EASYREEDER

Brooklyn Rail (talks)

Ubu Sings Ubu

(04/27/2014)

...John Reed (Rail): We are live now.

Dan Safer: All right.

Tony Torn:  Great. Grill us, man. Grill us.

Rail:  So, all right. First question of the evening: So is that the same seat every show?

Torn:  Excuse me?

Rail:  Is that the same seat every show, the seat where Julie finds the hidden treasure?

Torn:  Do we want to give that away?

Rail:  Well, I might go back.

Torn:  I would say—no, I would say the fun seat is the same, but how Julie gets there and what she does on her way there is different every night.

Safer:  So if you want to get, like, crawled upon by Julie, the seat might not be the best strategy.

Rail:  Crawl is not the verb I would have used.

Torn:  It’s the same seat, but what she does is different every night.

Rail:  So it could happen to anybody, any seat in the theater?

Torn:  Well…

Frederic Tuten

(09/01/2010)

...John Reed (Rail): So, where are you now?

Frederic Tuten: Finishing up the summer in Southampton and writing a new novel.

Rail: What’s it about?

Tuten: People vanishing and huge ships evaporating in Brazil’s Tocantins River in the middle of the day. It’s a detective story, a love story, and a story about a man who has found a secret way to change the world. And, finally, like the character of Tintin in my novel, I’m working on my memoir. The Self Portraits is part one of an ongoing autobiography, the stories being transformations of me and of people in my life. That’s why I have dedicated each story individually. 

Rail: Since we met at the Bon Vivant Diner, any exciting new developments?

Tuten: It’s a season of blessings. One of my stories in this book, “Self Portrait with Sicily,” is coming out this fall in a little book in Italian and English and with illustrations by the artist Mimmo Paladino. Another story from my book, “Self Portrait with Sicily” is appearing as a book in Spanish and English published in Madrid by the Residencia de Estudiantes, where the poet Garcia Lorca stayed as a young man.

I have started on a project for the young Mexican artist, Pedro Reyes, creating the characters for the puppets of figures such as Mao and Lenin for an internet show called “Baby Marx.” And in October (12) at the Getty in L.A., Steve Martin and I are having a conversation about our new books and about the role of art in our work. 

Rail: I have a great story about Steve Martin—I wish I could remember who told it to me. An art dealer, I think. He had gone to a party thrown by Steve Martin…

Stephen Graubard

(11/01/2004)

…John Reed (Rail): Has the U.S. presidency had a consistent reaction to disasters and human suffering around the world? What are the variables that come into play when presidents are looking at their involvement in crises abroad?

Stephen Graubard: I am not sure that I know what disasters and human suffering can be said to encompass. I would point out, however, that Theodore Roosevelt was very proud of his efforts to help persecuted minorities in Europe, that FDR literally “saved” Britain by what he did in 1940 and 1941 before Pearl Harbor, not only by pressing Congress but also by his executive orders. He helped in all sorts of ways to alert the country to the dangers of Nazism and therefore kept British resistance alive. He knew something of what Hitler was doing to the Jews, but never all that came to be revealed about the Holocaust. In any case, he did not see what he could do to help the endangered Jews, never taking in the full character of the catastrophe represented by Auschwitz and the other death camps. Harry Truman, by his Marshall Plan, but also by his help to Greece and Turkey and Point Four program, did much to reduce human suffering in the devastated societies that had experienced World War II. John Kennedy imagined that he was helping to liberate Cubans from their oppressors by his Bay of Pigs, a tragic mistake. Richard Nixon withdrew many of the American forces from Vietnam but believed he could not cut and run, that to do so would only increase suffering in the whole of Southeast Asia. Jimmy Carter sought to rescue hostages taken in the invasion of the American embassy in Tehran and failed entirely to do so. Ronald Reagan imagined that the policies advanced by his aides, represented by the unforgettable word “Irangate,” would liberate hostages and at the same time offer aid to “freedom fighters” in America. The plot, when revealed, was only embarrassing to him. Clinton took few risks, though he imagined that he had helped rid Serbia of its oppressor, as George W. Bush also imagined when he toppled Saddam Hussein and rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. Of yesterday’s inaugural speech by Bush II, one can only echo Robin Cook’s words, as given in The Guardian this morning. Cook, once Blair’s foreign secretary, writes: “The Bush administration is in denial about its disastrous failure in Iraq.” His article is entitled “Fireworks in Washington, Despair Around the World.” Presidents generally try to engage themselves when they think they can win popular and world support by doing so. At times, they make grievous mistakes in respect to both.

Rail: At the moment, there’s some idea that the U.S. election process has become exceptionally vulnerable to tampering, even that elections might be or might have been stolen….

Karen Liebreich

(10/01/2004)

…John Reed (Rail): Over the centuries, how much evidence of these crimes was destroyed by the Roman Catholic Church? What was the quality of that evidence? Important?

Karen Liebreich: By definition, we do not know how much evidence was destroyed over the centuries. In the case of this particular order, there are several areas where I know material is missing. After the initial allegations about the activities of a headmaster, Father Stefano Cherubini, another Piarist teacher, Father Garzia, was sent to Naples in 1629 to interrogate the school’s teachers and boys. He compiled a dossier of the evidence, which, given the reaction of Father Stefano when it fell into his hands, must have been damning. Father Stefano grabbed the dossier and took it to his brother, the important lawyer at the Vatican, and it has never been seen since. Calasanz told Garzia to destroy all his letters and any other correspondence that mentioned this scandal. He obviously failed to destroy everything, since I have copies of these letters, but nevertheless he probably did destroy a great deal.

In 1659, thirteen years after the suppression, one of Father Stefano’s closest colleagues, Father Glicerio Cerrutti, also a man with a very dubious reputation, built an enormous bonfire out of any incriminating material. Given what I found anyhow, just think what I might have found had that material remained in existence.

Why was there no material in the Inquisition archive? From the archive of the order I found instructions and correspondence from the Inquisition and correspondence to the Inquisition, but in the Inquisition itself—nothing. It could, of course, be that the material has been lost in the destruction of the centuries, or that it is misfiled, or that I simply didn’t spend enough time in the archive, but at any rate, such indexes do exist, and such sources as I consulted had no record of any material concerning the Piarist order. Given that the Piarists were suppressed as a result of investigations led by the Inquisition assessor Francesco Albizzi—unprecedented legally and shocking—and that the founder was arrested by the Inquisition and then subjected to house arrest, it is strange that there is absolutely no record.

So, who knows how much evidence was destroyed, or what its true quality. But important material was certainly destroyed, and destroyed in a deliberate attempt to cover up the evidence. This is true in the particular case I studied, and I think one can safely extrapolate that it will be true for other instances through the centuries.

Rail: There’s a blurb on your book from Kirkus: “Cover-ups never work.” Is that true?…

Paul Auster

(08/01/2003)

…John Reed (Rail): Is there a cultural war going on in this country?

Paul Auster: How so?

Rail: Well, for our purposes, a relationship between conservatism and sort of a squashing of creative endeavors.

Auster: I wouldn’t call it a cultural war. I think it’s a real political war that’s going on. We’ve gone through bad periods in the past. McCarthyism, for example, to cite something fairly recent. The Vietnam War was bad, tumultuous, but at the same time invigorating— because a lot was being aired about the nature of our society and culture that was very healthy. Now that the right wing has taken over, we’ve entered a new realm of danger. It’s certainly the scariest moment that I’ve experienced in my lifetime. In a serious way, we’re running the risk of eroding all that’s good about American democracy; and I think these sons of bitches are doing it on purpose, with their eyes wide open. What the right wing wants is to bankrupt the government. They want to make it impossible for any kind of social programs to be affordable. The only money— public money— they want is for the military. Everything else they want privatized. The thing that shocks me about what’s going on is not so much that it’s happening— but that no one is really screaming about it. I would think now, after more than two years of Bush, that the country would be hysterically, passionately against it, but he’s rolling over everybody. That’s appalling to me.

Take something like the Halliburton contract in Iraq. A few years ago, this would have caused a major scandal; it would have been an outrage to the American public. Now nobody seems to think twice about it. On every front, these people are doing things that I’m entirely opposed to. Whether it’s foreign policy, economic policy, social policy, or environmental policy— everything, everything is 180 degrees against what I think the country should be doing. Am I alone in feeling this way? No. Most of the people I know in New York are thinking similar thoughts— but out in the rest of the country I’m not sure. I’m just not sure. I’ve been so angry, I even wrote a song against George Bush, when the war broke out. One Ring Zero, a group of young musicians from Brooklyn, have set it to music, and recorded it on a CD. I’ll play it for you later, if you like.

Rail: That would be great…

Shitty Mickey

(02/10/2003)

…John Reed: Mickey, what a wonderful chance this is for people to get to know the real mouse.

Mickey Mouse: Yes, I often think how exceedingly difficult it must be to get a sense of my importance through just my films— and I so rarely give interviews, as I can only sustain my enlightened state of awareness by way of a quiet, contemplative life, rich with meditation and debased stupors. But of course, even if the audience of the Earth can only glean the most transient sense of my holiness through my movies, it must do them a great deal of good, anyway.

Reed: Meditation and stupor? Is that the secret to your amazing longevity? You must be nearing eighty, which, as I understand it, is quite advanced for a mouse.

Mouse: Seventy. It’s all about quality healthcare. As it stands now, mouse health care is extraordinarily evolved. The testing process for mice, in terms of therapies, medicines, etceteras, is far more developed than it is for humans. Indeed, if a mouse receives the very best in the way of proper medical attention, he might expect to live forever. And that’s true, by the way, because mice are foremost supporters of the medical establishment—and the medical establishment can’t afford to lose me, as the world’s preeminent mouse.

Reed: You mean you sell a lot of candy?

Mouse: And soda, and so forth. But the medical industry owes a great deal to mice, not only because of my candy and soda, but because of Lyme disease and the Hanta virus and the Bubonic plague, and, moreover, because the general social theory of mice— that they can live anywhere, on any food supply, in any level of toxicity/adversity— has been a well-spring of surgical and medicinal necessities, and, henceforth, applications…