Today’s conversation with Jordy Rosenberg is many things but at its heart it explores the question of what it means to write revolutionary literature (or as Trotsky would call it “October literature”). Whether we are talking about trans horror or a Marxist surreal, the originating violence of early capitalism or writing toward utopian horizons; whether we are getting granular on the level of craft and form or looking more broadly at the role of art and artists, the question of how our writing can lend itself toward conjuring an elsewhere and otherwise is, I think, the animating force behind it all. Jordy’s provocative choices in his latest novel Night Night Fawn bring these questions urgently to the fore as it centers and is narrated by someone whose worldview Jordy strongly opposes. Night Night Fawn is an opioid-addled, deathbed rant by one Barbara Rosenberg, a transphobic Zionist woman modeled after Jordy’s own mother. Barbara holds court not only on her life’s disappointments, but on Marxism and gender delivered through her cracked lens. All while her greatest disappointment, her transgender son, who may or may not want to kill her, visits her at her bedside. What opportunities, challenges and dangers does this approach create for a writer with revolutionary aims? How can looking back at originary violences, within a family or a nation or an ideology, be a liberatory act? And when confronting structural or familial violence, what is the role of humor and satire? Perhaps it is best summed up by Book Page in its starred review when they say Night Night Fawn is “comedic fiction as political firepower.” For the bonus audio archive Jordy contributes a reading of Kay Gabriel & Andrea Abi-Karam’s “What is the Project of Trans Poetics Now?” This joins supplemental readings by Torrey Peters, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Rickey Laurentiis, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Isabella Hammad, Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Christina Sharpe, Layli Long Soldier, Natalie Diaz and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally, here is the BookShop for today. Given Jordy’s generous citational practice, it is more robust than most.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.