The Making of Amerikkkans

Camped out on Orchard Street

You could’ve gone to two camps in Manhattan this weekend. The uptown one, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, the site of the class struggle and the revolutionary illusions, with the student demonstrators and other pro-Palestine activists decolonizing themselves in the “liberated zone” against the genocidaire university administrators and the NYPD and a bunch of ghoulish Zionist counterprotestor crybullies, sleeping in the tents on the lawn in the locked-down campus, chanting utopian slogans, dancing dabke, beating drums, and so on. And then the downtown one, the 52-hour livestreamed marathon reading of Gertrude Stein’s abortive novel The Making of Americans at Earth, Dean Kissick’s new “open format culture space” on Orchard Street, the site of the avant-garde illusions, a different sort of trancelike chanting, with a lineup of dimesquareños out of Walt John Pearce’s rolodex taking turns every 20 minutes to sit in front of the stars and stripes and wrestle with the notoriously impenetrable modernist dronecore epic about “family living.”  

I got to the one I had decided on Friday evening, in time to see our girl Dasha the Marianne of the Spirit of Reaction reading and there was a crowd gathered on the street outside, in front of the four big posters in the windows with the full schedule, and these posters felt particularly striking somehow, more so than the usual party flyer, this was the full cloutbomb flyer for this little Woodstock of literary modernism. THE MAKING OF AMERICANS. And these here are the Americans being made, these here are the Americans of the all-American cloutbomb flyer, stretched out over three days, a generation over three days, a triple-header, and you know exactly when your favorite Americans will be going on in these three days, you know exactly when to go in and see our favorite Americans and leave and smoke and eat food and jerk off and get stoned and come back and see our favorite Americans and leave and do blow with Cassidy at the Coldhealing party at Sovereign House and walk to Delancey and fight random people and throw up and jerk off and come back and see our favorite Americans and leave and go to church and go meet Adam22 at his SoHo popup and go to Spicy Village and wait a long time to get a table and then finally eat there and go jerk off and come back and see our favorite Americans like Dasha the Marianne of the Spirit of Reaction reading. In America the Americans get together and read poems. I am one of the Americans being made. Americans get together and read poems on Orchard Street and Canal Street and Ludlow Street and sometimes East Broadway. And when the Americans get together to read poems on Orchard Street and Canal Street and Ludlow Street and sometimes East Broadway they make flyers and put their names on the flyers. These flyers are like poems. Sometimes they are even more important than the poems being read. The poets are the performance. Sometimes the review is the performance. Sometimes I am one of the Americans and sometimes I am not one of the Americans. Sometimes I am British like Dean. Sometimes I am Roman. Sometimes I am standing outside the performance and sometimes I am letting the performance wash over me. Sometimes I am being and living and existing and having a nationalist feeling. Sometimes I am not having a nationalist feeling. There are many millions of Americans and these are the Americans that Walt and Dean are giving us. A whole generation of Americans. And among these Americans are some of the usual downtown socialites and heirs of alt-lit, these are the Americans like Jordan Castro and Nicolette Polek and Honor Levy and Sean Thor Conroe and Genevieve Goffman and Christian Lorentzen and Peter Vack and our girl Dasha the Marianne of the Spirit of Reaction and they all read the Crumpstack to read about themselves. And then there are other Americans who have actual Wikipedia pages like Merve Emre and Lydia Davis and Ariana Reines and Joshua Cohen and Vivian Gornick and Charles Bernstein and Richard Kostelanetz and Amy Sillman and they read about themselves in more respectable publications, like Wikipedia. These are also Americans. And all these Americans are for various reasons invested in this obscure nationalist pop-up performance project, the nationalist project that is being part of a generation of poets, the nationalist project that is being part of a scene, the nationalist project that is realized by reading a book by some other cool cat who was part of a generation of poets, the nationalist project that is reading this book in front of the flag in a livestream, the nationalist project that is reading this book in front of the flag of the Spirit of ’76 in a livestream, the nationalist project that is reading this book in front of the flag of empire and genocide in a livestream, the nationalist project that is the rhythmic caress of this absurd book about the failure to write a nineteenth-century novel.

Some of the readers read fast and some of the readers read slow. Sean Thor Conroe reads slow. Then Dasha reads fast and nervous. Then Dasha leaves and a dozen people leave with her. For many hours I sit on a pillow on the ground with a copy of the massive book among the Americans sitting on pillows on the ground with copies of the massive book and we listen to the Americans read about the Hersland family and the Dehning family and it goes on for many hours about how some of them have inside of them this feeling of being living and how some of them have inside of them that feeling of being living and how some of them have inside of them a great many other kinds of feelings of being living and some of them have inside of them not so many other kinds feelings of being living and some of them have inside of them a great deal of real existence inside of them and some of them have not so great a deal of real existence inside of them and how there were many other kinds of families living then in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. And it goes on for many hours that there are many different ways of being and there are many different ways of being living and there are many different ways of thinking. Many of these ways of being have something to do with family living. Sometimes there comes to be a new word and sometimes we are then smelling. Sometimes we are then smelling and deciding about smelling. Sometimes we are thinking about smelling and sometimes we are thinking about a great many other things besides smelling. Sometimes we are smelling ourselves and sometimes we are smelling others and sometimes we are sorrowing. Sometimes we are smelling the tobacco smoke from outside and sometimes we are smelling the cannabis smoke from outside and sometimes we are smelling the vape cloud from inside. Sometimes we are smelling coffee. There are many different ways that many different ones have inside them ways of being living and ways of smelling. Once every hour or two Walt interjects with “yooooo that line was so sick” or something to that effect. He is the one true Steinhead here, he’s camping out here for the full 52 hours, and I suppose this is the sort of thing he’d spend his evenings reading from his porch on his farm in the Catskills after a long day of shooting guns and riding dirtbikes around in the woods. You’d see his tweets or IG stories and sometimes he’d read Proust and sometimes he’d read Gaddis and sometimes he’d read Stein. Books that are like enormous ranches on the frontier. I think he somewhat unironically thinks The Making of Americans is a Great American Novel. He’s the only one that thinks this. Dean and Honor don’t seem as convinced and are more interested in it as a vehicle for a Happening. As I was saying there are many different ways that many different ones have inside them ways of smelling and thinking and deciding and being living. Now we are no longer smelling and thinking and deciding and being living. Now we are sleeping and being living. Sometimes we are sleeping and having a great many illusions of sleepfulness and sometimes we are waking and having a great many illusions of wakefulness. Sometimes we are sleeping and having a great many illusions of sleepfulness and sometimes these illusions of sleepfulness are nationalist illusions. Sometimes we are sleeping and having a great many illusions of sleepfulness and sometimes these illusions of sleepfulness are illusions of family living. Sometimes we are sleeping and having a great many illusions of disillusionment. Sometimes we are sleeping and waking when the lights are dim in the middle of the night and Peter Vack is reading. Sometimes we are sleeping and waking when the lights are dim in the middle of the night and we are listening to Peter Vack’s soothing psychopathic voice. Sometimes Peter Vack is reading and he is pronouncing Hersland like Hershland. Sometimes Peter Vack is not reading. Sometimes I am reading. Sometimes I am reading along to Stein and sometimes I am reading excerpts of Peter Vack’s forthcoming book that Honor brought along for some reason. There are many many readers and many many readings and a great deal of these readers are having within themselves some kind of nationalist feeling. There are many many readers and many many readings and a great deal of these readers are having within themselves some kind of ignorant feeling. There are many many readers and many many readings and a great deal of these readers are having within themselves some feeling of disillusionment. There are many many readers and many many readings and some of these readers are from poor living and many more of these readers are from rich living. All of these readers are having within themselves some feeling of family living. I am asleep or gone for all of the passages of metatextual commentary where Stein breaks the fourth wall and goes off about the frustrations of writing, which is unfortunate. Sometimes we are coming and sometimes we are going and sometimes we are having within ourselves a revolutionary feeling. Sometimes the revolutionary feeling we are having within ourselves is the feeling of ’76 and sometimes not so often in fact quite seldom if ever the revolutionary feeling we are having within ourselves is the feeling of ’68. Usually we are not having a revolutionary feeling. Sometimes we are deciding. Sometimes we are not deciding and are instead already having been decided. Sometimes the revolutionary feeling we are feeling in living and being and being living and existing and thinking and deciding and smelling has within itself the feeling of disillusionment. There are a great many kinds of revolutionary feelings and there are a great many kinds of feelings of disillusionment. There are a great many kinds of revolutionary feelings and in each of those revolutionary feelings is a feeling of disillusionment. There are a great many kinds of revolutionary feelings and in some of those revolutionary feelings is a collaborationist feeling. There are a great many kinds of revolutionary feelings and in each of those revolutionary feelings is a feeling of family living.

On the final day as the reading gets to the book’s final section, the final 20 pages, the entire gallery joins in reading out loud, a long prayer about death and the fate of the family, which is also the fate of narrative itself, the undecidable perpetual-arriving at “coming to be a dead one.” Then it ends and everyone cheers and claps and leaves and Dean packs up the flag and the sound equipment and cleans up the camp. As I’m writing this now two days later with Gertrude Stein’s strange syntax still ringing in my head, Dasha is drawing attention to herself online by tweeting that the participants in a pro-Palestine demonstration that marched through Chinatown need to “get a life” and Tao Lin is agreeing with her from Hawaii or wherever he is and adding that the protestors need to “leave the Chinese people alone.”