Why Some Writers Refuse to Submit?

Portrait of Dostoevsky by Vasily Perov (1872)

It is easy to see how writers like Mailer, Hemingway and Plimpton (who all boxed), Isak Dinesen (who hunted game), Gloria Steinem (who became a Playboy bunny) Jean Genet (who was a hustler and criminal), Peter Matthiessen (who explored dangerous places like the Himalayas)  and most recently William Vollman (who explored his dark side in varying dangerous milieu ) challenged bulls or  added tails to their tales. It was the only way to differentiate themselves from their colleagues, meek Kafkaesque creatures who lived in fear of rejection and waited for telephone calls or the return of sases (remember them) from imperious editors who could make or break their careers. Even running for your life at Pamplona or performing half naked in a sex club and facing the leering eyes of inebriated businessmen was better than dealing with the literary world in a places like London, Paris or New York. Graham Greene was another writer who put himself in danger whether exploring the criminal world of Nice (J’Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice) or in his varying travels through Mexico, Africa and Caribbean. V.S Naipaul chased his high in his well documented sadistic relationship with his mistress. Many writers and artists, whose art evolves from their quirky and eccentric way of doings things and ofttimes their inability to conform to the more narrow lifestyles afforded by run-of-the-mill professions, occupied the world of haute boheme. But few would go to the lengths of colorful figures like Norman Mailer who stabbed his then wife on eve of his candidacy for the mayoralty of New York. What made Dostoevsky engage in dangerous revolutionary activities that in a famous instance found him in danger of execution? Was he looking for material or was he just trying to escape from the lot of being your typical weirdo and egghead whose ego would one day be trampled by an insensitive world? “Not having heard from you, I was wondering about the status of my submission,” is the kind of note that writers today may text or e mail. Even a firing squad is better than that.

Chris Ofili: Night and Day

The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili (1996)

There’s a lot of good shit in Chris Ofili: Night and Day currently on exhibit at the New Museum. Not the selfies of shit that are popping up on iPhones these days, but dung. Ofili is quoted as saying this about “The Holy Virgin Mary" (1996) whose profane Madonna includes inlays of assholes along with the infamous fecal matter: “As an alter boy, I was confused by the idea of the holy Virgin Mary giving birth to a young boy. Now when I go to the National Gallery and see paintings of the Virgin Mary, I see how sexually charged they are.” Ofili comments thusly about another centerpiece of the show, “Shithead,” a piece of dung with teeth, topped with bits of his own hair: “They’d look at me. They’d look at the shit. They look at me. Then it would get to them. So it was a cycle of looking in which they put me together with shit and created an image from those two.” The show is titled “night and day” since some of the paintings are so conceived that the color of a face will change from black to white depending on the perspective of the viewer. Ofili grew up in England and his parents were born in Nigeria. Race is one of his subjects. Blaxploitation and hip hop are elements of some other works. Big Daddy Kane’s song “Pimpin’Ain’t Easy" is reflected in an Oflili artwork of the same name from l997 which also hearkens back to the Notorious B.I.G lines, "Pimpin’ ain’t easy but it sure is fun.” But what’s almost disconcerting is the profound religiosity which infects all of the work. “The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Star” is the title of yet another painting. Ofili partakes of a tradition of transgressive Christianity that goes back to Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, to Graham Greene’s fugitive priest in The Power and the Glory and to the damnation that infects the saintly fallen creatures in Pasolini’s films. Then Mayor Rudy Guiliani took offense at "The Holy Virgin Mary” when is was shown at the Brooklyn Museum in l999 and tried to have it removed. In another age, Ofili would have been burned at the stake.