way that the state form worked. by your (revised) definition any continuity in the state form would mean literature hadn’t had a definitive disruptive impact that had helped bring a prior state form’s critical structure to an end. the united states didn’t go to war to end the united states as it existed to that point, quite the reverse, but ending the nation as it had existed til that point was exactly what happened when the south seceded and it went to war. if a work of fiction can move the world like that, the difference is not nearly as big as you’re making out, nor the interest in the idealism of it worthy of easy cynical dismissal.
david,
i am just pointing out that bobby’s rhetoric is silly. no text can bring down the majority. surely, if the great nietzsche could not sway a people to believe in individuality, to abolish the “state” altogether, who could?
what bobby is saying is “what happened to literature that could manipulate the people into believing in what i believe in.”
btw dude, if you think the civil war was about slavery and not the empire building of one of our most evil, selfish presidents, well, then i suggest you read more on the subject.
and their uggs.
chubby teen-aged girls wearing “pink” labeled sweats.
when has literature ever brought down the state?
Ben,
Got the book today and think it’s great! Congrats!
uncle tom’s cabin
Palace of Dreams, Ismail Kadare
it changed the state. it never brought it down.
big difference.
if you literally mean a work of fiction bringing down a state (as opposed to literature where evidence is abundant: bible, koran, communist manifesto), i guess you take a technical win. i can’t think of an example of a book that has caused time to stop. but it seems like that standard sucks all the meaning out of what alter is saying above by rhetorically undercutting it, not by disproving his call for a literature that intervenes in an undoing way. if the wider argument you’re making here is that fiction is useless politically unless it can bring down the state whole force, i think that just conflates an ideal that fuels the imaginative fire of political literature with some sort of cost-benefit analysis of its effects, which is such a stale way of seeing it, misses the very literary dimension in the thing. like, with uncle tom’s cabin. if you go by how the constitution and the arrangement of american electoral democracy came out of the civil war transformed, then it changed the state so radically as to have brought the state’s relation to power down in practice. it ruptured the state in secession and then the ‘remending’ entirely altered the way that the state form worked. by your (revised) definition any continuity in the state form would mean literature hadn’t had a definitive disruptive impact that had helped bring a prior state form’s critical structure to an end. the united states didn’t go to war to end the united states as it existed to that point, quite the reverse, but ending the nation as it had existed til that point was exactly what happened when the south seceded and it went to war. if a work of fiction can move the world like that, the difference is not nearly as big as you’re making out, nor the interest in the idealism of it worthy of easy cynical dismissal.
david,
i am just pointing out that bobby’s rhetoric is silly. no text can bring down the majority. surely, if the great nietzsche could not sway a people to believe in individuality, to abolish the “state” altogether, who could?
what bobby is saying is “what happened to literature that could manipulate the people into believing in what i believe in.”
btw dude, if you think the civil war was about slavery and not the empire building of one of our most evil, selfish presidents, well, then i suggest you read more on the subject.
and their uggs.
Ben,
Got the book today and think it’s great! Congrats!
get it ben
get it ben
Isn’t it curious that no one here attempts to *define* civilization? It’s equated in many spots with products that make our lives “easier,” like kleenex, mattresses, and so on. Or it’s implicitly configured as *any* formation of social organization.
Derrick Jensen is very specific with his terms: Civilization is defined as a form of social organization that grows out of and is oriented toward the growth of cities. This can be defended both historically and etymologically (civitatis is the Latin term for city, for example).
So how should we define city? A social formation of people living on a landbase in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other resources.
To repeat: Civilization is a way of social formation defined by and oriented towards the growth of cities, with city being understood as a density of people living on a landbase that cannot support them, requiring the constant importation of resources from elsewhere.
Civilization is not any form of social organization. Nor is it a form of social organization that’s unique to white Europeans. (The Aztecs had cities and sought growth.) Once we get our terms straight it’s much easier to see how civilization is–at the most fundamental level–*unsustainable*.
The interview is interesting in part because everyone dodges an explicit definition, but I must say it makes the piece less useful for helping us think through these complex issues. We end up falling back on these crusty and untrustworthy binaries of Civilization VS Nature. Consider where Higgs says that he’s uninterested in a “reversion to nature” because he “doesn’t like nature.” It’s an illusionary choice. We never “left” nature, so we can’t “revert” to it. Whether you like or don’t like nature isn’t the issue; you ARE nature. Clouded terms cloud the construction of our possibilities. (I would also call into question Higgs’s assertion that the destruction of capitalism may breed his arch-nemesis: homogeneity. Our economic system is exterminating biodiversity at a nearly unthinkable pace. The UN just reported that since 1970 *1/3* of the world’s vertebrates have gone extinct–that is, the death of birth. If difference and diversity is your paramount value, then I would suggest your paramount enemy is capitalism.)
I’d be very curious to see a sequel to Brooks’s _An Island of Fifty_ where he works through the position of “everything is fucked.” He says in the interview that “about midway through [writing] I became disillusioned and thought something like ‘it’s no use, everything is fucked’.”
The cynical side of me wants to say: Welcome. Of course it’s all fucked. Of course almost every act of resistance seems futile. Of course our current practices of resistance look silly compared to the power of capitalism. Of course. Welcome to our group.
Brooks’s response to “it’s all fucked,” however, is simply, “There are no workable solutions left open” and consequently, the only option left is the “‘eat, drink and be merry’ type philosophy.'” But here he must be speaking specifically to those with the means to eat and drink, no? Isn’t what is at stake here *precisely* the ability to practice this philosophy? We can’t drink when there’s no water that’s not toxic or privatized. We can’t eat when there’s no food that’s not toxic or when all seeds are controlled through federal regulation (check out HR bill 875). So Brooks’s option is one that’s only available to a comparatively small portion of the global population and growing increasingly small at that.
But the kid in me likes the frosted side, so let’s move past cynicism and any semblance of horizontal hostility. I would agree that we’re all fucked. And I agree that our current avenues of resistance look laughable compared to the task at hand. But what does that change? Or more specifically, does the ethical situation change just because there are “no workable solutions?” I don’t think it does.
We know we’re fucked. But can recognizing that be itself a source of ethical freedom and point of departure for courageous action, instead of the masked, passive nihilism that’s being presented here? _I think it can._ Sartre made the remark that “We were never more free than during the German occupation…every accurate thought was a conquest.” We’re fucked and free, my friends. With all the world at stake–a phrase that has moved out of the figurative realm and into literal–some of us do indeed have the option to eat, drink, and be merry. Of course, we’d be doing it as the world burns.
So what do we do?
Ask, answer, and act:
* What do you love?
* What are you gifts?
* What’s the largest, most pressing problem you can help solve given the gifts that are unique to you?
* What does your landbase need to survive?
* And if answered the last question: Are you willing to do it?
Isn’t it curious that no one here attempts to *define* civilization? It’s equated in many spots with products that make our lives “easier,” like kleenex, mattresses, and so on. Or it’s implicitly configured as *any* formation of social organization.
Derrick Jensen is very specific with his terms: Civilization is defined as a form of social organization that grows out of and is oriented toward the growth of cities. This can be defended both historically and etymologically (civitatis is the Latin term for city, for example).
So how should we define city? A social formation of people living on a landbase in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other resources.
To repeat: Civilization is a way of social formation defined by and oriented towards the growth of cities, with city being understood as a density of people living on a landbase that cannot support them, requiring the constant importation of resources from elsewhere.
Civilization is not any form of social organization. Nor is it a form of social organization that’s unique to white Europeans. (The Aztecs had cities and sought growth.) Once we get our terms straight it’s much easier to see how civilization is–at the most fundamental level–*unsustainable*.
The interview is interesting in part because everyone dodges an explicit definition, but I must say it makes the piece less useful for helping us think through these complex issues. We end up falling back on these crusty and untrustworthy binaries of Civilization VS Nature. Consider where Higgs says that he’s uninterested in a “reversion to nature” because he “doesn’t like nature.” It’s an illusionary choice. We never “left” nature, so we can’t “revert” to it. Whether you like or don’t like nature isn’t the issue; you ARE nature. Clouded terms cloud the construction of our possibilities. (I would also call into question Higgs’s assertion that the destruction of capitalism may breed his arch-nemesis: homogeneity. Our economic system is exterminating biodiversity at a nearly unthinkable pace. The UN just reported that since 1970 *1/3* of the world’s vertebrates have gone extinct–that is, the death of birth. If difference and diversity is your paramount value, then I would suggest your paramount enemy is capitalism.)
I’d be very curious to see a sequel to Brooks’s _An Island of Fifty_ where he works through the position of “everything is fucked.” He says in the interview that “about midway through [writing] I became disillusioned and thought something like ‘it’s no use, everything is fucked’.”
The cynical side of me wants to say: Welcome. Of course it’s all fucked. Of course almost every act of resistance seems futile. Of course our current practices of resistance look silly compared to the power of capitalism. Of course. Welcome to our group.
Brooks’s response to “it’s all fucked,” however, is simply, “There are no workable solutions left open” and consequently, the only option left is the “‘eat, drink and be merry’ type philosophy.'” But here he must be speaking specifically to those with the means to eat and drink, no? Isn’t what is at stake here *precisely* the ability to practice this philosophy? We can’t drink when there’s no water that’s not toxic or privatized. We can’t eat when there’s no food that’s not toxic or when all seeds are controlled through federal regulation (check out HR bill 875). So Brooks’s option is one that’s only available to a comparatively small portion of the global population and growing increasingly small at that.
But the kid in me likes the frosted side, so let’s move past cynicism and any semblance of horizontal hostility. I would agree that we’re all fucked. And I agree that our current avenues of resistance look laughable compared to the task at hand. But what does that change? Or more specifically, does the ethical situation change just because there are “no workable solutions?” I don’t think it does.
We know we’re fucked. But can recognizing that be itself a source of ethical freedom and point of departure for courageous action, instead of the masked, passive nihilism that’s being presented here? _I think it can._ Sartre made the remark that “We were never more free than during the German occupation…every accurate thought was a conquest.” We’re fucked and free, my friends. With all the world at stake–a phrase that has moved out of the figurative realm and into literal–some of us do indeed have the option to eat, drink, and be merry. Of course, we’d be doing it as the world burns.
So what do we do?
Ask, answer, and act:
* What do you love?
* What are you gifts?
* What’s the largest, most pressing problem you can help solve given the gifts that are unique to you?
* What does your landbase need to survive?
* And if answered the last question: Are you willing to do it?
I would miss my son , Ben Brooks , if civilization were to end x