I, Tania - Softcover

Name: I, Tania
Author: Davis, Brian Joseph
ISBN: 9781550227826

Davis, Brian Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550227823 ISBN 13: 9781550227826

Verlag: ECW PR, 2007

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America lies in ruins during an age of decline, despair, and death. The year is 1975 and a radical far-left group has kidnapped a young woman from one of America’s richest families. She will later join their cause and will eventually be arrested and convicted of armed robbery. She will claim it was a “different personality” that robbed the bank. The jury didn’t buy it, but author Brian Joseph Davis did. The important difference is: Davis thought her “different personality” was more interesting and deserved her own fake memoir. Welcome to I, Tania, a book that uses the memoir format just enough to spin off into a crazed, bawdy, and seditious charge through pop culture, politics, and the meaning of fiction itself. I, Tania begins by recounting the highly fictionalized true story of the rise and fall of the Symbianese Liberation Army, as it never happened. Brainwashing will never be as much fun as when Tania takes you on an armed-to-the-teeth trip through one of the strangest episodes in history while writing her memoirs in the year 2005. Tania may have survived bank heists and open relationships, but will she be able to survive the savage world of contemporary book publishing and promotion? More than just a run-of-the-mill fake memoir, I, Tania will blast you into a million little pieces with: • The hidden Marxist meanings behind Cujo • Why John McEnroe is scarier than Ian Curtis • How Don DeLillo can kill . . . with his mind Do violent debutantes have a place in political struggle? After Tania and Katie Couric’s climactic talk show, you’ll know the shocking, surprisingly funny answer.

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�ber die Autorinnen und Autoren

Brian Joseph Davis is an artist and the author of Portable Altamont. His audio art has been acclaimed by Pitchfork, Salon, and Wired. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Brian Joseph Davis is an artist and the author of Portable Altamont, a collection that garnered praise from Spin Magazine for its “elegant, wise-ass rush of truth [and] hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes.” His audio art has been acclaimed by Wired, Pitchfork, and Salon. Davis is also a columnist for Eye Weekly and wrote about the death of the cassette for the Utne Reader.

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I, Tania

A Novel

By Brian Joseph Davis, Michael Holmes

ECW PRESS

CHAPTER 1

My father, the rich man with a name of American nobility. Cold, he was a mystery to me and perhaps the reason I sought love from overbearing m —

"No! Wait! YuyuuytyyuiuHhhfgffkl;svbbbvvbvb"

I apologize for the ghostwriter's head slumping to the keyboard but I do abhor cheap psychological insight. Didn't that go out of fashion with the '70s? I suppose if I make any more ghosts of the writers the publisher sends, they will need to reconsider my substantial advance against insurance payouts. This writer was the best so far. His credits included Will by G. Gordon Liddy, Suzanne Somers's Slim and Sexy Forever and his own little novel, London Fields.

Let that be a lesson to all aspiring writers: don't turn down the "as told to" opportunity. Other industries are much more relaxed about these things. If you recall, during the recording of Donna Summer's concept album I Remember Yesterday, producer Giorgio Moroder responded to critics who claimed his work was vapid and escapist by publicly commissioning anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing to compose words for "I Feel Love."

It's so good for them
They are good
I want it to be so good for me
They are not so good

They feel love
They are feeling like feeling love
I must feel their feeling of love
They are not feeling love
I can't feel love if they don't
If I get them to feel love, then I can feel love with them
Getting them to feel love, is not feeling love
It is hard work

They fall free
I must fall like they are falling free
They are not falling free
I can't fall free if they don't
If I get them to fall free, then I can fall free with them
Getting them to fall free, is not falling free
It is hard work

Moroder, unfortunately, went with a much simpler lyric. But even in the world of print, we all know that Ice T's The Ice Opinion was ghosted by William Gibson, that Klaus Kinski's All I Need Is Love was given a touch-up by Alice Walker, and that Reed All About Me by Oliver Reed was — perversely — composed by Michael Caine, author of What's It All About? Michael Caine's story as told to Michael Caine.

But to pick up my narrative again. Yes, my father was a corporate pig newspaper baron liar — but he was my corporate pig newspaper baron liar. He was a pig second, but a father first, who always had the time for my sisters or myself. He taught me how to fire a gun. If you're looking for a cheap psychological device, I did move out of the estate at age seventeen to live with a much older man named Donald Barthelme.

"So the French invent revolution," Donald would say to me in his drawl, "but they can't play rock and roll to save their baguettes. And that don't make you the least bit suspicious about their philosophers?"

"The French don't need our st-st-stupid rock and roll," I sniffed, choking back tears. "They're better than us. Better than us."

But let me go back farther than that, so you can understand why my eventual leadership of the SLA makes sense. My early actions consisted of pranks. Base anarchy. Nothing more than experiments in testing boundaries: nuns suddenly coming down with amoebic dysentery, ski chalets flooded, and cotillions trip-wired.

Then a copy of For the Liberation of Brazil by Carlos Marighela was given to me when I was a teen by the exchange student staying with us. I would occasionally have flirtatious political debates with Guillermo. Nothing serious, just a little wink and a cute comment on how the transition to collectivization could be made easier for rural workers. One morning the Marighela book, slipped inside a copy of Oui, was slid under my door with a note attached that simply read, "Party?"

The chapter titled The Mini-manual for the Urban Guerilla reads:

Within the framework of the class struggle [are] two essential objectives:

— The physical liquidation of the chiefs and assistants.

— The expropriation of government resources.

The most popular models are the bank assault (serving as a sort of preliminary examination for the urban guerrilla in her apprenticeship) and the political kidnapping.

The highest display of ostentatious wealth and avarice most socialists get to witness is the lineup at the Olive Garden. Being raised in a media baron's household provided a view into a world only dreamed of in the frothiest, most paranoid nightmares.

One day while I was playing with my cats (Pufnstuf and Tapestry, if you must know) I overheard a conversation in the next room between my father and the head of his publishing division.

"Sir, you're going to love what marketing has come up with. As you know, the most popular paperbacks are the hospital romances and the soldier-of-fortune series. Combined, they're 60% of the market. Marketing thinks they can grab the other 40% by literally combining the two —"

"Keep talking," my father replied.

"— into an atrocity-romance series. The gist would be: soldiers, mercenaries, national guardsmen, etc., wreak havoc, Doctor A treats victims — passionately, altruistically — Nurse B falls in love with Doctor A, convinces him to enjoy life. We can mix it up, too. Sometimes it could be Stasi Agent A who tortures student leaders — passionately, altruistically — who then has to convince Nurse B that dissent must be crushed. And, here's the cost-saving measure: real historical atrocity settings that can cut editorial time in half. We'll just rewrite newspaper reports from archives we already own. In thirty years, they'll call it synergy."

"Real-life atrocities? Can you do that?"

"Try me."

"Hmm, okay, the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo."

"In a city of ash," the executive intoned as he pantomimed batting flames out, "her heart smoldered while his went out to a hundred thousand dead. Could she steal the flame of his passion?"

After several noncommittal hmms and clucks my father threw out "The Pinochet coup?"

"She was a Marxist nurse who wanted a new world. He was a CIA agent who wanted to overthrow her heart. Will Cupid get these two in his crosshairs?"

"The Spanish Civil War."

"She was a Catalonian communist republican with centrist leanings towards liberal democracy. He was a legitimist monarchist who wanted to break free of his ruffian Falangist friends. But in a country with 6000 dead priests, could they even find an altar?"

"The Russian Civil War."

"She was damaged goods. He was a doctor in a country of 15 million dead, but poetry calmed his soul. It was a love caught in the fire of revolution and —"

"— in a land of guns and ice, there is the great sound of battle and the greater silence of lovers. Blah blah blah. Cue 'Laura's Theme.' Already done."

I went to my room to practice bayonet moves with a pen, striking out the pig eyes of the David Cassidy poster above my bed. I would have much to teach my brothers and sisters when they came to rescue me several years later.

Meeting Minutes of the Symbionese Liberation Army War Council (February 1974; Berkeley, California)

Present: Subcommittee on the Choosing of Codenames for Taking of Prisoner of War Operation Combat Cell.

General Field Marshall Cinque opened the meeting by passing around The Definitive Book of...

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