In the Shadow of the American Dream by David Wojnarowicz

Yet to characterize Close to the Knives as the agitprop of a particular moment of the crisis is to miss many of its virtues as literature. His polemics against political figures, ranging from ineffectual bureaucrats to outright fascists, gave vehement expression to the demands and frustrations of aids activists. He rose in the world, but he never lost his fear of being evicted, impoverished, on the streetand he never forgot where he came from.īy reputation, Wojnarowicz became identified primarily as an aids artist. His relationship with lover and mentor Peter Hujar, whom he met sometime in late 1980 or early 1981, prompted Wojnarowicz to pursue his artistic ambitions, which were never exclusive to painting, although his work in that medium overshadowed his writing and earned him a living for the last decade or so of his life. Homeless and hustling around Times Square as an adolescent, he found a way out of that life with the support and affection of a married lawyer, who could have gone to prison for having a relationship with him.

His volatile, alcoholic father subjected the family to horrific abuse. He spent much of his childhood in the New Jersey suburbs, but he experienced nothing resembling a normal middle-class upbringing.

Wojnarowicz stood out as a poor, ethnic loner in a scene populated by rebellious middle-class kids with vivid assumed names. From the series “Arthur Rimbaud in New York,” 1978–79. That weight of image and sensation wouldn’t come out until I picked up a pencil and started putting it down on paper.ĭavid Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York, 1978–79, gelatin silver print, 10 × 8'. There was never a point in conversations at work, parties or gatherings where I could reveal what I’d seen. In a passage from his book Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, he describes his writing as a way of overcoming alienation: I had almost died three times at the hands of people I’d sold my body to in those days and after coming off the street and adapting to familiar routines of working and living under a roof, I could barely speak when in the company of other people. Photo: Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU.ĭAVID WOJNAROWICZ first became widely known during the brief vogue of the East Village art scene in the 1980s, but he distinguished himself from his contemporaries with the seriousness of his literary interests and the depth of his rage. 1978, photocopy mounted on card stock, rubber bands, 11 5/8 × 8 7/8'.

In the Shadow of the American Dream by David Wojnarowicz