The Trouble with "New York Books"
Jeff Rubard
Fellow Americans, lady Americans, this is Jeffrey Rubard and today I
would like to talk to you about a problem of middling size in the
American publishing industry, my authorship of *scores* (precisely) of
books under pseudonyms/*noms de plume*. A partial list, stretching
back to *1995*:
*The Trouble with Computers*, Thomas L. Landauer, MIT Press, 1995
*Vurt*, Jeff Noon (royalties *freely given* to Mr. Noon, who wrote the
*other, better* science fiction novels appearing under *his name*),
St. Martin's, 1995
*Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy
of Race*, "Matthew Frye Jacobson", Harvard UP, 1999
*The House of Sand and Fog*, "Andre Dubus III" (Knopf, 2004)
*The Garden of Last Days*, same, W.W. Norton, 2006
*Inwardness and Existence*, "Walter A. Davis", Marquette University
Press
*Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche Since 9-11*, same, Pluto
Press, London, 2006 (Freudian cultural criticism, mind you)
*The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts*, "Richard
A. Lanham" (An English name, of course)
*Style: An Anti-Textbook*, ibid., Yale, 1974 (back-dated to "indicate"
that many New Left-sympathetic professors could have *said* such
things at the time but not *write* them)
*The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of
Information*, same, University of Chicago Press, 2007 (tributary to
Ranciere and Barbie-as-James-Brown)
*Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal*, "Rob Riemen", Yale UP (get
real, anti-Semites)
*The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America*,
"James Sullivan", Gotham("Berkeleyan idealism" and the best book I
ever wrote: the worst possible book about a topic nobody else could
write about, honoring JB from the maximally racist position in
America)
*Corn Flakes with John Lennon: And Other Tales from a Rock 'n' Roll
Life*, Rodale Books, 2009, "Robert Hilburn" (My uncle schools my rock-
and-roll-father, if not the *WSJ*)
*Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation*, "William
H. Sewell Jr.", University of Chicago Press (for a black-Republican)
*Deduction: Introductory Symbolic Logic*, "Daniel
Bonevac" (condescending intro logic texts fromma Blackwell wit' "local
color")
*A Course in Mathematical Logic*, "Yu. I. Manin" (*Springer-
Motherfucking-Verlag*)
*Mathematics and Physics*, ibid. (Birkhauser)
*The Employment Effects of Technological Change: Heterogeneous Labor,
Wage Inequality, and Unemployment*, "Jens Rubart" (Springer-Verlag and
Euro-leftism *for Real*)
*The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in
Contemporary Social Thought*, "Kian Tajbakhsh" (payback for a
"mother")
*Philosophy for Linguists*, "Siobhan Chapman", Routledge UK (Wouldn't
you like to know the "historical" Braeburn-Twinsett? Actually, you
have no idea)
*The Perfectibility of Human Nature in Eastern and Western Thought*,
"Harold Coward" (SUNY and "Nelson Rockefeller" indeed)
*Battle Cry of Freedom*, "James M. McPherson" (Oxford, England
University Press, which as *many* know was not publishing American
history in 1988 -- though dig that new book on the "Era of Good
Feelings" by, uh, someone else)
*Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics*, "Jeremy
Gray" (Princeton University Press, peace to Bourbaki and soft drug
dealers)
*Transcritique: On Kant and Marx*, "Kojin Karatani" -- a common name
with *another, different* book to *its* credit
*Building More Effective Unions*, "Paul F. Clark" (ILR Press, and even
*two* jokes in the title)
------
Actually, quite a number of other books and monographs have been
published, including *my* "love letter" to Portland, Oregon, *The Moon
for Its Citizens*: and I personally have not *directly* collected a
*red cent* from *any* of them, tho' this may not go well with born
Knickerbockers and other *authorities*. How-ever, this *traditional*
idea: known as "New York books", and sometimes used to *socialist*
purposes by those who like the free written word better than "wudz
with money": has its intrinsic limits as well, and a *great* admirer
of "Terry Pinkard's" free-or-instaprintable translation of Hegel's
*Phenomenology* intends to *try* to make it good to those dependent on
income from intellectual property by producing a translation of
Nietzsche's compact version of the *Will to Power* from 1885
*copyrighted* by the Government Printing Office, and see where things
go (not usually in the grave, directly and "o'course": ask my literary
agent, Howard Dean or some such). On the other hand, it is not ours to
try to force the hand of the federal bureaucracy or executive branch
by "critique": and these books were *even* written, ahem, in what *I*
myself used to call the *W-Zeit*.
I hope you enjoy reading them: I would enjoy spending earnings from
them on "worthwhile things".
Jeffrey Daniel Rubard
Jeff Rubard
County Library *in its current conformation* encounter on account of
their difficulties with this concept of authorship, and "honest pay
for honest work", are *no concern* of mine.
Jeff Rubard
And if you were curious about the method behind the "madness":
-----
Zach,
All of our problems except monstrous Democratic backsliding nationally
solved, but please to know this: I *don't* actually have a problem
with not getting royalties for my popular and well-regarded books,
*provided* the money goes to a good cause. I just gave Jeff Noon the
royalties for *Vurt*, an *experiment* in "mutual aid": however, I felt
morally compelled to give the money for *Whiteness of a Different
Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race* -- an *Apologia
Pro Vita's "Sew-er"* -- to the Labour Party of one Great Britain: the
*presumable* limited money from my "star turn" as Yvonne Bynoe to the
United Negro College Fund: shamefacedly, the money from the "Spinozist
parecon" from South End Press went to the *Forward*: every true
American's favorite *Rebels Rising* funds the American Indian
Movement: and the Crimethinc self-help manual -- "Hey you guys!" --
funds, I think, Books for Prisoners.
So, really, there *is* a "future in your front" but I didna exactly
have to learn How It Is Done. Would you like to have coffee today at,
say, 3-4?
-----
Furthermore, I have done a little bit of charity work *locally*: I
gave money from a work of "philosophy of quantum physics" to Potluck
in the Park, and money from a "gay theory of the Internet" to Free
Geek; what I think of as a "high-brow *Krimi*" perhaps pays for
Beaverton Police's coffee and pastries divers, and *more I suppose*:
in the recent weeks I've become *aware* of my published authorship,
I've liked to think of such an *achievement* of forgetting as
"deathless cool" but life might really have more to do with Portland
Community College and "Trotskyist sanity" than such "slick tricks".
Jeff Rubard
Jeff Rubard
> On Nov 3, 1:17 pm,JeffRubard<jeffrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Finally: any "unpleasantnesses" *Powell's Books* or the Multnomah
> > County Library *in its current conformation* encounter on account of
> > their difficulties with this concept of authorship, and "honest pay
> > for honest work", are *no concern* of mine.
>
> And if you were curious about the method behind the "madness":
>
> -----
>
> Zach,
>
> All of our problems except monstrous Democratic backsliding nationally
> solved, but please to know this: I *don't* actually have a problem
> with not getting royalties for my popular and well-regarded books,
> royalties for *Vurt*, an *experiment* in "mutual aid": however, I felt
> morally compelled to give the money for *Whiteness of a Different
> Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race* -- an *Apologia
> Pro Vita's "Sew-er"* -- to the Labour Party of one Great Britain: the
> *presumable* limited money from my "star turn" as Yvonne Bynoe to the
> United Negro College Fund: shamefacedly, the money from the "Spinozist
> parecon" from South End Press went to the *Forward*: every true
> American's favorite *Rebels Rising* funds the American Indian
> Movement: and the Crimethinc self-help manual -- "Hey you guys!" --
> funds, I think, Books for Prisoners.
>
> So, really, there *is* a "future in your front" but I didna exactly
> have to learn How It Is Done. Would you like to have coffee today at,
> say, 3-4?
>
> -----
>
> Furthermore, I have done a little bit of charity work *locally*: I
> gave money from a work of "philosophy of quantum physics" to Potluck
> in the Park, and money from a "gay theory of the Internet" to Free
> Geek; what I think of as a "high-brow *Krimi*" perhaps pays for
> Beaverton Police's coffee and pastries divers, and *more I suppose*:
> in the recent weeks I've become *aware* of my published authorship,
> I've liked to think of such an *achievement* of forgetting as
> "deathless cool" but life might really have more to do with Portland
> Community College and "Trotskyist sanity" than such "slick tricks".
>
> Jeff Rubard
And now, to begin the task of honoring intellectual property (and mine
own "Gideon J. Pillow") *in earnest*, a quotation from the
aforementioned *Version* of the *Wille zur Macht*:
Man muß sich klar machen, was eigentlich die Meisten interessirt: was
aber die höheren Menschen interessirt, das erscheint den niederen
uninteressant, folglich die Hingebung daran etwas “Unegoistisches”!
One must to oneself make clear -- that actually interests "the
mostest": what would interest the higher men, that "looks
uninteresting" to those hiding under bushes, which following the
giving-back bears on something "unegoistic".
Der Sprachgebrauch der modernen Moralität ist durch die niederen
Menschen gemacht, die den Blick von unten herauf zur Moralität heben:
The 'speech-tool' of modern morality was made *through* the lower men,
that the 'visage' on lower there-up to Moralitie lifted;
“aufopfernd” — aber wer wirklich Opfer bringt, weiß, daß es keine
Opfer waren!
"offered up-and-at-them" -- however, those who actually 'level idols'
know that it was no idol.
trans. Jeffrey Daniel Rubard