bell hooks, books, and counterculture heroes (a discussion with Jana Sante)

….So, you like bell hooks, eh?

Jana Sante: Indeed. Do you have any objections?

Push: No, of course not. That would be sacrilegious. I saw her about five years ago at Michigan State University. She’s a perfect academic blend of sarcasm, charm, wit, and brilliance – the ultimate academician. You’ve got quite a few goodies on your book list.

Jana Sante: Yes, I had to dig deep to snag a couple of those, all in the name of a BA dissertation on sexuality, blues and womanhood in the work of Gayl Jones. It was a labor of love and quite an interesting task, too, I guess. But your summary of bell hooks, I agree with verbatim. The woman is just on another level and she’s mastered her fears with way more panache than the average functional intellectual.

Push: Yes, I agree. She’s the only woman I’ll allow to give an opinion on manhood and masculinity, or at least the only one I’ll deeply consider.

Jana Sante: So, what’s your new book about? And I gather you regard bell’s voice as credible because unlike some of these other screaming feminist scribes, Ms. hooks has much more of an Oracle feel about her? I wonder. Who ranks supreme in your upper-echelon list of male scribes?

Push: Denicio Barbier – the new book – is loosely based on a woman I met in Arizona. I’d gone out there to write, reflect, and get away from the existential meaninglessness of Detroit. For shelter, I took lodge on a Native American reservation for free rent in exchange for a promise of early morning rising to make community coffee, tend to the elders, and herd the sheep until late afternoon. Afterwards, I’d write and explore the vastness of land. Once every two weeks I’d drive into town – a three hour drive – to get supplies, water, and mail letters to the outside world. Also, I would sometimes drive to Ahwataukee for a beer, chicken wings, and a rock/blues/funk band. That’s where I met Denicio. She was an attractive sista with a Brooklyn accent, but told me she was from the Hamptons. I didn’t believe her because she didn’t seem polished like that, and she didn’t have educated or sophisticated diction. She was very urban, chic, and more believably situated in the lower class bracket of Brooklyn or Harlem rather than the Hamptons. I really didn’t care because she had a great figure, nice ass, pretty mouth, and a sexy accent. So, over the course of the summer, I’d make it a habit of meeting her at that bar, and eventually at her apartment. In short, she was the most dynamic, exotic, and mysterious woman I’ve ever met. So, she is the basis of my story. As for my favorite male writers, I’d say James Baldwin, Wallace Thurman, Cornel West, Chinua Achebe, Woody Allen, Capote, and Ginsberg.

Jana Sante: So, you were on some black Kerouac-type expedition, eh? Pardon the comparison, actually Kerouac and his hedonistic Beat cronies irk me. Maybe in the back of my mind, there’s a smidgeon of anger/envy at that kind of flagrant white-boy mobility, maybe. But, your trip sounds remarkable. You surrendered yourself to the mercurial elements – very, very brave in many ways. The Indian reservation stay sounds intriguing to say the least, as does your muse, Ms. Denicio Barbier – of the faux-Hampton milieu. This issue of the making of identity is fascinating to me and I gather we share a similar appreciation for the dissections of social identities. I say this in response to your dramatic removal of yourself into a new state of isolated engagement, away from that existential meaninglessness. There’s so much profundity in that kind of deconstruction. I haven’t read any Capote. I guess I should. Interesting that Woody Allen’s in your categories of writer. So often screen writers don’t get their proper recognition as authors. Allen’s extremely anal retentive. His attention to cerebral interplay works effectively on screen though. I know black folk who lambast him for his color-free visualization of New York. But hey, he writes what he knows; be it insular or otherwise. Your reservation trip reminds me of Kerouac.

Push: Well, unlike Kerouac, I’m not an in-the-closet homosexual, masquerading as a homophobe, while hanging out with notoriously flamboyant gay men. And my mother doesn’t live with me.

Jana Sante: Your breakdown of Kerouac is funny! Well, living here in the hub of homo-erotica England, I’m perpetually left to raise a brow at the schizophrenic shifts in western literature between misogyny, homo-erotica and homophobia. As a female, most often I’m wearily bemused. So, what’s the title of your book?

Push: Push Nevahda and the Vicious Circle: scenes from a random life.

Jana Sante: I suppose the Vicious Circle considers itself outside the popular ideology? I like antagonisms, as long as there’s a working point to the objection.

Push: There is a working point, but you’d have to read the book. Also, I think the working point is in the title itself. That’s if one understands the point of Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle. I was trying to both pay homage to Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle, while suggesting a revision of a new black literary/counterculture movement. lol. What a foolish notion, eh? Parker and the Vicious Circle were not compromised and subdued like the Harlem Renaissance. Anyway, the book was very experimental, bold, stream-of-consciousness (fancy expression for unedited), hasty, cocky, and out of the mainstream. Not very many people understood the point. You have a degree in American Literature, and even you didn’t get it. Shoot the messenger.

Jana Sante: Truthfully, the only part of Dottie Parker that rings a mental bell is the ballad penned by Prince. So I’m without solid references on that score, hence would not begin to offer detailed appraisal. Not that one was required nor solicited. But I am interested in counter-culture in a hypocritical but honest sort of way i.e. my longstanding gripe with Kerouac, the white-negro hipster phenomenon, and other instances in which elements close to my internal framework get pimped into obscurity. But, that stated, I do get the need for self-discovery beyond the pale. My American Lit background in retrospect is surprisingly sketchy. I was less interested in digesting the conventional classics and far more motivated to fuel my internal ravenous discourse on socio-cultural retentions of the Black Diaspora.

Push: I never felt like Kerouac was trying to be a black hipster. He liked black pussy, as he demonstrated with Subterraneans, but they all do. I think Kerouac understood and appreciated the tragicomic circumstances under which black art was manifest. I actually think that he got the style idea for On The Road from the jazz artists – the improvisational, stream of consciousness, modernist kind of writing. He’d go to Harlem and watch the jazz musicians and get inspired by the improvisational style of playing. So, with On The Road, he was copying the jazz musician. That’s about as close to being black and hip as Kerouac wanted to be. And screwing black women. But, like most white men, he could have never found it in himself to relate to black men beyond jazz. He was already self-conscious about his ethnic/racial security and status, and to go so far as to relate to black men on a human level would’ve cost him something that at that time white men were not willing to relinquish: the prestigious benefits of white skin color. So, if you understand his lifestyle, nothing about Kerouac was imitative of black culture. If anything, Kerouac was really no different than any other American writer reflecting on issues of culture and society……

To be continued…
Jana Sante is an artist and living in England.