George and Martha
My Tuesday night eating disorders group was cancelled so last night I went to Barbara’s Bookstore at Halstead and Roosevelt, near the University of Illinois Chicago campus to see noted performance artist Karen Finley. Best known as an 80’s art martyr from the whole Jesse Helm/NEA fiasco, was as scheduled to read from her new book George and Martha, which relates a passionate affair between Martha Stewart and the current president.
I really don’t like to think about President Bush but I will admit I’m a little fascinated by Martha Stewart, by the overpowering need to control and overpower that lurks just beyond the pleasant smile and the perfect façade she has carefully created. I used to love watching her show. She would be helping a child or a guest with a craft project and you would see her hands taking over, doing things her way. I loved her sense of overkill. Her recipes served dozens. Everything always has to be the best. Best of all she would often end up using an electric hacksaw on topiary or taking a blow torch to custard as if she was starring in some bizarre domestic horror extravaganza.
Fertile ground for absurdity and I was curious to see what Finley would do with it. I’m not exactly what you’d call a Karen Finley fan but the woman is iconic. I’ve known about her since I was a teenager. I have her book Shock Treatment and she has an interview in the Re/Search Angry Women anthology one of the most influential books I ever read so I definitely wasn’t going to miss a chance to see her read.
Because of my mini-car accident and because UIC is about twice as far from my new place as it was from where I used to live I was only 10 minutes early. I’ve been to two previous author events at Barbara’s Bookstore UIC, readings by historian Sarah Vowell (The Partially Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation) and revisionist Gregory Maguire (Wicked, Son of A Witch). Both drew fairly large audiences and the only reason I got a seat was my tendency to show up to events of this nature half an hour early. However much to my surprise when I went into the room for the Finely reading quite late by my standards there was no one in the room but an elderly gentleman and Karen Finley.
During the next 10 minutes, no more then a dozen people wandered in. I couldn’t believe how poorly it was attended. It was in the Reader, it was in Time Out Chicago. I mean I have always considered Karen Finley to be fairly mainstream, practically a household name thanks to being scapegoated by Jesse Helms. What really surprised me was that there didn’t seem to be any students in attendance. Not a single punk rock 18-22 year old in evidence despite the fact that we were 10 feet from a University. My fellow audience members seemed to be culturally minded seniors for the most part. I was easily the youngest. All I can think of is that she must have been at another event earlier that day. I really hope that’s the case, I mean what is the world coming to when college kids aren’t interested in watching a woman best known for shoving yams up her ass make fun of the president? (I know I know she never actually shoved yams up her ass but sometimes myth captures a persona and an era way better then the truth.)
Finley was pretty riveting when she read from George and Martha, a tall woman in square glasses wearing a long, tight black dress and a sequined jacket of red and black with white stars (a clear reference to the American flag), with witchy hennaed red hair. She was very funny; there were some good lines:
Martha: I’m everybody’s mother and everybody hates their mother.
George: I know we’re both in domestic issues but Iraq isn’t K-Mart.
Martha: It could be.
Overall however it did seem more like a performance piece then a book. I couldn’t really imagine George and Martha and their obscene, shrill and silly affair being all that engaging on paper. However when Finley began to discuss her work I realized just how important it was.
When my father goes into an art galleries he can with a completely straight face start talking absolutely the most pretentious bullshit you can imagine, dropping key-words and loaded phrases saying a huge amount about absolutely nothing. Karen Finley was doing the exact same thing about George and Martha, talking about how crucial it was in the face of the patriot act to create provocative art and how this was a post-modern deconstruction that worked on so many levels not only of George Bush Jr./Martha Stewart but also George and Martha Washington, George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff the first modern American play and all this other stuff.
I will honestly say I don’t have a clue if she was serious or just bamboozling. I felt sort of like I do when I watch Sarah Silverman, where she comes on totally sincere and confessional then says really horrible, outrageous things. I really hope Karen Finley was pulling something like this because if she wasn’t she’s really self-important and sort of scary. Of course the real scary came out during the Q&A portion of the event.
First the elderly gentleman who had arrived before me said he’d read Finley had a performance background and asked if she’d ever “done that play you mentioned”, which I assume was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff. I had no idea it was possible to wander into a Karen Finley reading with no clue who Karen Finley is.
Even worse an older woman, a self proclaimed artist was so inspired by Finley’s line about the sacred duty of artists to notice things and reveal truth that she decided to share her observation that George Bush Sr. had “a slanty eye and you can’t trust someone with a slanty eye” and that George W. Bush had likewise had a slanty eye but had it fixed. I know I winched at that, a little for myself and a little for the Asian-American bookstore manager who was coordinating the event.
Karen Finley gave the woman a polite slap down about how she didn’t think judging people by physical appearances was quite what she had in mind. The woman defended herself saying she was fulfilling her artistic duty to be provocative. The Asian-American manager hopped up, led a round of applause and got the book-signing portion of things rolling. I went to look at the magazines.
Damn that Jeremy Piven is cute, in a tactile way, like crushed velvet. You just want to rub your face all over him.