Monday, August 23, 2010

Spotlight on ... Robert Glück 'Jack the Modernist' (1985)

----



'I wanted to write with a total continuity and total disjunction since I experienced the world (and myself) as continuous and infinity divided. That was my ambition for writing. Why should a work of literature be organized by one pattern of engagement? Why should a "position" be maintained regarding the size of the gaps between units of meaning? To describe how the world is organized may be the same as organizing the world. I wanted the pleasures and politics of the fragment and the pleasures and politics of story, gossip, fable and case history; the randomness of chance and a sense of inevitability; sincerity while using appropriation and pastiche. When Barrett Watten said about Jack the Modernist, "You have your cake and eat it too," I took it as a great compliment, as if my intention spoke through the book.' -- Robert Gluck


'You heard of Robert Glück? You should have. He basically started this thing called the “New Narrative” which started in the late 70s and is not so easily defined. Some say it’s gossipy but I think they miss the point with that word. It definitely is locked to sex and to the body and establishing a relationship with the reader. Of course, all books must establish a relationship with the reader in order to succeed,but maybe think of New Narrative as if the writing wants to establish a sexual relationship with the reader. This writing wants to fuck you and then tell all of its friends about what it was like fucking you. So, this is Robert Glück’s thing.' -- Vice Magazine


'Robert Glück is the author of the novels Margery Kempe (Serpent's Tail, 1994), Jack the Modernist (SeaHorse Press, 1985; Serpent's Tail, 1995), and three collections of prose and poetry: Reader (Lapis Press, 1989), Elements of a Coffee Service (Four Seasons Foundation, 1983), and Denny Smith (Clear Cut Press, 2004). He lives in San Francisco and teaches at San Francisco State University, where he is an editor of the online journal Narrativity. Through his own writing and a workshop he taught at San Francisco's Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center in the 1980s, Glück helped shape what became known as "New Narrative," a movement that included his friends and colleagues Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Kevin Killian, and Dodie Bellamy.' -- Clear Cut Press



Media


Robert Gluck 'Misbehavior 1' (9:08)


Robert Gluck & Kevin Killian 'Passing on the Pen', Part 1 (8:00)







from Fame
by Robert Gluck

There are contradictory reasons when I use "real" people in my work, and the contradictions comfort me. Any literary practice should, I think, derive from contradictory sources and motives... I name names to evoke the already-known, to make writing co-extend with the world and history, and to examine the fiction of personality, as well as the fiction of the word.... I propose self-community-story as a tonic for the loss of human scale; by naming self-community-story I participate in their disintegration, their progress from invisibility to something to be named and manipulated—to be reintegrated later in a new context, in a third term that history must provide.

Prolonged scrutiny can become an expenditure of self, a potlatch of self. I've come to experience the unreeling of interiority and sexual disclosure as such a loss, and also part of a historical trajectory. It's a writing activity that privileges the aggression of naming—an ongoing colonization of self into one's own language. Once something is named, you are in relation to it. Name the disease to cure it.

We want to see a story as we see other representations: being hiding behind appearance—that is, hiding and revealing the body. But the use of real names [in my work] reorders connections and disjunctions. I do mean fragmentation. I don't want to make the predictable distinction between story and fragmented writing. Naming names creates an open form that co-extends with the world. In a postmodern switch, it applies the open form of modernism to content by putting quote marks around the entire story, turning the story into a fragment, an example of a story. The story floats—as gossip does—between the lives of the people who are its characters, and the lives of its readers (in that thorny field of reader/writer dynamics). The problem of figure and ground becomes a social one, and some of what is existential in the content is subtracted and reintegrated in the relation between reader and writer.

... Using real names provides a relation between the writer and myself that carries some risk, like performance art. What I witness is always the same: any story hides and then reveals the body.






Jack the Modernist

'Set in the early 1980s, Robert Gluck's first novel, Jack the Modernist, has become a classic of postmodern gay fiction. Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack A paean to love and obsession, Gluck's novel explores the everyday in a language that is both intimate and lush.' -- Serpents Tail

'In this book self-exploration is so precise it becomes impersonal.' -- William Burroughs

'Robert Glück, in writing the story of Bob and Jack, writes about two individuals whose on-again, off-again affair rivets the attention of the reader. This postmodernist work requires readerly effort, but we are rewarded. Jack the Modernist makes gay people complicated, instead of the cartoons we usually are in fiction. Glück surprised me on every page with his language and his perceptions, his humor and his ironies. Do I want to be Bob? Or Jack? No. But I want the taut energy that leaps off the page whenever they appear.' -- John Treat

'Robert Gluck has found a new way of making fiction passionate. This novel is a strange, exhilarating love story rich with invention and observation.' -- Edmund White


3 excerpts


One sleepless night my mother said, 'Think about happy things.' She sat down on the edge of my bed with a tired exhaling sound. That sigh added to my list of worries-- I did not want to outlive her. She was anxious to get away, to enjoy herself, word out after a day of children, fearing the expense of a demand for intimacy. My sole drawing card was misery. Happy things? I pressed her-- what specifically did she have in mind? Apparently she also drew a blank (there I felt we were united) because she finally replied Mickey Mouse. I thought the answer dismissive and contemptible-- did she think I was going to trade real misery for a cartoon mouse? I loved her more than anyone and I assumed she loved me that way: I still want her love, it's a design in me as structural as grain in wood, an imprimatur. Didn't she know me at all? If she didn't know me, who did? She was treating me like an abstract child: I was set adrift.

*



Oh I'm the guy they call
Little Mickey Mouse.
Got my sweetie down
In the chicken house:
Neither fat nor skinny
She's the horses' whinny,
She's my little Minnie Mouse--

So far so good; a ballad in Mouse falsetto. With a few deft strokes Mickey proposes as desirability itself the beauteous Minnie, Beatrice to his Dante-- not fat not, skinny, Mickey characterizes the shapely mouse (in daring leap from mouse to horse) as a whinny, a low and gentle neigh, perhaps a call or greeting that presages further developments in the song. These terms of respect and admiration do not mask the possessive nature of Mickey's attachment. Minnie is a sweetie that Mickey has 'got'; he sings, 'She's my little Minnie Mouse' (italics mine). We may condemn Mickey's patriarchal attitude toward women, or we may simply note the generic use of possessives in romantic ballads. But I would like to suggest a third interpretation: Mickey and Minnie are so meshed, so unified in their love that they literally do belong to each other and use the possessive with the same authority as, say, Tristan and Isolde. Mickey is not insensitive or unconscious but merely responds to a fact, indeed the central fact of his existence.

But to digress a moment: as I recall Mickey sings his tribute while steering a ship up a river. This ship captain has a strangely bucolic image bank, typified by chicken houses and horses. Perhaps Disney wanted to include many walks of life in the figure of Mickey in order that his experience appear 'universal'; perhaps Disney wanted to set the rapture of the Mouses' interior lives against the awkward social realism of their trades. But Mickey makes the boat toot and whistle, he transforms it into a wind and percussion instrument; the landscape is not unwilling, it can be pummeled and drawn out like taffy, trees shimmy and spasm, the banks of the river heave and convule with sympathetic vibrations. (The conventional French seventeenth century made a map of the land of love, La Carte de Tendre. My map includes Jack's apartment, Leadville, Colorado, and the Mouses' River and Farm.)

MICKEY: When it's feeding time

For the animals
They all howl and growl
Like the cannibals,
But I turn my heel
On the hen house squeal
When I hear my little Minnie--

MINNIE: Yooooo Hooooo

So Mickey and Minnie transcend the exigencies of commerce, which Mickey characterizes as the 'howl and growl' of cannibals (a racist image in keeping with Disney ideology). The whole getting and spending world weighs less than Minnie's call to love. In the figure of Mickey we recognize Count Mosca from The Charterhouse of Parma, a man whose informing quality is capability, an intelligent man who creates a brilliant career, yet comprehends that power is a bauble. As easily as a light finger on a chin pivots a head, passion turns him away from his past and present; he abandons them in a simple gesture towards happiness when he hears his love's preemptive Yooooo Hoooo. This is Minnie's first entrance-- how beautiful she is, with her eyelashes and stylish shoes. She shakes out her truck garden like a blanket; fertility. Now we see that Minnie is the root of Mickey's Georgics; and for Minnie speech is about rivers? Everything comes alive for them-- communication sails forth-- the world is at hand when Minnie Yooooo Hooooos in wild rapport.

*



Feel better? I lie back on my bed and let my breath out. There is not so much sensation as you might think, a subtle emphasis marks the borders of my body-- hands, feet, crotch and asshole more emphatic, more receptors, more expectation. I try to picture my dead self hosting the irrepressible life of worms and maggots but my own life returns as a shadow that only makes me more aware of feelings in inner mouth and tongue, my face pushing out, itchy skin above ribs, nipples like two pots gently stirred. Small pains and irritations begin to assert themselves, dull eyestrain and a throbbing above my right eye, itchy scalp. My right ball aches a bit. Lips and toes slightly prickly as if asleep. Soles of feet tingle and I hear/feel intestinal sounds like people moving around a house avoiding each other. I sort out the fretful noises-- bird, heater, parents, electrical-- before dismissing each as having nothing to do with me. I also feel/hear my pulse, my heart through my body as it continuously gulps mouthfuls of blood like a pious cannibal. Finally the high woodwind of empty room air arches between my ears. I wear hearing on the sides of my head. Does air have anything to do with me? Inhale. My first breath has the heavy lift of an airplane taking off. I try to locate some joy there but instead it is sluggish and unwilling-- my breath does not satisfy me. Could that be true? I find that if I contract my neck muscles I can follow a stream of breath past my face and throat into my lungs where it releases a sparkle of pleasure. Can that be true? The pleasure is akin to the tension of being drunk, the body reaching toward further intoxication, but the fealing is localized and after all, pretty faint. Still, there would be an accumulation. I let out my breath again and the pleasure remains, a tension in the form of a deep hum that takes place at the same level as my breathing only next to it.
----





*

p.s. Hey. Let's see ... My back is still bothering and hampering me. If it doesn't cut me some slack soon, I'll have to see an osteopath, but I hope not. Which is to say my physical discomfort might show up in my wordage. There's a small chance that there won't be a full-fledged p.s. tomorrow. There's vague talk of maybe going on a day trip somewhere, but it's vague enough that chances are we won't. Still, if we do, I'll catch up with you on Wednesday. Being the well known worshipper of Robert Bresson that I am, I'll alert you to the current post on the poet Tom Clark's blog that includes a lot of great quotes by Bresson and images from his films. I think that's my story for the moment. ** Misanthrope, Well, if I were to get a Nobel Prize in Literature, it certainly wouldn't be for my literature, so, heck, maybe so. Logic says that since I'm quite a bit older than, oh, 90% of you at least, I'll go first. But I still have this slight hope that I'll be humanity's first immortal. Optimism as insanity. If you really do upgrade your diet, that'll probably help with some of your maladies. I know that when I'm at my skinniest, my back is at its friendliest. ** Oscar B, Nilbog. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Well, the NYT's power and use of it has always bothered me, of course, but when the occasional smart, interesting writer gets to use that power for good, and some amazing people have and do write for the Times now and then, it pleases me. Thanks very, very much for the beautiful Highsmith review. Really need to find that. ** Alan, Ha ha, 'do him', wow, hey. Oh, yes, that is a very good introductory piece re: the persecution of Roma in France. It consolidates some valuable information. Everyone, courtesy of Alan, if you've heard about the Sarkozy government's persecution and mass deportations of its Romany population, or even if you haven't, and if you want to get a basic understanding of what's going on, Alan and I recommend both that you read this piece from the Guardian. Thanks a lot, Alan. ** Syreearmwellion, Yeah, the horror film or the modern horror film at least was apparently spawned by those same detonations. There's a sort of interesting documentary about that where most of the big horror directors of the 60s, 70s are interviewed and confirm the influence. A TV thing, I think. I hear you about the problem with shows like 'Ghost Hunters' and so on, but I guess I try to fill in the blanks with my own spooked-ness while I'm watching them. On the paranormal reality-type show front, I prefer the now not-so-popular ones that overdo the eeriness like 'Scariest Places on Earth' or 'Unsolved Mysteries' or whatever that show was called where the ghost hunters were morose teenagers. Oh, yeah, Hudson Mohawke is really good, right? I've been into his stuff lately. He gigged in Paris recently, but it sold out before I knew. He did the 'Invisible Jukebox' feature in The Wire a couple of issues ago, and it was how cool and enthusiastic he came off there that got me started on his work. The 'IJ' is nice, if you can find that issue. Anyway, yeah, totally with you on his stuff. ** Sypha, It's really trippy how it took me ten years to write the GM Cycle, and people can read the whole thing in as little as a few days if they want. It's strange. I kind of like it. ** Pilgarlic, Hey. The last time my back did this -- it does this every every, oh, six months maybe -- an osteopath maneuvered the pain away in seconds. Amazing stuff. Lying on an osteopath's table is my fall-back position. Wow, that's cool about my 'SiH' getting the royal treatment at Outwrite. I'd guess there are probably only two or three stores in the South that even stock my books. I think the 'Talk Talk' coincidence is plenty cool. Coincidences are the truth. Wha? That was my back pain/ pain killer's sentence. I never brought myself to actually go to a GG Allin gig. But one time when I was living in NYC, I was meeting a friend somewhere in Soho, and, while I was waiting for him to show up, this nasty looking guy walked by, caught my eye, then stopped dead in his tracks and started a staring contest with me, very aggressive and grrr, and I let him win, and he left, and I thought, 'Boy, that was one neurotic guy,' and then I guess I saw an ad for a GG Allin gig in the Village Voice or somewhere and realized the neurotic guy had been him, and, forever after that, no matter how scary and evil, etc. Allin tried to be, I just thought he was being neurotic. ** Killer Luka, You were a hit, babe! ** Changeling, Oh, actually a cyber back jump would be very nice, if you don't mind. With roller skates maybe, if you have any. Housemaid's knee: what an embarrassing sounding malady. Well, housemaids are often on their knees washing floors or kneeling before their housemasters? So, it's like that? So MES has a lot of hair? Hm, I think maybe on one of The Fall's US tours he shaved the top of his head and combed it over just for kicks 'cos everyone I know who thinks he's a haircut faker saw The Fall on that one tour. About your question: I try to be really stingy with physical descriptions of my characters. I think physical descriptions are mostly just interference. Sometimes I over-describe them in a way that makes them even harder to picture than if I just toss off a few details. In the Cycle, I used to describe their asses in much more detail than their faces 'cos I was kind of into the idea of the ass as the body's true face. Long story. But, yeah, like I've said, I don't see my characters as distinct creatures. They're just figurative devices to move information from my mind into the readers'. Like rafts floating on the novels or the novels' brush strokes or something. I don't know these people who gave you feedback, obviously, but, based on my experience with that kind of thing, I'd guess they're parroting what they learned in school or wherever about what fiction is supposed to be. Same goes for when people want to know characters' motivations or want them to have gripping stories and so on. A lot of people's expectations are conventional and secondhand, which isn't their fault. Sometimes I have a mental image of a character in my mind and sometimes not. Sometimes I use pictures of particular people or friends as guidelines just to help me organize my thoughts. Sometimes I don't have any idea of what the characters look like. I think I like that approach best. From the work of yours that I've read, I don't think there's any problem regarding the lack of description. When I read your work, I either get some kind vague image of the characters that's plenty for my imagination, or I don't care what they look like, and I know that you'll describe them or some part of them if it's important for me to have a picture and if it's important to the work, and that if there's no description, that means it's not important. I guess I'm saying I think your instincts on that issue are very good. And I'd guess the weird feedback is a result of people pausing their imaginations because they've been told at some point that all fiction is supposed to follow one set of rules. Does that make any sense? ** Allesfliesst, Oh, shit. I never saw Christoph Schlingensief's work, but I followed him as I could and admired greatly him from afar. And you and I were just talking about the sort of work he involved himself so thoroughly in. Did you see many of his pieces? ** Brendan, Denial is half the battle, as someone said. I'd like to revisit 'Catch 22' myself. Maybe I will. Oh, I'm going to have to take a short rain check on the book suggestions. My back, its pain killer, and my brain are a fruitless combo, but I'll pass your query on in the meantime ... Everyone, Brendan would like 'suggestions for funny, dark, satirical novels in the mode of Celine, Heller, Waugh et al.' Any ideas? ** Michael_karo, Good to have you back, sir, however briefly. ** Catachrestic, LA will do that to you, man. Awesome. Where in the city are you living? If I've forgotten, forgive me. ** Eli Jurgen, Hey. I watched some more videos, and I like them a whole lot too. Merci! Do you show your in galleries or alternative spaces or I guess I just mean physical public spaces? You probably answered that on your site, but I missed it, sorry. So, do you get to live alone now, or do you need to find a non-psycho replacement? ** Little foal, You were on quite the exquisite roll here this weekend, my brilliant friend. Whoa. ** Will Decker, Actually, the spot where that picture was taken is about a twenty minute walk from Notre Dame. Just for clarity's sake, I don't hang out at Notre Dam or anywhere else for that matter hoping to see sights like that. If it were the Milkboys fella instead however, well, I'd certainly consider lingering, ha ha. Thanks for asking about my back. It's unchanged so far. Not debilitating but rather interfering. Ironically, I think my back might be rebelling against me precisely because I've been getting a lot more exercise than usual what with my friend being here and all of Paris too show him, mostly on foot. ** Paul Curran, How's Heathrow? Wait, I know the answer to that. In fact, I think Heathrow might be my least favorite airport in the world. So, the trip down under is a relative quickie, it sounds like? Safe flight, if it's impending, or safe jetlag, if it's history. ** Plexus, Hey! Welcome back! Oh, Yury would probably give me a back massage if I asked, I guess. I hadn't thought of that. Interesting. Man, I totally love your weekend. And what a gorgeous bunch of writing it coaxed out of you! Ah, acid, the king of drugs, if you ask me. The God of drugs, even. Coincidentally, there's an acid-related post coming up here on the blog later this week. Weird. Anyway, yeah, your report was awesome. Strange that I have a fondness for that reed taste. I don't think it's about wood. Maybe it was because they're kind of shaped like a knife? I mean I chew pencils, but so does everyone, right? Uh, ... right? Well, you are poet. That weekend report was full of poetry. And you're good with being economical. So, I'd say it's in the bag. I used to do that too: make little handmade books and stuff and give them to friends. When I was in 6th grade, I handmade a little magazine called 'Flunker' inspired by Mad Magazine, and sold copies to other kids for 5 cents or something. When I was 15, I found and read Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. They changed me into a different person. Pretty intense. I love being a writer. I think I'm the luckiest guy ever, etc. When you're a writer all your life, or an artist of any kind, I guess, you end up knowing and being friends and comrades with the most interesting people alive. And sometimes you can collaborate with them and use your writing to do other things than just writing books. And life's most boring rules don't apply, or not as much. And you get to totally love what you're doing, and indulge all your fantasies and work out your fucked up aspects while doing what you love, and what you do can actually inspire other people to be artists too. I mean, what other kind of life could you want? The only thing you probably have to give up is having lots and lots of money. And I don't mind that. Uh, I don't think I've ever wanted to be anything other than a writer. Everything else I get to do, like acting in that film recently, is just a cool bonus. Well, if you do the community college thing, it'll probably be interesting, and, if you don't, well, we already know that will be interesting. Thanks for all the words, man. They were great! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hey, Jeff. Haven't seen 'Wild Grass'. Loving Resnais' work, and giving 'WG' the benefit of the doubt, I would guess the misogyny is in quotation marks? I don't know. But balls out, unqualified misogyny from Resnais would greatly surprise me. ** Jeff, Hey, J! Job, awesome! Congrats to your employer. What is this job? ** _Black_Acrylic, Still not? They're taking their sweet time. Is there a back up plan or a supplementary treatment if the steroids don't do the job on their own? Very sorry to hear that, Ben. Let me know how it goes today. Love to you, my friend. ** Bernard Welt, I don't think I ever saw 'Star Gazer'. He doesn't look familiar at all. Still, sad, and RIP. ** JW Veldhoen, That was cool about the owl. And the Ariana/ Ribot gig too. I think the only Richard Ford novel I've read is 'The Sportswriter'. I remember it being pretty good. ** Steevee, 'Fact or Faked' sounds like a paranormal themed version of 'Myth Busters'. Is that right? If I could watch it, I sure would. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey, Frank! Last time we talked, I think you were going in to meet with the Strand Releasing folks the next day? Anyway, glad you're home safe and hanging in there. Sure, yeah, I'd love a catch up when you get the time. ** Statictick, Dude, don't wait too long to see the doc if the arm doesn't perk up really soon, okay? ** You-x, Hey, man! Girlfriend, bikes, river ... you sound like you're feeling a lot better, which is, you know, excellent. No Mario Kart scored as of yet. If it stops raining today, we'll probably continue the search. People don't seem to rent vgames over here very much. Buy or die. ** Right, it's late, and I've got an aspirin or two to swallow. Robert Gluck's 'Jack the Modernist' is a favorite novel of mine, so I thought I'd share it. Pretty simple. See you tomorrow, probably at length, but, if not, in short but sincerely.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)