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Covid Chronicles, 4/20/20

I feel like I’ve come across Sarah Schulman’s work at just the right time. She writes with compulsion, rage, and fierce, indignant clarity, as if daring you to ask her “did you mean what you just said?” The Gentrification of the Mind, which is the book of hers that I’m reading right now, is about how the AIDS crisis bled into a material gentrification of housing and businesses in New York, but also resulted in an intellectual gentrifcation of art and politics as it brutally razed the city of a core piece of its counterculture, thousands of its most rebellious thinkers and civic actors. AIDS did this with its literal death toll, but also did this by paving the way for housing gentrification as justification for the city to replace these residents with bland bourgeois homogeneity, unaffordability, and a new purpose for art: as a backdrop for the pursuit of status reproduction rather than as a mode of expression for the most radical and courageous thinkers. 

I love how this book is so many things at once, and, as she says in the introduction, doesn’t try to be a “one big idea” scholarly book that has one overarching argument to which the chapters build up. This book is an elegy for dead friends, it’s a critical take on housing policy from a tenant activist, it’s an excoriation of historical erasure and of the recurring sanitization of dangerous ideas/movements, it’s a chronicling of important artists. Maybe most of all, it’s a free flowing narrative of the heart that is a joy to read. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 4/18/20

No sleep in Brooklyn... I suppose six weeks of sitting at home and going on the occasional walk while the world falls apart around you can quickly turn a perfectly normal human into a living ball of rage and anxiety. What to do? Drink coffee, write, bake cookies, listen to records...

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicle, 4/14/20

We pass the time playing stupid online trivia games with friends in distant places. We have quiet dinners, commenting on the food we’ve made. We stare at our screens 9-5. We go on the same walk over and over and over again -- every day! -- and maybe even see the same people. We see the same boats. Lunchbox. Urban Journey. McShiny. Spring Mallard. Sunset Crossing. We lie on the floor listening to records. We read old New Yorkers. We text silly things to our friends. 

We bake bread and eat it. We water the plants, we move the plants. I am concerned about one of my plants which hasn’t been growing new leaves (Covid?). We make rich coffee and sip it down and long forward to the next morning. We watch Planet Earth. We listen to the hammering across the street and call 311 to report it. 

I read the news relunctantly and hardly bear it. Justine listens to the radio, gets the story, keeps abreast. She listens to Brian Lehrer asking his guest to break it down. I cringe at almost everything I read. I’m waiting for the day when I can get out of here and join in activist efforts again -- of course I can already do this on the phone but it doesn’t feel the same. I am more and more interested in canvasing this summer if conditions allow it. I am still thinking about attending DSA meetings. I want to get Republican senators out of office. On my facebook feed today: a recap of Trump’s new conference last night: “When you’re the president of the United States, your authority is total.” And a comment by one of the poster’s friends: “Can you imagine what Republicans would say if Obama had said that?”

I play the guitar. I read. I cook a new thing. I check in with my parents. I check in with my grandmother. I chip away at my dissertation. I finish it? I begin to think about when and how I will defend it. Cuomo is already talking reopening the country for business. How can we do that when the surge hasn’t even hit some parts of the country? Some parts of the world? When people start to come back outside won’t they risk infection by people who are coming into the city from outside of it, who are just getting it... or by the people who are still coming down with it today, tomorrow, the next day -- we are still adding some 10,000 cases (documented) each day here in the city. Also, how are you gonna reopen the state if you don’t even have widespread testing? How will we know if we can come out if we don’t know if we have the antibodies?

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 4/13/20

Justine and I walked through Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope to Prospect Park yesterday and Justine commented that she hopes she never forgets this image of empty streets in Brooklyn on a beautiful spring Sunday, once this pandemic ends. To aid her memory I will describe how the neighborhoods look these days, and yesterday as we strode toward the park. 

No cars. Fewer bikes, fewer delivery e-bikes, fewer people riding recklessly the wrong way down streets or on sidewalks. Fewer cops. 

The odd family with two kids on scooters passing by; a stray couple walking by, talking, walking single-file (if they’re considerate) to keep a social distance from us. Very few people on the blacktop in Carroll Park. 

Most of the businesses shuttered but a few open (including pretty much all bodegas). The ones that were open often had lines out the door, with 6 feet between each person in the queue. Most of us outside wearing a bandanna or a mask. A long line outside the butcher shop; a shorter one outside the liquor/wine store and the small produce grocery. Huge line outside Whole Foods stretching all the way to the back of the parking lot near the canal. 

Quiet, birds, the wind. 

Once we got to the park it was pretty empty, maybe because it was cloudy, Justine thought. We lay down and read. The sun came out and an hour later there were people everywhere, on blankets, on the grass, just walking. The park was hot! It was about 60 degrees and breezy; I imagine ten degrees warmer and it would have been mobbed with people trying to practice social distancing while also getting in their outside time. The result will soon be a mess of people on the grass together under the guise of apart-ness. Unless they close the parks, the beach, the promenades, we are going to have throngs of people lounging around together, soon. 

At 7pm each night everyone still goes to their windows and balconies and applauds for the essential workers who haven’t changed anything in order to do the grunt labor necessary for the rest of us to eat, drink running water, have working sewage systems and electricity, etc. Maybe when everyone goes back to work some of them can reconsider how (un)important their work is to society and take on something new and more socially productive. 

De Blasio closed NYC public schools for the rest of the year; Cuomo rebuked him and said that it wasn’t de Blasio’s decision. What an asshole. 

This morning the construction company across the street has put its worker back on site, illegally. I made a 311 complaint. 

I’m baking bread and waiting for the sun to come out. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 4/10/20

Two mornings ago Bernie Sanders dropped out of the democratic presidential race, handing it officially to Joe Biden. This came the morning after the state of Wisconsin forced their primary to continue even in pandemic conditions at the mortal risk of voters because the Republican dominated legislature wanted participation to be minimal so that they could retain their majority on the State Supreme Court. Biden himself played a role in letting the primary continue, saying that conditions were safe and that there was no reason to postpone. Trump took the same stance. Sanders condemned the primary and vocalized how his campaign was not doing any GOTV mobilizing because he knew that it would be unsafe for people to go vote in person. 

When I heard the news that he’d dropped out I can’t deny that I was sad and upset about it, even though I have known for a while now that he didn’t have a chance to beat Biden and also have always believed that it would take a lot more than a Sanders presidency to make some change in this country. In some ways I think a Biden presidency and a Sanders presidency -- and a Warren presidency, for that matter -- would be interchangeable since in order for any good legislation to get through we’ll need a Democratic congress and also we’ll need lots of organizing to pressure whoever is in charge to do the right thing. Bernie as president would make it a lot easier since he and his people would be leading the charge and not have to be convinced or pressured or leveraged. Biden as president means that congress will need to be more progressive and more radical than him so that they can keep pushing him left. If we could ensure that this happened then this would still be a good outcome. Even Donald Trump as president could be pushed by a Democratic congress (house and senate) to enact good legislation. So I think congress is more important, ultimately. That said, we obviously need to get Trump out of office and now that Biden is the democratic nominee I am incredibly concerned that he does not have the support nationwide to defeat the despicable incumbent.

But all that is politics; I want to step back for a minute and think about what Bernie’s dropping out means for me. It feels pretty personal, not because I did a little campaign work for him but because this once again represents an older, more conservative generation pushing aside a younger, more courageous and more radical minded one. It feels like seniority and patriarchy and ancestry using broken and archaic yet powerful tools of the media and the electoral system to step on me and every other organizer and activist that I know. I can’t think of a single person who does social justice organizing that supports Joe Biden. Think about that. The people who are most involved in making change in this country -- who do it every day, as their job or in their spare time or just to build community -- are subordinated by a mass of people who fling punditry from their couches and that is the extent of their civic involvement (aside from voting, of course). What a fucking shame. 

This country demands change and yet most of this country does not seem to be ready for change. This paradox endures with this most recent turn of events and it is rage inducing as it means that the people whose voices continue to count are the ones who are most satisfied with how things are. Those who push for change are boxed out by those who feel good about the status quo. This morning I am raging over this as I do the laundry and bide my time before community organizing can happen again, post-pandemic. It is a shitty, shitty time. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles 4/8/20

I have been feeling down the last few days and it’s no mystery as to why. I haven’t seen any friends or talked in person with any people in my life aside from one rogue encounter with Kate in the park. Democracy is crumbling beneath us; Wisconsin held its primary even at the height of this epidemic in a power grab for state republicans and also to Joe Biden’s advantage since it would drive down voter turnout in urban areas (Biden gave the primary his own blessing which is a truly stunning act of immorality and spinelessness). Workers hustle around me to deliver people’s food, packages, mail, to fix the pipes, to keep the electricity on, while subjected to grave exploitation and of course to the virus -- and all I can do is greet them and feel guilty about it and maybe write about it on facebook. People are dying young. My parents haven’t come out of their house (except to go on solitary walks around the neighborhood) in a month. My mom misses going grocery shopping. Nobody knows if they’ve had the virus or not which means that we don’t know if it’s safe for us to get back outside and start doing community work again. 

So these are just some of the things that have happened in the past week or so that contribute to how I am feeling. It’s important to remember that all this underlying shit exists, has happened and has had an effect on me, when I’m sitting on the couch confused as to why I can’t get up / don’t want to get up / don’t want to talk to my partner about it or write about it. It’s hard out there, and it’s hard in here. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 4/4/20

Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of my dad’s cousin’s death and I had little time or brain space to devote to reflection on this tragedy -- he died at age 65 unexpectedly, collapsing during a walk. I’m still sad about his death, sad that we didn’t get to talk more. Right now in this country hundreds die of a virus every day -- a virus that could be coming for me, for all of the rest of us -- and this fact seems to render my uncle’s death almost quaint and irrelevant if I let it. But why let it? I guess I have to allow myself the luxury of being sad for one person close to me -- and to make sure I remember that collective crisis does not mean that personal tragedy is less important.

What would Bob say about the pandemic? He would be grief stricken and solemn. He would talk to his eight year-old grandson about it and share his fear and pain with him even if that didn’t seem fashionable. 

I have been avoiding thinking about how my mother won’t stop texting and calling me out of her fear that I am sick and dying with the virus (I’m not). Her relentlessness is not something I enjoy. It makes me feel anxious, angry, suffocating, and bound to her -- as though I need to report to her every hour that I’m not in the hospital on one of the last ventilators in the state of New York. I think she can worry about me without attacking me with her worry. I get that she wants to connect with me every day out of love, concern, fear... I guess I need to admit that I’m not in the same place, don’t have the same need for connection. How should I accommodate this need of hers? Is this something we need to compromise over? Is it possible to connect without being suffocated? 

I think it’s reasonable to talk on the phone every day without these conversations being occasions for her to tell me I must or must not do things -- occasions to impose rules and restrictions. Because that’s not love and support and care as far as I’m concerned, that’s just force and ultimatum. That’s dictation. Now I am the rebellious teenager again who rejects and defies his mother’s rules. To be the adult son do I ignore the need to defy and rebel and just concentrate on how upsetting it is? Do I ignore even the upsetting aspect of it and just try to have a peaceful and supportive conversation with her? That would be dutiful at least, though not really honest. Maybe honesty has to go if I’m going to be the responsible person in this relationship. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicle, 3/29/20

Things I miss most right now, in no particular order:

1. Conversations with my parents that aren’t confined to “are you okay?”

2. Having friends over for dinner; hanging out with friends elsewhere, in a group, in a small space, on a blanket in the park. 

3. Hanging out somewhere that’s not my apartment, especially at night, like in a bar or a tea shop. 

4. Going to bookstores; buying books over the counter.

5. Going to the movies; going out to eat.

6. A feeling of excitement about summer around the corner. 

7. Community activism, community organizing, community involvement of any kind... community. I don’t think we can change the world over Zoom. 

8. Outdoors in general (this is more about the weather than the virus).

9. Going to energizing talks and shows; feeling inspired by random events I end up at.

Things I don’t miss:

1. Going to work

2. Anxiety and stress around going to work

3. Loud bars; going to mediocre restaurants, especially the odd brunch invitation that I don’t feel right wiggling out of

4. Crowds, the New York bustle

5. The subway

6. Jammed roads; driving, period, and alternate side parking 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 3/28/20

We are on day whatever here in brooklyn and things don’t seem to be changing very much nationwide in terms of cases but I can already sense that people are itching to get back with their normal lives. Trump is the mouthpiece of this impulse that nothing seems too wrong so what are we doing inside our houses? It’s definitely a working class, renegade, fuck-all-precaution attitude that I feel all the time myself when I defy social norms. Trump capitalizes on the folks who feel this way and says what they are thinking. Will it help his popularity or are people wiser to his ploys even if they might feel some of what he’s saying? 

The streets are kinda empty here still but there is no shortage of people at work even in the epicenter of the pandemic. Business must go on, especially business worked by low wage blue collar workers. Props to Andrew Cuomo for at least cancelling “non-essential” construction. Will NYS govt cancel the rent as well? 

We watched How to Survive a Plague last night. Anthony Fauci is in there, back in the 80s he was a prominent CDC doctor and he is shown being wishy-washy and very diplomatic about AIDS back then. At first, in one clip, he speaks to how AIDS is a legitimate concern (Duh, but he is actually parting from official opinion at this point... Reagan wasn’t even trying to acknowledge it), but then in the second clip he’s in a meeting with some activists and hedges on the question of why the CDC isn’t being more assertive in developing more potential drugs to combat AIDS. Years later he is interview and he’s changed his tone, talking with more concern and urgency about the crisis and the need for more development -- firmly placing him within acceptable public opinion. He seems like a decent doctor whose political barometer still supercedes whatever is the right thing to do medically. That doesn’t bode well for us now as he serves as Trump’s adviser on the coronavirus crisis. 

[noncomply]

Covid chronicle 3/25/20

Bear with me on this; it takes me a while to say what other people have already said more concisely and more powerfully. 

This morning I walked out of my apartment past workers loading groceries out the back of trucks for the people who lived in the high rises above me. I passed a grocery store, a deli and a produce market where people were mopping floors, stocking bins, sitting at checkout counters, hustling to make sandwiches behind the counter. A few workers were outside one market holding doors, directing delivery loads; a woman bee-lined out of the store past them and shouted over her shoulder, “Thank you!” I walked down toward the river past sparkling new glass condos -- the doorpeople and desk workers gazed out at me. Past the ferry terminal where workers stood waiting to usher people on and off the boats that other crew members steered and cleaned, but no one boarded. 

I passed legions of builders busy on any number of projects -- this was seven in the morning and they were putting up stoplights, painting lampposts, directing traffic; they were rebuilding a pedestrian bridge, planting trees along the walkway; they were out on the docks unloading materials, they were penned in tight spaces by wooden barriers, milling back and forth with instructions; they were on rowboats in the water under the docks doing work that I knew so little about I couldn’t even name. I passed by workers sanding the tops of public tables to make them smooth. Finally, I walked back up the hill to my neighborhood and passed by one construction site after the next, all pulsing with workers putting together the next empty luxury unit, the next bayview parapet, the next security box.

Who gets to stay “safe” at home during a pandemic of inequality, and who must work the front lines? What the socially distanced don’t seem to understand is that our comfort in allowing other people to sacrifice their labor and exposure is just a convenient way to ignore how we still endanger everyone. The virus still perpetuates and spreads into the most elevated social eyries, the most remote vacation homes crammed with hoarded supplies. This crisis has shown me that our society only cares about public health so much as it doesn’t disrupt our most basic power dynamics -- which is to say, not much public health at all. What it also shows is that a system that believes it’s only subjecting some people to the poisons of precarity and disease is sorely deceived. Here in New York City, or wherever you are. 

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 3/22/20

My dad offered to send us a box of medical gloves by mail, because of his and my mom’s fears that we’re doomed here in NYC. Justine’s response -- “send them to a hospital” -- is spot on. It’s tough to face the fact that my parents care more about my health than all the other potential coronavirus victims combined; care more about saving me than making any contribution to healthcare system desperately lacking supplies and capacity for the mass of sick people they are about to receive. 

It’s depressing to think about how I could spend the rest of my life explaining to my parents why this is fucked up and why they should invest more in the public good than in their private (sons’) sustenance, and they would never really change. I’ve done this to some extent already (though I haven’t poured it on in an obnoxious, relentless way... more of just periodic articulation of my politics and a consistent declining of their foisting shit on me) and it hasn’t really gotten me anyway. Be more forceful about how I feel about this? Or just try to forget about it and focus my frustrations elsewhere...

Part of me is swept away in disbelief at the prospect of social distancing and economic shutdown for the next several months... and part of me is unconcerned because I’m not really affected, having job security (and few job obligations) until July, and also being introverted and having low rent to pay and lots of books to read other ways of amusing myself and feeling good about myself and so on. This torn-ness is something to continue to think through...

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicle 3/20/20

I talked to my mom on the phone this morning. When she picked up, her voice sounded grim. Was she okay? Was she experiencing symptoms? But then I realized that her anxious state was on account of me being in Brooklyn still. She probably didn’t sleep much last night because she was worried I was going to get the virus; had gotten it already. “You know when you were a kid it was always a serious thing when you had a chest cold,” she said, referring to how my coughs always last forever when i get a cold. I tried to assure her I was fine and that, actually, she and my dad are much more vulnerable to this disease than I am, but she wasn’t having it and kept putting it back on me. She wouldn’t let me play parent and I have to say it was annoying, even though I should be so lucky to have a mother who (1) cares so much about me and, (2) maybe more importantly right now, is healthy enough to worry more about me than I worry about her. 

The number of New York cases doubled yesterday (~4000) and then doubled again today (~7800 as of midday... probably a lot higher by the end of the day?). We are about to begin a shelter-in-place mandate starting Sunday, which won’t really change anything about the way we’ve been weathering this epidemic but indicates that the light at the end of the tunnel is still distant. I read an op-ed yesterday about how there will probably be three or four waves of social distancing, not just one (I don’t quite understand why, but i believe it). Ironically, the fact that not everyone is going to get this virus is actually going to mean that it will be around longer, since we’ll be building an immunity to it in clusters and stages rather than all at once (like with a seasonal common cold virus). All this suggests that we are stuck inside and with all of our in-person civic capacity unfulfilled for a very long time. That’s scary in the age of ultraconservative, autocratic rule in the US and means that we will need to find a way to alter power from our screens and phones, and also means we will need to make physical civic involvement safe again before the election in November. That is not a sure thing right now.

[noncomply]

covid chronicle, 3/19/20

it’s looking pretty bleak for bernie sanders but last night i was on a new york state organizing volunteers’ call with their campaign and their staff showed no sign that bernie would be letting up over the next month in preparation for the ny primary. i take that as a good omen if nothing else because sanders’ presence in the primaries holds biden accountable for taking progressive stances and also for owning up to the problems of his own ideas / platform (which bernie pushes him to acknowledge in debates). if bernie stays in the race i’ll keep making calls for him from my apartment.

yesterday afternoon i went and bought a book from greenlight bookstore by phone and then walked to pick it up. i wore my pink bandana over my face while walking through busy intersections. i paid for the book over the phone and then at the door of the shop the woman working extended her arm out with the book and i reached around the door and took it and we waved at each other through the glass and thanked each other. i’m planning on buying a book a week now that i’m not gonna be spending anything on bars, restaurants, subway rides, etc. this week’s book was The Fifth Season by n.k. jemisin -- i’ve never read anything by her and actually haven’t really read any fantasy novels since, like, high school... harry potter? i started reading it last night and promptly fell asleep.

[noncomply]

covid chronicle, 3/18/20

i read Mike Donnelly’s medium article about the inevitability of catastrophe if NYC didn’t do everything possible to shut the city down immediately; admired it for its succinct and strong writing and wondered if de Blasio and Cuomo have truly heeded its warnings. will our hospitals overflow and our doctors be overwhelmed and virus-stricken and quarantined themselves? 

the virus is coming for everyone but especially older folks. i feel like i have it (mild symptoms -- discreetly sore throat, some fatigue, the occasional headache, mucus) and will kick it without much fanfare (or I just have a weird, impotent cold) but if I cross paths with anyone older and/or more susceptible to its full impact then i pass it to them without any of us knowing it. it was stupid to work my coop shift the other day and all of us should be maintaining full social distance for weeks, months? or i suppose the other option is to just ignore the whole thing, let hundreds of thousands fall ill and possibly die. seems like a terrible idea. 

but how will we transition to democratic socialism so that we can cease to rely on markets and banks and multinational chain businesses for our wellbeing? with the covid unleashed and preventing in-person organizing we must drive systemic change through remote participation and pressure, i guess? how will we socialize healthcare, education, housing and other basic services from our couches and our apartment balconies? what call do i get on? what virtual space do i e-occupy?

[noncomply]

Covid Chronicles, 3/17/20

NYC has been shuttered and quiet for over a week now. Many of the 8 million people who live here seem to still be here but, also, many of them seem to have left. Yesterday I walked to do my coop shift around 4pm and few people were on the streets; walking back at 9pm, I encountered hardly anyone, like the main character in the Ray Bradbury story “The Pedestrian.” Every once in a while there would be a guy walking a dog; maybe someone on a bike; few cars. Come to think of it, the number of guys on electric bikes has gone way down, too. I guess no one wants to order delivery? The question is, has everyone just gone inside for covid-19 self-distancing and prolonged hibernation? or have they left town? Have folks gone to their second homes (like we did last weekend, to Justine’s friend Amy’s house in Catskill, NY)? Just how many New Yorkers have second homes? 

I worked my coop shift faithfully, and now I wonder if it was a bad idea. Rather than be a walker, they put me in charge of managing the line, and so I had to let five people into the coop every five minutes, and people would sidle up to me and ask me the same questions. Two people thought they were clever and told me that we were doing it wrong -- we should be letting as many people in as were leaving -- and even if they were right I just had no time for it and directed them inside to talk with the squad leaders if they really wanted to change it up. People got up close to my face and talked at me as though the virus concern didn’t exist. Come on people: the coronavirus can travel up to six feet between people if one person is talking at the other. To signal that I wasn’t in the mood for talking, I held up my Alice Munro book (”Dance of the Happy Shades”) and put my nose in it whenever I could, even if I wasn’t really able to read. It was cold and I had to direct traffic every few minutes. I feel for service workers who are still doing this every day because they have to keep their jobs for fear of eviction, starvation, etc. While the privileged hole up in their condos and wait out the plague for however long it takes, collecting their paychecks after a couple of conference calls (or after typing up a few pages about social studies teacher candidates for their dissertation), the rest of the city continues to subject themselves to the rampant, highly contagious disease because they have no other choice. We depend on our line managers and our cashiers and our janitors and our stockers because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to buy anything, and in the same thought we forget about them and we do nothing to shed our own social power to make things more equal. 

[noncomply]

“Severance” by Ling Ma

In “Severance,” the 2018 novel by Ling Ma, most of the Earth’s population has succumbed to Shen Fever, a fatal disease that shuts down people’s brains and causes them to repeat the simple habits most deeply ingrained in their bodies, until those bodies begin to deteriorate, fester, and eventually rot away. The first fevered Americans we see in the book are a small suburban family who drift through their dinner table ritual on endless loop. “The family seated themselves around the cherrywood dining table, decorated with a cream lace runner, anchored with a bowl holding what looked like moldy, decomposed citrus fruits.” They mumble an incoherent grace, they try to eat off empty plates, they get up, the mother collects the dishes, then she sets them again and the process begins once more. 

“As soon as she finished, she began again, unstacking plates and resetting the table. The Gowers were having dinner once more, the second of dozens of dinners they would have that night. They bowed their heads and said grace, although they likely did not speak words but animal mumblings following the same rhythm, the same cadence, like humming a favorite tune. Words are often the first to go when you are fevered.”

At the end of this scene, our protagonist, Candace Chen, watches as the small band of survivors she is traveling with puts each family member out of his or her misery with guns they’ve gathered up from the back of an abandoned Wal-Mart.

I read “Severance” during the week of July 4th, 2019, a time when Donald Trump was hosting a tank parade in celebration of the history of the U.S. military. People cheered as he confusedly recalled the glory of how soldiers in 1775 “took over airports.” I missed the parade but I did watch the “Macy’s 4th of July Spectacular” that night, where they televised the barrage of neon explosives launched over New York Harbor, set to a half-hour-long symphonic medley of 20th century hits from the big screen, including “Theme from Star Wars,” “Theme from Casablanca,” “Theme from Rocky,” “Theme from the Wizard of Oz,” ending of course with “Stars and Stripes Forever.” As we watched the fireworks our hearts soared to this mashup of Hollywood nationalism that stars all of us at home, with our families, on the couch. 

While we watched, thousands of people were being crammed into small cells after they had tried to cross the border into this country. Trump’s government could not have cared less about the squalid conditions of these Texas detainment camps; now on July 4th, he continued to shrug in indifference. Officers were ordered to remove beds from inside the cages in order to make room for more detainees. In the New York Times one Border Patrol agent, himself stinking from the stench of the migrant children’s decaying clothes, was quoted as saying he felt like he had “become a robot.” 

it was difficult to remember that this was going on, though, while the blasts rang over the Brooklyn Bridge and the movie soundtracks produced vague but powerful associations of joy and gratitude and belonging. For me, the fireworks trigger nostalgia for my childhood, the nights on the back lawn watching the sky with my dad, the town’s annual event at the park where I played soccer with my friends, picnicked with my family, then watched more fireworks launched by the fire department over the lake. The Hollywood music triggers something similar: the first time I watched a classic movie on the couch, the revelation that came with witnessing the film’s climax. The producers of the Fireworks Spectacular have managed to employ the soundtrack of my American childhood to fuel an empty patriotism that supports-by-omission Trump’s insecure jingoism and his brazen human rights violations. As appalling as it seems, there is nothing new about this; Americans, and white people especially in this country, have always used entertainment to mute the ongoing global and local destruction our tax dollars fund and our ideologies propagate. 

A dangerous buffoon’s rise to the presidency has shocked many of us into new awareness, but still, as a culture, we are exceptionally good at deferring to our rosy memories to blot out the urgency of the present and to avoid seeing how we got there. “Severance” speaks directly to this American condition, I think. Ling Ma’s fevered characters are mostly too caught up in their adoration of material objects, the imperative of empty work, and nostalgic spaces to notice that the world is collapsing all around them -- and taking them with it. But the novel is also concerned with our memory of national identity and national history -- Candace seems to have outlived most of humanity because she is so good at subduing her memory of what was. She is a Chinese American immigrant who still understands where and whom she came from, but she is adept at cutting those ties, too, so that she can face the demands of the present. This makes her unsentimental about her parents, for example, or the city she lives in, or her relationship that just ended abruptly. Throughout the book we see the pitfalls of Candace’s slash-and-burn approach to what was left behind, but we also see, in vivid gruesomeness, what happens to the people who cling to the romantic creations of their wistful minds. 

[noncomply]

“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones

File this one under Novels without a main character; Novels that complicate our understanding of the institution of slavery; Long novels that start slow but eventually you don’t want to end; Novels in which terrible things happen to good people who then do terrible things to other people making us question if there even is such a thing as good or bad people; Novels that extensively depict an oppressive system but which focus on individual agency and humanity inside of it; Novels that will one day be considered classics when more people get around to reading them; Novels in which the author has done a remarkable job writing characters whose experiences he cannot know based on his own identity; Novels that feel like you’ve lost a friend when you’ve finished reading them.

This novel has been compared to “Beloved” (Morrison), “Confessions of Nat Turner” (Styron), “Absolom, Absolom!” (Faulkner), probably others. The only book I can compare it to, though, is Marlon James’ “Book of Night Women” for the way in which the writer embraces you with his captivating, unique, inventive, glorious prose and causes you to savor every word regardless of how long it takes you to read those words. I found myself reading this book very slowly at first because I had to adjust to the care with which Jones had written every line. It’s not that Jones meant for his book to be read slowly, I think, but that there is a pacing to his ideas, sentence by sentence, that takes some getting used to. After a hundred pages or so I was reading faster because I had gotten used to that pacing, sort of the way you gradually adjust to the pace of a language you don’t regularly hear or speak. 

“The Known World” is also a gift because it helps us see why novels like “The Underground Railroad” (Whitehead) fall short. That book is creative and interesting and holds its readers in suspense as far as what will happen to the protagonist, but the detail and complexity with which Jones has fictionalized the social system that is racial capitalism in the US antebellum South utterly blows Whitehead’s work away. 

Toni Morrison is also probably a good writer for comparison to Jones, though “Song of Solomon” is the only book of hers I would hold against “The Known World” for its similar epic ambitions. 

I wonder if Jones has any other books in him. Astoundingly, he wrote TKW in only two years (after twelve years of developing the characters in his head, according to this interview), and then published his third book, “All Aunt Hagar’s Children,” only two years later. That was 2006. Thirteen years after that, we still haven’t heard anything from him. Now Jones is 68 years old. I wonder what he has been working on, if we will be able to enjoy more of his profound and beautiful fiction anytime soon.