America, quo vadis?
Oct. 3rd, 2007 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusLet's begin this textural-barometric probe into the current soul of America with something relatively benign: beige, biscuits, pumpkins, blandness, coffee and cinnamon. We're in a branch of Barnes & Noble, and I'm trying to identify what exactly it is that alienates me about the place, despite its obvious concern to draw "me" in. Is it the shabby serif faces on the bookjackets -- the hardback books have a kind of pumpkin feel; big, bland, light, pulpy -- or is it the oatmeal-butter and dark green hues everywhere, the antique-yet-plastic, old-but-new feel to the shop fittings? You feel like nothing progressive could really happen here, nothing interesting be said. Everything white, everything elegant, everything stylish and modern seems to have been banished from Barnes & Noble. There isn't a single interesting, "trustworthy" magazine on the racks, although they go on for miles. It's all about reassurance, pabulum.
Whereas a comparable bookstore in Berlin (Daussmann on the Friedrichstrasse, say) has glass staircases, Modernist atriums, halogen lights suspended on cables -- some evidence that the 20th century took place! -- here there's a careful avoidance of anything stylistically post-Victorian. Someone somewhere has decided that books are a commodity that requires a fusty, conservative ambience. Sure, there's tons of space, enormous sections dedicated to New Age and Judaica, comfy leather chairs and a cafe -- and yet for all the homeliness, I don't feel at home at all. The gatepost green and oatmeal ambience feels fusty, plastic and reactionary to me. I connect it to the fusty-comfy sets on US chat shows like Letterman, or American-Italian bistros on the Upper East Side, or the American farmhouse kitchen.
Of course New York has bookstores I do feel at home in. I like the shabby pragmatism of Strand, the new Taschen store in Soho feels elegant, fresh, sensual and contemporary (well, okay, slightly 90s retro with its big swirly psychedelic mural, but at least it's 1990s, not 1890s retro), Spoonbill and Sugartown with its books about Situationism for Williamsburg hipsters (a Barnes & Noble element provided by comfy leather chairs and two enormous cats). In the St Mark's Bookstore yesterday it seemed completely natural to run into two (Euro) friends, Jorge Colombo and Christine Rebet. Then there's Printed Matter on 10th Avenue, a place I trust almost as completely, on a stylistic level, as ProQM in Berlin. Printed Matter is a bookstore unafraid of the colour white, a bookstore that displays "Fuck for Peace" signs and allows its sales assistants to eat sugar-free breakfast cereals at the till. Who says freedom is dead in America?
It's not the margins that concern me, though -- it's the mainstream. Coming through immigration I'm subjected to a CNN discussion about whether American universities can really be "open-minded" if they marginalize conservative views. On the platform at Howard Beach JFK subway station I see my first US movie poster, and it's for The Kingdom, an action picture about an "elite FBI squad" sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate attacks on American oil personnel. The poster shows the "elite squad", weaponry brandished, in a dusty environment we can safely assume is Southern California rather than the Saudi Arabia it purports to be. One of the flak-jacketed avengers is black, another a blonde woman -- hey, elite death-squads are equal-opportunity employers! Blacks and women can be hired killers too, you know! All you need is a crack trigger finger and you too can be a "contractor" sent to deal with the Muslims! It's not a very promising start, texturally-barometrically speaking.
I remember reading, in Adorno's psychological study of the origins of fascism "The Authoritarian Personality", about a "policeman scale of interest". People with authoritarian proclivities, said Adorno and his co-researchers at UC Berkeley, tend to focus on strong father figures and have an endless fascination with dramatic scenarios involving policemen, judges and other authority figures. Walking around New York, it's impossible to forget that since 9/11 the US has become a "paranoid security state" and that private contractor, police and security staff roles have been one of the job market's fastest-growing sectors. Stepping into the Papp Theatre where I'm playing a show on the 10th, I was immediately intercepted by the now-ubiquitous American "quo vadis": "How are you doing? Is there something we can help you with?" The tone was abrupt, slightly menacing, definitely unfriendly. The speaker was a black-suited black man with a shaved head. "I'm just looking for a brochure about your upcoming events," I said, and was allowed to continue. This was the public lobby of a public theatre. The "quo vadis" seemed a little unnecessary.
Later, heading down to City Hall to buy electronic gadgets at J&R, I had to make a wide circumnavigation of Police Headquarters. This whole area -- from south Chinatown to Civic Center -- always used to be blocked off, even back in the still-Clintonian America I moved to in 2000. But now it's like a war zone, with glass boxes every few yards containing the usual hostilely-glaring, overweight security people, their belly-squeezing belts dangling with keys, walkie-talkies, handcuffs, guns. Huge concrete blocks protect police HQ from attacks by, I don't know, car bombs, chemical trucks or wheeled nuclear weapons. There's a sense that the US, despite its vast size, now has the embattled self-image of a tiny state like Israel. "We're hemmed in by people who hate us," it seems to say. "We have to be vigilant."
I come across a Joni Mitchell exhibition in Nolita. It's called Green Flag Song. Two rooms of greeny, blurry photographs of toy soldiers, big printouts of the lyrics of Joni's new album, and her songs playing quietly over the speakers. The message of this work is clear -- read the lyrics and they're all about America's current rightward drift. According to the gallery's blurb, the show is about "the historical and current strife born from aggression and fear and the consequential repetitive demise that ensues. The power of the work expresses the need for a change of consciousness." Yet even here the shadow falls -- apart from me there are just two people in the big gallery: the gabby, garrulous art dealer jabbering on her phone, and a silent hulk of a security guard, dressed in black, shaven-headed, watching to see if I suddenly make an attack on America's hard-won freedoms. I watch him back.
Whereas a comparable bookstore in Berlin (Daussmann on the Friedrichstrasse, say) has glass staircases, Modernist atriums, halogen lights suspended on cables -- some evidence that the 20th century took place! -- here there's a careful avoidance of anything stylistically post-Victorian. Someone somewhere has decided that books are a commodity that requires a fusty, conservative ambience. Sure, there's tons of space, enormous sections dedicated to New Age and Judaica, comfy leather chairs and a cafe -- and yet for all the homeliness, I don't feel at home at all. The gatepost green and oatmeal ambience feels fusty, plastic and reactionary to me. I connect it to the fusty-comfy sets on US chat shows like Letterman, or American-Italian bistros on the Upper East Side, or the American farmhouse kitchen.
Of course New York has bookstores I do feel at home in. I like the shabby pragmatism of Strand, the new Taschen store in Soho feels elegant, fresh, sensual and contemporary (well, okay, slightly 90s retro with its big swirly psychedelic mural, but at least it's 1990s, not 1890s retro), Spoonbill and Sugartown with its books about Situationism for Williamsburg hipsters (a Barnes & Noble element provided by comfy leather chairs and two enormous cats). In the St Mark's Bookstore yesterday it seemed completely natural to run into two (Euro) friends, Jorge Colombo and Christine Rebet. Then there's Printed Matter on 10th Avenue, a place I trust almost as completely, on a stylistic level, as ProQM in Berlin. Printed Matter is a bookstore unafraid of the colour white, a bookstore that displays "Fuck for Peace" signs and allows its sales assistants to eat sugar-free breakfast cereals at the till. Who says freedom is dead in America?
It's not the margins that concern me, though -- it's the mainstream. Coming through immigration I'm subjected to a CNN discussion about whether American universities can really be "open-minded" if they marginalize conservative views. On the platform at Howard Beach JFK subway station I see my first US movie poster, and it's for The Kingdom, an action picture about an "elite FBI squad" sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate attacks on American oil personnel. The poster shows the "elite squad", weaponry brandished, in a dusty environment we can safely assume is Southern California rather than the Saudi Arabia it purports to be. One of the flak-jacketed avengers is black, another a blonde woman -- hey, elite death-squads are equal-opportunity employers! Blacks and women can be hired killers too, you know! All you need is a crack trigger finger and you too can be a "contractor" sent to deal with the Muslims! It's not a very promising start, texturally-barometrically speaking.I remember reading, in Adorno's psychological study of the origins of fascism "The Authoritarian Personality", about a "policeman scale of interest". People with authoritarian proclivities, said Adorno and his co-researchers at UC Berkeley, tend to focus on strong father figures and have an endless fascination with dramatic scenarios involving policemen, judges and other authority figures. Walking around New York, it's impossible to forget that since 9/11 the US has become a "paranoid security state" and that private contractor, police and security staff roles have been one of the job market's fastest-growing sectors. Stepping into the Papp Theatre where I'm playing a show on the 10th, I was immediately intercepted by the now-ubiquitous American "quo vadis": "How are you doing? Is there something we can help you with?" The tone was abrupt, slightly menacing, definitely unfriendly. The speaker was a black-suited black man with a shaved head. "I'm just looking for a brochure about your upcoming events," I said, and was allowed to continue. This was the public lobby of a public theatre. The "quo vadis" seemed a little unnecessary.
Later, heading down to City Hall to buy electronic gadgets at J&R, I had to make a wide circumnavigation of Police Headquarters. This whole area -- from south Chinatown to Civic Center -- always used to be blocked off, even back in the still-Clintonian America I moved to in 2000. But now it's like a war zone, with glass boxes every few yards containing the usual hostilely-glaring, overweight security people, their belly-squeezing belts dangling with keys, walkie-talkies, handcuffs, guns. Huge concrete blocks protect police HQ from attacks by, I don't know, car bombs, chemical trucks or wheeled nuclear weapons. There's a sense that the US, despite its vast size, now has the embattled self-image of a tiny state like Israel. "We're hemmed in by people who hate us," it seems to say. "We have to be vigilant."
I come across a Joni Mitchell exhibition in Nolita. It's called Green Flag Song. Two rooms of greeny, blurry photographs of toy soldiers, big printouts of the lyrics of Joni's new album, and her songs playing quietly over the speakers. The message of this work is clear -- read the lyrics and they're all about America's current rightward drift. According to the gallery's blurb, the show is about "the historical and current strife born from aggression and fear and the consequential repetitive demise that ensues. The power of the work expresses the need for a change of consciousness." Yet even here the shadow falls -- apart from me there are just two people in the big gallery: the gabby, garrulous art dealer jabbering on her phone, and a silent hulk of a security guard, dressed in black, shaven-headed, watching to see if I suddenly make an attack on America's hard-won freedoms. I watch him back.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 12:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:00 pm (UTC)and it relates, properly speaking, to buildings like Philip Johnson's Chippendale-themed ATT building, from 1984:
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:08 pm (UTC)And thats also the reason Modernism never took off as it did in post WWII European reconstruction. Sleek white halogen lit spaces are too neutral for American taste. We need a little red,white and blue, a little floral wreath, some chintzy toy-block castle wallpaper in the childrens section, for example, to soothe us, to coddle us. All that white minimalism is too independent, requires a sense of individualistic taste, it leaves the imagination free to dream. American design tries to limit the dialogue. Call it Capitalist Realism.
Europeans fled fascism to America and all they got was McCarthyite reactionary witchhunts. And in now, in Neocon, evangelical land, it isnt much different, Just more guns, as you said. Great post. You'll be glad to be back in Berlin I'm sure.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:17 pm (UTC)Anyway. So many great bookstores have closed within the past ... 3 years. I hate walking into Spoonbill in Williamsburg and seeing a decent chunk my bookshelf displayed on the table. It's like a certain literary nerdiness is commodified cool. maaan. Though who knows if that's a bad thing - it's interesting seeing really straight looking girls from Long Island leaf through Bataille while waiting to get back to Manhattan on the L train.
Your New York Views
Date: 2007-10-03 02:20 pm (UTC)I am glad you are in NYC and I am going to see you perform. One good thing about this city is that things are open late. In Germany everything closes early or does not open at all. Also if you think the vibe is bad here try south of the Mason Dixon line.
Love,
Jimmy
jimmy.mcdonough@gmail.com
now now...
Date: 2007-10-03 02:22 pm (UTC)Not to spin off topic here, but aside from ersatz architectural detailing, the great irony is the fact that the 'classically-referencing' Barnes and Noble is completely detached from a classical urban environment (i.e. a pedestrian thoroughfare, facing other shops, in proportion to other buildings, with offices and apartments on top.
They're trying to build a 'power-centre' shopping mall literally around the corner from me, in a neighborhood at the foot of downtown...I proposed a Traditional Neighborhood Development with shops instead.
Re: Your New York Views
Date: 2007-10-03 02:26 pm (UTC)In Germany everything closes early or does not open at all.
Now, that's not quite the case. I always show up for things in Berlin at 10pm to find they don't happen till 4am. There's daylife, which does indeed close early, and then there's nightlife, which closes early the next morning.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 02:50 pm (UTC)hrmm...
Date: 2007-10-03 03:08 pm (UTC)Then i would communicate my findings to the entire world through countless hardware, software, and technological advances that happened to be made in that particular country.
Re: hrmm...
Date: 2007-10-03 03:59 pm (UTC)So as to get this idiotic thread over with by Godwinning it as fast as possible, let's talk about Albert Speer, Leni Riefenstahl and volkswagen instead.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 04:00 pm (UTC)Momus -
If you've lived anywhere in America other than a major city, you should know that NYC is not even close to being a barometric probe for the nation in general. In America, the smaller you go, the further you get from cities and suburbs, the more you cross into "culture country," where culture isn't on display so much as marketing or as a clashy point of difference. Some of this culture is disgusting (small town racism), but some of it is quite interesting and beautiful (immaculately preserved 17th and 18th century colonial architecture). I know you may not have the time or the means, but if you ever get the chance, you should explore the America that exists outside NYC, LA, and major cities in general. At the very least, you should not act as though your observations about NYC say anything about the rest of the country. Sure, there are chain stores everywhere, but at the same time, I've never once been questioned by a police officer where I currently live. It is no surprise that NYC is a police state after 9/11. You're silly if you think the rest of the country (even in other major cities) is the same, though.
-Max
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 04:40 pm (UTC)Hopefully.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 05:11 pm (UTC)I have had to resort to Morrisons and Sainsburys store brands to find any packet cereal which doesn't have sugar or salt.
To the tune of Yankee Doodle
Date: 2007-10-03 05:27 pm (UTC)And bought an Apple hum-ding
Promptly made a eurosneer
That we all knew was com-ing
Momus, Momus, lighten up
Momus don't be huf-fy
All this talk of pure white block
Is sounding a bit stuf-fy!
mass marketing
Date: 2007-10-03 05:34 pm (UTC)It might be the conforming effect of design space. The eye-patch, hoodee, and beard from Kuntwasser in NY is a definite lightning rod for eyeballing.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 06:21 pm (UTC)there are a lot of law enforcement guys everywhere operating under this mentality that something bad could happen at any second. i have only been to stockholm as far as european cities go but i felt incredibly laid back the whole time. no one seemed to suspect me of anything there and it felt more open like i could actually breathe. new york is so congested and everything is squeezed together..i have been there 5 times to try and like it but it's just not my taste.but there are definitely places in america where you can just relax and enjoy yourself..unfortunately most of them are in deep seclusion or in small towns that don't offer much in terms of excitement..not that you could sit in a field and light up a joint or anything..someone would probably tattletale on you
cause that is what americans do..we tattletale
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 06:26 pm (UTC)I live in the redwood forests of Northern California, and I'm gonna haveta say, NYC is (thankfully) completely unlike the America that I gnow.
Re: To the tune of Yankee Doodle
Date: 2007-10-03 06:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 07:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 07:58 pm (UTC)I've got it on authority that, in France, these people are among those most detested by non-Parisians, for the simple fact that most non-Parisians hate Paris and find it to be a disgusting cesspool, a "tourist trap" writ large. Those who travel only to Paris or London or NYC or Tokyo or Berlin, and think that their experience acts as a sort of barometric reading by which to judge "what the country is really like" are the equivalent of the retired elderly couple who sell the house and travel around in an RV for the rest of their lives touring Ripley's Believe It Or Not museums and stopping once each year at the Grand Canyon to see if it's changed lately. While this people are often thought to be highly sophisticated, they're really just practicing for retirement, when the bustling cities they cherish so much will be replaced by wax museums and other roadside curiosities.
-Max
Barnes and Borders
Date: 2007-10-03 08:14 pm (UTC)But these stores have brought huge selection and a cozy atmosphere to towns that before had no bookstores at all, or at the most little strip mall ensembles heavy on romance novels. In the end, I'd have to chalk up the rise of mega-chain bookstores as a big plus for capitalism. Plus, they have chairs.
I agree with the above commenters that it's silly to judge America by NYC. I grew up near NYC and left the area as soon as I can. It's always been a very uncomfortable, striving place.
Tattered Cover in Denver is pretty nice.
Re: Barnes and Borders
Date: 2007-10-03 08:32 pm (UTC)As far as Momus's criticism of the magazine section is concerned, I feel his pain. That's one decision the big chains seem to have made, that they're going to focus more on books and treat magazine publications as secondary to that endeavor. But the alternative is a place like Books-A-Million, which is owned by bible thumpers, and seems to have a larger selection of magazines than it does books. There is something magical about walking into that place and surveying a 30-foot wall of periodicals. But at the end of the day, can you really justify handing them your money, knowing that it might end up funding an abortion clinic bomber? Though I did think it was kind of funny that a Marquis De Sade book seemed to slip through their computerized smut-suppression system.
-Max
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 08:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 09:09 pm (UTC)-John Flesh
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 09:35 pm (UTC)It's like visiting Hong Kong and then saying "I can extrapolate about all of China from this experience alone." I know for a fact that people from Hong Kong and people from mainland China are completely fucking different, value different things, live different lives. Similarly, there is a major difference between the way things are in NYC and the way things are in the rest of the US.
The borders of understanding are much smaller and more numerous than this "national barometer" business would have us believe.
Re: To the tune of Yankee Doodle
Date: 2007-10-03 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 10:27 pm (UTC)Re: Barnes and Borders
Date: 2007-10-03 11:32 pm (UTC)But I can't say that there aren't specialty bookstores in many of those other places, or that they aren't threatened by the volume of Barnes & Borders - I'm thinking of places like Chop Suey in Richmond or J.M. Prince Books in Norfolk, just to elaborate on what I know of the parts of Virginia not within the Washington city region.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 03:14 am (UTC)If I can scrape together the money, I'm hoping to see your show on the 10th.
Thank you for your time and patience and excellent writing.
Take care, sir.
Book & Space
Date: 2007-10-04 06:38 am (UTC)In contrast, the photos of Printed Matter (http://printedmatter.org/about/index.cfm?email=&cookie1=1077376.6&return=/index.cfm) show a starkly modern arena with open floor and low barriers -- everybody sees everybody, and the bookstore is suddenly a stage. Looking at a book is now a spectacle. With the self aware ultra chic ambience, focus is taken away from the self/book relationship, and becomes a self/others/book relationship.
Places like Skylight Books (http://www.skylightbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp) in LA avoided the operating room aesthetic, while still maintaining a modern, but comfortable, feel -- while bookshops like Shakespeare & Co. (http://www.shakespeareco.org/index.htm) in Paris refuses to answer to ultra modernity, while avoiding the banality of chain bookshops.
It's not like one is looking at work in a gallery, or buying clothing -- the experience of reading a book is an inherently personal one, so shouldn't the environment reflect that in some way?
Of course, when it comes to websites, Printed Media wins. Screw meatspace psychogeography; there's nothing so satisfying as a well structured site!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 07:08 am (UTC)RIGHT?
printed matter....
Date: 2007-10-04 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 09:09 am (UTC)But if you consider it "a dumb move", then what would be the opposite? Could you write it for us?
The Violet Ray
Date: 2007-10-04 09:20 am (UTC)http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?category=Sexual+Energy+Transfer
"Mitchell has also recently completed what she considers to be “as serious a work as I’ve ever done” referring to Shine, her new album released by Hear Music, the new label formed by Starbucks Entertainment and Concord Music Group."
This kind of stuff isn't even amusing anymore.
Praise!
Date: 2007-10-04 10:17 am (UTC)I find myself amazed by the scale of your work here: the number of subjects covered, the amount of writing produced, the quality of so much of that writing, the continuous diligent effort required to continue the whole enterprise day after day after day.
I hope enough people are appreciating what you are doing.
I am certainly a very grateful reader.
Thankyou.
(From Alex- ex-cafediarist)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 01:35 pm (UTC)-Max
Re: Book & Space
Date: 2007-10-04 01:44 pm (UTC)I like them all, for different reasons. Being modern is about liking things.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 03:10 pm (UTC)Extrapolating an entire nation's culture from one city, however large, is folly. It purposefully ignores the wondrousness of human variety and invention and sets up some nice mirrors in the narrow mind box to make the thinker see infinity when he opens his tiny thought pattern. It's better to say "I know New York's culture, but not Atlanta's" and then ask questions about Atlanta to expand one's mind. Instead, you get people who, for example, come to Tokyo and then say "Japan is________," completely ignoring that Kansai folks and us Okinawans are COMPLETELY different in our patterns of thinking, our native dialects and even our preferred way to eat sashimi.
Hack through the world with a machete, indeed.
Re: Barnes and Borders
Date: 2007-10-04 03:13 pm (UTC)NOT WATCHING TV = AWESOME AS HELL
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 04:03 pm (UTC)so many speeches
we incite reaction rather than stir emotion
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 06:53 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematization
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 10:51 pm (UTC)-Max
Re: To the tune of Yankee Doodle
Date: 2007-10-07 06:05 am (UTC)He hates us for our pumpkins & cinnamon. It's october! Without pumpkins & cinnamon... why... what would come of us?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-07 06:09 am (UTC)