I discovered the rites of limbo, in the used section of a St. Louis bookstore last year. The cover photo was of a bald and nude Peter Plate, lying upon a slab in a cemetery.
the rites of limbo is intimate and harrowing, a series of stories that chronicles specific moments and events in Plate's life. Most interesting was the way these tales of pain and rage were documented in an unaffected style. I felt voyeuristic; it was obvious to me that I was reading about Plate's personal experiences.
the rites of limbo was my introduction to Plate's raw and deliberate style of creative autobiography, or as Plate prefers to call it, "personal mythology."
During a recent visit to San Francisco, I found two more of Plate's books at MEDIA. These books were free and I discovered that Plate intends for all of his work to be given away. Intrigued with this concept, impressed with his writing, and curious about how he produced his books, I contacted him for an interview.
We met at a cafe on Mission Street and after a brief introduction began the interview.
Plate is a vibrant and serious man who speaks with impressive authority about himself. In the following interview, he discusses the personal, political, and technical elements involved in producing his work.
Block quotes are from Plate's books.
Christian Herman: Where are you from?
Peter Plate: California.
But you have an accent.
No I don't.
Yes, you do...what kind of community were you raised in and who raised you?
My grandparents. Ah, they were from Russia, English was a second language for them.
So...that's it.
You're very perceptive.
Maybe just familiar with the it. I know people who have been raised in ethnic communities, they've absorbed the accent.
Nobody has ever commented on it before.
How do you produce your books?
The material considerations are a combination of drive, determination, hustle, and partial favoritism. I have some friends who run a printing collective in East Oakland and they give me a fair deal on printing. That's all I pay for. I have a friend who does typesetting for me without charge, so it averages out to about a dollar a book. It's a relatively cheap process because I do much of it myself. Self-production does limit the cost and overhead.
Why are your books free?
There are many different perspectives. One, I think of the matter in an idealistic sense. I would like to give away products and establish a free exchange of products born out of my personal ideals and dreams. I don't think I could even conceive of a price tag to put on my own personal expression, that being the expression of my own personal subjectivity.
Then, there's a more social view. I feel that in this society most people identify themselves on a social basis as consumers. They see themselves in regards to the purchases they make. That determines the type and quality of empowerment they attain as individuals on the social landscape. I would like to undermine that kind of relationship. I would like to undermine the transaction and force upon people a choice. They can see a product, an inanimate mass-produced object and they do not have to undergo any process of mediation for it. They can take it if they so desire. I find that for many people they have been partially hypnotized into believing that all they see in a store is for sale. If it's not for sale, then there's some kind of perverse connotation applied to the object. At that moment I think people are forced to wonder why it is free. And do they want it? Is it appealing because it is for free, or is it repulsive? So some people are forced to take on a new role of an anti-consumer surrounded by the realm of consumerism.
And above and beyond that is a historical basis. The reason I attempt to create literature and give it away is more political than it is artistic. In Cromwellian England during the mid-1600s, there was a number of radical Utopian groups. In particular, a community called The Diggers. At that time they created a Utopian community in rural England. They believed that the basis of their community would be the free exchange of all goods, services, dialogue, and ideas. To me, that was supremely idealistic when thinking of social relations.
Then, once again, that was reenacted in the late 1960s here in San Francisco by The Diggers of Haight-Asbury. They would give away cars, drugs, food, anything that people desired. They attempted to do this with a partial degree of success over a period of a couple of years. I have not seen anything like in the realm of literature, ever, but I thought on the basis on my own political activities in the recent past, this is what I would do if I were to write. If I were to write, I would go on to print my work. And, if I were to print my work, I would disseminate it freely to the public.
What political activities?
I was involved in Native American Education in secondary institutions here in California and South Dakota. That is, the development of Native American curriculum in junior and four year colleges. After that, I became a tenant union organizer here in California. I also worked as a rent control advocate. I had the mild privilege of being one of the co-authors of one of the two existing rent control ordinances in the State of California.
Eventually I became a random agent in the political arena, just plugging myself in where I saw fit, particularly in the realm of housing reform, housing transformation, and squatting movements.
Was there any particular attraction for you in working with Native Americans?
No, it was something that I fell into right after high school. I had a friend who was recruited by a Native American educator in Northern California. There was a college called D-Q U., near Davis. It was a purely Native American school; run by Native Americans, funded partially by the Native American community and the government. It was a school that created its academic program on the basis of indigenous cultural perception. He recruited me. I told him that I wasn't an Indian and he said it didn't matter, that they were training agents of social transformation. I thought that was great, so I went. My duration in that community was limited because, as I said, I'm not an Indian, and I have no desire to be anything than what I am. That's why I had to return to a community that would be more or less of my own constituency.
But you were sympathetic.
Oh yeah, always.
I understand that. Sometimes I meet men who tell »e they are feminists. I tell them they can be pro-feminist but never feminists.
Yeah, that's shit. There's a word, enterism, entering a realm and creating a sense of false identification that is not born out of ones own immediate personal, social...
Experience?
Yeah, experience.
Do you write strictly from personal experience?
Mostly from my experiences. I consider myself to be very underdeveloped artistically. I'm still in the age of literary self-consciousness. So I write from the view point of creative autobiography. But, I think as time goes on I will be able to stretch the limits of my imagination and be able to detach my ideas of writing and what I write about from myself. I've only been writing seriously for about three years. I feel sorely underdeveloped.
Do you have any kind of technical experience as a writer?
No, none at all.
Did you go to college?
D-Q U. We didn't have teachers, we were forced to develop our own curriculum, which was rather difficult, and it wasn't academic. Let's say I haven't been a participant in any academy whatever, writing or otherwise. I realize I don't even know any damn grammar. I just plunge into it and take it as it sounds to me.
But you must have read extensively. I've noticed that your writing flows smoothly and if you haven't had any training as a writer you must have developed an ear for it from reading.
Yes, I do read a lot. In that respect I guess I am auto-didactic. Yes, the lessons I've learned in literature come from reading as opposed to tutelage.
Of the fiction writers you've read who have been an influence?
Currently my greatest influences are the contemporary writers of Eastern Europe. There's a writer from Czechoslovakia that I really admire, Joseph Skvorecky. He's in exile in Canada now. There's another writer I like from Poland, Tadenz Konwicki. His work is banned in Poland.
I like these men because to me they stand on the cutting edge of literature in the Post-Industrial world. They have survived war, holocaust, fascism, and also state socialism, only to emerge on the other side of state socialism, only to realize that they have had to define themselves in greater opposition to the alleged Utopian Idealism of a socialist society that has betrayed them as individuals and as writers. They have experienced all the great ideological rebellions and conflicts of the 20th. Century and have emerged on the nether side of those conflicts. I feel they stand on the cutting edge because they could be in prison for what they write. I feel that kind of, well it's not necessarily inspiration... the French writer, Georges Bataille, says something to the effect that if a writer doesn't create the kind of literature that is born out of his or her struggle, the reader will be bored. I find these Eastern European writers have that capability. Socially, they are in such great opposition to a very repressive social environment that they have created literature that is viscerally highly powerful. It really creates a great punch.
In America the writers that I like best are Native Americans. They have experienced the same dynamic: they too have survived great repression in their own country. From that survival they have created a literature that in the last ten years has exploded.
There is a woman poet I like, Roberta Hill Whiteman. And then there's a couple of novelists that I like, Leslie Silko and James Welch. I think the Native American writers are the best writers today in America.
Have you read Louise Erdrich?
Yeah, right. She's really good, too. Her book, Love Medicine was really powerful. I like to read stories about reservation life. Reservations as they are today in America are so invisible. Yet their very invisibility presents a reverse side. It's really the core of American existence. There's a reproduction of American values in a miniaturized distorted version going on in the Indian reservation. Color televisions and poverty juxtaposed. Ford automobiles and Indians on horseback going down the same little dirt road.
"now sonny, watch closely."
i extracted a tiny pistol from the paper bag i clutched, the wife of my oldest friend had bequeathed it to me the year before, a gesture of affection gone extreme, you think? be careful, said she...
...i released the safety latch and cradled the harbinger against my stomach. i was rocking back and forth, my butt resting upon cold concrete, sonny and i were crouching on the third step of an apartment building stairwell, about a mile away from the pacific ocean, across the street, a bank was waiting for me without any visible concern, but i knew better.
-the final chapter
In your book the final chapter, your protagonist fires a pistol at close range in front of his lover to impress her and force her attention. It reminded me of something William Carlos Williams once said. Something to the effect that if creative energy or activity cannot be manifested in expression, it will turn to crime. Do you agree? I'm asking because you seem to be involved in various "criminal" activities. I was thinking, for example, you must shoplift.
I used to an awful lot, but it's getting dangerous in San Francisco. I don't consider those activities criminal. I think these are the experiences of the underclass or the nether side of the American public. These are experiences that have never really attained much public attention or focus. They are everyday activities. The attacks on public and private property are continuous. It's not discussed. To talk about it would be the destruction of the values that our great society is based upon. But I like to talk about them because I know so many million people are engaging in petty theft and various other activities on a daily basis. I think it's important to address these issues and actions, to let people know that there is some kind of subversive vein growing and expressing itself. It's something unheard of in the commercial mass media.
we all know that as long as the past is alive, the future is already dead.
-the final chapter
That's you laying on the slab on the cover of the rites of limbo, isn't it?
Yes. I understand that Joel-Peter Witkin really got a kick out of that photograph.
Oh, he would, wouldn't he...
The woman who took that photo showed it to him and he liked it a lot.
I noticed that in the rites of limbo and in the final chapter, the male protagonist is rarely identified by name. There's just the beginning letter of his name then a dash indicating the rest of it. Any particular reason for that?
I couldn't tell you.
O.K.
I really couldn't say. Subterfuge, paradox, falsehoods. To create a minor sense of confusion and misunderstanding maybe.
But you don't know? It wasn't deliberate?
Oh sure it's deliberate. And without being glib, I think the best thing I could tell you to suffice your question is to create paradox, a minor vein of subterfuge, a slight contradiction.
Have you ever read Lying: A Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok?
No, never heard of it.
How long have you been squatting?
About a year now.
Have you squatted before?
Yeah, but not for very long, and not in this city.
What about electricity and plumbing?
I have everything, thank you.
How do you manage that?
Subterfuge, paradox. You pose as what you're not. You pose as a citizen who has the right to have utilities.
Are you're neighbors aware of you? Does anyone know that you are living there?
Good question. I'm a very private individual, so I don't really know.
Do you enter from the street?
Yes, but you would never know there's any distinction.
When I was in MEDIA, I encountered an interesting situation. A customer discovered your books were marked, "free". This confused him and he asked Martin about it and Martin explained that you wanted to give your work away. I was holding two of your books and wanted to put them in my backpack, but was concerned that if I concealed the books without consulting anyone perhaps they would think I was stealing.
Yes, having that free object in your hands you don't know exactly what to do with it. It does create a sense of contradiction. You're in contradiction with the alleged atmosphere of a retail bookstore. You're pitted against your own understanding of what you think you should be doing is maybe not what you could do. I like that. I want people to challenge their own definition as being consumers much less to read the book itself.
Have your books always been free?
Yeah, the five I've made I've disseminated freely.
If anyone reading this interview wants to read your work?
They can write me at the address listed in the books.
grandma and grandpa are downstairs in the basement watching the news, i can hear grandpa coughing in his loud way. grandma is speaking in russian to him, with the hard and sharp syllables that burn in her mouth, her severe face provides the punctuation that my grandfather tries to ignore.
his massive head barely nods, eyes fixed on the television screen, the news is about russian naval craft carrying nuclear missiles very close to american shores.
i spy upon them from the recess of the stairwell leading upstairs, they are talking about me. they only talk about me in russian. this is so i will not understand what they are saying, i heed the language that is used to keep me in ignorance, i gave up caring about what they say some time ago. it is ironic that they speak of me in russian. grandma and grandpa are almost as ashamed of being russian as they are of me.
-the rites of 1imbo
Your grandfather surfaces a lot in your writing. You mentioned that you were raised by your grandparents. Was your grandfather more important to you of the two of them?
Only now in the making of personal mythology. I barely knew him.
But he raised you?
I never saw him. He worked. He worked and worked and worked. By the time I had time to get to know him, his body was so riddled by ailments created by four decades of working, that it was very hard to communicate with the man.
Was he crippled?
Yeah.
The grandfather in pressure, that's him!
That story is completely autobiographical. I didn't know how to deal with it.
You're the son!
Yeah, I wrote that from my mom's point of view. God help me If she ever reads it, she could not handle it. She read the rites of 11mbo, and we didn't speak for a year and a half.
How old are you?
State secret, dear. But she couldn't handle it at all. The personal nature of what I write... I would describe it as getting rid of my own demons through writing. For her to see me using her character as my voice as I did in pressure, would blow her right out of the room. But I wanted to do it. I feel really sympathetic towards her. Her struggle of being a woman. Women just can't break out of the roles which have been foisted upon them by society and just be themselves, not have responsibilities such as matrimony or raising children. To do whatever they damn well please, like she wanted to very much. As did my grandmother. They never wanted to be married or have kids, just found themselves in that cul-de-sac. So I wanted to write about my mom in that respect, because her life has been tortuous in that violent struggle to retain her personal autonomy.
For my grandmother it was the same. I think the way my mother and grandmother handled it was poor, but their intentions, hats off to them for that effort and desire to keep that personal freedom intact. It's noble, I appreciate that...you don't believe me, huh?
I believe you believe it. I don't agree that it's noble to give birth to an unwanted child and then abandon him.
Oh, they fucked up for sure. They didn't materially know how to handle responsibility for other people. But when I think of what they tried to do for themselves, to remain personally free and defined as individuals... I don't know. I still feel sympathetic above and beyond all historical considerations. Maybe that's noble of me, that I try to write a sympathetic story.
How did you get the name, Plate?
When my mom got pregnant, let's say I was a "love child", she never knew the guy, he ran off. She got married to this other guy just to give me a legal name. They were immediately divorced. This guy, Plate, was generous enough to concede to this kind of legal arrangement for a temporary period of time so everything could get straightened out on paper. It's a weird name. I don't even have a middle name.
What makes you happy, Peter? What makes you feel satisfied and content?
Fuck, not much. Socially, very little. I like to do readings. I think I read out loud a lot better than I write. I enjoy it greatly. I enjoy writing. I enjoy loud music, sex...that's an awfully broad subject. I don't think about myself in terms of enjoyment.
You don't think about what satisfies you?
Yeah, I do. But the attainment of that pleasure, that fulfillment, is so big in itself, the means, the intent to harness those means, is so big that I never think about the end result.
What about personal accomplishment? For example, when you write something that pleases you?
It's O.K. By the time I'm through writing it and self-producing it, that being such a major technical effort, such a pain in the ass, that I'm so fucking glad when I'm through with it. I guess it's self-reducing, kind of takes the sheen off the artistic accomplishment, takes the veneer right off because it's such a heavy effort.
At Dana's opening last week at MEDIA you read from your work. What pieces did you choose to read? And why those particular pieces?
I wrote a piece and it was coupled to a piece that I had written about a month ago. The first piece was about schizophrenia, what I call personal politics, the realm of subjectivity. I coupled that to the second piece which was about personal politics. the realm of radical subjectivity. I coupled that to the second piece which was about political theory, once again about radical subjectivity, but on a social basis. The third piece was the one that I always read, about San Bernardino, where I come from. It's more of a historical poem. It serves as my anthem.
Was that poem ever published?
Yes, it's in my first book which is out of print. I always read San Bernardino. It's more descriptive than anything else. Imagistic where as the first two pieces are not imagistic. They're like fragments, like a collage.
Like Cut-up?
Sort of. There's more of a linear sequence to it, a deliberate preconceived sequence, but still has a collage-like effect.
Do you read Burroughs?
Not that much, I'm not that fond of him. The older stuff I read a long time ago. He's really trendy. A lot of people who write are lifting his style. I'm more concerned about working on my own internal development stylistically other than being influenced by other people. I resent being influenced by other people, I don't even like the possibility.
But that's practically impossible.
Yeah, but it's something to fight against too. It's hard enough to hear yourself think. I don't want to have my brain cluttered by other people.
How do you avoid that? Do you have a television?
No.
Radio?
Yeah, I listen to the radio for loud music.
(Smiling) Does loud music clutter up your brain?
(Laughing) Yeah, it does really bad. But I never wanted to be influenced by anybody about anything. It gets in the way of that very important subject of personal autonomy.
(Referring to tattoo on Plate's hand) What does your tattoo symbolize?
Well, living with the Indians...in California you'll find this a lot. A lot of Chicano low riders have a cross right here, tattooed between the index finger and the thumb. Most Indians have tattoos here too. It's a four direction sign, meaning a symbolic representation of the Universe in total. And they say that when you die, you can't get past the old woman, Wakanka, at the gate. The gate being between life and death, unless you have a sign on your body, she won't let you through.
Is this prevalent mostly among men?
Men and women. Each individual does something different that they think makes sense to them.
Like a mantra?
Yeah, in a rough sense. But it's more of a cultural phenomenon because it's always the four direction sign.
"with the district attorney's approval," he lifted up a document, "i am going to drop the charges of said defendant william rudd."
i leaned forward, billy's charges were going to be dropped? maybe that's why he isn't here this morning, christ, what a break!
the judge continued, "i am going to drop william rudd's charges as he is no longer able to stand trial, mr. rudd committed suicide, case dismissed."
-the rites of 1imbo
Have you ever been arrested?
A lot of times.
Why?
The Dan White riot. I was arrested on multiple felony charges. I was on trial here in San Francisco for two and a half years.
Were you convicted?
Finally convicted on a misdemeanor, broken down from four felony charges and one misdemeanor.
How long was your probation?
Two years. It was a big situation. They tried to put me in state prison, that was their intent. It made national T.V.
The trial?
At the conclusion, yeah, because it went on for so long and no one ever heard of it. Essentially I was selectively prosecuted by the District Attorney's office in San Francisco. I remember the Chief Criminal Prosecutor was a Mormon named Jerome Benson. I called him an asshole in the courtroom. At the last day of the trial, he told the judge that I had started the riot. He told the judge they had actual concrete evidence, even after the evidence had been submitted and rejected. Obviously that was their political perspective of me, that I was one individual out of a crowd of thousands who could create a spontaneous occurrence of that nature shows how archaic they think politically. That's the biggest situation I've ever been up against.
Have you ever served any time?
No, I've been really fortunate to not be a victim. I know a lot of people who have served hard time and I find myself very gratuitous to not have. A lot of people I know in the traditional and orthodox Left think that if you haven't served time, there's something lightweight about you. A very foolish masculine code. I've been on the edge of that for many years. The reason I've never careened over into that abyss is because I'm smart, I'm not a victim. I think that is circumstantially as well as individually, I pilot myself out of those situations were ultimately I would be incarcerated.
That's more important, it supersedes this ethos, this credo, that people find to be so all important in determining ones depth. It's really a crock of lies. I have a sense of self-preservation despite everything. I find that quite remarkable, I never thought I had that kind of capacity in me. Especially at this trial, I had about twelve police officers testifying against me. The pressure was intense, they wear you down so badly. The one co-defendant who had similar charges against him committed suicide. We went to court over 100 times.
What were the charges?
Assault and battery on a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer,felonious and malicious mischief for burning police cars, felonious and malicious mischief for the destruction of City Hall property, and incitement to riot.
Have you ever handled guns?
Sure.
Do you own any weapons?
I used to. I've been around guns a lot. I can break down, reload, make bullets.
Were you in the service?
Hell no. But it's America, you know? You can find hardware like that any where you go. It's an integral facet of an American male's rites of passage. To have some kind of physical contact with machinery of that nature. There's a mystified sense or veil around guns. To me, it's the same as driving a car and about as dangerous too. The implication is what makes it more dangerous to me. That violent possibility. People don't think of cars as weapons. I don't drive and I've handled more guns than cars.
Is writing difficult for you? Do you have to be in any certain kind of mood to write?
I write like a worker goes to work. I sit down at the same time every day and no matter how I'm feeling, I just put my head to it.
That sounds similar to the way that Salinger wrote. He packed a lunch and went to his garage to write from nine to five.
God, I can't do that, I can't write for that many hours. I write in long hand, I don't know how to type. I can go for about five hours and then I feel exhausted. It takes too much out of me. Maybe I need more protein. I write six days a week. When I have the project down and when I know what I'm going to do, I just go at it.
So you work from a basic outline?
Sometimes. Other times I'll just come up with a few ideas, then start writing and it will develop as I progress.
C.H.: Do you do any revision or editing?
P.P.: I do minor revision, I go through about four drafts. It's not changing the story or characters, I'm more concerned about grammar and excessive verbiage. I try to tighten things up. So it's picking at words as opposed to cutting ideas. I'm really concerned about fluidity and minimalism. I like things compact.
Is there anything that you want to do that you're not doing right now?
I'd like to write better and print more. The financial limitations are really a drag. I have no distribution whatsoever. It's just sheer hit and miss. I don't know how you ever found a book in St. Louis.
Yeah, that was luck.
That's the way the whole process has been. It's irritating in the sense that it's so limited to sheer luck itself. I'd like to develop some kind of distribution system.
Do you have any plans for future projects?
I was thinking about writing a story about my grandmother next. She's a painter, a really good painter. Throughout her life she has has a desire to paint and has had that desire aborted over a period of decades. Now she is painting.
C.H. How old is she?
About 80.
Are you approached often about your work?
Not enough. I really could dig a lot more dialogue. People don't really know how to approach one another on a casual daily basis. To seek someone out of a specific matter as abstract as artistic expression is even more difficult, but it's starting to happen. I'm just a perpetual malcontent too, always hungry, I want more.But since I'm always putting out, a response is going to be unavoidable. I'd like to see this mechanism growing, because to me that serves the place of material reward, to hear people talk to me because it upsets them or provokes them. That's when I feel very happy. That's when I feel like I've achieved something with my work.
