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The Tense of Trauma: NovelistChris Kraus ponders themeaning of "It would havebeen"BY LESLIE CAMHI

The prospect of speaking with ChrisKraus is unnerving. This is a womanwho turned her affair manqu with anexpatriate English cultural critic intothe cult classic I Love Dicka succsde scandale and roman clefwrittenin the form of wildly unrequited loveletters/philosophical meditations. Wasstepping into her orbit, even for aninterview, a calculated risk?

Torpor, Kraus' dazzling new novel,

digs still more deeply into the mindsof its protagonists, a married couplewho bear a more than passingresemblance to Kraus and herhusband of many years, Frenchliterary critic and Columbia professorSylvre Lotringer. This hilarious andbiting satire of academia and the artworld is set at the dawn of the NewWorld Order, circa 1991, as itsheroine, a frustrated avant-gardefilmmaker, and her husband, a childsurvivor of the Shoah and a university

professor who loathes academe,travel with their miniature dachshundacross a newly reconfigured EasternEurope. Their ostensible purpose is toadopt a Romanian orphan, thoughthat's a barely adequate cover fortheir flight from History and from theirrelationship's unraveling.

Torpormarks a departure for you,in that in it you use pseudonymsfor the main characters, Sylvieand Jerome, whereas in I Love

Dick, you use your own and yourhusband's names.

It was impossible to write Torporinthe first person, because it was justtoo personal. There was a lot ofcontroversy around I Love Dick.People claimed that it was such aconfessional book. I didn't really thinkit was personal at all. The stuff frommy life was used in a very anecdotalway there.

But in TorporI really wanted to getinto that stuff, which had a lot to do

with Sylvre and me, and withSylvre's background as a childsurvivor. And I also wanted it to bevery funny, and to turn the couple intoa pair of clowns at times, because the

truest stuff is also always the mostembarrassing, the funniest, and mostcompromising stuff.

I guess I learned that, especially for awoman, you can't turn yourself intothat kind of a clown, because it justinvites the wrong kind of scrutiny. Soif I wanted to knock the couple arounda bit, they had to be like Burns andAllen, or Laurel and Hardy. Then Icould say anything.

Also, since I wasn't writing the book inreal time, I started playing games withtense. "It would have been"just tosay it puts a little lump in your chest.It's so incredibly sad and poignant.And then it turned out that this reallyis the tense of trauma. It's apparentlywell-known among people who studytrauma that this tense is used a greatdeal.

Can we talk a bit about thecharacter of Sylvie? The book isnarrated from her perspective,

looking back. At one point, shedescribes both Sylvie and Jeromeas "people born of tragiccircumstances." It's clear whatthe tragic circumstance were forJeromethe war, the Shoah. ButSylvie, who is a generationyounger, grew up in New Zealand.What were the tragiccircumstances for her?

Oh well, when she was in the 5thgrade, the kids picketed her house

with signs saying, "Sylvie Green hascooties." And then she has a wildimagination. It's also somewhat aclass thingbeing from a family ofworking-class, disenfranchisedintellectuals. And then coming to NewYork, and not having been to the kindof school that most people in the artworld go to, and always feeling, evenin a band of outsiders, somewhatapart.

Where did you grow up?

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Well, like Sylvie, I was born in theBronx. My parents moved to a suburbnear Bridgeport, Connecticut. Duringthe Vietnam War, they decided to giveup their American citizenship and

move to New Zealand.

Was it a political decision forthem?

Yes, it was a political decision, a heartdecision, also a money decision. Theywere perpetually behind, financially.My sister had some pretty seriousmedical problems, and they didn'thave insurance. And they saw NewZealand as this social-democraticparadise, which in a sense it was. Itwas so marvelous to arrive there in1969. At that time it was still a veryclosed society, with a huge lowermiddle class, very few wealthy andvery few poor. And very lowexpectations in terms of consumergoods, and a much more communalway of life. All of which gives Sylvie agreat deal in common with Jerome.New Zealand in the 70s was likeFrance in the 50s, in terms of howmany people had cars, and that theywould socialize in each other's houses.

And that it was a small society, wherethe people you knew at universitywere running the country 20 yearslater.

You say in I Love Dickthat youweren't aware of the fact that youwere Jewish until you were 21.

Right, until I came back to New Yorkand met the Glassmans and theHeymans.

The Glassmans and the Heymans?

My relatives. My parents were bothonly children whose parents died at ayoung age, and they were not close toeither of their families. And I only metthese parts of the family when I was21 and came back to New York.

So...what did you think?

Well, it was no surprise, because I'dalways gravitated to the only Jewseverywhere. And once back in NewYork I deeply related to New YorkJewish culture. But I was very nave.

And then Sylvre, of course, filled inall the details.

About the war?

About the war. About the history of

anti-Semitism.

You mentioned that the names ofSylvie and Jerome are taken from themain characters in George Perec'snovel Les Choses. I remember thatbook as an itinerary of 1960s materialculture in France.

Do you want to know the realknockout? That book begins in thepast conditional. "They would haveliked to be rich" is the first line. And inthe last chapter, when the couplefulfills their mediocre destiny, itswitches to the simple past, as I do inmy last chapter. And you feel theknife coming down.

They finally have full-time jobs inadvertising. They're on the traintraveling first class to their new jobs.And they're about to be able tomoderately afford all the fantasies oftheir youth. They're going in to havelunch in the railway car. "And theyfound it quite tasteless," is the last

line.

I remember reading an interview withPerec, and all he would say about LesChoses was that it was a book abouthappiness. Maybe that's his commentabout happiness, that it's somehowunworthy, or mediocre.

Expectation and longing are always somuch richer than fulfillment. That's aFlaubert thing, too. In SentimentalEducation, the character is outside thebrothel and it's the happiest day of hislife.

You also quote Perec's memoir ofhis experiences as a hidden childin Occupied France, W, Or theMemory of Childhood.

The part that I quote, about his notremembering his childhood, mirroredso much of what I had observed. AndSylvre and Perec knew each other atschool. They put out a magazinetogether, called La ligne gnrale. It

was a bunch of really brilliant,sarcastic, witty young Jewish men, just

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five or six years after the war. All ofthem had lost parents. And they nevertalked about the war. Sylvre knewSarah Kofman at school, too and theynever talked about the war. Instead,

they hated humanism.

How do you see the relationshipbetween their wartimeexperiences and their hatred ofhumanism?

Well as opposed to de Beauvoir,Sartre, and company, they preferredan absurdist, kitsch, sarcasticembracing of popular culture. It wasmuch closer to their view of the world.

Because of de Beauvoir and

Sartre's wartime history?Because they couldn't take things thatSeriously, with a capital S. Thingswere so serious that they could onlysee them through this absurdist lens.It was like Sartre and de Beauvoir andthat generation were the hippies, andthese guys were the punks.

Sylvie takes a swipe at something likethat, in the beginning of the book,when she talks about how she can'timagine why these people around her

are taking their lives so seriously. Thewhole culture, all of their friends, thepeople in the East Village, everyonesuccumbing to this sauve qui peut, I-have-to-get-my-life-togethermentality.

What role does Romania plays inthe book?

Romania is Jerome and Sylvie writlarge. I was completely fascinated bythis idea that not just traumasurvivors but an entire nation canexperience this entropy. That once acertain downward spiral is reached,there's no way out, it can only godown. And in the case of Romania, it'sso much because of the nationalismsand racial hatreds. They seal theirown fate with those.

Are you making a comparisonwith Jerome's feelings about thewar? He doesn't experience aracial hatred of Germans.

No, but he is certainly very much keptalive by hatreds and resentment. And

hatred can be a very energizing thing,but ultimately it's a pretty closedcircuit. Just like trauma. It's not thatyou can ever achieve thepsychoanalytic model, where you

confront, integrate and move on. Idon't think that's possible. The bestyou can hope for is to sort of moveover. People who come to myreadings have said that they feel anaffinity with that in terms of survivingcancer. They can't ever come to apoint where they say it was a goodthing, and where the whole horribleexperience is redeemed. It's notredeemable. And that's a much moreadult position.

So you mean Romania is Jeromeand Sylvie writ large, in theirinability to move forward on allfronts.

Yes, and since their decisionspredicated on resentment, hatred,and trauma, they're never really theright decisions. It was also fascinatingto me, looking at that period, 1991,and realizing that in the globaleconomy there will always have to bewinners and losers. So how are the

losers chosen? Do they chosethemselves, and if so, to what extent?

Are you and Sylvre still married?

We are. We live separate lives, but wecontinue to be married. We have otherpeople in our lives who respect that.Sylvre and I had this pretty singularexperience, where we realized that wedidn't have to do the couple anymore,but that we still loved each otherdeeply, and felt responsible for eachother.

I don't think that's so singular, it'sjust singular that people act on it.

Yes, the whole culture says, next,next, next. The year coming up is hislast year teaching at Columbia beforeretiring. He's on sabbatical this year,and he's been working on a bookabout the Romanian critic E.M. Cioran.He's writing about French anti-semitism through the experience ofCioran, who was in the Iron Guard, theRomanian equivalent of the SS.

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There was also that Romanianhistorian...

Mircea Eliade. He was huge in the IronGuard.

I remember reading him in artschool and finding his work soessentialist.

Absolutely. Those were the peoplewho hung little bags of peasant soilaround their necks while clubbingJews.

Torporis not the most flatteringportrait of Jerome. It's done witha lot of love and empathy, but it'svery biting.

It's not a very flattering portrait ofSylvie, either, as this cheerful littleenabler. I think it's much more bitingabout the nature of the couple, thanabout either of the two people.

I guess the part that seemedharshest to me was when you talkabout writing or coauthoring yourhusband's work for him.

I ghostwrote for other people, too, fora long time. Because I had thisprecocious career as a journalist in

New Zealand, all the while that I wasbeing lost and miserable and trying tobe an artist, I could always write. I wasjust writing for other people.

Then you finally realized that youcould publish something withyour own name attached to it.

Yes, but not until I Love Dick. I guessit was being able to write in the firstperson, and being so driven to write,that I wasn't all hung up on who thefirst person was. So I just flew throughit. I posited Dick as my ideal listener.And with that, you can say anything.All you need is a listener, and you cantalk.

Leslie Camhi is a writer whose workappears inThe New York Times, theVillage Voice, and Vogue.

POSTED ON 06.07.06 IN: Books

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