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Pop Culture
Dec 22, 2023, 06:28AM

It’s So Cruel

A 1996 Der Spiegel interview with novelist William Gaddis vs. a 2o18 SF MOMA interview with artist, writer, and filmmaker John Akomfrah. || Raymond Cummings

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William Gaddis: What happens to a civilization, its undercurrents when it becomes legalistic?

John Akomfrah: This is probably the most vexed question of them all. It’s so cruel.

Gaddis: Right. I don’t see any way out.

Akomfrah: I’m here. I didn’t die.

Gaddis: Yes, very much so.

•••

Akomfrah: That there is no detour around form: the desire to say something is also a desire to find a way of saying it.

Gaddis: But no one has read the novel, and so no one's noticed a thing.

Akomfrah: Definitely, your average educated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century figure understood this.

Gaddis: Especially the feeling that many men have, who have to support a family and keep a job that they hate.

Akomfrah: You’re struck by the fragility of things and how close you are to your own unmaking.

•••

Gaddis: No. Things fall apart, everything breaks down, even language. I see it as a decline, entropy, breakdown.

Akomfrah: Absolutely. In fact there were some very ugly episodes.

Gaddis: Quite a few.

Akomfrah: I think that tone’s important.

Gaddis: And the race question—how is it going to be resolved?

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