William E. Jones Pleas for More Translations of Yayoi Kusama's Writing

Artist and filmmaker William E. Jones sings his influences for Book/Shop Journal in an interview for their "One Great Reader" series. After he's asked which creative people have made him want to read all he can about them, Jones responds to interlocutor Wes Del Val by connecting his love for Raymond Roussel—as met in John Ashbery—to the writing of Yayoi Kusama:

Many years ago, I devoured John Ashbery’s essay about Raymond Roussel, “In Darkest Language,” which, in an earlier iteration, introduced the author to American readers. This led me to How I Wrote Certain of My Books, Roussel’s posthumous volume that purports to reveal his technique for writing, but which ends up being more than a little mystifying. The discovery in 1989 of manuscripts of previously unknown (and enormously long) poems by Roussel initiated a whole new line of inquiry. In contrast to the position I took when answering the previous question, I think Roussel’s biographical legend is the least interesting thing about him. The way Roussel used language—specifically, the plethora of French homonyms—to generate poems and prose exerts a powerful appeal for me to this day.

I’d also like to use this context to make a plea for more translations of Yayoi Kusama. After her days as an artist and provocateur in 1960s New York, she took up writing fiction. In the late 1990s, she reemerged for Western audiences as the “dot lady” celebrated for her paintings and installations, generally to the exclusion of other aspects of her practice. At Kusama’s first big American retrospective, I bought a copy of Hustlers Grotto, a collection of three novellas, now long out of print. Her fiction is difficult to describe; to me it seems like some distant cousin of the nouveau roman. I find it scandalous that most of the writing by such a major cultural figure is simply unavailable to Americans. Even her novel with an English language title (Manhattan Suicide Addict) has only been translated into French. I suppose the galleries that represent her see little profit in the publication of books without pictures. Shame on them.

Very interesting that you pair Roussel and Kusama here and then mention nouveau roman, which ties it back to Roussel. I have to admit that while I knew she was multidisciplinary I did not know about Hustlers Grotto. And you’re right, people don’t line up for over an hour to see words in a book and take countless Instagram shots like they do for one of her installations so the chances are likely quite slim that we’ll see a proper reprint anytime soon.

An elegant proof of a mathematical theorem is internally consistent. A well thought out brand is, too. Human beings, fortunately, are inconsistent. Kusama’s literary works are not obviously of a piece with her installations and paintings. Her books don’t obey the logic of the art market, so in a society where mercantile values hold sway, they hardly exist. In this respect, they are truly subversive, and truly human, too.

The full interview is at Book/Shop Journal.