Connecticut Yankees, kangaroo courts, etc. We read by dissenting from sentences and building some banging alternatives. She with her red pen, me with my mechanical pencil, literarily critical, but referentially, citation-free. As we do, in these days of chronic despair, indentured li’l Care Bears at the downfall of Higher Ed. As we do, in the land of plenty, portaling to idylly elsewheres when the empire inevitably strikes back. Hilary reiterates her intimate connections to faraway lands like Iraq and Afghanistan and faraway eras like the early 2000s. Hilary counterfactualizes apathy, necropolitics, white America, “context collapse.” She kills this opportunity to share her complicated relationships to pop publishing, student debt, health insurance, doing dishes. “Is writing an activist act?” I picture her being interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel, slipping off-script, ripping up shit, lighting his entire set on fire. Mic drop: “Sincerity in Hell.” Hole Studies by Hilary Plum (Fonograf Editions, 2022).
