DIY on the Lower East Side: Books, Buildings, and Art after the 1975 Fiscal Crisis

268 Pages·2020·2.133 MB·English

by  Andrew Strombeck

DIY on
the Lower
East Side

DIY ON
THE LOWER
EAST SIDE
Books, Buildings, and Art
after the 1975 FiSCal Crisis
Andrew Strombeck
Cover image: Broken Promises/Falsas Promises, © John Fekner. Reprinted with
permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
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permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Andrew Strombeck.
Title: DIY on the Lower East Side: Books, Buildings, and Art after the 1975 Fiscal
Crisis / Andrew Strombeck.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438479811 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438479828
(ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940104
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 David Wojnarowicz, Gordon Matta-Clark, and the
Fordist Crisis in 1970s New York 29
Chapter 2 The Puerto Rican Working Class and the Literature
of Rebuilding 55
Chapter 3 Semiotext(e), Kathy Acker, and the Decline of the
Welfare State 85
Chapter 4 The Rise of the Creative Economy: Art, Gentrification,
and Narrative 117
Chapter 5 Between Fordism and Post-Fordism: The DIY Literature
of Between C & D 151
Afterword: ACT UP and the Divergent Possibilities of DIY 179
Notes 189
Works Cited 227
Index 245

Acknowledgments
In researching the culture workers of the Lower East Side of the 1970s and
1980s, I have often been struck by their generosity: the ways that they often
commented on, promoted, and collaborated on one another’s work. Doing
my own work, I have likewise benefited from others’ generosity. Some of
this generosity came from the writers themselves. Joel Rose and Catherine
Texier were especially helpful in sharing their stories, helping me get details
right, and understanding the texture of the Lower East Side. Other writers
involved in the scene were similarly wonderful, including Lynne Tillman,
Chris Kraus, and Darius James. Robert Siegle wrote the original book on
these writers, and exchanging emails with Robert established key paradigms
for my book early on. From the day I looked her up, Catherine Liu has been
an unflinching supporter of this project, and much of the book wouldn’t
have been possible without the valuable conversations I had with her.
As a researcher who has worked primarily with post-1945 literature,
I had scant experience with library archives when I began this project. The
staff at Fales Library at New York University made this potentially difficult
process feel easy and familiar. While I was at the Fales, talking to Mar-
vin Taylor and David Hobbs helped me reshape questions and find new
resources. The staff at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies were similarly
fantastic, especially Pedro Juan Hernández. While I never visited the library
onsite, the staff at UC San Diego were wonderful as well. All that is to
say: research librarians are amazing, and I have never been more grateful
for them. Support your local research librarians.
This project received an early, invaluable boost when Post45 Peer
Reviewed accepted my piece on David Wojnarowicz and Gordon Matta-Clark.
I was stunned when someone thought it was acceptable for me to write
about art, and I have never looked back. I am grateful to Sean McCann,
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Palmer Rampell, Merve Emre, and everyone else involved with Post45. I’m
also grateful to Michael LeMahieu and the other editors at Contemporary
Literature, who, also early on, published a related piece on Rachel Kushner’s
The Flamethrowers. That experience was formative for establishing the themes
and problems of this book. (Though we’ve never met, I’m also grateful to
Kushner for writing a novel full of references and paradigms that cleared
crucial ground for this study.)
As a scholar working at a regional university, I have sometimes found
myself, as some of us do, feeling a bit isolated from the larger field. I cannot
express enough how grateful I am to the Association for the Study of Arts of
the Present, which has been a welcoming home since I first attended in 2015
in Greenville, SC. At a panel at that first conference, J.D. Connor, Joseph
Jeon, and Gloria Fisk showed up with interesting, thoughtful questions for
a scholar they’d never heard of, and they have been supportive ever since
then. Through ASAP, I’ve met so many wonderful people whose friendship
and intellects have benefited the project, including Sheri Harrison, Lee
Konstantinou, Sheila Liming, Theodore Martin, Annie McClanahan, and
Min Hyoung Song. Thoughtful conversations with Tyler Bradway, Sarah
Broulliette, Leigh Claire La Berge, Diarmuid Hester, Kate Marshall, Andrew
Marzoni, Urayoán Noel, Matt Tierney, Jean-Thomas Tremblay, Andrew Lison,
and Joshua Clover have also shaped the project. Andrew Hoberek has been
simply amazing, promoting the project at every turn, putting me in touch
with key people, and generally being a great friend and colleague. Jason
Arthur read and gave feedback on multiple drafts of early chapters. Vinnie
Haddad has been an ASAP of one here in the Miami Valley.
My career began at the University of California at Davis. I learned
to be a scholar under the mentorship of my dissertation advisors David
Simpson, Riché Richardson, and Rita Raley. Elizabeth Freeman arrived at
Davis too late to be part of my committee, but conversations with her also
helped form my intellectual foundations. I would not be where I am today
without their guidance, skill, and depth of knowledge, and they have all
continued to support my career in ways large and small.
My colleagues at the Department of English Languages and Literatures
at Wright State University are a great group. Hope Jennings, Kelli Zeytoun,
Lynnette Jones, Annette Oxindine, Carol Mejia LaPerle, and Alpana Sharma
have made Wright State a welcoming intellectual community. Deborah
Casan told me to keep writing. Chris DeWeese and Heather Christle have
helped me understand the avant-garde poetry of the past 40 years from
the perspective of brilliant practitioners. Lars Soderland has, alas, moved
Acknowledgments ix
on to Western Oregon University, but the many Mondays that Lars and I
spent sampling bourbons and talking literary theory have left a long mark
on the book.
I’ve also learned from the insights of Wright State’s graduate and
undergraduate students, especially students in Fall 2017’s Books/Space/Cities/
The Present and the Spring 2016 sections of ENG 3060. Among these stu-
dents, I need to mention two in particular. Jamal Russell, now writing his
own brilliant book at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been
a friend and inspiration since I first had him in class. Dave Shields, too,
has inspired me with his intellect and friendship. I appreciate in particular
his insights on art and museum curation. Students are amazing. Support
your local students.
The College of Liberal Arts at Wright State University provided
important research funding for this project in 2014, and allowed me a
year of sabbatical in 2016–17. The Wright State chapter of the American
Association of University Professors has fought hard both to allow people
like me the time to do research, and to keep Wright State as the kind of
viable public institution that I discuss in this book. I’ll stand alongside
them on the picket line through any amount of terrible weather. Unions
are amazing. Support your local unions.
I first talked to Rebecca Colesworthy about this project at the Novel
conference in Ithaca in 2017. I’m so lucky that I did. From the start, she
has been responsive, attentive to the work, encouraging, and, simply, a good
person to talk to. She and her colleagues at SUNY Press are the best of
their class. I can’t imagine this book being anywhere but SUNY. University
presses are amazing. Support your local university presses.
Chris Maikels has always been good at getting me to take breaks
from all this. I’m grateful for his friendship. I’ve come to think of writing
as including all sorts of activities: walking, cleaning up, going to the library.
For this project, it also included playing guitar with Michael Schlaerth, and
I’m grateful for his patience with my so-so playing. Jay Lewis has been a
rock since I first met him in 1992; I can’t imagine my life without him in
it. John Beckman and Thomas Heise have encouraged this project from its
very early origins at the MLA in 2014, and their friendship over the past
twenty years has been one of the very brightest parts of my life.
While working on this project, I’d often joke that it was just an excuse
to go to New York. The North Shore neighborhood in Staten Island is quite
different from the Lower East Side, but it’s come to feel like a second home.
Trish Strombeck and Christoph Mayer watched my kids while I worked at