8 pm. Welcome to City Arts. A season of torch them on stage conversations recorded before an audience 2 at the Norse theater and San Francisco's Performing Arts Center I'm Linda Hunt Joining me now in hearing some of the most celebrated writers artists and thinkers. Maggie Nelson writes about art feminism the history of the on guard and sexual violence called one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today by the Guardian she is the author of 9 books including new acts the red parts and the art of cruelty. In her National Book Award winning memoir The argument it's Nelson dissects and examines every It perience from motherhood to being an artist to her sexual identity. In the process she challenges us to question the aspects of our lives that we think of as conventional and those that we consider radical. I'm John you are a 19th 2018 Maggie Nelson visited the Norse Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by June Brian Wilson. Joins me now for a conversation with makin us. Hi Thank you. Thanks to you all for coming so I want to begin by talking a little bit about the mini John or as in which you write and I'm wondering about how you label yourself I guess I mean you part of what you do is very much resistance of labels but I feel that you maybe own the word poet a little more easily than you own the term memoirist and I'm just curious about your relationship to some of those words. I fear that I will now begin by performing that resistance to the label like I'm very you know. I mean I'm kind of a. Innit. Deconstructor more than identifier as you probably know so I think that it's hard I was take a step back and kind of feel like I'm more like fascinated with why everybody is so interested in John relabels right now a little bit I don't it's not something that I came up with. As a real interest or affliction and I think that. I mean I did come up mostly in poetry so. I think and you know anything that has a you can't sell in has a ragged margin gets put into poetry category so that takes a lot of writing. So that in some ways I think and also you know it's an easier signifier for some of the things I've done but would you say they write poetry but you're not a poet or would you not even want to know at this moment I would say the very very . I mean having written poetry for quite some time. I mean never say never but I think I mean I say that I would identify as a poet doesn't write poetry just because I think that. I don't know the sociology of poetry that I came up and continues to really inform I think how I think about writing or even the writing business. Which I think a lot of people in poetry write prose and they're just. Capacious enough with their idea of writing that they're not really worried about they're not I mean I'm kidding about things they don't sell but I'm also serious because you don't have to speak a language to anybody where you ever really have to describe what it is and I think that's more how I came in. You have a passage in the read parts where you say that you don't trust stories you're kind of referring to. And you have this kind of series of words that for you. About your suspicions towards stories which is that they distort they trap they codified and I think you're talking about fiction there so I'm I'm also curious about your relationship to the words fiction and nonfiction and you have are you put yourself in those territories very I mean in some ways one of murky time is are policed categories but I think you you have you exist in a somewhat murky terrain. You know I mean kind of like the way the poetry no one ever says oh I write autobiographical poetry because this would be kind of I don't know a lot of poetry just has and I am I think likewise I never really. I never really. Never really thought about writing I wrote. Nonfiction per se but I would definitely say that I don't write fiction and I think that I mean a lot of work that I admire and a lot of people that I sometimes. Paired with and talking about writing write what people are calling out of fiction or things like that these days which I think is super great it's just doesn't temperamentally. Probably a lot of you know this great. Writer Malcolm And her in her book The journalist in the murder she has a well known comment about fiction and nonfiction saying that. Writing nonfiction is like being a renter where you're allowed to rearrange the furniture but you know essentially you have to give back the lease whereas in fiction you can kind of you know make the whole house you know like you know buying a house and I definitely I like the constrictions of renting you know sometimes you know when you talk in a different book about how liberating it is to read because once you get because you're freed of responsibility in some ways like if you have to build it from the ground up yeah I mean I think it's a little bit of the. Ethical conundrum which has to do with. The world isn't good enough and part of the difficulty of writing nonfiction is that if you're if you're constrained as working with the world such as it is it needs to be good enough. To make a piece of writing that you like so I have a lot of friends who will be like you know she was wearing a blue bathroom but that sounds terrible so I made it read or whatever and to me the problem would be how do you keep it. When you wish it were otherwise and still come up with something that you like so I like that. Your I like better also cluster I mean there is the auto fiction rubric. Karlovy not scarred on the one hand there's also right around the time the arguments was published a few other explicitly clear memoirs came out so I'm thinking of Douglas crimps before picture isn't an all girls and I'm curious about you know do you feel an affinity there where it's he might not you might feel some distance or separation from fiction is. It does that feel more comfortable for you yeah I mean although I think that a lot of people with a lot of fiction like like like she's been are other people are doing something similar that I think killed now and stuff are doing which is basically just trying to find a container that is spacious enough that you can kind of airlift in the whatever kinds of writing you want to be in it so you know and then learners books will air lifting pieces of talks he gave an essay isn't a short story and a poem and you're kind of and then the question the formal question is just like what is the thing that can hold all these pieces of writing I want to be in this book and so I think like a book like the Argonauts. The scene this have been a raised but it is holding. An art essay. Chopped up into pieces it's holding some diary a stick writing it's holding. Other people's writing like this letter with my partner is holding. A talk I gave about a mentor of mine and Cedric. And so it's hold. And like I say those were things written for occasion separate from the occasion of the book so I think then the question you know again I think I'm kind of a formalised where I like to imagine if this is all the company I want to keep in this book. What can I make that invites all this to the party I have 2 questions that come out of that one is about structure because. I think the reader really senses your formalism and those things are knitted together I think really precisely and there is a sense of pacing and tempo with in some ways a kind of pastiche that you're creating and I'm curious how you do that like are there index cards I mean that's one way I can almost see it's a show live with you know some kind of bulletin board or something where you're moving parts around does it come more organically or in a linear fashion I'm really interested in the process of putting those pieces fitting those pieces together to make that whole feel really seamless Yeah you know different books I've. Had to find different ways I mean. I wrote a book called blue eyes that I did use index cards for. And that book I don't know what the word count was but it was pretty low and there's quite a lot of white space yeah I really wanted the book to be 100 pages at least because I wanted to I thought I was right this huge book about the color blue the encyclopedia be so red and luscious and then it just kept getting smaller and smaller you know what this poem I love the ring the ticker called the condensor like I feel like you go to work and you're like oh I'm at the condensor e. I didn't want to be here I want to be you know. At the maximalist factory but. So but in the condenser I really want that book to be a 100 pages and then it was kind of a joke with myself because when I came back from the typesetter it was 99 and I was like like. Ok you don't know how it's going to come out I'm tired of fighting so I did and you know that's pretty good that's pretty accurate but that's it was small enough that I could spatially lay it out in a room on a wall and move the pieces and have it make sense. It was frustrating to me because I tried to do the same thing with the Argonauts and I had too much paper. It just couldn't be laid out and I could probably do it like on the stage but then I don't have any space in my life this is the stage so anyway just so I did feel like I mean I really am sure there are many of you in the audience who are novelists who write really long things and I don't know how anybody holds it together because I'm very fascinated by I mean I can barely hold you know 50000 words together but I I think I mean it's funny because your time I want to cry when it was one of his most famous psychoanalytic you know metaphors is about holding and containing and that was a kind of operative metaphor and it actually is in the red parts as well as it is in the Argonauts but I. Have always been very taken by that because I feel like a book to me feels like the whole thing held and and therefore it produces a lot of. Pain when you feel yourself unable you know when it's exceeding the grasp of your small brain to be holding it but luckily you can work in pieces and you know it can exceed you well one of the ways you do exceed yourself this is my 2nd question is with what I consider your extremely generous politics of citation something that does run throughout a lot of your work and that includes everything from people like you to your and star ease and I it makes you know waveforms what seems like a kind of map of your reading practices but I'm wondering about other reading practices he might have like that or for pleasure for fun then why not make their way into. A place where you do put everything your you know is not a really comprehensive bibliography of of how you're processing what you're reading I guess that will in a way it's sort of a question like Is there ever a novel Yeah that would never get you know that you're too embarrassed that you got at the airport or something would never make it into one your books you know I should do more if. I really should because I don't do very I don't do a lot of that and I think it's one of the reasons why I don't read a lot of fiction is that like I was really with a mechanical pencil is just my thing and. You know I have nothing to do I know I don't mark anything when I read novels you know so I thought I was like I'm not getting any work done you know because I think this kind of machine of citation I do. You know often I'll read for a spell and buy a spell I mean like 3 months to 20 years and then I'll kind of go back in that subject area and kind of coalesce everything that I mark basically So you're right you're. Underlining marginalia as you're reading not a lot of fiction you know I mean the thing that I'm going to read I mean to read something I mean that you know fiction Yeah absolutely I mean that's kind of like the. Joke of. I mean the red part was written in a very anti a narrative mood as you've noticed about story. Which in that book is kind of stitched up with the fact that. Courtroom. Cases essentially competing narratives. And. I've always very much love the I'm not going to get it right I don't think but I love this poet Frank O'Hara and he says. You know pain creates logic which is very bad for you and I've always like this idea that like when you're in pain you know that actually people think of it as a you know it can be in high trauma kind of splintering or dramatic falling to pieces but that also can engender a kind of manic. Narrative making it when you all know you've all been there lying awake at night thinking if you know if he just done this I should have said that and then he did this and this really you know like you're so you're paying for this is logic and so you know it can be very bad for you so I think that book was really fighting with that. So I think that I had but that anti narrative. Fever. Broke a little bit but I also you know I don't. I don't I don't argue that's actually a schoolboy has some very novelistic I mean I think the Red Bridge has to I mean I think that you can't write. I don't it's Ok if any of you've ever done this I give you. My blessing but like I don't lie don't love it when people call my books collages or something because I think in poetry and other things that word kind of like juxtaposition is. A very powerful tool but when but when you're taking something out over many many many pages you're always going to be weighing the power of juxtaposition against the power of moving from a beginning to an end and that's the narrative I know so those are that's a narrative process and I and I and I like that and I work with it so I don't. Chew it as a as a tool you know do you think almost filmic Lee in terms of like slices and custom enough to meet the Argonauts is structured very much like. Change you know I think so I think that. I think that. I moved to Los Angeles and I don't know 2005 I guess and I started you know finding yourself at parties with screenwriters or whatever and I was like This is not my jam. But I was at one party very early on when I was writing the red cards and somebody did say to me oh you know you just write all I just write all my scenes down and then you just shuffle them around and that's how you decide how to edit the film or something I thought that's so smart you know and that actually with the red cards I didn't have index cards but I did have a chapter list and I did suddenly see them all as much more. Moving piece is in a way that reminded me of I mean and was inspired by the thing film process you know. I want to switch gears a little bit. Sticking with the Argonauts for a 2nd and taking us which I'm sure we all vividly recall the 1st paragraph because that is very. Really announces something you know a kind of an openness a frankness right I mean it's a very you know it's bold a very bold opening gambit I would say and I guess I did against him the language problem yeah it's also in there it's a lot it's a it's a dense 1st paragraph and it really works as a hook but I guess the question is more about. Thinking further about your relationship to autobiography and to memory and of course just the question of vulnerability and disclosure and how you negotiate personally in your own you know as a as a person has become has kind of interred in to the public you know you are now kind of a public figure really are public figures from a 1000 people if I do you talk tonight that people get what you already know you're going to tell me. And how. You know vulnerability is feels both very raw but maybe also strategic strategically. How that affects your relationships with not just your partner obviously but with your family with friends who all kind of get conscripted into your narrative. Here's where I shout out to my mother and sister who are both here tonight I got. You know I. I came up like I said in poetry and the poets that I admired most. Were. Bold Frank talkers you know and I also I didn't really I don't think I really knew this till I look back on it more retrospectively but I also grew up in the age of. In this town my hometown and. And the literature that I like the most you know when I was in my late teens and early twenty's were I mean I read David van which is close to the knives a memoir of disintegration which I thought was the best book I've ever read my life the veneer of which was dying you know and he was you know angry and speaking these amazing dreamlike urgently political monologues that was the milieu you know it's like yes to me. I didn't. And it matched what naturally to me was the desire to. Use the self as of lens on the culture use the culture as a lens on the self like that was a I think my might. The most natural modality to me is that you have a as a young writer so I think for all those reasons I have not I never gave a lot of thought in my writing to. Vulnerability as it related to a public I guess it was more like the water I was swimming in I mean I've thought about it more. As my writing has moved out into fears where people are less familiar with some of my heroes. And don't maybe. And find. Like something that would be like a more natural frankness to me as a more of like a gambit or something. But I've been there but then I said I will just say that I am aware I mean I'm not I'm not pleading and I have a 10 day that you know I am aware that I mean I can Carson another writer who I admire so much I mean I was very schooled I think by her writing the way that she would combine her. You know a very. Proud thing of the word it's not cold it's just it's. The voice of her as a classicist kind of you know telling you about you know what entity might have said you know with these very puncturing and vulnerable moments sometimes sexual sometimes otherwise. I'm thinking of the glass essay in particular which is which was really important to me when I read it because it kind of combines I mean I write criticism scholarship what I want to call it as well so her combination in the glass essay of writing it's kind of a essay about a breakup of the man she calls allegorically law with a trip to see her mother in an allegorical place called the Moore's with a kind of literary critical essay about Emily Brown today. And what it was like to friendly Bronte to live in her household and write weathering heights. So I knew I didn't notice how. You know you can you know is. Vulnerable or Frank or course moments as texture that. Moves a piece in and out of something that feels more. Cerebral or and this and visceral in turn so I do I do I do like to play with that but I don't but the discourse of vulnerability wasn't wasn't maybe the 1st one that or her and I mean I think also it does make the reader then also notice the moments when you withhold and sometimes you narrate the withholdings you know like I'm not going to talk anymore about my son's illness and you go on you know and which I don't know anything about yeah tell us and I mean that and it's really I think it's just really interesting when you know you know it's kind of you just seem very conscious I guess of playing here's I'm puncturing of this you know assumption of transparency and then there's other moments where I'm really building a wall around it yeah so congratulations on your MacArthur and I was really tremendously well deserved but I want to yes but I think it was. And then let us take a moment to reflect on this weird word genius. What is the does it what does it feel like to be officially known as a genius I'm so interested my friend Trevor Paglen just got one of these awards in the fall and he's like has it changed your life he said I got a ton of e-mails on the day and then now my friends make fun of me that's how it's changed my life. You know indication to hatred over and. I am. I mean you know after you know 25 years of you know feminist theory totally you know doing admirable dismantling of the word genius like I got all I get all that but I you know a little bit like the Gertrude Stein school of reclamation of the term genius because I mean I ruin our essay recently for a painter friend of mine and. It was a group show about 4 women and I said you know where these women have in common except they're all geniuses and. A couple of them you know said that they were uncomfortable with that as an opening paragraph because of what I've just mentioned about this very lengthy very necessary dismantling of the kind of idea of the genius or the Master in the you know but I kind of felt like. You know. I mean Gertrude Stein knew this and wielding this word all the time she will do that a lot is that you know I mean Newsflash like men men for centuries columns of geniuses were not necessarily geniuses it's a performative gesture that you prognosticate you create a reality by claiming these words and by you know I now I mean we all know somebody has recently called himself a very it's true statement you know you rightly say more so I mean I think that I am. I'm interested in the performative play of it not necessarily for myself but I have I interested in there. Precisely because I mean this is what the whole book about the New York school that you mentioned was about was precisely because I'm very interested in the ways in which. Women. And other people have had a. Not just a hard time it's not about breaking into the club it's about the club being predicated on terms they don't allow them to participate in it not because there's a sign on the door but because the entire thing is not structured around. Conceptual structures in which they can participate So I'm So I'm I mean I think in that way using the word performative really creates jarring notice you understand what I'm saying thank you so we're saying I think I'm delighted Lee I'm delighted least surprised because you're so I mean like me I mean like I know you're like yes I know right yeah yeah yeah I mean it's crazy I mean I'd like to say that I know you're not exactly like that but you are saying you're performing to be reclaiming it in other words you're owning it. I mean look you 'd know it's not. It's not. I feel like there must be something in the press must be something coming down from on high of the MacArthur Foundation that you have to put it in scare quotes they always say to their award the genius right you're going back to get you're not really Gene yes you're. Right I guess I'm not doing this but I do think that I think. I think that. I do think it's interesting though that. Having met some other people from my year . It does do something very different to apply that word to people who are doing like you know inventing ways of doing like mobile pap smears you know I mean Gulf of Mexico and like I mean there are some really really interesting work and I think that altering the term. To. Not be isolated. Individual istic labor but actually about finding ways to solve problems of Karen Service. I think that's another way that it's performing interesting to me you know so you just just read this raise the specter of our president and here we are talking right on the cusp of the anniversary of Trump's inauguration and also of. Women's March and cetera and I guess this is a question I ask just everyone because I want to know because I desperately strategies Yeah how are you coping here what are your methods how do you deal with the news how do you what is I mean I want everyone to tell me what they do so I can do it do something better because I've been pretty crushed and paralyzed. Yeah I mean what a bad year what a bad time you know just horrible I think I was just telling you in the green room. I was scared that I was teaching a class called Hope and Fear right now to my graduate students and I think in putting together this class. Like the 1st 4 weeks we're just doing all ecological texts about. And time species grieving you know all these kind of like it's a lot of books and things I have put off going into because I've worried that if I went. You know like I was but I think that I mean and this is a kind of Buddhist adage about hope and fear of just why the class is called this being 2 sides of the same coin that they don't have one without the other and it's really kind of the the wheel of samsara if you will is kind of being caught between hope and fear both of which are. Have a lot to do with attitudes towards future. And anxiety and even even for those of you who are the very people you know this is also links up with warmer Lance Crow optimism and the ways in which discourses of hope can be just as kind of crushing in their way as discourses of fear so a lot of the thinking and the reading that we're doing is just really going to the belly of the beast and reading a lot of things that we just read Learning to Die in the Anthropocene last week I like books that I haven't wanted to read but it's beginning to have a transformative effect I would say in the way of going straight into things you can do and so that's been helpful so tell me more about the transformative effect and what it has yeah. Just I mean because I know I had to do prayer and so I guess I often sometimes reading the news feels you know kind of like the same dynamic of self harm you know like I you know it's going to hurt but then it'll feel better you know like I kind of go into the yeah you know check the New York Times like with that same and then there's this release you know I don't know sorry it's a merry. No I'm right with you yeah that might come on 110 and then not so I ask you all that they're shut down and 3 no. But maybe a. Thoughtful confrontation rather than these kind of like you know and then I would have these crazy rules for myself like I'm not going to look at the headlines before 10 am The morning is ruined I'm not going to turn it off and it's just another it's working like you know it's impossible to contain you know. Yeah I don't I think I mean I do all that too so I don't know exempt from the from the madness. I mean I have been thinking a lot about maggots this is part of the transformative effect is that. I don't really want to bring you guys down. But talking about the end of the species I write about just. Since I've been writing in this realm a little bit I will just say that I was actually one of the few comforts I have a very least of all that I do humans will go away I did were just such a mass I do think that part of the fear part is the feeling of fear and the feeling of emergency. You know so then Thompkins you know and others would call them strong theory right not weak theory and so strong theory and it has to be a kind of like aggressive nihilism or aggressive. Things that make you feel a sense of adrenalized emergency and that seems like it can only be responded to in very strong terms and the problem with writing especially writing books is that they kind of depend on a lot of weak theory in the sense that they depend upon slow down time perspective . Not the cycle of often not certain of the cycle of social media and I think that . And the perspective I perspire active I also mean this is where the end of the species comes in perspective like. Knowing that they're all these fires literally to be being put out in the moment but also not allowing oneself to to step apart from the kind of you know and seeing human doings in history with more perspective and to me all that only happens in the space of reading and writing which take time and they take focus and so. Is it helpful to have if I don't if I'm not doing that I do feel very lost and despaired but so long as that is something I continue to do that also having that experience in a classroom I mean is that partially also about being a teacher and responding to students and having that good like learning happen yeah I think so and I think that. Being a teacher or being a writer being anything or people occasionally might look to you and say what should we do I mean it was a year ago actually I don't know I know that I think Ethan and Emily who I know too well here there was a reading that I didn't San Francisco I think was very close to after the election maybe like 3 days or something crazy and it was really hard because that whole timing going to do readings or teaching everybody was like you know what are we doing you know I'm in the same boat with with everyone and not knowing but I do think I do like teaching in the way that I mean again it sounds repetitive but. If I can make a container space where we can I can talk with other people. And we can face some things together in the slow down time that nearly every 4th of the culture agitates to foreclose. Just time spent like we're taking right now talking. You know to me that does feel like a great service that they'll spend it with me and I spend it with them so I like that you know and you've been to you've been a teacher for a long time now and you just switched in the fall interest in it to u.s.c. . And is that an act I mean do you consider your teaching almost kind of part of your practice as a writer is that I mean or are you kind of one of those people who's sort of looking for your exit and if you could you would prefer to just be in your office at your desk all the time I mean I think that no I like teaching you know if you like teaching I look yeah I like it I definitely like it and I definitely wouldn't want to not do it. I mean I think as demands of life grow and as. The difficulty I'm just describing to you about focusing grows Certainly it becomes hard to balance your time but I do think that. You know I had I never even really decided to teach it just felt like I just felt natural you know right so. I actually have taught the art of cruelty Ok yeah and students really it's a great book to teach students get a lot out of it people I'm sure people in the audience have read it and I was revisiting it in preparation for this conversation and I wanted to ask you about Paul McCarthy. And. I'm not sure McCartney home apart because. This artist who works in many different fields and he's based in l.a. And he's been there for a long time and you know some Yeah I guess so whereas my question here I mean this is a public criticism like the I mean Francis Bacon and Paul McCarthy kind of emerges sort of touchstones in the heart of royalty is people that you you know you're learning lessons from Laura Kipnis reviewed the book in The New York Times and she called Francis Bacon my bad boyfriend I couldn't circling around here over and over the guy actually really I thought that was really fun and I was good yeah so the lab was like the very growth rate and I would say it was she did. This stuff and they can go together often but Paul McCarthy also comes in maybe he's like about Father or something like that he's kind of the Dirty Uncle maybe. One of the very most beautiful parts of the Argonauts actually when you talk about Harry reading the draft and you guys go in. And the feeling that he didn't feel beheld or held and I held in the representation and. I thought that was really just was moving Actually I have to say that was really moving to read that and then I had I had questions about your process of revision in general your editing and how you know 1st seems clear to me that you know you're such a considered writer and you're so careful and intentional but what is you know do you have a really really intense process of revision is the for. After something so radically different from the end result. I think like a lot of writers I mean maybe some people love going into the room and making their castles out of air whatever but you know again like I like to arrange things that are have already been written but that's really hard because you have to write them before you can arrange them and that's hard so I think that. Revision and writing to me are you know they're one in the same and if I manage to write any sentences down I usually start the next day by printing out what I wrote the day before in line editing it and then going back in and making all the changes and then moving forward from like Page 6 to that I write paid thinks 12 the next day I'll print out Page 6 to 12 then I'll do the same thing some other time. I will have done that so many times I will have added to it and I'm sure many of you feel like as if you're a writer you know the feeling that bad sentences are sitting on your desktop is so appalling you know what if they're like Yeah and look just like it's just yeah there's like a moral wrong to have your bad sentences be sitting around not made good and. And so I think that that's like what gets me back into writing you know each day is wanted to correct that the prong of the bad sentences I wrote before so I guess all of that is to say that you know I try and make them better. All the time and I can't really bear. You know. Whereas I know some people I have a friend who's a novelist who I love this I would do anything for this is so mazing he like will write a chapter in its own file on the computer save it the next day he'll just like put a new file chapter 7 and then write a new chapter and then save it the next chapter and then at the end you print out chapters one through $200.00 sit down and read the whole thing and kind of feel like what have I done you know like that is so many. Very relaxing to but I just like you move forward and look back but now I worry I worry over everything kind of thing that's happening over every little Yeah I think it's you know again it's kind of a holdover from poetry where in poetry you could control the whole sonnet just 14 lines so I didn't have to stay bad for very long at all you know a few passes through and but I think I kind of bring that same but you know in terms of what you're saying about bringing things to other people. I mean I like it I don't know the word you used I think you said you thought it was moving that passage of the book and that is moving to me because I think a lot of people and this is a gendered thing I think. Where people will say a lot of times like aha and that paragraph because you let your partner read it and suggest revisions it sounds like it's not really your creative project you know like you let somebody else have a say in your writing and I'm like what what planet does anybody you know any journalist we're not in journalism is different like you know any nonfiction book I mean you're always going to have. I mean your book will be legally vetted they'll be you know you might have to live with the person that you wrote about you know like you know you you you're going to have concerns of about. I mean unless you disturb ready to torch it all you know I you know. I mean you you I mean I but I do trying so give myself the freedom which I think every writer needs and can be hard to grant which is to not worry about what you write about other people and tell you have figured out your your book you know because if you're worried. While you're doing it you know. You're just small business or you know very well what are you working on now. I am. Working on a book about freedom. Small Talk that I have taken on but I notice you do you take on these really small topics Well that's what I wanted to talk about cruelty people kept saying to me I could be writing as I write a book about cruelty and people would say oh great and then I would kind of joke like I want to be able to say I wrote the book on cruelty you know and so maybe I want to say I have a good look I'm straight I maybe but I think that. A lot of books give birth to like kind of. Repressed topic in both the art of cruelty actually in the Argonauts weirdly as distinct as those 2 books are. They both were very much about well they're of cruelty was about. I was very taken by a French writer a shock rentiers book the emancipated Spectator which you probably know and the idea of kind of instead of focusing on the maker like what Paul McCarthy wants to do or make but this is where the notion of like repaired of reading or watching comes in I was very interested in a man's atory positions for the person viewing and taking things in a kind of collaging an experience of the world based on this real experience with art. As a kind of a manse of a Tory practice so that book even though it was about constriction and claustrophobia of cruelty it was trying to meet that discourse with this discourse about the emancipated spectator and then in a different way the Argonauts was very much about you know we live in a culture that has. Commonly opposed individual freedom to care for others and that Books project was in the way. Working to find emancipate Tory spaces that were not opposed to. When it got calls in ordinary devotion to your loved ones to your community to your planet you know what not so I but those 2 problems about. A kind of emancipated spectator and. This not. What possible modern models of freedom there are that oppose them selves to the encumbrance of others remain a deep interest to me that's so freedom emancipation. A few one more thing about that where you're going. Well I just finished a chapter about drugs. That helps and the chapter about drugs is about. Looking at drug writing by mostly women and people of color. In the way that all the boroughs and you know the kind of like the great pantheon of all the theft of things from the bookstore of all the kind of you know white guy. Drunk alive because. I was really interested in how those represents are so festive you know so often because they seem to represent a thing about freedom. And I was really interested in the kind of subject position of being interested in. The kind of dialectic of enslavement with addiction but also with a mandatory experience via drugs and I was curious to see how it played out with other people so I kind of went on a 2 year binge of reading a lot of memoirs and. Fiction and poetry that you really think you have in a chair and. Not talk about that the bar is well. But I was also very interested with drugs in the fact and this is the cruel fact of so many drugs that . You know we don't use them because we're. Because we're you know often we use them because because we're a human being seeking feelings of you know of exiting the enclosure of our consciousness or what it means. To be alive but the cruel paradox of drugs is that many of them have an addictive quality which is which becomes the absolute opposite of freedom so that's just one instance a that is a kind of paradox I find interesting about I can which Ok. I think it's time for questions from the audience. Right and I wanted to ask little bit more about. The idea of language falls short or the frustration of like oh there isn't a word to communicate this idea this feeling. How do you cope with that and what's your process in response. I mean I guess here I mean the the Argonauts talks a lot about that because I think I presume that language falls short or fails as a as a starting position and then you kind of get to the Samuel Beckett feel better mode and I think that. I mean I think there's a kind of there's a kind of search Robert really there's a poet who's one my favorite poets he would often say that he was trying to say something really specific with his poems it just wasn't I'll be back in 5 minutes or I have to go the bathroom you know and I love that line of his because he was trying to say like you are searching often for this thing that's very specific it just doesn't yet have the language for the thing you want to say and I think that. The line that I quote alongside the passage that opens the Argonauts is the begin Stein's line where he says I am going to get this wrong but he says you know basically he says Don't you need to go chasing after the ineffable he says because the another of Will will be contained on the other a bully in the expressed. It's so great to say one more time like the on the terrible is contained on the other of late in the Express pheno So it's kind of I think even though there's a kind of. Admission of failure from the start there's also it in mission. That. Words are more than the sum of their parts. So what I mean the things that the expression you know that. I mean that's the kind of magic to me of words is that individual senses or phrases feel paltry but we all know because we're all here and you're all of literature that when you read a book that you love you feel something much much much bigger than the individual. Senses you can't even believe how it happened I mean that's what feels like the magic and that will always be a formidable and inspiring mystery to me you know. There's questions on this and. I see it just talking about how the Argonauts is you know adequacy of language but I have to. The sentences in the are going to us are for me and I of course don't mean this as an insult there's so much more meaningfully beautiful and complex and gorgeous then and I read of course all your stuff and I love all your stuff but for whatever reason those sentences kind of broke through not just for me but sort of publicly and I was wondering as you were writing it did you feel in any way more more connected either because of the subject matter or because of your evolution as a writer that you were doing something more with with language. And again I hope I don't mean I don't mean this as an insult that's fine as long as it's always there that the last book and not the 1st Exactly right so it's all good. You know you know I didn't feel that. I didn't feel that I didn't. But I think I've lived long enough as a writer to know how I'm feeling while I'm writing has little or nothing to do with what I'm writing which is a really key thing that. To get your your feelings on the thing that you're making may not have a relationship you know so I think I felt often very cramped and very troubled while writing that book it didn't feel like a. Flight in some way. But I also felt like. How do I think you may use the word connected to me I think I felt like I was . It was pleasurable to take stock of many many tests with this kind of promiscuous citation you're describing it was pleasurable for me to take a kind of. Stock of so many things I'd read the thought about over the years and to find a way to leave them together so that was that was very satisfying but. Yeah. Questions from the back and center of the orchestra Hi I've read that you used to be maybe still are a dancer and I was wondering what your some magic experience of writing is like what's happening for you in your body when you're writing and how do you understand that connection between the word and the seller. It's a good question I mean my 1st response was miserable because. I just feel like I don't know I just it's just getting older but I just I can't believe I devoted my life to something so sedentary. Given how much as you say I love moving me as I love moving but you say I used to dance and that's true that I did spend a lot of time and in dance studios and spaces him or herself and performance and I and I. You know I live mostly amongst artists now and. You know deeply envied them both the sociality and the movement of their I mean I kind of they made the sale they part of me is like God like thank God I make are the only I have to make anybody else around to do it but I also. You know I. Even when I danced I I I thought I wanted some way when I dance and there's a lot of you know amazing r. I mean amazing dance you guys have. I've had a lot of amazing dance in the Bay Area of people who do art and text combined in different ways and I thought I kind of wanted that for a while. Some mode of dancing and speaking are combining poetry and dance but it turns out I really. Didn't want that. I think because I like to dance so much because it was. Apart from language for me and that was kind of its main a virtue but yeah no I wish that I know. I mean. The great. Convenience and hell of Google Books is now even getting up to look at something on your bookshelf has been taken away as an activity while you read now like you never have to get up from the chair. You know you don't have to go consult the source you know it's just kind of a. Endless conspiring I feel like to say. To stay sitting so I don't I don't like that aspect of writing at all you know but I do believe that the brain is a feeling organ like a you know in the brain and so much and so I think. That. I do take stock of feelings of expectation and border. Frustration you know where you feel the same things and you're right. Hi So one thing that the Argonauts in particular has made me think a lot about is. Reimagining or reinventing the structures of society whether they be care structures or language structures or structures of written expression and I think one question I have is I think one solution to feeling limited by like what is immediately available available to you in terms of examples for those structures would be to read more things or experience more things and break out of kind of you know they can and whether they can is a literary canon or is just like the examples you see before you but how do you do that what are other ways you do that or not just like finding new things because at a certain point it can be very difficult to find things. I mean I think I found a lot of pleasure. This kind of relates to what we're talking about maybe being the . A side of like figure and you're never going to be in the genius category so it's like only hilarious Larry is to like imagine the words that like I think that I have often. But there are a lot of people who don't advocate this so if you're of the kind of like Sarah med school of like don't quote dead white guys or something like I'm all for it but that said I have often really enjoyed knowing the kind of golf of my difference from a lot of writers that I admire using like the blue is modeled on Vic in science Philosophical Investigations like uses his. I stole all of his. From that book I wrote them on the index cards and then map them on to my subject matter and I think that. I guess which is to say that like that but like people were like wow this is a totally new form and I was like that's funny it's it's like a complete rip off like it's like the most copy thing I've ever kind of done but I think it felt new because. Of. That I know the sensibility of the subject matter that you're using so I guess that all of which is to say I don't often look for novelty of you know like the whole house. But I think that there can be. You know fissures and for a song that you can find that can make you know radical novelty happened they don't have to do with putting the pressure on you to to reinvent the wheel you know or to come up with something entirely new as a structure you know because everything. I mean now when you say experimental poetry you guys some of you know all of you but might have like an idea of what like like I can do a parody sketch for you of experimental poetry and you would be like oh yeah that's experimental poetry so like it already has become you know the leopards at the temple doing the same thing over again so it's not a. Is that boy right exactly you know yes it's non sequitur you know you name it so I think it's like. You can always be on in escape or on the run. But sometimes I kind of prefer to kind of turn around face the tiger what could I do with this you know as opposed to trying to find. A novel flight. Oh you're on the eve of the 2nd women's March and are you going and why or why not and what do you think of this time of attempts to overthrow these coercive structures that have been around for so long right on overthrow the course of structures that have been around for so long on here is what I say absolutely. Well. I haven't checked my flight time tomorrow back to l.a. But I believe the March is from 10 to 3 and if I get home before noon I will go for sure and my small son who was dragged all the way to do say a year ago for a very harmful as an experienced him at age 4 now he's 5 we'll see if he has a better time but he will just have to he'll have to love it again by his love because he's got these boots we bought for last year 3000 a snow that he calls his women's March boots and he's he's excited. Told me you know like I said we might have to go get us early is like where the women's March. Yeah yeah well. I think maybe I think that maybe it's for that all we have time for I just want to say thank you all and especially think thank. You in this magnificent campus and you know Brian with. This program was recorded at the north and San Francisco on January 19th 2018. These broadcasts City Arts and. In association with. Public radio San Francisco founding directors. Executive producers are highly. And Goldstein production is just and Alexandra Washington. Are technical director Steve. Post production director source. The recording engineer is. Engineering supervisor Monte Carlo. Director of Radio affiliate station Eric. Seen music composed and performed by pact. And Wallace is vice president and general manager of. City Arts in the. Issues programs are supported by grants for the arts of the San Francisco home town tax for. Additional funding for vital bomb the Warner sonic Sandra the foundation and the Mimi and feeder Haas fund the Bernardo sure foundation and the friends of city arts and actors support for recording and post production of City auction Nectars is provided by Robert manna Anderson and nickel mine. To attend a live program for nest of upcoming gas visit our website at City Art stop net City Arts dot net. Pushing the arsenic juice and cake food in public radio. Support for k.q.e.d. Comes from the world of people who are an annual gathering of wineries chefs and gays in celebration of people who are March 2nd and 3rd at the Ritz Carlton in Santa Barbara open to the public learn more at world if you know com and from Eric and Wendy Schmidt who's fun for strategic innovation supports transformative ideas that benefit humanity while protecting the natural world recognizing through science the interdependence of all living systems City Arts and lectures will be on again tomorrow morning at 2 in hour of news from b.b.c. World Service is coming up next in the Wednesday evening special this week is can do stories of black visionaries seekers and entrepreneurs it's a Black History Month special from the Kitchen Sisters and it comes on tomorrow night at 8 here on k.q.e.d. F.m. $88.00 San Francisco and k.q. We i f m $89.00 North Highlands Sacramento it's 9 pm. B.b.c. World Service It's 5 o'clock pm.