It began with wandering...

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“It began with wandering. We rejected the idea of a destination. We thought of such wandering as equivalent to having a light touch. Yet there was also another aspect: we were not prepared.”

(I’ve decided to serialize my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever on my Patreon. The above lines are from the second instalment. For the indefinite future all posts will be free, so there's no reason not to follow it here.)



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Metonymy Press anthologies and fundraiser

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Metonymy Press is one of my all time favourite publishers. You can preorder their two new anthologies Sharp Pink Claws and at the same time help support them! Find out more here: https://gogetfunding.com/metonymy-press-needs-your-support/


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Inventory of novels I recently started but couldn't finish

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Over the past five years, while continuing to work on my final trilogy (including Faithful Unbeliever which I'm currently serializing on my Patreon), I've also started a number of new novels that I just as quickly abandoned. (Each time I posted sections of them on social media, which is perhaps the main point.) When this has happened in the past, certain aspects of these unwritten books eventually end up in the book I do write, in both explicit and implicit ways.

I thought I would make a brief inventory of these failed attempts to see if, by writing about them in order, there is anything useful for me to learn:

Jealous Friend
A novel about an artist who is jealous of another artist. This is as far as I got: "Most of the time I don’t think about it. A year will have gone by, two years, three, and I won’t have considered the matter even once. But then there are other years that don’t pass so smoothly. This was one of those other years. It wasn’t anything specific that set me back on this once again wrong path. And this wasn’t anywhere near the worst time. But I truly thought I had let it go. So I was disappointed with myself, disappointed to find myself back in this particular mental space. I had escaped it before and would escape it again. But not quite yet. Then again, maybe there was something that had brought me here. A thought. Something that had occurred to me in a flash. Something I’d done to myself."

Jacob’s in a State of Decimation
Another attempt in a long line of attempts to write a fragmentary, autobiographical novel. An excerpt: "I chose the title Jacob’s in a State of Decimation because I thought it could be some kind of commercial suicide. It is a line from a Destroyer song. Because it is a line from a Destroyer song it seems only reasonable that the theme of this book becomes music. I really love music. In the past I have loved it so much I could barely bring myself to write about it. However, when I find myself in a state of decimation, music is where I go to help myself through." I was also thinking this could be a book imagining what my life would have been like if I had stayed in Toronto and never moved to Montreal.

The Fervour of the Newly Converted
An attempt to write a detective novel that takes place in a world without prisons. This idea has now appeared in many of my unfinished novels in one form or another. It has also had many different titles, including Desire Without Expectation (a title I've now used for many different unfinished books which will also be the title of my next published book forthcoming in 2027.). It often connects to the line: "To try, in some way, to break into my own writing style and damage it. To find the necessary balance between damage and healing. To more fully consider the many overlaps between making and unlearning." I also wrote: "A detective novel that takes place in a world without prisons, a detective novel with a twist and the twist is: there is no crime and no detective. A cross between a detective novel and a book-length poem."

Know Me Better Than I Know Myself
To avoid confusion, I am now calling this unfinished novel Know Me Better Than I Know Myself (though it was also previously called Desire Without Expectation) The short description I wrote at the time was: "Know Me Better Than I Know Myself is nothing if not hybrid. A cross between a diary, an essay, a poem, and a novel. This is not the book Jacob Wren set out to write, but rather the book he wrote in spite of himself. As he writes: “The world is a mess. And so am I. And so is this book.” And yet there are so many themes and (unfinished) stories." I often start writing these fragmented, autobiographical novels and then give up. I find them interesting for about ten pages but then get bored writing about my own life. Excerpts of this work were published in atmospheric quarterly, the International Times and a chapbook published by above/ground press.

One Yes & Many Know
A novel about an artist who decides to sell out. It was mostly just this one paragraph: "It would be like a Faust story, but instead of making a deal with the devil I would make a deal with myself. Up until now, I’d fully dedicated myself to art, and to living art ethically. But now something had changed. I was dissatisfied, and my dissatisfaction suddenly had a possible solution landing directly in the middle of it, as unexpected as a UFO. (Though hadn’t I always said: it’s my nature to be dissatisfied.) There was a success that had eluded me for as long as I could remember. Was my inability to achieve it due to some shortcoming in my work, or was it only because I’d never really tried? What would it mean to reach for the brass ring, and not stop reaching until it was fully in my grasp? I didn’t know but if there was ever a time to find out, it was now. I wasn’t planning to do so at the expense of anyone else, didn’t believe that would be necessary. But I was planning to focus on myself, on my own trajectory. A trajectory that was going to be convincingly upward. At all costs. This is what I began to repeatedly tell myself. What quickly became almost an obsession, taking over my life, while at the same time realizing I didn’t know much about success or how to achieve it."

The Biography
Inspired by people writing to me to say that the Luigi Mangione story reminded them of my 2016 novel Rich and Poor, this was going to be a strange kind of sequel. In it there is an author who's written a novel about a man who washes dishes for a living and decides to kill a billionaire as a political act. He is approached by a real life billionaire and asked to write the billionaire's biography. (I did finish the first chapter, which I think would work well as a stand alone short story, so I should probably try to get it published somewhere.) At the end of the first chapter someone kills the biography-subject-billionaire, and in the second chapter I was planning to have the assassin show up on the author's doorstep seeking shelter. I was thinking the rest of the book could be the author and assassin on the run. It seemed to me that all of this would work well, but I also felt I was writing a book I had already written, and I always prefer to try writing something completely different. One other thing: I was thinking of naming the author in the book Wolfgang Wren.

Grand Meeting of Failures
A novel about a group of people who try to start an art movement. I recently posted excerpts of it here and here. But I quickly realized I had no idea what the art movement could be, and if it wasn't something convincing (or at least convincing to me) I felt the book wouldn't get very far. As well, I feel I write too much about art, and I find my books more interesting when art is only one aspect of the narrative (since in some way all my books are about the relation between art and politics.) There were also a series of art movements in my novel Polyamorous Love Song, and I don't really like repeating myself. Though there will likely be some kind of art movements in my future books, it's a topic I can't seem to stay away from.

Money Selling Poison
This was an idea from only yesterday. I posted the opening here. I suppose the idea was to write my own version of Catcher in the Rye. Two sentences from my notes: "The “phonies” don’t know that capitalism is already over." "Just to be clear, I know that “Jacob Wren rewriting Catcher in the Rye to make it more woke” is a completely bonkers idea." From the opening it doesn't seem much like Catcher in the Rye, more like a book about going back to school. I like the opening but, the more I think about it, the more I feel I don't really want to write about school. Yet I'm clearly not certain what it is I do want to write about.

Most of the above ideas lasted for at least a couple of weeks, but Money Selling Poison lasted for less than twenty-four hours, which is perhaps what inspired me to take this inventory. Try to figure out if there's any through-line running through all these different ideas, and if there's some way I can use this through-line as an arrow pointing me in the right direction.

This all reminds me of an earlier moment of my writing life, slightly over ten years ago, when I also began a series of novels that I started but couldn't finish. At the time I posted excerpts of them as follows:

I want to start again (possible opening for a new book.)
Excerpt from I Want To Start Again
Past, Present, Future, Etc. / Excerpt #2
Past, Present, Future, Etc. / Excerpt #3
The Great Fire of Slander -- (yet another attempt at a new novel)
My Apologies

And yes, someday I am thinking of taking all of these unfinished fragments and putting them together as some kind of book of unfinished books. But for now, I feel I need to keep writing new books, since some days it seems to me that writing these novels is the only thing keeping me sane (though it obviously doesn't keep me all that sane.)

Two final thoughts, things I've posted in the past:

Between writing novels, I attempt to start writing new novels, many false starts. Why does one of the starts eventually take while the others don't? Not a reason but a feeling. Mostly a feeling that I don't know where it's going but I want to find out.

Writing the first thirty pages of a new book and then completely abandoning it seems - if the frequency I have done so is any indication - to be absolutely my favourite genre of writing. (Though for many of these ideas it ended up being a lot less than thirty pages.)




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Money Selling Poison

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"I was feeling bitter and washed up so I decided to go back to school. Many people I knew were going back to school around that time. One foot pressing down hard on the brakes while, at the exact same time, the other foot presses down hard on the gas. To employ a driving metaphor, that is what my life is like. But I don’t drive. In going back to school I was hoping to at least lighten my foot on the brake. I was older than the other students, but apparently came across younger than my age, so the generational divide often went unnoticed or at least unremarked. Nonetheless I felt it. Some days it was the only thing I felt while other days I set it aside. Each day I got up and went to class. I had decided to take all of the classes in the hope at least a few might interest me.

I was also trying to make friends. Trying to figure out how to access my charm. I knew, in certain situations in the past, I’d been charming, but could I do it here at school and on purpose? It was, in many ways, a time of starting over. The school itself was a rather unusual place. It prided itself on how few students were admitted, falsely aligning scarcity with value. Yet this falsehood had also worked on me, since the reason I applied for the scholarship was in the hope of spending time amongst people who were more brilliant than those I’d previously known. In the hopes that being accepted might mean I was also one of the brilliant ones. Since there was always some part of me that believed I already was (alongside some part of me that painfully doubted this fact.)

The acceptance email was formulaic yet meant I could afford to attend. Questions concerning money were the main reason many were deciding to go back to school, their decision contingent on funding. A dreamed of few years of respite from the harsh realities of low wages, of underpayment that subsidized a few more yachts and mansions for the ever-growing ruling class. Every year there were more mansions which meant more tent cities. I didn’t honestly think I’d end up in a tent, but I also wasn’t anticipating any great, undeniable success lying in wait for me along my future path. Like many people at the time, I found it difficult to imagine a future path. School would be a way to postpone the question, the inevitable, not indefinitely but for two full years. A band-aid solution I was hoping might unlock a more substantial one.

You might be surprised to hear that my charm did not immediately rise to the challenge. But everything in this life is a work-in-progress."

- From another attempt at an opening of a new novel, this one tentatively entitled Money Selling Poison



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A story about a soldier who...

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“A story about a soldier who, when ordered to fire at the enemy, instead turns around and shoots his commanding officer dead. A clear act of treason followed by the other soldiers spontaneously bursting into applause.”

I’ve decided to serialize my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever on my Patreon. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content. The above lines are from the first instalment.

Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.

You can find it here.


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Faithful Unbeliever on Patreon

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I've decided to serialize my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever on Patreon. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow: https://www.patreon.com/c/jacob_wren_writer

Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.


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Two passages from Tell Them I Said No by Martin Herbert

Two passages from Tell Them I Said No by Martin Herbert:


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“She quit solo shows at the age of forty, the point when, in recent decades, many artists’ profiles have dipped because they’re somewhat familiar, not the new kid on the block, exploring variation rather than innovation. The art world likes hot young artists and it likes reviving older ones after a few decades in the wilderness, but it doesn’t, as a rule, favor artists between about the ages of forty and sixty. Cady Noland, though, pointedly ceased production at the top of her game, which had the effect of ensuring a scarcity market for what she had already made.”


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“Concerning those who don’t leave, what one longs for – or what this writer, who sees too many exhibitions that are blatantly products of the studio treadmill, which circularly pay for the assistants and the fair-booth acreage, longs for – is some tactical thinking. No artist needs to undertake a half-dozen solo shows per year, plus fairs, plus a continual side salad of group shows. Artists who do this, given the unassailable fact that most of them are not modern-day Picassos, will in most cases burn out and deliver diminishing returns in the meantime. One wishes, however vainly – one writes, at least in part, to accrue useful examples of such – for artists to make statements when necessary and be silent when not. We have no shortage of art, or of galleries, and, as Mark Twain once said, 'No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.'”


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"men are reading less and less"

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"According to a recent article in the New York Times, men are reading less and less. Yet fiction is one of life's greatest pleasures. Why not rediscover the joy of reading with this novel by a Canadian author?"

Wondering how my book made it into 15 idées cadeaux pour tous les hommes sur votre liste in French Elle. "From retro gadgets to stylish apparel, these undeniably cool gifts are sure to delight." EDIT: I just realized it is also in the English version 15 Gift Ideas For Every Man On Your List. (Which makes the entire thing only slightly less strange.)

Another page from the novel-in-progress Grand Meeting of Failures

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The reason art movements were prevalent during the twentieth century is because political movements were prevalent during the same period. Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, Fascism (and in a different way Capitalism and Libertarianism) each had millions of passionate, organized followers who often reformatted their lives around collective practices for bringing their chosen ideology into greater prominence. A battle as to how society should best be organized. Many of the same people who were organizing politically were also organizing artistically. Or knew the people who were organizing artistically. Avantgarde artistic forms were made and fought for in relation to avantgarde political formations. To get out ahead of current artistic practices, and to get out ahead of current political limitations, took place parallel to one another and intertwined. The removal of the Berlin Wall is often seen as a kind of marker, both in time and in relation to tail end of an ideological shift. A moment when capitalism won the so-called Cold War, and Communism was no longer generally seen as a viable option. And, it seems to me, art movements suffered a similar defeat.

At the same time, I have absolutely no belief in that way of framing these events. The former Soviet Union was never Communism, or at least wasn’t from the moment Stalin took control. And Capitalism won using only dirty tricks. The dirty trick of assassinating or overthrowing any leaders who didn’t tow the line and the dirty trick of giving certain people temporary “democratic freedoms” in order to dissuade them from amassing enough collective power toward Socialism and Communism, and then removing those freedoms when they were no longer required. Don’t go over to Socialism or Communism, they said, because we have these “democratic freedoms” that make our society so much better than any other, when such freedoms were only part of a temporary propaganda campaign for Capitalism that was never meant to last. Of course, it is Capitalism that is now in decline – perhaps a victim of its own success with no other world system to keep it in check. Unfortunately, Capitalism is now rapidly being replaced by Technofeudalism, or hopefully something better if we can summon the collective political will. Art movements might return if radical politics also returns. If we can once again believe in its possibilities. Those possibilities were once based in the idea of progress, and since progress is a lie, we will need to find another basis. Things do not progress, they go in circles like the seasons. These were all thoughts and questions I had sitting in the back corner of that very large bar, watching all the people who had absolutely no interest in any plans we might be hatching. And our disagreements were also connected to an underlying agreement that something had to be done. Yet we were always arguing about the what, the approach, the strategy, the tactics. Everything was like being up against impossible odds, where the house always wins. We were trying to convince each other to fight for something. We were trying to measure how much solidarity we might spark. How much we could trust and count on one another. It was extremely unclear what our art movement might become.



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Coastal Lines Press

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"Coastal Lines Press is a collective of writers in Gaza. Our goal is to turn words into life-saving supplies for our families. We thank the global network of creators and distributors who make this fundraising publication possible. Like vessels at sea, our zines travel from coast to coast, drawing lines of human connection and solidarity. Follow their journeys and our stories."

More info here: https://www.coastallinespress.com


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working title

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I may or may not have started a new novel today. Possible working title: Grand Meeting of Failures

Possible opening paragraph: "I decided I would be the historian of the movement. No one gave me permission, it was something I had to decide for myself. That is, if there even was a movement. If it didn’t all just fizzle out. The rumor was that if the Night Manager likes your work, you don’t need to pay your tab. The rumor that started it all. We might imagine how. One of us had been drinking and when it comes time to pay they’re told they don’t have to. They inquire about the reason, are told some work they made was deeply moving to the Night Manager. Then it happens again, this time to a different artist. Word begins to spread. It might be seen as a form of curation. A way for artists most cherished to keep coming back. Musicians, performers, writers, image and object makers, filmmakers, and those of no fixed discipline. Most of the clientele continue to pay for their drinks, subsidizing a small number of artists who are no longer asked to. The place is large. A few hundred who pay each night and a few dozen who do not. It doesn’t take long to find each other. We gather in the back corner. Soon many of us are coming four or five nights a week. This was all before I arrived. I am repeating pure hearsay. But it was also around the same time I arrived. Somebody mentioned this back corner to me and I immediately knew I had to check it out. I introduced myself to the first likely candidate and soon into our conversation it occurred to me to ask if anyone was keeping a record. When the answer was no, I heard their reticence as an invitation."

Another sentence for somewhere later in the book: "I’ve always imagined an ongoing game where the purpose is to try to invent an art movement."


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[I'm still working on my third trilogy (with all three books based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.) So if I manage to keep going with this Grand Meeting of Failures, I suppose it would be book number ten, which for some reason feels significant to me. But often there are a lot of false starts before I find one I want to continue with. So let's see...]



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Boycott of the Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art

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We, MFAs Against Genocide, are a collective of recent and prospective graduates in the Montreal arts community and are reaching out to you as you are a signatory to PACBI. As a collective, we are organizing an institutional and individual boycott of the Stephen and Claudine Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art Fellowship. We are asking for your support in order to increase our pressure, and to call on artists, cultural workers, academics, and institutions to refuse together to be complicit in artwashing.

The fellowship, which is awarded annually to Concordia and UQAM studio arts graduate students, is funded by Claridge Inc; Stephen Bronfman's Montreal-based private equity firm that, in 2015, opened a parallel firm in Tel Aviv focused on Israeli tech investments. These investments include Cyberbit, a a cyber security, warfare, and espionage company that lists the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as one of their key clients. Claridge Isreal is also invested in D-fend Solutions, which provides counter-drone technology to clients including the Israeli ministry of defense and the United States departments of War and Homeland Security. In August of this year La Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec announced that it is in the process of selling off its investments (valued between $400M - $600M CAD) in Claridge Israel; we believe it is long past time for our institutions to do the same and divest from the Isreali occupation and genocide. For more information about the award, the campaign, and our demands, please see our website: https://mfasagainstgenocide.cargo.site/

the art that strikingly knows it’s own futility

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"Where is the art that strikingly knows it’s own futility but stumbles forward compellingly, anyway, because as an artist you have no choice?"

(From my 2011 manifesto: Manifesto for Confusion, Struggle and Conflicted Feelings.)



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Some favourite records of my 2025 (so far)

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Back in July I did a list of Some favourite books of my 2025 (so far). It occurs to me now that, around the same time, I could have also done a list of Some favourite records of my 2025. So this is coming a bit late (and a bit too close to my end of year list.) But I'm doing it now because Bandcamp Friday is in two days (Oct 3rd), so you might want to support some of these amazing artists. (Also, as is my habit, some of these records didn't come out during 2025.)

Moses Sumney – Sophcore
Adrián de Alfonso – Viator
Quinton Barnes – Code Noir
Quinton Barnes – Black Noise
Elle Barbara’s Black Space – Word on the Street
Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
DJ K – Radio Libertadora !
Pink Siifu – BLACK’!ANTIQUE
Qur'an Shaheed – Pulse
Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie
Frog Eyes – The Open Up
Fievel Is Glauque – Rong Weicknes


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listening

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For a lot of the past year or two, I've mostly been listening to the same four records by Jeff Parker over and over again: The New Breed, Suite for Max Brown, Forfolks and The Way Out of Easy.

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One year of Dry Your Tears plus a review by Junction Reads

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim was published exactly one year ago. Thanks so much to everyone who read it. And everyone who wrote about it. It’s been really beautiful to receive so many different and insightful reactions. For example, Junction Reads has just written this very nice review. You can of course order it here.

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PME-ART's Relay-Interview Party / Thursday October 2nd, 7pm-9pm

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Relay-Interview Party
Thursday October 2nd, 7pm-9pm at the MAI Café Bar (3680 Rue Jeanne-Mance) / FREE ADMISSION

Beautiful changes are happening for Montréal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART, both internal and external. Beginning now, PME-ART will open each new season with a Relay-Interview Party. This is a chance for the community to meet us, meet each other, and get a taste for how the PME-ART process works. It’s also a chance to think alongside us about the theme for our upcoming cycle of creation: How Does Change Happen?

Relay-Interview is a ridiculously simple game for having unexpected conversations, like a relay race but for asking and answering questions. Please join us on Thursday October 2nd at the MAI Café Bar (3680 Rue Jeanne-Mance) from 7-9 PM for questions, answers, snacks, and drinks. Come to learn Relay-Interview (an open-source activity which anyone can use for their own artistic processes) and begin our season with us - which is also the official start of PME-ART's next evolution!

If you have ever been interested in co-creating with us, auditioning, or proposing activities, this is the perfect space to tell us who you are, what drives your heart, and how we could walk together in the future. All disciplines, identities, and experience levels are welcome.

Facebook event

PME-ART now has an Instagram. And you can also subscribe to the PME-ART newsletter here.

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Two Montreal events in September 2025

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1) Saturday September 20th at 7pm - The Air Contains Honey at Douze Douze
2) Tuesday September 23rd, 7pm / doors at 6:30 - The Longest Way to Eat a Melon at Rocket Science Room


1)
The Air Contains Honey performs only once a year. This year it will be on Saturday September 20th at 7pm at Sanctuaire Saint-Jude (10120, av. d'Auteuil) as part of Douze Douze, presented by LA SERRE - arts vivants. (Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless situations, which I believe fits with our vibe.) The Air Contains Honey will start at 7 sharp, and we have to be finished by 7:45 so everyone can join the Burning BRASs Band on parade. This is your one Air Contains Honey chance in 2025 (and its free admission.) There are also many other amazing Douze Douze performances on September 20th - from noon to midnight - which you can find out about here. You can also watch some demos of an earlier version of The Air Contains Honey here. (Album coming in 2026.)

Facebook event

The Air Contains Honey―co-founded by Adam Kinner and Jacob Wren―is an “orchestra” that mixes professional and amateur musicians in search of a warmth and community spirit they may or may not find. All of their songs follow the same basic structure: a quote sung four times, an instrumental break, and then the same quote sung another four times. For the audience, as well as for the performers, this is a chance to hear an orchestra in the process of discovering its sound as it goes.

The Air Contains Honey’s lineup is ever shifting but the performance will likely feature some or all of the following members: Pietro Amato, Patrick Conan, Claudia Fancello, Michael Feuerstack, James Goddard, Thanya Iyer, Adam Kinner, Liam O’Neill, Lara Oundjian, Pompey, Rebecca Rehder, Catherine Fatima, Frédérique Roy, Mulu Tesfu and Jacob Wren.


2)
Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross launches The Longest Way to Eat a Melon
at Rocket Science Room (170 Rue Jean-Talon O #204)
Tuesday September 23rd, 7pm / doors at 6:30
Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross will be in conversation with Carmen Faye Mathes
Plus an opening reading by Jacob Wren

Facebook event

Equal parts melody and malaise, The Longest Way to Eat a Melon charts the activities of a cast of speakers who all grapple in their own ways with what it takes to conjure a self in the midst of discordance. A brain argues with a non-brain about how to remain productive from a place of exhaustion; two supernaturally inclined twins named Han are separated at birth; and an emerging artist overwhelmed by possibility considers how best to transform a melon into a breakthrough work of art. Incorporating elements of fable, surrealism, satire, and art and cultural criticism, these stories have a playful peculiarity to them, an interweaving of self-deprecation and curiosity, of woe and hope, of absurdity and humanity. Reader, you will want to savor every bite.

“The cats begin coming through her window. And she feeds them – of course she does – to please nature, to please all animals, to please the mystics, to please the menace, to please the gods. Two at first, then six, then ten, their tawny stripes blending with the dappled light through the waving blinds. Q is friendly with them, even if it is true that she does not know what they get up to in the night. She is learning about and cultivating this kind of acceptance. Violences, valences. They purr and are energetic, even if their company is not the same as friendship, not the same as romantic love. They do have a certain terrible unknowability about them. Q entertains this even while, deep down, she feels fear.”
― Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, The Longest Way To Eat A Melon

Booksaredeadly's favourite books of 2024

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is one of Booksaredeadly's favourite books of 2024.


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Jacob Wren reads from his books

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Videos of me reading from and talking about my recent books:

Polyamorous Love Song Launch Reading
Polyamorous Love Song Interview
Rich and Poor Launch Reading
Rich and Poor Interview
Authenticity is a Feeling Launch Reading
Jacob Wren Introduces Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim


I recently posted on Instagram: "For the past few years I’ve been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books..." And one of the replies was: "I get it! What about videos? Your face talking to the camera? I can’t say what it would do for book sales, but you have a lot of followers already so reels could get good traction. When I go to your profile, I can see what kind of books you *read* but I don’t get a sense of what your books would be like or why I might need to get one. I think about this all the time for myself, so I’m just brainstorming out loud! Or pinning posts about your own books to the top row?" This is probably good advice regarding my use of Instagram. However, I would likely require technical assistance so instead I'm doing this. All of these videos, and much else, can also be found at: Jacob Wren Links



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the reason I find easiest to understand

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This is a chapbook written by me and published by above/ground press:

https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html

It came out last year. This is how it starts:

“Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand.

It is difficult to imagine how anything secular could generate the same intensities of community that religion does. Such intensities are also forms of power which are easily abused. Yet when certain kinds of atheists fail to understand how powerful a genuine sense of [spiritual] community can be, it is as if they are willing themselves to understand nothing. Nonetheless, I somehow know that religion will never be a solution for me. How exactly do I know this? I don’t think I’m writing a book about religion, but if I am it is about the furthest thing I can imagine from anything I previously thought I might someday do. And yet in various moments in my life I have felt that in order for the left to win it needs to find ways to connect to something one might call spirituality. A sense of the sacred. As an unbeliever I am not really the person best able to figure out how we might do this. Yet maybe it is the person who truly doesn’t know who is able to ask the most genuine and genuinely difficult questions. I am writing this book because I truly don’t know. (Here again we come back to the question of doubt.)”

Palestinian Poetry Fundraiser / Tuesday August 19th at Low Bar

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Join us on Tuesday August 19th at Low Bar in Toronto for a poetry fundraiser and celebration of the book launch of My Voice Cannot Be Bombed (available for pre-order through iskra books) by Yahya Al Hamarna. Yahya is a Palestinian writer from Gaza City who “documents the brutalities of war alongside the fragile rituals of everyday life—studying, walking to the park, reading poetry, preparing tea, mourning, surviving.”

Toronto writers will read from Yahya’s debut collection and share their own work. Signed book copies and other prizes will be auctioned off. All proceeds will go directly to Yahya and his family in Gaza.

Doors will open at 7:00pm, with the reading to begin at 7:30pm.

Organized by Independent Jewish Voices UofT and UofT English Graduate Students for Palestine

Some passages from Liberation Through Hearing by Richard Russell

Some passages from Liberation Through Hearing by Richard Russell:


*


“As is often the case with those who make disturbing art, he seems a person of integrity. Those in the public eye who go out of their way to seem benevolent, the supposedly squeaky-clean ones, are the ones to beware of. Nasty pretends to be nice, and vice versa.”


*


“Mainstream entertainment, like mainstream religion, is used to control people. But there are threads that run through all religions and I see music in similar terms. Both religion and music provide ways of seeing the unseeable and a necessary escape from the sometimes unbearable harshness of reality. Ideas can be communicated about death and the worlds beyond the one we inhabit.”


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“Once I had been allowed to enter the movement, I decided it was rubbish, continuing a lifelong pattern of disowning my goals once they were achieved.”


*


“Not only did this represent champagne aspirations on a beer budget, but Nick and I were attempting it without our partners. There were lessons to be learned: break up a winning team at your peril. Never overlook the contributions of your collaborators.”


*


“Every artist who achieves longevity does so not just through the making of music, but the making of decisions, eventually thousands of decisions, starting with what to call themselves and who to play their demos to, through whether to sack their friend and go with a professional manager, which live agent to work with, and then on to the lifelong navigation of an endless series of suggested compromises.

The artists who thrive are not just the most musically talented but the most dedicated to their core values. There is a toughness required of this kind of work, but given that artistry is delicate, a dichotomous nature is necessary. That is the thread that has linked the artists I have worked most closely with. Extraordinary strength coupled with sensitivity that is so acute it is almost psychic.”


*


“I was starting to realise that a large part of the creation of success was about ignoring the reasons it might not happen. Blocking out reality and getting on with it. Focusing on what I wanted to happen and how to get there, not the reasons it was unlikely to work.”


*


“The process of songwriting and recording often involves wild oscillation between feeling immensely empowered – godlike is how some describe it – by one’s own abilities to make something out of nothing, and feeling like an idiot who is wandering around naked while everyone laughs. These extreme swings can occur in very short spaces of time and when they do you are fairly close to madness. The uncertainty of the creative process feels to me at times like chewing tin foil.

The manager of one huge artist proudly told me that he insists to the musicians he works with that they behave functionally. He said that he doesn’t buy into the idea that instability is intrinsically linked to creativity. Perhaps, I thought, he is just working with talent so mediocre that their behavior is as mundane as their music. Whatever abilities I possess feel like they are simply the flipside of the least functional parts of me. Dysfunctionality comes with gifts as a consolation prize. Whether a person is able to tap into these gifts is another question.

But no one whose art is really good tends to feel all that good for much of the time. Blissful happiness is an unlikely condition in any event and would certainly be an unusual place for a gifted person to inhabit, at least for long. The best a great talent can hope for is to reach some sort of an accommodation with themselves. An appreciation that they at least have something to show for their alienation.”


*


“John Peel was an influential tastemaker, but I wanted to diverge from his approach as much as emulate it. He was probably the greatest champion of independent music ever because the way he chose which records to play was so ideologically powerful. His position was not that he would play good music, regardless. It was more political than that. If he perceived something was too pop, he would not play it.

So while John Peel was a supporter of Scritti Politti’s early singles and debut album for Rough Trade, Songs to Remember, he never played anything from their masterpiece, and one of my all-time favourite albums, Cupid & Psyche 85. This music was even better than their previous output but he did not support it. Green and co. had decamped to New York and made the music they dreamed of, which was R&B, with storied soul producer and arranger Arif Mardin. But Peel stopped playing them because he considered what they were doing too pop.

I didn’t wish to take this approach.

‘Indie’ to describe music was a term that was destined to become obsolete, and I didn’t want this type of ghettoization to happen to XL. I wanted to be able to back artists to be as ambitious as they saw fit. Equally, I wanted to discourage artists from being overly commercial if that meant their records would suffer. I wanted to work with the best artists and help them make the best music. I didn’t want to be tied down to an ideology that would get in the way of that. I didn’t want records to have to be commercial – like a major; equally, I didn’t want them to have to not to be – the way John Peel seemed to sometimes see it.”


*


“Her approach owed something to punk, perhaps best summed up as: If it ain’t broke, break it.”


*


“This book is not about sales figures or awards. Too many artists whose work is close to my heart have not achieved huge sales for me to think of units sold as what is important. Commercial success is a measure of something outer; not necessarily anything deeper. The record industry’s obsession with figures is limiting and stifles creativity. Music that reaches a lot of people but has no substance is of no interest. Music that has depth but only reaches a small audience is often the most important and long-lasting.”


*


“I just knew that whatever we did needed to be a celebration, and that I had to have faith that something special would manifest. The principle I tried to stick to was that the absence of doubt would lead to success. Commit to the process, don’t waste time thinking about whether it will or won’t work, and execute to the best of your ability. The rest will take care of itself.”


*


“Coincidences are ‘God’s way of staying anonymous.’ They are a reassurance that there is a flow and it’s useful to note and appreciate them when they occur.”


*

perhaps a relief

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For the past few years I've been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that, at least for the time being, there aren't any. This perhaps comes as a relief.


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Twenty years of A Radical Cut

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Today is the twentieth anniversary – to the day – of A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality. The very first post here was on August 8, 2005. The title came from a Slavoj Žižek quote (this was a long time ago, I would never quote Žižek now.) You can find the quote in this Twenty-eight quotations on failure post, if you scroll down to the middle, which was the first in a series of posts collecting quotes around a theme including: pessimism, fame, individualism, loneliness, sex, suicide and of course failure. Other ongoing series include Some passages from and Some favourite things from my year. I've told this story before, but the main reason I started A Radical Cut was because I had written a book called Families Are Formed Through Copulation and was having great difficulty getting it published. Every publisher I sent it to said no, and more than a few genuinely seemed to hate it. So I was wondering if there was some way I could just write and have at least a few people read what I was writing, not have to wait so long (and receive so many rejection letters) before someone got to see it. Families Are Formed Through Copulation did eventually get published in 2007 by Pedlar Press (though it's now out of print.) And starting in 2014 my work began to have a little bit more of a positive readership and therefore it became a bit easier for me to get my books out there. Now I feel like I'm having almost the opposite problem, in that it seems to me I'm writing too many books too quickly (which is probably a problem many writers would like to have, assuming the books are any good.) (It now occurs to me that perhaps I would have written more books if, back when I was starting out, I'd had an easier time getting them published.) Earlier this year I started a Patreon and I suppose, at the time, I was planning to slowly phase out A Radical Cut and eventually just do the Patreon. But so far I haven't had the heart to make even small steps in that direction. Doing something for twenty years really makes it feel like it's a part of you. So we'll have to see what happens. Not quite sure how to end this, so perhaps I'll simply repeat myself (at least if you've read previous posts) by saying, if you don't already know, my last book got some really nice reviews. I wonder if I'll manage to do this thing for another twenty years.



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Monday August 11th / Erin Brubacher and Jacob Wren at Perfect Books in Ottawa

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Erin Brubacher and Jacob Wren, hosted by Rachel Weldon
Perfect Books
Monday August 11th
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
258A Elgin St, Ottawa

In writing that speaks to the here and now, two protagonists, in very different ways, seek connection as an antidote for hopelessness.

Erin Brubacher and Jacob Wren read from their recent novels: These Songs I Know By Heart and Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, and converse on the intersections between literature and performance making, and the personal and political. Hosted by Debaser's Rachel Weldon.

-Erin Brubacher, These Songs I Know By Heart (Book*hug Press): Seeking and searching; making art; making new friends; getting divorced; falling in love; becoming a stepparent; surviving miscarriage; enduring the pandemic; valuing lakes, lilies, and mosses; and celebrating the quiet moments between people. A novel about living inside the unknowing: surrendering control and finding joy in the free fall of it all... It’s about love.

“This book left me feeling less alone.”
— Aimee Wall, author of We, Jane

-Jacob Wren, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (Book*hug Press): In these pages, real-world politics mingle with profoundly inventive fabulations. This is an anti-war novel unlike any other, an intricate study of our complicity in violent global systems and a celebration of the hope that underpins the resistance against them.

“A knowing knot of courage and its opposite, and a defiant work of desperate grace.”
— Eugene Lim, author of Search History

start over again

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I'm in some sort of madness where I can't seem to stop writing books. It's like the last push of madness before I die, which I have decided to call a trilogy. The performances we made are so ephemeral. It feels to me like they never even happened. Some of the books are now out of print and those also now feel like they barely exist. It's actually only the book I'm writing at this moment that feels alive to me. But, also, it's like my writing practice restarted in 2014. Starting with the book I published in 2014, all my books are still in print. I've been a writer for thirty-eight years, but in my current trajectory I've only been a writer for eleven years. It's like I found a way to start over. And I am searching for a way to now start over again. (And, of course, all this writing must also have something to do with wanting to have something to do other than doomscrolling the current state of the world.)



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Francesca Albanese Quote

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“And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter—not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors, but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.”
- Francesca Albanese


From Francesca Albanese's remarks to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, at the Hague Group Emergency Conference of States in Bogotá, Colombia.



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changing around (and unchanging) the various titles

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024)
Desire Without Expectation (2027)
Faithful Unbeliever* (2030)

I now seem to spend a significant amount of time changing around (and unchanging) the various titles of the books I’m working on. I mostly do so here. (It also might be worth mentioning that I now think of these three books as some sort of strange trilogy based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.)

*Other possible titles for the book I'm currently working on:

Know Me Better Than I Know Myself
Undoing Failure
Kind Sadness
Precious Compromise
Sacred Landslide
Talented Ruins



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Some favourite books of 2025 (so far)

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[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these books were published this year, but this was the year I read and enjoyed them.]

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore – Touching the Art
Raja Shehadeh – We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I
Vivian Blaxell – Worthy of the Event: An Essay
Sarah Schulman – The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
M.E. O'Brien & Eman Abdelhadi – Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies Novel


Bonus:
Some passages from The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman
Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore



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NEVER STOP ACTING FOR PALESTINE

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Next Wednesday, 5pm, join us for a popular gathering at métro Mont Royal, at the square, a live speak out and recording for broadcast on Radio alHara of poets, political activists and musicians speaking out and playing for Palestine! Thank you to Léon Lo for working on this poster design!

At this gathering we will hear poetry from Alejandro Saravia, community activist Summer Alkhdour, educator Sarwat Viquar, poet Jacob Wren, an anarchist marching band project Fanfare d'occasion featuring many awesome folks, plus many more, I hope to see you there!

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I haven't read this book...

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I haven't read this book. The reason I'm posting it is I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War. And perhaps the Cold War thing I heard most often was that the great difference between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was that in the U.S. you were allowed to protest as much as you wanted but in the Soviet Union protesting got you sent to the gulag (as I believe is described in this book.) I know the Cold War ended a while ago, and differences between the two systems (now both "capitalist") are no longer held up as having any meaning. But with the current hype around "Alligator Alcatraz" - which I'm sure is just one of hundreds of such "prisons" the U.S. is about to build - I can't help but feel this is the final endpoint of the Cold War, the real race to the bottom, where instead of people in the former Soviet Union now having the right to protest, people in the U.S. who effectively protest will be sent to gulags in great number. The existence of the Soviet Union in some aspects kept domestic U.S. policy on its best behaviour. Now, with any threat of communism in the past, the U.S. will finally do at home what their foreign policy has imposed on so many other countries over the last hundred years.

*

"Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

fourteen years ago

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I've been thinking a lot about this bad poem I wrote fourteen years ago: Obsessing over the ramifications of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. (A moment in history.) The first line was: “In the bright light of day, the United States becomes a lawful fascist state.” You can find it here. 


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So I don't forget this day...

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"With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined."


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“Because it is lucrative for many.”

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“Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation – they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” it said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip. In an expert opinion last year, Francesca Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The UN report stated that its findings illustrate “why Israel’s genocide continues”.

“Because it is lucrative for many,” it said.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/un-report-lists-companies-complicit-in-israels-genocide-who-are-they

 

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With an archive in the attic in dHOUSE Magazine

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I have a text in dHOUSE Magazine called With an archive in the attic. The table of contents moves around but, if you search, you can find it here.




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"Other than capitalism, what qualifies conceptual art?”

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"A fantastical text concerning transformation, Jacob Wren’s novel Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim follows a narrator to an unidentified liberated zone, where noncapitalist, collective practices are formed, reworked, and communalized. The zone is unidyllic as it continues to be bombed and fired upon by nearby and faraway imperialists. Amidst the daily raids, the narrator is allowed to sit in on town meetings, where economics and trade become reinvented. In one such meeting, the narrator hears a woman discussing how concerns over goods being “too expensive” must also be applied to items being “too cheap.” She says, “Just as you mustn’t accept a price that is too high, you also must not fight, nor constantly search, for a price that is too low … You need to understand that those who sell you these things also need to live.”

This gallows humor highlights the disparities between life and death and locates a price so low that some are explicitly not allowed to live. Tellingly, Cattelan, the supposed prankster who will sell and hire others to do everything and treats all matter as dispensable, predictably imposes a boundary on engagement with his own critique. In response to Mr. Alam’s critiques of his exploitation, Cattelan stated that “art, by its nature, does not solve problems—if it did, it would be politics.” Evading criticism through a well-worn notion of aesthetic isolationism, Cattelan offers art that ideologically affirms the status quo, upholding supply-chain repression and enforcing and extending class domination. (He offers, in other words, enmeshed and predictable capitalism-as-art.)

Regarding that which is purposefully degraded and denied in the supply chain: when Daniel Druet, the artist who made Untitled (Stephanie), sued Cattelan’s gallery over authorship and payment, contemporary artists such as Sophie Calle signed an open letter in support of Cattelan. It stated: “Daniel Druet’s quest for recognition as the exclusive author of the works imagined by Maurizio Cattelan opens the door to the disqualification of conceptual art.” Does the qualification of conceptual art hinge on the erasure of laborers and the repression of its making? The artists who signed the letter seem to think so. Other than capitalism, what qualifies conceptual art?”

- Eunsong Kim, No Aesthetic Autonomy Without Labor Autonomy



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"Because there is only room for one empire at a time."

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"I start to think about all the stated reasons for this war and other wars like it. For humanitarian reasons (every time an expensive humanitarian bomb landed on civilians, it was enough to turn even the most optimistic Pollyanna into a hardened cynic). To fight communists. To fight terrorists. To stop the spread of communism or terrorism or extremism or something else. To help people. To improve the lot of women. Because we’re right and they’re wrong. Because: Why do they hate us and why do they hate our way of life? Because war has always existed and will always exist. To increase the quantity of democracy in the world. Because we have a responsibility to the world and to freedom. For freedom. For strategic reasons. To stop a domino from setting off all the other dominoes.

And then I move on to what I think the reasons are for this war and so many others. Because our leaders need therapy. Because a bully needs a victim. Because so-called powerful men are deeply insecure. So politicians in favour of war can get elected or re-elected by voters in favour of war. To make money. To placate the arms industry and their high-priced lobbyists. To justify never-ending increases in the military budget. To distract from rampant domestic problems. To bring certain natural resources and labour into the jurisdiction of the global marketplace. To ensure these resources most benefit the capitalists doing the bombing and least benefit the people being bombed. Because it’s easier to kill people who look or sound different than you. Because hatred takes on a life of its own. To explain to the world that you do it our way or suffer the consequences. Because a protection racket needs to constantly ensure no one steps out of line or seeks protection elsewhere. So they can set up permanent military bases to keep the surrounding countries in line. Because there is no alternative. Because there is only room for one empire at a time."

- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim




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PME-ART in Harstad, Norway (June 22-24)

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PME-ART will be in Harstad, Norway
for a series of events at Festspillene i Nord-Norge

Panel: Common Things Made Holy
June 22, 2025 at 12:10pm
Moderator: Ragnheiður Skúladóttir
With: Maret Anne Sara, Stefan Schmitke, Sonya Lindfors & Jacob Wren

The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information
June 22, 2025 at 9pm
With: Caroline Dubois, Adam Kinner & Jacob Wren

Bring Your Own Record / Listening Party
June 23, 2025 at 8pm
With: Caroline Dubois, Jacob Wren & special guest Tommy Vandalsvik

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Bonus: the letter I wrote to the audience of The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information in 2011.

And an article in the Harstad Tidende (in Norwegian but with pictures.)



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The first page...

The first page of Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim.

I Make and Watch Performances

[This text was written for the Montreal edition of Oral Method in response to the prompt EXCUSEZ-MOI.]



1.
I make performances. Therefore I feel an obligation to watch performances. Lately this has been creating difficulties. I feel an obligation to watch performances made by other people, perhaps only so that they might in turn feel obligated to watch performances made by me. This is not a good reason. The difficulties are not recent but have recently intensified. The performances I watch mostly do not feature or mention current events. Many of these performances were created long before current events occurred. But current events are weighing heavily upon my interior life. I think I go see art because it is a place we can speak about the world. I think speaking about the world means speaking out against injustice. I think live performance means speaking and acting in the here and now. By this point you might have already intuited what my difficulties are.


2.
I have a fantasy. It is a fantasy I often have while I am watching a performance. The people on stage are doing whatever they are doing. I am in the audience. In the middle of the audience I stand up and begin to speak loudly. I accuse those on stage of failing to mention current injustices in the world. I do so in a charming and entertaining manner so as to win over the rest of the audience. I make my case: that by failing to mention any injustices they are like ostriches with their heads in the sand. (Ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand. This is a myth.) That every moment art fails to mention painful realities is a moment when art is not doing its job, when injustices continue to proceed unchallenged. When injustices continue to devour every living moment of the world. I know I have to make my case quickly. That soon some usher, or audience member wanting to make themselves useful, will forcibly remove me. I don’t mind being removed. I just want to make my case in a manner that will not easily be forgotten.


3.
I do not necessarily require performances to speak out directly against current events. I just want to see some indication that they know these events are happening. That we are all living in the same indefensible world. I want them to know what I know and somehow let me know that they know it. I find it painful, sometimes almost unbearably so, that we are not acknowledging things that are happening every day and all around us. I also find my position unfair. Unfair to the artists on stage who are hopefully embodying and expressing something that is meaningful to them. Unfair to art, which has ways of speaking about the world that can bypass the didactic and reach toward other truths. Unfair to myself, since I am forfeiting my chance to momentarily stop thinking about the injustices of the world and enjoy watching a performance. But I do not enjoy watching these performances, and for that I probably should, but will not, apologize.


4.
Then there are performances that do directly denounce specific injustices and I don’t much care for those ones either. You can’t win with me. Because it is not enough to denounce injustice. It is not enough to say those people over there are bad and over here we’re good and that’s all you need to know about the world. The performance must also implicate the audience and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. We must begin to see what is to be done and with what small steps we can begin to do it. I have not yet seen any performances that meet this perhaps unrealistic criteria. Did I mention that many of the performances I see take the form of contemporary dance. I am not sure there is any way, using the forms of contemporary dance, that one can implicate the audience in the injustices of the world and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. But dance is not the problem. Rather it is more like I am going to the hardware store and trying to buy bread. They do not sell bread at the hardware store. Instead of going to watch performances, there might be other kinds of events I could attend. But I want something specific from art, and no matter how many times it disappoints me, I will never stop wanting it.


5.
I make performances. And the performances I make also do not sufficiently fulfil the criteria I have outlined above. Each time I strive toward it, and each time I fail. Since audiences do not have the same strict desires as I have, they do not seem to notice these particular failures. They notice other failures, such as the failure to entertain, or the failure to present aesthetic splendor. But mostly they are not thinking so much about failure. They are people who know how to enjoy watching a performance which is the reason they attend. I could learn from them but I will not. I will wait for one of them to stand up in the middle of the audience and quickly and loudly denounce me. I will continue to wait.


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Finalists for the 2024 Big Other Book Award for Fiction

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a Finalist for the 2024 Big Other Book Award for Fiction (along with many other amazing books.)

Oral Method in Montreal / Saturday, May 31, 5pm

🌀📜Excusez-moi! Pardon us! Please save the date for a 🌻 free 🌻 happy hour reading at Star Bar (4671 St Laurent Blvd) on Saturday, May 31. This Mtl edition of Oral Method is co-curated w Rose Flutur and will feature much admired writers from la cool(er) province: H. Felix Chau Bradley, Eva Crocker, Marcela Huerta, Faith Paré, Sina Queyras, Jacob Wren plus illustrations & dj’ing by Amery Press

doors: 5pm, readings: 530pm

Writers will be responding to the prompt *EXCUSEZ-MOI* 🌻 perhaps conjuring the energy of overtaking someone on the sidewalk, navigating Français-English (or other language!) communication dynamics, calling someone in, asking for forgiveness, passive / aggression, or maybe even reflecting on Steve Martin (as Jacob Wren reminded us :)) 🤣

Please come, tell your friends, and support these amazing writers & artists!! 📜 🌀

Poster by: Amery Press 🙏🏻

 

Some passages from The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman

Some passages from The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman:


*


“Regardless of specificity, solidarity always requires awareness, self-criticism, consciousness, the decision to act, and the need to create strategy, to build alliances, and to listen. It always requires taking chances, making mistakes, and trying again.”


*


“The US entertainment industry is one of the last places a person can find solidarity.

Most corporate-produced culture is filled with terrible values, is blatantly retrograde or – at best – meaningless, which is its own politic. The product exists to make money for people who have fun solving intense but tightly focused problems. Its social function is to create individuals who can feed the need for fame, upon which American marketing depends. A friend once pointed out to me that America’s greatest exports are film/TV and weapons, and most of the highest-grossing films and TV glorifies violence in a way that serves as advertisement for weapons.

I am not the only person who reads incredible reviews for plays or movies or TV shows that turn out to be banal, repetitive, or nonsensical. Part of the problem is that print and online critical publications are tied to the marketplace. Critics mostly write about books or actors or writers or filmmakers who have a new product on the market right now, rather than works that the critic feels illuminate our current moment.

It occurs to me that most (not all) of these institutions that drive me crazy have historically and consistently excluded, watered down, or marginalized the more interesting and necessary ideas in any given period. Risky and exciting movements of forward-thinking people were usually debased or ignored, while avoidant or repetitive work was elevated and glorified, and then given awards. This system of repetition is reinforced psychologically by the creation and strict maintenance of a scarcity-based concept of an elite. If an artist or intellectual or activist or any combination thereof is looking for non-market-based support adequate to live safely and comfortably while following their gifts full-time, it’s literally a MacArthur or nothing. Repetitive ideas are selected by gatekeepers, elevated by critics, rewarded with prizes, and branded as good and important, when they are often actually stagnant. We have collectively underestimated the ultimate danger of that entrenched cycle. It turned out to be far more sinister than just boring, as corporate entertainment sells bad values about humans being expendable and worth destroying when compared to the risk of losing social status or influence with funders. Cultural producers should be joining the large numbers of people trying to stop this war on Gaza, but either being quiet or supporting the killing is actually consistent with the norm.”


*


“What makes it so confusing is their embedded accompanying system of self-praise telling us repeatedly that the repetitive, banal ideas in mass circulation are special and deserve reward. Year after year we are told through many selections at elections, through promotions or even the Oscars, Tonys, Pulitzers, and the full range of intellectual and citizenship awards in corporate marketing venues, that irrelevant products deserve to be the focus of our attention and should be replicated. This reinforces the idea that the way things are is not only great, but the best. This merry-go-round debases and marginalizes risky, exciting movements of forward-thinking people while elevating and glorifying avoidant work that pretends away the most important questions of our time: Who has the power, and why?”


*


“It was a cultural moment that made white writers look in the mirror and wonder if we have been confusing it with a window.”


*

Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore:


*


And how this happened for me too – twenty years ago, when my chronic pain first became debilitating and I couldn’t write like I used to, in frantic bursts trying to get everything out. So I decided to write a few sentences a day, with no intention of plot or structure, and after a few years I was shocked to find I had over four hundred pages. And that text became my second novel.


*


How music always carries the memory of when you first heard this music. How this can be a burden. How this can be glorious. How this can be suffocating. How this can make you shake. How this can make you sing. How this can make you dance. And this can be true of visual art too.

Sometimes, when the CD skips, I think maybe I should stop listening to CDs. And sometimes, when the CD skips, I think this is what it feels like to really love something.


*


Gladys saw herself as a contemporary artist, so she didn’t want to be defined by the past. She wanted her art to be considered on its own. But then Bobby wrote the catalog copy, and she rejected it. So someone else was hired to write it.

Bobby says Gladys was not a risk-taker, she was fiercely competitive with herself and how she saw herself among Baltimore artists, but she turned her back on the professional art establishment, and after that she didn’t pursue a professional career, and you can’t expect the world to come to you. She enjoyed the process of painting, and put that above anything else.

Like many artists of her generation, Bobby says, Gladys made the mistake of thinking that genius will be discovered.


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When someone asks what is your writing process, I think it must be to try and try and then finally, in the gap between the limits of my body and the possibility of pulling something through, somewhere in that gap—


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Maybe a different way to say history repeats itself would be to say history never resolves itself. History is a lesson, this may be true, but, as with any other lesson, the people who need it the most rarely listen.


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