The
lowdown on the loser class
The following critical
introduction/friendly roast was delivered at the Montreal launch of Jon
Paul Fiorentino’s fourth poetry collection, The Theory of the
Loser Class (Coach House, 2006), at the Blue Metropolis
International Literary Festival, Thursday, April 6, 2006.
A reading by Fiorentino from his new
book followed. During the opening moments of said reading, Fiorentino’s
daughter comically waddled towards her father crying, to which
Fiorentino smiled and said, "You’re ruining daddy’s
career." And we all laughed.
~
INTRODUCTION TO THEORY
OF THE LOSER CLASS
By Jason Camlot
I have looked into the Theory of the
Loser Class and have found no theory there. I refer you to footnote
eleven on Page 77 of Jon’s book for the author’s confirmation of
this assertion. QUOTE "No theory here." CLOSED QUOTE. There is
no theory, per se, just a lot of losers, and an exciting array of lyric
refraction expressing loss. And certainly that’s enough for a poetry
book dressed—handsomely dressed—as an analysis of bourgeois culture
and the function of conspicuous consumption in fin-de-siècle
Boston or New York. Still, despite the absence of a coherent theory, I’m
very proud of Jon for the great accomplishment that is his latest
collection of poems. Jon came to me for advice as he was working on the
manuscript, and I recommended a small cluster of books that I thought
would help him accomplish what he was aiming for. Among the books I told
him to consult were:
Poetry: Yes You Can! (Grades 4-8), (CHAPTERS
1 AND 2) by Jacqueline Sweeney
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (more familiarly known as the DSM-IV),
by the American Psychiatric Association (In ITS ENTIRETY)
The Anti-Depressant Fact Book: What
Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and
Luvox by Peter R. Breggin,
M.D. (ALL CHAPTERS)
My own poetry collections The
Animal Library and Attention All Typewriters, (IN THEIR
ENTIRETY)
And one of my favorite essays by
T.W. Adorno, his essay titled "Veblen’s Attack On
Culture" (translated and published in the collection entitled Prisms)
Now, given that I have been unable to
locate the theory within the Theory of the Loser Class, and given
also that among the suggestions I am certain he did read (because it
provides an epigraph for his book) is Adorno’s essay on Veblen, I
think it might be appropriate, by way of introduction, to attempt to
theorize the absence of theory in The Theory of the Loser Class,
through a selective reading of that Adorno essay in the context of Jon’s
new book. So for the next few minutes I shall conduct a mini-lecture, a
Loser Class, so to speak, on the latest work of Jon Paul Fiorentino. I
have a handout.
***
Following his summation of Veblen's
thinking as an amalgam of positivism and historical materialism, Theodor
Adorno characterized Veblen's "basic experience…as that of
pseudo-uniqueness" (78). That is, as a result of an early
sensitivity to the false pretensions toward uniqueness inherent in the
jargon of sales, Veblen came to see everything but what is sacred in his
theory—the work instinct—as sham.
Unlike Veblen’s theory, in Jon’s
work, nothing is sacred. Well, certainly not the "work
instinct", in any case. I sincerely believe that Jon has evolved
beyond "the work instinct". I believe, further, that this
remarkable evolution beyond one archaic instinct has been accompanied by
a heightening in him of several other instincts, these being the
"Alpha Male Macho Hunter Instinct", the "Check Cell Phone
for Text Messaging Instinct", the "Morrissey is Grand
Instinct", and the "Death-ly Dissatisfied With Myself
Instinct."
Veblen argued that the pseudo-realm
emerged with a shift from industry to exploitation. Industry "is
the effort that goes to create a new thing," and exploitation is
defined by Veblen (as cited in Jon’s book, page 58) as the conversion
of someone else’s industry to one’s own, newly defined ends. Rather
than rely on industry as an antidote to exploitation, Jon’s work most
interestingly and creatively explores the psychology that permeates a
culture of exploitation. In this sense, Jon is writing his own chapter
of the DSM-IV, the chapter titled "Exploitation Disorders."
The tone of Veblen’s attack on
culture is decidedly elegiac. Like Matei Calinescu's
"Kitsch-Man" who experiences the sunset as the Florida
postcard (so to speak [259]), Veblen already saw the real temples as the
false imitations (Adorno, 79), and consequently, Adorno notes, "Veblen
explains culture in terms of kitsch, and not vice-versa" (79). This
experience leads Veblen to posit everything as 'pretend' and results in
a puritanical approach to culture, an approach that hopes to wipe the
slate clean of non-productive (i.e. cultural) functions. Everything
non-productive (not industrious) Veblen posits as inherently decadent.
The Theory of the
Loser Class can be read as an extended song of lamentation, a lament
for the dead. But it is never exactly clear just what is being lamented,
what has died, in a world where everything is somehow impervious to
death, either because everything is already dead (in a bong-hit
philosophy sort of way), or because, as in American TV you never, never
say that a serial has been killed in favour of a new serial. It is
always pre-empted. We just don’t speak about things dying anymore
because that implies we might have defended them (to the death) and
perhaps even have prevented them from being killed. In loserdom we’re
well beyond such utopianism. Death, and all its pomp and circumstance,
is for winners. As Jon notes in one of the poems, "I tend toward
pre-emptive elegy." It’s in his establishment of a preemptive
elegiac mode, that Jon’s relationship to culture differs from Veblen’s.
For the present purpose, I prefer the
OED’s third definition of the verb, To Pre-Empt:
3.
To set aside (one thing in favour of another); to preclude
(something); to prevent (an occurrence); to forestall (someone).
Jon’s poetry sets aside the Paxil for
the Robot, the Robot for the joystick, the joystick for the pipedream,
the pipedream for the Photoshopped self.
His poetry precludes itself,
syntactically, at every turn, not allowing his ingrained lyrical drive
(to epiphany) and narrative drive (to comedy) to realize themselves in
the ways poetic syntax demands.
Contrary to decades of creative writing
advice, his poetry prevents things from happening. Industrious
occurrence is prevented. As in slapstick comedy, his poems combine bad
aim with exquisite timing (that’s from a poem in the book called
"Jerry Lewis With A Gun"), and result in the thing not
happening to great tragic-comic effect.
In his poetry Jon forestalls himself,
leaves himself a loser, so that he can get on with further, pressing
losses.
***
By way of conclusion, it might be
useful to turn this discussion back to Adorno's essay on Veblen for a
moment. A consideration of Adorno’s treatment of "spleen" in
Veblen's theory will help to clarify some of the issues I have raised
here.
The curious conjunction Adorno finds in
Veblen's thought is that between positivism on the one hand, and a
Rousseauistic theory of a primitive ideal state on the other (88). This
combination manifests itself in the motif of "spleen" which
permeates his work. As Adorno writes:
The observer who is guided by
spleen attempts to make the overwhelming negativity of society
commensurable with his own experience. He seeks to make tangible the
impenetrable and alien character of the whole, but it is precisely
this quality which lies beyond the grasp of direct vital experience.
The idée fixe replaces the abstract general concept in that
it rigidifies and stubbornly preserves specific limited experience.
(89)
Adorno goes on to note that spleen
attempts to create its own un-mediated experience in face of the fact of
the mediation of all experience by consumer culture. It attempts to
escape the contradiction inherent in the notion of vital experience by
positing its experience of the artificiality of contemporary
culture as a vital suffering—as 'real suffering'. In preserving (in
Veblen's case) the experience of conspicuous consumption in society as a
vital experience, conspicuous consumption itself loses its elasticity as
an abstract concept and becomes, like the Rousseauistic primitive
utopia, a static idea.
This is not how it works in The
Theory of the Loser Class. Because there is a distinct absence of
theory in Jon’s Theory, Jon does not fall prey to the same kind
of spleen that Adorno finds in Veblen. So, if I were to formulate a
thesis on this point, and perhaps a thesis is overdue, it would sounds
something like this:
While both Veblen and Fiorentino
manifest spleen in their work, Veblen’s spleen is not the same as
Fiorentino’s spleen. Their spleens are qualitatively distinct, yes,
but even more importantly, they relate to their respective spleens in
very different ways.
Veblen’s spleen is his utopia.
Fiorentino’s spleen is the labyrinth of suburban basements, discount
malls, talk show line-ups, and other reality interfaces through which he
explores a lyrical system of thought.
And this leads me to my conclusion
about the status of theory in Jon’s Theory of the Loser Class.
He has no theory, but a virus-infected system of poetic syntax with
which to tangle, crash, jump-start and twitch the nerve of a theory that
has a lot of nerve insofar as it asserts the legitimacy of some
suffering, and discounts other suffering.
The Theory of the Loser Class
is not a theory, but a system (like software) designed to render all
suffering legitimate, by communicating to us evidence (like the blisters
of the herpes virus) that we are all insufferable losers, suffering
endlessly, for real. Probably.
Your assignment for next week is to
read the first two sections of Jon’s book, and come prepared to
discuss the import of the "snivel" in his poetry.
Class is not dismissed. We will now
witness what I have tried to describe as a system of loss, in practice.
It is my pleasure to introduce our featured reader tonight, Mr. Jon Paul
Fiorentino…
~
Adorno, T.W. "Veblen's Attack on
Culture." Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Sherry Weber. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986. 75-94.
Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of
Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.
Fiorentino, Jon Paul. The Theory of
the Loser Class. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2006.
Jason Camlot is the
author (most recently) of Attention All Typewriters (DC Books,
2005). |
