I’ve always been attracted to what Amalfitano, in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, calls the “great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze the path into the unknown.” Like Amalfitano, a professor of philosophy on the verge—like most, perhaps—of madness, I’m interested in “real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” And I’m eager, similarly, inspired by them, to join the fight. Find me in the trenches dug between two covers, two lines, two letters, grasping at the throats of sentences and paragraphs, smashing them o bits: words. Doing my best to rend it all into meaning, and should that fail by the time night falls, emerging unashamed, covered in gore, an exasperated, “huh?” on my lips.

I’ll take another stab at it later. More reading required.

Unfortunately, as Amalfitano notes, even bookish pharmacists—or serious readers—are shying away from such works, favoring the “perfect exercises of the great masters.” And indeed, beyond academic circles and high school literature classes, where, granted, readings lists should be reexamined and expanded, the narrowminded umbrella of “English” dismantled in favor of something far more representative, far more interesting and illustrative of literature’s ability to break boundaries, even these are being considered less and less. Sought out less and less, their value scoffed at, like the past, like anything older than now, their reading discouraged, preparedness and willingness to take on War and Peace elusive.

Like gods without worshippers, without readers, will they live on?

The classics are one thing. What’s perhaps more worrisome—we must, after all, move on, move forward—is that imperfect, torrential works of contemporary fiction, like 2666, books by Bolaños or writers with the capacity to become them, masters, a capacity we all have, to inject some optimism in difficult times, who for now simply follow in their footsteps, as good students and Padawans should, acting in a sense as worshippers—if allowed, they’ll no doubt echothe great works, perfect and imperfect, ensure they live on in some evolved form—and who share an affinity for real combat, are becoming increasingly rare, an endangered species spotted, hand- bound, at fringe art book fairs and in rarely-visited digital platforms, microclimates that are themselves dying out; passion alone can’t provide.

Unless the author is already well-known, on the verge of death, already dead, or some combination of the above, to breach the castle of publishing with anything more than more of the same or indeed, something less, has become a near-impossible feat. Lacking the weight of siege weapons, such works must be sneaked passed the gatekeepers and guards—a disguise will do, you decide. Something mawkish, designer designed, or paint-spattered in all the right places. I must look the right kind of good or the right kind of bad to blend in with those who wander the grounds, already admitted and there to stay; only death or disgrace makes room for more. A limited palette is best, you know, as well as patterns flown before, a palette and patterns that studies, analytics, have shown attract the most eyes.

Bu lo, disguised and through the gates: the more perilous route, you realize, poking around. A closer look or pat down is enough to reveal who you truly are. In their eyes: too different, too difficult and—in yours too—awkwardly encumbered. So you try another route. Scale the walls when the watch changes with the help of a rare traitor. A patriot, truly; they’re tired of that same same and ache from stooping any lower.

I didn’t sign up for this, their conscious has been tormenting, especially at night, when the weight of everyday tasks lifts ever so slightly, and the bustle of sunlit hours dissolves in the murky glow of a vague moon and neon gloom. When we’re left with only the hum of generators and the pulsing thump of absence through which what we’ve suppressed resurfaces.

Again and again they ask themselves: Shouldn’t we let the artists be the tastemakers, not the lowest common denominator or those—like me—appealing to them?

“Now!” they shout, when the searchlights pan elsewhere.   

“Quickly!” they then hiss, urging you to follow, sacrificing, as martyrs must, their lives, should things go wrong. At the very least their positions and reputations, sacrifices worth making to worthy gods: us. Humankind: the most brilliant creators. Risks worth taking. Believing in you, what you represent and inspire with colors and patterns almost entirely your own—nothing is original; you carry the greats with you, a strand, a shade, a motif—when none of their peers will.

Too risky. Not for me. I’m going to pass.      

Or when they avert their gazes, hide behind a backlist bestseller, shrug off the responsibility of you, and smother their shame with no reply.

No response is a no.

Deep down they know your worth. True worth. What lies beyond profit, the only landscape they allow themselves to see; are we not designed to see much more? To see passed what’s immediately before us? Over horizons? To search for—and find—something more lasting? Something, indeed, inexhaustible?

A bloodless incision; the traitor-patriot manages, with difficulty, navigating so many bustling chambers, the cogs of the castle, of the kingdom it governs, a vast hegemony, a global, cultural one, to smuggle you into the innermost and highest-most chambers, that of their slumbering lord. Their king: the hegemon.

“I can’t go any further,” they say, and bow into the shadows or draw a blade and fend off pursuers; the alarm has been raised. You shouldn’t be here. Walk with purpose. Here is for the servant. For those who kowtowed for entrance.

You cast off your disguise if you insisted on wearing one, just in case, or shroud, and enter alone, upright. The hegemon, swathed in firelight, wakes with a start to this shadow, sweating and blubbering the last words of his dreams.

“I’ve dreamed of you,” he admits.

You: something beautiful, what he longs for deep down, like a first love. Or longed for, aspired to uphold, only to be laughed at by those in charge and led astray, waved away red, embarrassed, feeling stupid, unrealistic still resonating in his ears. As something terrible too: a temptation. A risk he never took or has long-since ceased taking, one filtered on the front line, comfortable in his comfort, filling his coffers.

His silk gown hangs open. Its colors and patterns: the same as those outside.

“I knew you’d come,” he says.

As a shadow you’re indeed beautiful and terrible and a risk, a temptation. You are everything and nothing, a thing both realized and at the same time not yet. A Rorschach test. It’s up to him to realize you. So you step into the firelight and allow him to take you in, what you really are, and he weeps or apologizes or tries to send you away, but by some trick or threat or seduction, some sentiment or belief or bribe, some deep desire to relive days of discomfort that have taken on the golden sheen of a bygone era, he calls off the guards who barge in with patriot- traitor: bound. “Release him,” the hegemon orders.

“Stay the night,” he then offers you.

You spend the night together, awake by the fire. He silently considers you. Gingerly reaches out a hand to caress you and you feel obliged to let him; there’s no turning back. This is what you’ve worked for, countless uncompensated hours honing your every muscle, trimming your ever hair. You know the unfortunate reality that you need him, and must at some point sell some part of yourself. And in the morning, bleary-eyed, he rouses his men and demands they champion you, ignoring their chorus of protests.

“We’ll get nothing in return!” “They’ll make us talk!” “Worse: listen!”

He insists. Has a banner unfurled in your honor. Its colors and patterns are true, untested, but for once, he doesn’t care. He bids you farewell.

Off you go with a handpicked entourage to parade across the land.

Perhaps there’s indeed a place for you, he thinks, reconsidering everything that has brought him this far. Reconsidering his dreams in the sense of again considering them, watching you go, disappear in the waves of heat, dust clouds.

Perhaps my subjects want something other than the bread and games we’ve been providing, however content this has made them. However silent, drunk, and tired, susceptible to consume, pad our pockets. Perhaps they’ll indeed understand you; I should trust them more. And if not, so be it. I lose little. My conscious is clear.

Perhaps they indeed want you.

The scarcity of such works, at least on bookshelves—there must be plenty in darker climates too, drawers and cabinets, confidence in them lost even by their creators, brainwashed with every rejection to think they have no worth, worth misconstrued as profit, when it’s virtue and knowledge that begets wealth, to paraphrase Socrates, not vice versa—is in large part the result of the scarcity of said traitor-patriots, gatekeepers willing to challenge their lords, do what they should aspire to do: elevate culture in some way, not just look at the numbers. A balance can be found if, like with all ways, there’s a will.

In the place of the different, the difficult, and imperfect, we’re being fed perfect works only in the sense of their established marketability. Fresh campaigns or trust in the creativity of marketing teams and—God forbid!—in the work itself: too costly. Too risky; a lack of trust and unwillingness to risk are an insult to human capacity, ingenuity. Or in the sense of ease. The ease of their reading. A moment of contemplation is a moment lost, capitalism instructs, a chance for uprising or a different distraction, a change of nipple.

Or in the sense of their familiarity; we have, as Adorno and Horkheimer pointed out long before internet algorithms, in a passage inspiring what I wrote earlier, “the freedom to choose what is always the same.” And writers are continually reinforcing these walls, allowed in only if we can do so, as well as man the battlements, deepen the moat, build towers everywhere anyone looks, expanding the castle, kingdom, hegemony.

We’re powerless to extricate ourselves from the problem. In desperation we work for the agent, the editor, the publisher—the industry—rather than vice versa—do we, our words not fuel you? What would you do—be—without them?—because that’s the only way we’ll be accepted. That’s the only way we’ll escape obscurity and the purgatory of the submission process, perhaps more painful, where In-progress means nothing and every comma-splice is reason for rejection, as is anything less than 10k followers or existing publications like the one we’re hoping for by submitting. We’re expected not only to provide a perfectly polished, marketable piece from the onset, accompanied by all marketing material, every logline and comparison, audiences already picked out, saving gatekeepers the time and trouble, but to be someone in order to be someone in a classic catch-22 permeating so many industries.

With a not-so-gentle nudge and whispers in our ear, we provide; we write what they want, compromising in fear of being cast out. We hide true meaning between the lines and beneath Mad-Eye Mooney’s eye, or contribute the uncompromised and starkly meaningful to journals of our peers, those increasingly few of us who resist, perhaps in vain, but all the same.

Words are indeed power. Just one reader: all we need.

Don’t engage intellectually, we’re told: unnecessary. Pretentious. Think like the masses, assuming we know how they think based on the numbers alone. Act like the masses, write like the masses, write for the masses: therein lies real worth in the twisted definition of the word. Venerate the masses. Strive for their acceptance. Without them you’re nothing. Cease your role as artist, the same as those who supposedly represent you: to elevate society. Forget that the masses are made up of individuals who may need or want something else, different, more, and may not even know it, rarely exposed to it.

Risk being patronizing: another one worth taking. Risk everything—it takes courage, I know—and don’t function to keep it—society—and them—the masses—where they are. Don’t plunge everything—everyone—further downward; here is where we trod, trend. Don’t strive for ignorance, wherein profit compounds. Don’t “relax” after an overlong day of drudgery with the easy read or season six of the ambient watch. Don’t strive for comfort; comfort isn’t paramount. Comfort isn’t an escape. It’s shackles.

As Bolaño reminds us not only in the aforementioned passage, but in the whole of 2666, the sheer weight, size and complexity of it—one volume will do, the author always intended—the loose-endedness of it, the vague connectedness of it, the sudden-switch-of-perspectiveness-of it, the seemingly needlessly-long-sentence-and-lack-of-quotation-marks-of-it, even the serious reader is losing sight of what’s important: the fight. The discomfort. For fuck’s sake who is saying what?! God forbid: the boredom.

Yet therein lies true escape.

Illustration “Thoughts” by Cindy Kang
Cindy Kang is a New York-based artist and illustrator from Seoul, South Korea. After spending her childhood in Korea, New Zealand, and the United States, she moved to New York to pursue a career in the arts, receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. She has since been creating colorful works combining organic textures with vibrant palettes, conveying warmth and reverie.
Twitter @cindysykang
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