Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Introduction to THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND 12/11 Launch by Pelekinesis

"Somewhere along the Bowery The Anarchist's Girlfriend walks herself, her spirit taking her body. She wants to see the sunrise..." and so this saga of NY begins.

Introduction to THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND, Excerpted in debut issue of The Portable Lower East Side

Somewhere along the Bowery, in a basement, a red-haired Irishman wears his eternal black suit. Somewhere in Chelsea, a Russian defector has a twin brother. Somewhere in midtown Manhattan, a switchboard operator is going on her night shift. She carries a little video cam. She doesn't know what it is filming. She assumes it will collage to a logical sequence of related images that will have meaning by juxtaposition. She doesn't know if this is so, but it doesn't matter; not to this girl who lived for American rock ’n’ roll blaring incongruously over a Greek coastal town. She doesn't matter, to anyone in that isolated fishing village she left at 17.

THE ANARCHIST

The Irishman works without a green card in a health foods restaurant. He likes beansprouts, nuts, and most goat cheeses. He also silkscreens posters in his basement at night. His long, white fingers are smudged with raw, red ink. The poster glows, DO YOU WANT TO KILL YOUR BOSS? It’s very prettily designed, it's graphically appealing. It ends with a handshake.

The Anarchist examines the new poster, frowning at the quality. His silkscreen is fraying. He thinks of a specialist who prints with an expensive offset lithograph machine, realizing there's a certain quality of poster you need in New York to be noticed. The specialist, who amuses the Anarchist, is fascinated by the “Spy vs. Spy” comic of the raincoated anarchist. His favorite episode is when the spy attempts to throw a bomb sticky with adhesive, ending up a very charred cartoon man. Once he embarrassed himself, by expecting the Anarchist to agree to the cartoon's subversive nature. "I mean, it's anarchistic, even if the magazine still makes money on it.”

The redhead laughed, "Anachronistic, you mean.”

THE ANARCHIST’S GIRLFRIEND

The Anarchist's Girlfriend is from Brooklyn. She's apolitical. She works as a Go-Go Dancer for sixty dollars a night. She sews unusual ideas of what people could wear, might wear, perhaps will wear, in the next century at least. She can combine textures, styles, and periods to come up with any particular feeling in a short while. This is how she “positions” her creations. The Anarchist disapproves, since he is very careful how and where he positions his posters.

"One must have the largest audience possible!” he often admonishes her, "Who will buy these?"

She always answers with conviction, ''Museums of the Future. Underneath a holographic fashion cube a small latex placard will say, ANONYMOUS DESIGNER, 1980, DATE APPROXIMATE WITH TEUTONIUM 90.”

The Anarchist's Girlfriend has short blonde hair cut like Kim Novak and a ski slope nose under the largest, softest, otherworldly eyes. Though her heart is strong, she has very thin shoulders, and delicate highly-tuned nerves. Luckily, she is blessed with second sight. When the men hoot at her Go-Go Act, she excuses their ignorance. In her mind's eye, she is wearing a demure black dress.

In accordance with her futuristic visions, she dropped her name several years ago. She told her friends, “Oh, I don't have to carry it on; several others are listed the same way.” To tell the truth, she believed there would be no such designation in the future. Presently, she preferred the privacy of being known by how people referred to her. Since they often identified her by boyfriends, she became the AG, the Anarchist’s Girlfriend. She doesn't mind the abbreviation as she treasures her friends who entrust her with all their tragedies.

SANDY

Sandy, the AG’s roommate, works on an answering service under an assumed name. She changes services every week to another area of the city. Fortunately, she is, as yet, only a personal nihilist, since her photographic mind retains much information.

Sandy records the auditory impulses of the city and the wires are long. Every tie-in has a magnate's love affair, a jilted mistress' confession that ticks off a multinational cover-up to be noted and diagnosed. Yes, Sandy knows her city and its moods. During full moons the wires go wild with people seeking absurdly definite answers from their shrinks, clients, bosses, lawyers, mothers, brothers, and lovers. Sandy prefers the graveyard shift, when the board lazily lights up in a few spots, like the windows of a high-rise during a holiday.

Sandy takes and collages photographs that hang in galleries. They show anonymous limbs, faceless or masked people in strangely objectified compositions. She pastes when her switchboard is quiet. This evening, her subjects are magazine cut-outs of glinty chrome car bodies and “Town and Country'' tweeded flesh. As she applies the glue, she wonders how best to use her video-cam's potential for arranging events. Sandy also wonders if the Anarchist can be manipulated. She knows that she controls the board. She has the right pigeonholes to stick the messages in. She cuts a hole in her collage of men and machines, tempted to go beyond art. It's a perfect square. It makes a great sunroof.

THE LLAMA

The Llama is a bald man with a broad back. His nose is flat; his cheeks are high-planed. His squint is evaluative. There is nothing of weakness in this man. There is something of self-delusion. He thinks his aim is peace through knowledge. It's really power through obligation.

The Llama’s "Denotational Church" is based on his empirical concept of the universe. The Llama experienced an epiphany on the Santa Barbara Freeway during a traffic jam. This former life insurance salesman had more in common with Saul of Tarsus than just being a merchant. Not in the desert, but on the highway, his eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth foamed and he KNEW. Yes, there, in his car, on that freeway, he thinks he received the meaning of life. THE ROAD, he could get off one ramp and onto another, pass the speed limit or respect it. His reflection in the rear view mirror became his only icon.

Saul of Tarsus was an epileptic. The Llama is not. He postulated that all his mental logic was absurd in the overwhelming reality of the traffic jam. He gave no credit to the heat, which had so effectively triggered his vision. Still, he did recall the odd light around the circumference of his eyes before he passed out. Miraculously, when he came to, he found himself on the exit ramp. Immediately, he went to Tibet for spiritual credentials from Buddhist monks and emerged several years later with certain compatible age-old credos that were nothing new to the Anarchist’s Girlfriend.

The Llama's Denotational Church offers a faith of demystification. Events have specific meanings. The truth is always in a homily. The Llama proselytizes in awkward homilies that are not important for inherent wisdom, but for implications in context. They provide a through-line to life's incomprehensible mysteries. The future can be faced as objectively as death. Fragmentation is heresy.

Denotational journalists work in a loft in Chelsea rented for the Llama by a pair of Russian twins. The paper is called "The Printed World." The Llama uses it for political influence and as a source of new membership for his church. It preaches his pragmatism. It couches his homilies in the repetitive manner so necessary to reorder the mind's perceptions.

WAYNE

Wayne can stop on a dime. He's got a snub nose and good eyes. He can smell spilled milk from three days ago. He can sight a black cat at night. Still, he uses notes to talk.

Wayne is a deaf-mute, who parks cars in a pigeon-hole lot. He's also a floater on "The Printed World." Both places are owned by the Denotational Church. Wayne is a devotee because the church eased his spiritual infirmity.

As a child, recovered from rheumatic fever, Wayne taught signing to his classmates as an elite code. He used his natural gift for mimicry as well. A popular boy, he was sought after as a man. He read gestures as speech. People found his attentions flattering; his understanding profound. Women, anxiously awaiting his notes, were careful how they shaped their syllables.

Wayne became a gifted lover, a master of tactile sensations, who would select a scent, a cheek, or the turn of a heel for an individualistic approach to sex. Making love filled him with the soundless echo of a theme. But, he demanded ultimate content in an impossible compression of time. His mind and senses split. He went to too many parties. He read too much philosophy. Temporary illusion became his only goal.

At the age of twenty, Wayne was a nail-bitten sensualist--an indecisive intellectual obsessed with impossibility. An academic career seemed inane, the job market worse, since his tolerance of boredom was very low. The Llama taught him a management system. Now, Wayne's smile rarely reflects that constant anxiety. In addition, the Llama has promised him an editorial column, when he's firm in his faith. Wayne is grateful for the Llama's techniques, but skeptical about his own potential for enlightenment. Sex, as transcendence, remains his first religion.

It was this reformed Wayne Niebold, who took a drink of light coffee. He only drank it at night. It seemed to jangle his nerves. Wayne liked the effect, especially for a task as boring as proofreading his feature, "Helpful Hints for Citizens.” Wayne compared the galleys with the corrected copy. The press proofs showed a neat line drawing of a woman in a very geometric kitchen. The pots on the stove had diagonal lines around them.

Copy read:

MOTHERS! FOR SAFETY’S SAKE, KEEP HANDLES INWARD

AWAY FROM CHILDREN’S ACCIDENTS! ! !

Wayne decided the slant was right. The Llama would like it.

Somewhere along the Bowery, the Anarchist's Girlfriend walks herself, her spirit taking her body. She wants to see the sun rise--the familiar landmarks that make her day. The lunatic, placarded Socialist is on his corner at Fourth Street. Hung around his neck are various mottos: THIS IS YOUR WORLD, NOT THEIRS. THE KABBALA IS NOT A POP SONG.

The Socialist is old and doesn't see well. He thinks she's a debater on a soapbox with wheels, giving a Pearl Harbor harangue in Hyde Park. He shouts to get in the last word, "And I reiterate my friends, we are not sufficiently accomplished for apocalypse, we are not worthy!"

The Anarchist's Girlfriend smiles compassionately at such madness. She thinks perhaps he lives in the apocalypse presently. Paranoia? She smiles to herself at the term. It sounds too much like annoyance. Gingerly, she steps over the dubious puddles in her shiny yellow boots.

Susan I. Weinstein is a writer, playwright, and painter. She is the author of 3 books, THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND, PARADISE GARDENS and TALES OF THE MER FAMILY ONYX (Pelekinesis Publishing). Susan’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines, including The Metric and The Portable Lower East Side - a literary magazine in NYU’s collection of the lower east side art and literary movement.

Her plays include the Dec 2019 performances of ETHER: The Strange Afterlife of Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at I.R.T. theater. Her play THE WAPSHOT WHATEVER: The Secret Lives of Computer Programs was at Dixon Place Mainstage in 2018. Her play Something About That Face was produced at NY’s Harold Clurman Theater. Susan lives in NYC.

Quotes about The Anarchist's Girlfriend

About The Anarchist's Girlfriend

“Uh-oh, Woody, Manhattan may be in peril. Pre-Internet, pre-Kardashian, pre ARod
New York is the setting for Susan I. Weinstein’s sneaky funny, ever-seductive,
refreshingly unconventional novel, The Anarchist’s Girlfriend. It’s quite a headspinning
read. And no wonder, for Weinstein is a boldly creative, highly visual
writer whose narrative moves with distinctive rhythms; she has a laser eye for
hypocrisy and detail, and hits you fast with lots of stuff. Best of all, her imagined
parallel universe here is occupied by a Rolodex of indelibly unique characters—
starting with AG herself—unlikely to be found elsewhere. Well, at least not on this
planet; UFOs come to mind. A truly original work.”
HOWARD ROSENBERG, FORMER LA TIMES TV CRITIC

The Anarchist's Girlfriend NEW EDITION

The Anarchist's Girlfriend by Susan I. Weinstein

Read

My rating:

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars [ 5 of 5 stars ]

The Anarchist's Girlfriend
by Susan I. Weinstein (Goodreads Author)

Carla's review

Oct 28, 2016

it was amazing

Read from October 22 to 28, 2016

This is a wildly entertaining novel-- seriously wacky, inventive and original. The plot manages to incorporate three different weird (Pynchonese) conspiracies/groups-- each well-drawn, persuasive and fresh- and naturally, they collide. The author draws their self-enclosed realities with pitch-perfect comedy; -and I loved the absence of traditional, hackneyed corporate villains, cops, etc. Also, the details of downtown arty Manhattan are sharp and funny. All in all, a joyride.

The Anarchist’s Girlfriend, a novel by Susan Weinstein; Pelekinesis Publishing Group

Known only as the AG, the anarchist’s girlfriend is a fey beauty with ESP, and an unlikely Go-Go Dancer in an out-of-the-way Brooklyn bar. The Anarchist, an Irishman who wants to fix the Irish troubles through organic food, having founded Food for Vendettas, plasters his subversive silkscreened posters all over the streets of 1980’s New York City. There is a sense of déjà vu as Sandy, the meanie of the story, sets in motion a terrorist act that will cause the country to believe in its eventual downfall, using dust as the weapon. “There will be a sigh that a catastrophe has finally occurred. Yet it’s limited in extent and duration.” The key to the anarchistic meme is effect, not result. It’s all eerily suggestive of 9/11. A deaf mute, Wayne, a con artist-like Llama, founder of the Denotational Church, and the Anarchist’s Girlfriend shape the plot in this past tense futuristic novel that taps into the absurd with sure-handed writing and a voice that does not judge but carries on quietly through downtown New York before it became real estate fodder, when artists and anarchists could still afford to roam the streets, with time to listen, to dream and to plot grandly, if naively. Susan Weinstein’s freewheeling prose, wry humor and inspired, madcap observations have created a romp of a good book.

Janyce Stefan-Cole, author of The Detective's Garden

“Having lived in the East Village in the ’80s, I can say from experience that The
Anarchist’s Girlfriend captures the spirit of the time, real and surreal. Like Balzac
and Zola, it’s the novel as social history, and like Don DeLillo, it captures that
weird parallel universe version of a place that’s frighteningly close to home. Fans
of DeLillo in particular should be attracted to this work.”

PETER CHERCHES, AUTHOR OF LIFT YOUR RIGHT ARM

“What a puzzle box of a novel. The writing is very fine-textured and funny, but
mostly beautiful. New York under siege. I guess in a way New York is under siege
every day. I loved the character of the AG and didn’t expect to. After all, there’s
that annoying trend in novels where the title is always someone’s wife or
daughter. The Pilot’s Wife, the Bonesetter’s Daughter, the Pony’s Aunt. But the AG
is like Fitzdare in The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, a beautiful book by JP
Donleavy. New York is the only city where such a story could take place.”

SALLY ECKHOFF, AUTHOR OF F*CK ART (LET’S DANCE)

“A careening and suspenseful trip through not only pre-9/11, pre-cell phone
Manhattan but into the souls of unforgettable characters...and further, into the
world of ideas. Daring to delve into philosophy, metaphysics, politics, psychology,
and even art, the author makes you think, feel, and ponder. Yet she’s never, ever
didactic, it’s all part of the compelling story: a plot to create a horrendous event,
and the love inspired by the title character—the luminous, lovely, and clairvoyant
anarchist’s girlfriend. In a way, this is also a coming of age story as even mature
characters such as the Irishman anarchist; the Llama, a heavy in a church that
will remind you of Scientology; and a deaf-mute writer make new choices for their
lives. Don’t be put off by the long cast of characters in the very beginning, or you’ll
miss the sights and smells of gritty old New York, the wonderful outfits the
anarchist’s girlfriend designs, and her apartment mate Sandy’s bizarre collage.
The writing is modern and hip; the surprises keep coming. The Anarchist’s
Girlfriend is a unique treat.”

ANN SCHWARTZ, FORMER COPY CHIEF AT GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING

AG's Bowery, Photos

Here is late 1970's early 80's view of the AG's NY. 1. Far right where van is hurtling toward Cooper Union is her block. Same building that housed the Village Voice and before that birdseed for Hartzmountain.2, Middle is Phoebe's, where the AG first met Sandy. And scene where Mayflower van stopped, epileptic driver fell out and the AG directed traffic until Emergency came. (Actually happened.). 3. Further down the Bowery flops met restaurant supply houses.

Interview w/author of THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND and link to Dec.8 Dixon Place event!

http://dixonplace.org/performances/the-anarchists-girlfriend-and-autobiography-without-words/

Interview with Susan Weinstein, author, THE ANARCHIST'S GIRLFRIEND

Today’s author interview is with Susan Weinstein, whose underground classic, THE ANARCHIST’S GIRLFRIEND is being released in a definitive new edition from Pelekinesis. The wacky novel combines themes of terrorism, metaphysics and conspiracies and I gobbled it up.

Here is some background on Susan:

Susan I. Weinstein is a writer, playwright, and painter—and a graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art. She is married and lives in NYC. Susan has made her living publicizing books on arts, social and political issues, among other topics, for mainstream, small and university presses. Her review blog is

www.notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com.

SARETT: I love writers who use comedy to address darker issues of identity and meaning -- and you do this remarkably well in The Anarchist’s Girlfriend. What’s the biggest challenge in keeping it funny?

Weinstein: Keeping a perspective and not getting lost in the dark. I think humor is perspective. There’s a Moliere quote that’s stuck in my mind. It’s something like, if you look at life with your heart it’s a tragedy. If you look at it with your mind, it’s a comedy.

SARETT: Are there any writing rules that you secretly enjoy breaking?

Weinstein: Believability and likeability. I don’t think there’s a good writer who has those in mind or is sure what they mean, when they get down to work. Write what you know is another shibboleth. A person may understand what it’s like to live on Mars, without knowing how they know that. I think Ursula LeGuin has debunked quite a few rules.

SARETT: You’ve mentioned that Dostoyevsky's The Idiot prompted your invention of the other-worldly Anarchist’s Girlfriend. As I read, many of these characters seemed like people I’d met in downtown Manhattan. What was the mix of real vs. invented?

Weinstein: I lived in a Bowery loft down the street from Nan Goldin. One of her roommates, Jan, drew incredible comic strips and made clothes of the future. An Irish Anarchist silkscreened peace posters in a basement down the street. Mr. Dio was real, as was the Arizona Dust. I met him on a temp job. (He called me into his office to confess his fears that the dust used to store missiles would misfire.) The Llama is a composite with a good deal of Werner Erhard. Wes Mavine is based on an artist/businessman, whom I threw a broom at, after he fired me.

As for Sandy: I worked as a switchboard operator. My clients did include a church suicide prevention center, a prostitution ring, a dog grooming place. I once was crossing the street when a van stopped and the driver fell out in an epileptic fit. I directed traffic, as did the Anarchist's Girlfriend.

SARETT: You poke holes though pseudo-spiritualism, yet there's no doubt that the Anarchist's Girlfriend has psychic ability. Do you believe in such powers or is this a literary conceit?

Weinstein: Both. I believe some people have abilities we call psychic. I think they are often stronger in childhood and diminish. I think these abilities are based on science we don’t understand. The Maimonides Dream Institute in the late 1960’s proved the existence of dream telepathy—these experiments were published by Penguin. I read it because I experienced this as an adolescent. I dreamed a series of pop songs, before they came out!

SARETT: The wacky humor, and inventive plotting of the novel reminded me of Thomas Pynchon. Were you a fan of his? Other stylistic muses?

Weinstein: I read some Pynchon but I read all of John Dos Passos's USA Trilogy. The character, The Anarchist's Girlfriend, is a kind of blond descendent of Nana and Sister Carrie, though her soul's akin to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I like Bret Harte's Western humor in relating tragic events. Then there is science fiction: Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint and Theodore Sturgeon's IT.

SARETT: The novel is set in the New York of the early eighties, and yet it seems remarkably pertinent to our current obsessions with terrorism. If you were setting today, what changes (aside from sky high rents), would you envision for the story?

Weinstein: The New York of 2016 is far less idiosyncratic, more collective, hive-like than before. Today, every terrorist act seems calculated-- most are players with a larger cultural agenda. Now I might show how cell phones and social media affect thinking. For instance, a desperate personal act like the Anarchist’s, would not be attempted in his insular way with no intention of hurting anyone. Similarly, Sandy’s operation would be a different grandiose project. She might be a career oriented performance artist—and the outcome of her operation would be subverted by her "contacts." The Anarchist's Girlfriend might be a fashion muse, the Anarchist, a designer of brand logos, Wayne a news blogger.

SARETT: Your characters have such detailed, rich lives—it must have been difficult to let them go. Do you ever wonder about their fates? Did you contemplate a sequel?

Weinstein: I am attached to these characters. But they occupy a specific time and place. The Anarchist's Girlfriend's passage is from innocence to maturity. And all the characters experience a crucial passage. The ending shows the shape of some futures--Wayne's, the AG, The Anarchist, The Llama and Sandy. I can imagine them waking up in our time in the altered roles I described but no sequel.

SARETT: This novel has an interesting publishing history--colorful in itself. Tell us a little about its evolution. Is the new version revised?

Weinstein: I read and performed chapters of this novel in art bars/clubs and at marathon benefits for zines. It evolved slowly over several years. The introduction appeared in the 1984 debut issue of "The Portable Lower East Side," now in NYU’s collection. The evolving MS attracted the notice of several notable editors, but was never picked up. Years later, I gave an editor my ONLY copy (by then on unplayable diskettes.) She loved it, but not for her press. Worse yet, she had trashed it (assuming no one was idiotic enough to send an original.) I got the box before the trash was picked up! 2000's, Eat Your Serial Press published it, but it was not a "professional" launch.

Now, finally, the book is getting a proper release with a small, literary press. The Pelekinesis book is a new edition—edited, with a new preface and visuals.

SARETT: I’m always seeking new (or forgotten) writers. Any books that you’d like recommend to our blog readers?

Weinstein:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Writing Across the Landscape

Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka selected and translated by Peter Wortsman

Edith Nesbit: her books inspired Lewis' Narnia series and The Wizard of Oz books. Her fantasy is wise about innocence. The Story of The Story of the Amulet, 5 Children and IT, The Magic City

Don DeLillo: Running Dog, Ratner’s Star, The Names.

SARETT: What’s up next? Any projects in the works?

Weinstein: I am finishing new material for the 2017 New Editions: Paradise Gardens, which takes place in 2050 on the Earth's surface and 3011 underground; and Tales of The Mer Family Onyx: Mermaid Stories on Land and Under the Sea. I have a new novel based on blacked-out v-mail-- plus a play to finish and marketing of another, "The Wapshot Whatever."

Learn more about Susan:

Facebook Page

Twitter @swpubrel

Susan's Blog

There is an event on December 8th. Learn about it here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1222209531134926/

https://www.facebook.com/theanarchistsgirlfriendnewedition/

ORDER from Pelekenesis here

ALSO available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon