Gary Percesepe ~ The Climactic Interview

NBC Today Show: Guy Debord Interviews Edmund Jabès on Systemic Racism in America

Q:        They tell me you’re writ­ing a book?
A:        Liars. Knaves.
Q.        Can you explain for our view­ers what your new book is about?
A:        You are the one who writes and is written.
Q:        Excuse us?
A:        Mark the first page of the book with a red mark­er. For in the begin­ning, the wound is invisible.
Q:        Right. Where is your new book set?
A:        In the book.
Q:        I’m sor­ry. I’m hav­ing trou­ble fol­low­ing you.
A:        I, too, have often tried to give up.
Q:        We are almost at com­mer­cial. Can you tell us, quick­ly, what is your story?
A:        Ours, inso­far it is absent.
Q:        I do not understand.
A:        Speaking tor­tures me.
Q:        Let me rephrase. What is your truth? We have 30 sec­onds before the break.
A:        What lac­er­ates me.
Q:        And your salvation?
A:        Forgetting what I said.
Q:        That’s a big amen. If only Nixon were so lucky.
A:        There are no steps in the sea. Nor degrees in pain.
Q:        To see is to go through mir­rors. At the end we see the night of the last star.
A:        You are get­ting the hang of this.
Q:        One of the things I hate about my job is these damn com­mer­cials. I also hate what is said in places I leave behind.
A:        You trade in a future which is imme­di­ate­ly translated.
Q:        Let the dead bury their dead.
A:        Precisely.
Q:        When, as a child, I wrote my name for the first time, I knew I was begin­ning a book.
A:        Repeat after me: Fuck the commercial.
Q:        You are walk­ing toward death. You are walk­ing on all the deaths which belong to you and your race, and the lack of sense of these deaths.
A:        Yet some solemn­ly intone that America is not a racist country.
Q:        To the blind man who begged for his bless­ing, Reb Yekel said: Speak to the man who sees with your miss­ing eyes.
A:        To the one-armed man who begged for his bless­ing, Reb Derrida said: Speak to the man who builds with your miss­ing arm.
Q:        Shall we have lunch?
A: Sure.
Q:        Can you buy? I think I’m out of a job.
A:        Never work.
Q:        Although I have read a lot, I have drunk even more. I have writ­ten much less than most peo­ple who write, but I have drunk much more than most peo­ple who drink.
A:        Noted. Shit. Did I just agree to buy?
Q:        The hap­pi­ness to be one­self is what the horse feels when it has thrown off its rider.

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Gary Percesepe is the author of The Winter of J, and an Associate Editor at New World Writing.