T-Shirt

The T-Shirt As A Novel

At a time when some people argue that the Gutenberg Universe is dead, and books are quickly becoming obsolete, and Amazon. Com is desperately trying to sell us on the practicality of the Kindle— the time has come for a novel in the form of a T-shirt. Although I lay claim to this concept, I would expect you— less excited than me—to be dubious and skeptical at this point.

The great Italian novelist, Italo Calvino, wrote an essay on concise literature, in which he said: “I dream of immense cosmologies, sagas and epics all reduced to the dimensions of an epigram”.

When I first read this statement I was on the Elliptical machine at the gym, moving my make-believe skis in a counter-clockwise groove, and BAM, I stopped dead in my tracks. I walked over to the nearest mirror, put Calvino’s book up to my chest and tried to imagine draining all of the text into a singularly potent phrase, a phrase that would capture the entire book and distil it to its essence.

Since T-shirts are often used as promotional vehicles, I have high hope that the T-shirt/ novel can affect real change in the world. By provoking serious thought, its slogan should make the reader nod and repeat the phrase aloud to whoever is wearing the novel.

But already, in my mind’s eye, I see my reader grimacing. You make this face because you are not a frivolous person. “Not another gimmick!” You say. “I thought you were above cheap tricks.”

In defending my 100% cotton/polyester, pre-shrunk novel against the charge of gimmickry, I reach for my dictionary to define what a gimmick is. (My dictionary is missing that page, so I go online to Wikipedia.)

“ In marketing language a gimmick is a quirky feature that distinguishes a product or service without adding any obvious function or value. Thus, a gimmick sells solely on the basis of distinctiveness and may not appeal to the more savvy or shrewd customer.”

But it is to the savvy and sophisticated (as well as the curious) reader that I address this essay, asking them to bear with me, as I concisely set down the logic of my argument.

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“ You see how ridiculous you have to think, in order to make this work?” These are the words of Robert Rauschenberg, a daring innovator, counted among the most influential artists of the second half of the Twentieth Century. The statement refers to his famous painting called “Erased De Kooning”, in which he actually spent a month erasing—oil paint, charcoal, pencil and crayon—from the canvas of another master, named Willem De Kooning.

For Rauschenberg, this was not a gesture of protest, or a challenge to a reigning master, or an act of vandalism, or a media stunt—it was poetry. By challenging long cherished beliefs in the canons of Western Art, this painting revolutionized our notion of what beauty is, and what ought to count as a serious work of art.

I have never seen the painting, never stood before it in the perfect light of a museum. But I find the concept alone, on its own merits, supremely badass.

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Similarly daring reinterpretations of existing material have taken place in music too. As long ago as John Cage’s aural experiments with silence and ambient sound, to the Jamaican, King Tubby’s, experiments with remixing in the early 70s, where the remix morphed into a something so different it became a new song—and remixing itself evolved into a sub-genre of Reggae called Dub. In hip-hop, we have fragments of a pre-existing songs (samples) becoming the chief component of the compositional strategy. And in contemporary classical music, the deceptive simplicity of repeated sounds and phrases in the work of Philip Glass, build rhythmically into lush, hypnotic patterns with deep emotional roots.

In contemporary literature, a new movement called “Flarf” makes random Google searches the source material from which poems are crafted. And a conceptual poet named Kenneth Goldsmith, authored a book called “Day”, in which he copied the entire text of the New York Times for a particular day. He didn’t edit or change a single word. However, by placing the newspaper’s text in book form, he contends that he transformed the existing data into something completely new.

Which brings us back armed with precedents for the T-shirt as a novel...

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The slogan for my T-shirt/novel comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “ He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.” With a change of the reflexive pronoun, the statement seems custom made for a dominatrix with a cat o’ nine tails in her hand. And this goes to the heart of what the T-shirt/ novel is. In my one-line novel there is no definite story line. There’s only the premise, which in this case is—“control yourself or be commanded.” Or, framed in the language of a proposition leading to a conclusion, “a person who cannot control himself will be commanded.”

But here’s the big difference.

In the traditional story the premise is submerged. It is the unspoken raison d’être driving the action, the thing behind the forces that unleash the emotions of the story. In the one-line novel the premise is all there is. Or at any rate, it’s the only thing known.

In the one-line novel the storyline is submerged, and not even the title is known. Only the premise exists, and as such it can give birth to a multitude of stories that go in all kinds of directions. You create the circumstances, the setting, the title, the plot, the mood and the characters. Just like with your Ipod—with the one-line novel you can customize your own stories. You can hold tens of thousands of stories in a convenient, one-line premise.

In this way, each novel is unique to its wearer.

In a society that fosters dependency, where people are aimlessly drifting, the T-shirt/ novel is an indispensable aid. It gives the wearer a clear-cut sense of purpose. The bold slogan, which he’s reminded of every time he looks in the mirror, helps him confront deadlocks. It provides him with a “core mission” so to speak. As a decisive message it wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of a media-blitzed public, and stays there, waiting like a retrovirus for its moment to strike.

And suddenly in a single stroke, the T-shirt/ novel reverses a worldwide trend. Whereas the number of people who read books has been dwindling steadily over recent decades, we now have (appearing out of nowhere) a new reading audience of 300 million people.

Where do I come up with this number? According to the American Psychiatric Institute an estimated 5% of the global population has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Speed Reading courses are a thing of the past. In the blink of an eye, everyone is well read!

Yes…problems with distractibility, procrastination, organization, and prioritization are not going go away over night. In the age of the X-box, they’ll to be with us for a long time to come—but imagine how T-shirt/novel will raise self-esteem around the world!

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In 1984 (to provide a little more historical context) the Tate Gallery in the U.K. launched the Turner Prize. This is an award given annually to the best work in contemporary visual art—from concept-based art, to new forms of sculpture, installations, painting, photography and film. The prize and the publicity surrounding it have generated some heated controversy over the years. The good news is that controversy grabs the media’s attention, and this has broadened the public’s interest in art. The bad news is, that it has aroused an intense backlash among more traditional artists. Pointing to its wildly ludicrous extremes, detractors call it “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit”. In 1999, an installation piece called “My Bed” featured an unmade bed, complete with dirty sheets and assorted knick-knacks. As the source of this aesthetic free-for-all traditional artists point an accusing finger at Marcel Duchamp.

In 1917, Duchamp exhibited a urinal, in the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York. He repositioned the urinal in a way that changed its context, so that it no longer functioned as a urinal. He called the piece “Fountain.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Since only British citizens are eligible for the Turner Prize, I have an idea for a film that some Englishman (or woman) is free to use. The film is titled “Intellectual Masturbation”. It features a nude five hundred pound man lying on a bed with a jar of lube and a discarded pizza box. The top of the jar is unscrewed but the man never puts his hand inside. The camera remains fixed on a single shot of the naked man for approximately three hours, or however long it takes for the PBS special7 playing on TV in the background to conclude. The man only moves twice. On both occasions the viewer is left guessing whether he’s trying to find his penis under furrows of fat, or whether he’s trying to locate the remote to change the channel.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. For now, let’s focus on the T-shirt as a novel.