thenation--2020-12-02--Susan Taubes’s ‘Divorcing’ Asks: How Far Can the Novel Take You?

The question of why writers write is a lot like the question of why people marry , which is to say , it is the eternal question of why human beings knowingly commit themselves to tiresome and masochistic endeavors that most often lead nowhere , ending only in defeat or death .
There are some writers for whom writing seems to be a form of psychotherapy , a means of sorting through experience .
There are others for whom writing is evidently an act of pleasure and delight .
Some appear to write out of a compulsion , others out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them love , or attention , or acclaim .
( In truth , each of us might be one or another of these writers at some point , our motivations , in art as in life , being opaque and ever prone to delusion . )
Then there is the writer for whom writing is a means of transportation , a way of accessing spaces she longs to return to or places she has yet to go .
A form of movement ; in other words , a form of freedom .
Real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writer ; on occasion , travel may be her explicit subject .
But more often she can be distinguished by the undertow beneath her narratives , trying to pull her beyond the steadying control of language ’ s constraints .
As you read , you have the feeling that she is trying to get somewhere , trying to land .
I have always loved this kind of writer best : the one who writes not to make a point because she can , but to get to a particular place because she must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rachel Cusk , and Marguerite Duras are exemplars of this form ; it may well be a catalyst of this kind of writing for its creator to be born in one land and transplanted to another .
To their ranks I ’ d now add Susan Taubes , a writer who was underrated and overshadowed in her lifetime , and whose first and thus-far only published novel , Divorcing , teems with stylistic daring , taunts with irreverence , and glints with genius .
Reissued this September , Divorcing can now be read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work of art , decades ahead of its time , whose formal innovations and insistent excavation of the unspoken corners of female consciousness we now take for granted as de rigueur .
Experimental and evasive , Divorcing invites obsessive re-reading but resists summary .
On one level , it is a semi-autobiographical novel about a writer named Sophie Blind , who seeks a divorce from her scholarly husband , Ezra .
On another level , it is a book about an unnamed writer at work on a novel about a writer named Sophie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the story of one Jewish family ’ s dissolution , which coincides with the rise of the Third Reich .
Divorcing is both the tale of a dead woman speaking from the afterlife and that of a living woman resisting psychic death and manipulation by therapy and drugs .
Taubes constructs the novel as though piecing together a kaleidoscope of experiences from broken shards of glass .
The results are uneven but riveting , ultimately concerned with the question of where writing alone—and the novel form in particular—can take us .
Divorcing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these divisions feel fairly arbitrary , given Taubes ’ s shifts in perspective , tone , tense , and locale within them .
The novel ’ s first three parts follow a disorienting dream logic .
From its opening notes it is unclear where the narrator is situated and whether she is dead or alive , conscious or dreaming , sober or under the influence .
The final part of the novel is explicitly hallucinogenic .
The narrator is put in an isolation tank , a concept I didn ’ t realize existed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children are hypnotized .
None of this is really explained , yet like so much else in the novel , it makes a kind of intuitive or thematic sense .
( If all of this sounds cerebral to the point of ridiculousness , Taubes seems to be largely in on the joke .
Divorcing is , it must be said , very funny , and includes the perfect Freudian punch line , “ Baby , culture stinks .
Let ’ s screw.
” ) Drifting between various European cities and shifting between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as unnamed-writer-creating-Sophie-Blind , Divorcing ’ s opening scenes frame writing—and in particular , the writing of this book—as an effort to push past sense-experience into a more primal , individual truth .
After a paragraph spent describing the speck of an insect crushed onto a blank notebook page , the narrator abruptly states that she is “ coming into consciousness , a lifelong struggle .
For countless departures , few arrivals—mostly false.
” These countless departures mirror the act of trying to write as well as the act of travel , which the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Taubes writes , “ It ’ s the only way to live , Sophie always said , the only way to live in time : fly right with it.
” The narrative continues to conflate writing with traveling , traveling with writing , but without a particular interest in those few arrivals .
Taubes ’ s narrators are unconcerned about settling in any given bed with any given man .
The narrative sets up a series of puzzles and ambiguities that resist resolution , giving the impression of a mystery novel with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrive anywhere when you can keep departing , when the liftoff itself is the experience you ’ re after ?
Taubes ’ s narrators aren ’ t trying to rationalize Sophie ’ s life through writing or any other means .
Taubes writes , “ Thinking about the sense of one ’ s life , trying to make sense of it , was an idle and useless preoccupation , Sophie had always believed .
Worse than useless , it was positively unhealthy .
In short , a bad habit.
” Instead , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means of holding that which refuses to be made into sense : the selves we have been and have lost , the marital narratives we have bought into and broken , the homes that no longer exist , the myriad ways in which we attempt to divorce our present from our past , our history from our fate .
For Taubes , as for so many European Jews born in the 20th century , questions of travel—which is to say , questions of belonging—were questions of survival .
Born in 1928 to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the granddaughter of Mózes Feldmann , the head Conservative rabbi in Pest ; her father , a renowned psychoanalyst , brought Susan to America in 1939 , leaving behind her mother and much of her extended family , some of whom survived the Holocaust ( others of whom did not ) .
Ten years after leaving Hungary , 21-year-old Susan married Jacob Taubes , a noted philosopher and religious scholar , in the United States ; the two lived apart for several years after their wedding , exchanging detailed correspondence as Susan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Israel .
Both Susan and Jacob were close friends of , and influences on , Susan Sontag .
Divorcing was published in 1969 and immediately met with a condescending review in The New York Times .
Taubes died by suicide a few weeks later ; Sontag , who would later describe the suicide as “ second-rate , ” was brought in to identify her drowned body .
( I hesitate to mention the circumstances of Taubes ’ s death , facts that may tempt her readers , as it has tempted her marketers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particular box marked “ Read with a sense of impending authorial tragedy.
” To give Taubes her due , we should resist this . )
What does it mean to be spared the worst of something ?
Sophie Blind is not in Europe during the Holocaust , but Divorcing is a Holocaust novel all the same .
It is a novel about an escape that can not recognize itself , in the moment , as escape .
It is a novel about the randomness of who is spared from tragedy , that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sophie Blind is conscious of having left Europe—and her mother—on the brink of the Holocaust .
( She recalls the experience of living on the ship to America more than she can recall the sense of going from the Old World to the New ; the liminal space is where her consciousness stays . )
The second and third parts of Divorcing trace Sophie Blind ’ s family history : her parents ’ courtship in the left-wing intellectual Jewish community of Budapest ; their unhappy union , marred from the start by her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of familial pedigree ; the supplementation of their marriage with affairs ; the decision , in the end , to divorce , as the Nazis arrived in Hungary .
Taubes ’ s depiction of Hungary ’ s slow descent into a virulent nationalism—and the way in which even the most dire political developments are first and primarily understood through the ripple effects they send onto our private dramas—is among the strongest features of the novel .
Taubes presents these facts first in a detached third-person narration , as though these family trials form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the loss of her country , and the exile of her people from their homes , felt “ like it happened to someone else , another child , an undefined stranger.
” Between the adult Sophie and the Hungary of her childhood stand two oceans , the Atlantic and the wide span of decades .
She can cross one through travel and the other through memory , but she can never cross both at the same time .
Divorcing can be read as Sophie ’ s attempt to do so anyway , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Blind ’ s unmarried name—Sophie Landsmann , a bit heavy-handed—while describing her alienation from the physical landscape of Hungary .
( And as the adult Sophie is divorcing her husband , the unwritten question of what her name and identity will be after she is no longer a Blind hovers . )
As Hungary yields to the Nazis , and Sophie and her father prepare to leave for America , Taubes ’ s writing frames the incalculable personal losses of the Second World War as inevitable , predestined , already written : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jews weren ’ t meant to feel at home anywhere ; the fields , orchards , horses , cattle , rivers and sky were not for Jews and not what Jews wanted or should want because they were singled out by God to be different , singled out for a different destiny.
” Taubes interrogates the disintegration of Sophie ’ s childhood country and Sophie ’ s adult marriage through a series of nesting-doll perspectives : Sophie ’ s point of view as a child , as an adult , as an adult @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occasion , her own destiny as seen from the perspective of some omniscient third party , perhaps the perspective of God .
Then the interrogation flips .
Sophie is suddenly on trial herself , in a section of the novel formatted like a play or a legal transcript .
She is asked to defend herself against her sins , as her father , ex-husband , and members of their community sneer , scoff , and scold her while she lies in her coffin .
Here there is language that would make Philip Roth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sophie rebukes the jury from her coffin : “ I ’ m sick of all this fuss .
Go ahead , you dodoes , and condemn me for eating fried octopus , cock sucking , animal worship .
I touched the mezuzah when I was menstruating , put that down .
I confess to all your charges .
I recommend to all Jewish women semen drunk straight or mixed with beef blood .
Now feed me to the dogs as is your custom.
” The Limits of the Viral Book Review Taubes mockingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resolution or coherence in Divorcing : “ Coherent discourse ?
How do you expect me— ?
Begin to explain now in my present state of decomposition ?
…plurality of parallel existences…not my words…thought I put it in different books.
” At the same time , the first part of the novel consistently frames writing as an act of control , and for Sophie Blind in particular , a means of wresting back selfhood and agency , however disorderly , from the imposing influences of her father , her husband , and her broader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marriage , and Judaism .
Referring to divorce papers , Sophie Blind tells her husband , “ Sometimes one ’ s life depends on a piece of paper.
” Writing is again framed as a means of escape .
At the close of the novel ’ s first section , Taubes grounds the reader with a self-awareness so clear-eyed that she resets one ’ s expectations , asking the reader to consider the stakes—as well as the obviousness , safety , finality—of the book in her hands : A book is a book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a means of transportation , some pieces of paper on which one ’ s life sometimes depends .
Sophie Blind—and the unnamed narrator creating Sophie Blind—speak frequently of her ( their ? )
book-in-progress to her lovers , her husband , and her parents .
In return they respond as most do when informed that a relation is writing a book ; they ask vague questions , offer unsolicited suggestions , inquire after the seriousness of the undertaking .
At multiple points in the novel , writing is situated simply as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Sophie ’ s lovers quips , “ Write a book that gets you a fifty-thousand-dollar advance and it ’ s simple .
You ’ re free as a bird .
Tokyo , Lima , Istanbul , anywhere .
Spend your life on an airplane or cruising .
It ’ s obvious you have to travel.
” Sophie ’ s mother echoes the sentiment , telling Sophie , “ My life is a novel…somebody should write it .
Why don ’ t you ?
I am sure you could make a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a novel would be a path to financial freedom might now seem a touch absurd ( though the absurdity has rarely stopped anyone from trying ) .
Still , Divorcing identifies financial freedom with other forms of freedom , especially those freedoms that we can only hope to attain through art .
This conflation gestures at the reality that , for Sophie Blind and perhaps for Taubes , writing a book was a path to establishing an independent identity and a way of appropriating and transforming the mindless comments of the strong-willed men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer to the book ’ s chimerical logic : How dare we expect explanations when Sophie Blind is busy being reborn ?
Writing from upstate New York to her then-husband , Jacob , who was living at the time on a Bauhaus estate in Jerusalem , the 22-year-old Susan reflected on the fiction of her time .
“ The new ‘ literature ’ creates a situation which is almost reminiscent of the mystery-cult , ” she told him .
“ There is the picture , the hieroglyphic , the priestly interpreter + initiator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we are no longer in the sphere of ‘ literary enjoyment ’ in the ordinary sense.
” Taubes , then a young wife and student , was commenting on a study she had recently read concerning the first chapter of James Joyce ’ s Ulysses and its formal parallels to the structure of a Catholic mass .
She continued , “ And people who complain they don ’ t ‘ enjoy ’ modern art better learn to enjoy their meals , their bed and the sunshine and prepare their souls for a less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gods.
” ( If you ’ re on the market for a mantra , this would make a good one . )
The final section of Divorcing offers a gentle resolution for those less prepared for that uncomfortable banquet .
Sophie and Ezra ’ s children are minor characters in the first three parts of the novel , but they assume prominence in the fourth , which takes the form of an extended conversation between Sophie , her three sons , and Sophie ’ s friend Kate , an unmarried hypnotist .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ full of questions and hormones .
Taubes has thrust us into the present tense , the now ; we are shunted , unprepared , into the first person .
And the children are running wild .
In this last section , Sophie ’ s sons offer a path to narrative reconciliation .
Their conflicting energies serve as an externalization of Sophie ’ s impulses , and their Americanness ( “ My tolerant American children ” ) is resolute , a grounding influence for their nationless mother .
The boys pose blunt questions that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but don ’ t answer , such as “ Why do you like traveling so much ?
” and “ Just when you should be making something of yourself , when you were about to become an actress—how could you go to a gross place like Jerusalem ?
” Taubes ’ s narrator responds plainly , “ It was the war .
We were just stunned .
The things that had happened and that after they happened everything could just go on as before…it made one ’ s personal future somehow irrelevant.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the reissue of the book , that the final section of Divorcing may have been added as an afterthought , at the urging of publishers .
I ’ d disagree .
Taubes seems to be demonstrating , once more , the yawning gap between how we package ourselves for others ’ understanding and how we struggle to see ourselves .
Sophie ’ s children are already embarking on their own journey of packaging and unpackaging , as Kate lulls them into a hypnotic state while Sophie lies in a sensory deprivation chamber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a “ rebirth experience , ” Sophie replies “ I ’ ll write it up for your files and let the computer decide.
” Once more writing is the space where Sophie can set herself down , and know where she is .
The question of where flares up once more in the brief and surreal closing images of Divorcing .
Sophie , or the narrator who has created her , stands in a train station somewhere in Europe .
Then , suddenly , the platform falls away and she is in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of waking from dreams within dreams .
“ Because I ’ m not awake yet ?
” she writes , “ Not truly awake .
Of course , she thinks , going out on to the street to hail a cab .
And what presumption to expect in this life to be perfectly awake.… The irrelevance.
” Irrelevant because , as you see the blank space at the bottom of the page , both you the reader and Taubes the writer remain , indisputably , inside a book .
It can sometimes seem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ novel in our time is to be made into a television series .
The result has been a procession of novels that read almost like background material for a script : plotted with the aim of being binged , more developed than written , more consumed than read .
The reasons for this shift–the narrowing of possibilities for economic sustainability in the arts , the mass screen-addiction with which analog art forms have been forced to contend–are obvious and therefore uninteresting , as are most of the results .
But the power of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgotten novel by an author long dead , lies in part in its ability to remind us of other goals , other purposes , other conditions for creation .
In our era of made-for-adaptation fiction , Divorcing is thrillingly set apart by its manipulation of and deep faith in , the novel as a form .
Taubes draws together a tangle of realities and perspectives that could not fit into a medium any less forgiving or less malleable than one lacking in all practical restrictions except that it must take the form of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some set order .
It has been a while since I last read a novel that gave off that incandescent quality of needing to be exactly what it was , of being unsuitable for any other medium .
I had almost forgotten how good it feels .

The question of why writers write is a lot like the question of why people marry, which is to say, it is the eternal question of why human beings knowingly commit themselves to tiresome and masochistic endeavors that most often lead nowhere, ending only in defeat or death. There are some writers for whom writing seems to be a form of psychotherapy, a means of sorting through experience. There are others for whom writing is evidently an act of pleasure and delight. Some appear to write out of a compulsion, others out of a belief that writing may bring them love, or attention, or acclaim. (In truth, each of us might be one or another of these writers at some point, our motivations, in art as in life, being opaque and ever prone to delusion.) Books in Review Divorcing By Susan Taubes Buy this book
Then there is the writer for whom writing is a means of transportation, a way of accessing spaces she longs to return to or places she has yet to go. A form of movement; in other words, a form of freedom. Real travel may well be accessible to this writer; on occasion, travel may be her explicit subject. But more often she can be distinguished by the undertow beneath her narratives, trying to pull her beyond the steadying control of language’s constraints. As you read, you have the feeling that she is trying to get somewhere, trying to land. I have always loved this kind of writer best: the one who writes not to make a point because she can, but to get to a particular place because she must.
Renata Adler, Jamaica Kincaid, Rachel Cusk, and Marguerite Duras are exemplars of this form; it may well be a catalyst of this kind of writing for its creator to be born in one land and transplanted to another. To their ranks I’d now add Susan Taubes, a writer who was underrated and overshadowed in her lifetime, and whose first and thus-far only published novel, Divorcing, teems with stylistic daring, taunts with irreverence, and glints with genius. Reissued this September, Divorcing can now be read for what it is: an astonishing work of art, decades ahead of its time, whose formal innovations and insistent excavation of the unspoken corners of female consciousness we now take for granted as de rigueur.
Experimental and evasive, Divorcing invites obsessive re-reading but resists summary. On one level, it is a semi-autobiographical novel about a writer named Sophie Blind, who seeks a divorce from her scholarly husband, Ezra. On another level, it is a book about an unnamed writer at work on a novel about a writer named Sophie Blind. On yet another, it is the story of one Jewish family’s dissolution, which coincides with the rise of the Third Reich. Divorcing is both the tale of a dead woman speaking from the afterlife and that of a living woman resisting psychic death and manipulation by therapy and drugs. Taubes constructs the novel as though piecing together a kaleidoscope of experiences from broken shards of glass. The results are uneven but riveting, ultimately concerned with the question of where writing alone—and the novel form in particular—can take us.
Divorcing is divided into four parts, although these divisions feel fairly arbitrary, given Taubes’s shifts in perspective, tone, tense, and locale within them. The novel’s first three parts follow a disorienting dream logic. From its opening notes it is unclear where the narrator is situated and whether she is dead or alive, conscious or dreaming, sober or under the influence. The final part of the novel is explicitly hallucinogenic. The narrator is put in an isolation tank, a concept I didn’t realize existed in the 1960s, while her two children are hypnotized. None of this is really explained, yet like so much else in the novel, it makes a kind of intuitive or thematic sense. (If all of this sounds cerebral to the point of ridiculousness, Taubes seems to be largely in on the joke. Divorcing is, it must be said, very funny, and includes the perfect Freudian punch line, “Baby, culture stinks. Let’s screw.”) Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Drifting between various European cities and shifting between the narrator as Sophie Blind and the narrator as unnamed-writer-creating-Sophie-Blind, Divorcing’s opening scenes frame writing—and in particular, the writing of this book—as an effort to push past sense-experience into a more primal, individual truth. After a paragraph spent describing the speck of an insect crushed onto a blank notebook page, the narrator abruptly states that she is “coming into consciousness, a lifelong struggle. For countless departures, few arrivals—mostly false.” These countless departures mirror the act of trying to write as well as the act of travel, which the narrator relies on to move through life. Taubes writes, “It’s the only way to live, Sophie always said, the only way to live in time: fly right with it.”
The narrative continues to conflate writing with traveling, traveling with writing, but without a particular interest in those few arrivals. Taubes’s narrators are unconcerned about settling in any given bed with any given man. The narrative sets up a series of puzzles and ambiguities that resist resolution, giving the impression of a mystery novel with many killers and no clues. Why arrive anywhere when you can keep departing, when the liftoff itself is the experience you’re after? Taubes’s narrators aren’t trying to rationalize Sophie’s life through writing or any other means. Taubes writes, “Thinking about the sense of one’s life, trying to make sense of it, was an idle and useless preoccupation, Sophie had always believed. Worse than useless, it was positively unhealthy. In short, a bad habit.” Instead, she’s interested in writing as a means of holding that which refuses to be made into sense: the selves we have been and have lost, the marital narratives we have bought into and broken, the homes that no longer exist, the myriad ways in which we attempt to divorce our present from our past, our history from our fate. Related Article Mary Gaitskill’s Art of Loneliness Maggie Doherty
For Taubes, as for so many European Jews born in the 20th century, questions of travel—which is to say, questions of belonging—were questions of survival. Born in 1928 to a prominent Hungarian Jewish family, Susan Taubes was the granddaughter of Mózes Feldmann, the head Conservative rabbi in Pest; her father, a renowned psychoanalyst, brought Susan to America in 1939, leaving behind her mother and much of her extended family, some of whom survived the Holocaust (others of whom did not). Ten years after leaving Hungary, 21-year-old Susan married Jacob Taubes, a noted philosopher and religious scholar, in the United States; the two lived apart for several years after their wedding, exchanging detailed correspondence as Susan continued her studies and Jacob traveled in Israel. Both Susan and Jacob were close friends of, and influences on, Susan Sontag. Divorcing was published in 1969 and immediately met with a condescending review in The New York Times. Taubes died by suicide a few weeks later; Sontag, who would later describe the suicide as “second-rate,” was brought in to identify her drowned body. (I hesitate to mention the circumstances of Taubes’s death, facts that may tempt her readers, as it has tempted her marketers, to cram her work into that particular box marked “Read with a sense of impending authorial tragedy.” To give Taubes her due, we should resist this.)
What does it mean to be spared the worst of something? Sophie Blind is not in Europe during the Holocaust, but Divorcing is a Holocaust novel all the same. It is a novel about an escape that cannot recognize itself, in the moment, as escape. It is a novel about the randomness of who is spared from tragedy, that is, for whom tragedy is delayed. Sophie Blind is conscious of having left Europe—and her mother—on the brink of the Holocaust. (She recalls the experience of living on the ship to America more than she can recall the sense of going from the Old World to the New; the liminal space is where her consciousness stays.) The second and third parts of Divorcing trace Sophie Blind’s family history: her parents’ courtship in the left-wing intellectual Jewish community of Budapest; their unhappy union, marred from the start by her mother’s prior marriage and lack of familial pedigree; the supplementation of their marriage with affairs; the decision, in the end, to divorce, as the Nazis arrived in Hungary. Taubes’s depiction of Hungary’s slow descent into a virulent nationalism—and the way in which even the most dire political developments are first and primarily understood through the ripple effects they send onto our private dramas—is among the strongest features of the novel.
Taubes presents these facts first in a detached third-person narration, as though these family trials form part of a documentary. Sophie reflects that the loss of her country, and the exile of her people from their homes, felt “like it happened to someone else, another child, an undefined stranger.” Between the adult Sophie and the Hungary of her childhood stand two oceans, the Atlantic and the wide span of decades. She can cross one through travel and the other through memory, but she can never cross both at the same time. Divorcing can be read as Sophie’s attempt to do so anyway, through writing. Taubes repeatedly mentions Sophie Blind’s unmarried name—Sophie Landsmann, a bit heavy-handed—while describing her alienation from the physical landscape of Hungary. (And as the adult Sophie is divorcing her husband, the unwritten question of what her name and identity will be after she is no longer a Blind hovers.) As Hungary yields to the Nazis, and Sophie and her father prepare to leave for America, Taubes’s writing frames the incalculable personal losses of the Second World War as inevitable, predestined, already written: “It had to be so, the Jews weren’t meant to feel at home anywhere; the fields, orchards, horses, cattle, rivers and sky were not for Jews and not what Jews wanted or should want because they were singled out by God to be different, singled out for a different destiny.”
Taubes interrogates the disintegration of Sophie’s childhood country and Sophie’s adult marriage through a series of nesting-doll perspectives: Sophie’s point of view as a child, as an adult, as an adult reflecting on childhood, and, on occasion, her own destiny as seen from the perspective of some omniscient third party, perhaps the perspective of God. Then the interrogation flips. Sophie is suddenly on trial herself, in a section of the novel formatted like a play or a legal transcript. She is asked to defend herself against her sins, as her father, ex-husband, and members of their community sneer, scoff, and scold her while she lies in her coffin. Here there is language that would make Philip Roth squirm (or swoon), as Sophie rebukes the jury from her coffin: “I’m sick of all this fuss. Go ahead, you dodoes, and condemn me for eating fried octopus, cock sucking, animal worship. I touched the mezuzah when I was menstruating, put that down. I confess to all your charges. I recommend to all Jewish women semen drunk straight or mixed with beef blood. Now feed me to the dogs as is your custom.” Related Article The Limits of the Viral Book Review Larissa Pham
Taubes mockingly anticipates the reader’s search for resolution or coherence in Divorcing: “Coherent discourse? How do you expect me—? Begin to explain now in my present state of decomposition?…plurality of parallel existences…not my words…thought I put it in different books.” At the same time, the first part of the novel consistently frames writing as an act of control, and for Sophie Blind in particular, a means of wresting back selfhood and agency, however disorderly, from the imposing influences of her father, her husband, and her broader family and the institutions they represent—psychoanalysis, marriage, and Judaism. Referring to divorce papers, Sophie Blind tells her husband, “Sometimes one’s life depends on a piece of paper.” Writing is again framed as a means of escape. At the close of the novel’s first section, Taubes grounds the reader with a self-awareness so clear-eyed that she resets one’s expectations, asking the reader to consider the stakes—as well as the obviousness, safety, finality—of the book in her hands:
Between life and dream there was not much difference really, however the two wrangled, struggled, played tricks on each other. A book was something really different. To begin with, you know where you are: you’re in a book, and whether the setting is Paris or New York or the moon or not specified at all, you know you’re in a book.… You can be dreaming and not know it. You can be awake and wonder if it’s a dream and not believe it. But a book is simply and always a book—you can be sure of that. And with a book, whether you’re reading it or writing it, you are awake. The question does not pose itself. Writing a book appealed to Sophie on all these grounds. In a book she knew where she was. Because, however baffling and blundering and ambiguous, a book was a book.
A book is a book, simply and always: a container, a means of transportation, some pieces of paper on which one’s life sometimes depends. Sophie Blind—and the unnamed narrator creating Sophie Blind—speak frequently of her (their?) book-in-progress to her lovers, her husband, and her parents. In return they respond as most do when informed that a relation is writing a book; they ask vague questions, offer unsolicited suggestions, inquire after the seriousness of the undertaking. At multiple points in the novel, writing is situated simply as a means of acquiring financial freedom. One of Sophie’s lovers quips, “Write a book that gets you a fifty-thousand-dollar advance and it’s simple. You’re free as a bird. Tokyo, Lima, Istanbul, anywhere. Spend your life on an airplane or cruising. It’s obvious you have to travel.” Sophie’s mother echoes the sentiment, telling Sophie, “My life is a novel…somebody should write it. Why don’t you? I am sure you could make a lot of money with it.”
The idea that a novel would be a path to financial freedom might now seem a touch absurd (though the absurdity has rarely stopped anyone from trying). Still, Divorcing identifies financial freedom with other forms of freedom, especially those freedoms that we can only hope to attain through art. This conflation gestures at the reality that, for Sophie Blind and perhaps for Taubes, writing a book was a path to establishing an independent identity and a way of appropriating and transforming the mindless comments of the strong-willed men around her. Which presents a possible answer to the book’s chimerical logic: How dare we expect explanations when Sophie Blind is busy being reborn?
Writing from upstate New York to her then-husband, Jacob, who was living at the time on a Bauhaus estate in Jerusalem, the 22-year-old Susan reflected on the fiction of her time. “The new ‘literature’ creates a situation which is almost reminiscent of the mystery-cult,” she told him. “There is the picture, the hieroglyphic, the priestly interpreter + initiator, and the initiated members. And we are no longer in the sphere of ‘literary enjoyment’ in the ordinary sense.” Taubes, then a young wife and student, was commenting on a study she had recently read concerning the first chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses and its formal parallels to the structure of a Catholic mass. She continued, “And people who complain they don’t ‘enjoy’ modern art better learn to enjoy their meals, their bed and the sunshine and prepare their souls for a less easy, sedentary and comfortable banquet with the gods.” (If you’re on the market for a mantra, this would make a good one.)
The final section of Divorcing offers a gentle resolution for those less prepared for that uncomfortable banquet. Sophie and Ezra’s children are minor characters in the first three parts of the novel, but they assume prominence in the fourth, which takes the form of an extended conversation between Sophie, her three sons, and Sophie’s friend Kate, an unmarried hypnotist. The sons are young and chaotic, full of questions and hormones. Taubes has thrust us into the present tense, the now; we are shunted, unprepared, into the first person. And the children are running wild.
In this last section, Sophie’s sons offer a path to narrative reconciliation. Their conflicting energies serve as an externalization of Sophie’s impulses, and their Americanness (“My tolerant American children”) is resolute, a grounding influence for their nationless mother. The boys pose blunt questions that the earlier sections of the novel invite but don’t answer, such as “Why do you like traveling so much?” and “Just when you should be making something of yourself, when you were about to become an actress—how could you go to a gross place like Jerusalem?” Taubes’s narrator responds plainly, “It was the war. We were just stunned. The things that had happened and that after they happened everything could just go on as before…it made one’s personal future somehow irrelevant.”
David Rieff posits, in his introduction to the reissue of the book, that the final section of Divorcing may have been added as an afterthought, at the urging of publishers. I’d disagree. Taubes seems to be demonstrating, once more, the yawning gap between how we package ourselves for others’ understanding and how we struggle to see ourselves. Sophie’s children are already embarking on their own journey of packaging and unpackaging, as Kate lulls them into a hypnotic state while Sophie lies in a sensory deprivation chamber. When Kate asks if Sophie has had a “rebirth experience,” Sophie replies “I’ll write it up for your files and let the computer decide.” Once more writing is the space where Sophie can set herself down, and know where she is.
The question of where flares up once more in the brief and surreal closing images of Divorcing. Sophie, or the narrator who has created her, stands in a train station somewhere in Europe. Then, suddenly, the platform falls away and she is in bed. Taubes again evokes the feeling of waking from dreams within dreams. “Because I’m not awake yet?” she writes, “Not truly awake. Of course, she thinks, going out on to the street to hail a cab. And what presumption to expect in this life to be perfectly awake.… The irrelevance.” Irrelevant because, as you see the blank space at the bottom of the page, both you the reader and Taubes the writer remain, indisputably, inside a book.
It can sometimes seem as though the highest goal for a novel in our time is to be made into a television series. The result has been a procession of novels that read almost like background material for a script: plotted with the aim of being binged, more developed than written, more consumed than read. The reasons for this shift–the narrowing of possibilities for economic sustainability in the arts, the mass screen-addiction with which analog art forms have been forced to contend–are obvious and therefore uninteresting, as are most of the results. But the power of a reissued novel, especially a mostly forgotten novel by an author long dead, lies in part in its ability to remind us of other goals, other purposes, other conditions for creation. In our era of made-for-adaptation fiction, Divorcing is thrillingly set apart by its manipulation of and deep faith in, the novel as a form. Taubes draws together a tangle of realities and perspectives that could not fit into a medium any less forgiving or less malleable than one lacking in all practical restrictions except that it must take the form of words on pages, bound together in some set order. It has been a while since I last read a novel that gave off that incandescent quality of needing to be exactly what it was, of being unsuitable for any other medium. I had almost forgotten how good it feels.


thenation--2020-12-02--9 Months Into Touch-Free Living, What Shall We Birth?

uilford , t.—Once the Lamplighter Inn , a motel that had fallen into disrepair on the edge of Brattleboro , Great River Terrace is a permanently affordable housing community of people who have experienced homelessness .
It is a “ housing first ” residence , the first of its kind in Vermont .
There is no obligation to be “ clean and sober ” to living there .
Senator Bernie Sanders wrote at its opening that the residence “ will allow Vermonters struggling with complex challenges to live with stability and dignity.
” I have been visiting and writing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As an “ embedded writer , ” I listen , encourage , write , collaborate , and share my own poems .
Our project “ Face of Home ” began spontaneously when a resident saw a portrait painted by a local artist .
She invited the artist and her friends to paint at Great River Terrace .
Each week , while the artists painted , a resident would sit and talk with me in the common room .
I typed in a rough shorthand , and in the weeks following we edited the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ September .
I get choked up talking about it .
I got used to losing everything , and finally , I lost my hope .
After living in other people ’ s houses and sleeping outside , I had a hard time saying , Meet at my apartment .
It seemed weird , awkward , unfamiliar .
It took practice .
Come to my place .
It was like learning a new word : HOME .
–Joe S. Covid-19 interrupted this project .
Spring and summer , we stayed away .
In September @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , outside until the cold made it impossible to paint and type .
My friends at Green River Terrace are striving to reinvent their lives after traumas that led to homelessness and their existence in survival mode , sometimes for years .
We try to stay in touch , “ liking ” and commenting on Facebook memes and sorrows .
In the common room , your portraits bloom , alive and warm .
Little did we know how long the longing would go on .
Dry wind blew .
The garden pulled through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on your Timeline to ask how you were living .
In autumn , masked , on the patio , the artists drew , we spoke .
I memorized your faces and stories , wreathed by smoke .
* That regal tree on the lawn with a name nobody knew stays rooted here , and strong though her gold leaves shook and flew .
Be easy now , belong .
Let her mom-arms shelter you .
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , a living memorial to radical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
This series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

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G uilford, V t.—Once the Lamplighter Inn, a motel that had fallen into disrepair on the edge of Brattleboro, Great River Terrace is a permanently affordable housing community of people who have experienced homelessness. It is a “housing first” residence, the first of its kind in Vermont. There is no obligation to be “clean and sober” to living there. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote at its opening that the residence “will allow Vermonters struggling with complex challenges to live with stability and dignity.” I have been visiting and writing with residents since the spring of 2019. As an “embedded writer,” I listen, encourage, write, collaborate, and share my own poems.
Our project “Face of Home” began spontaneously when a resident saw a portrait painted by a local artist. She invited the artist and her friends to paint at Great River Terrace. Each week, while the artists painted, a resident would sit and talk with me in the common room. I typed in a rough shorthand, and in the weeks following we edited the text together.
I got here in September. I get choked up talking about it.
I got used to losing everything, and finally, I lost my hope.
After living in other people’s houses and sleeping outside,
I had a hard time saying, Meet at my apartment.
It seemed weird, awkward, unfamiliar.
It took practice. Come to my place.
It was like learning a new word: HOME.
–Joe S.
Covid-19 interrupted this project. Spring and summer, we stayed away. In September, we arranged to meet, masked, outside until the cold made it impossible to paint and type.
My friends at Green River Terrace are striving to reinvent their lives after traumas that led to homelessness and their existence in survival mode, sometimes for years. We try to stay in touch, “liking” and commenting on Facebook memes and sorrows.
In the common
room, your portraits
bloom, alive and
warm.
Little did we know
how long the longing
would go
on.
Dry wind blew.
The garden
pulled through,
giving and
forgiving.
I landed on your
Timeline
to ask how you
were living.
In autumn,
masked, on the
patio,
the artists drew,
we spoke.
I memorized your
faces
and stories,
wreathed by
smoke.
*
That regal tree on
the lawn
with a name
nobody knew
stays rooted here,
and strong
though her gold
leaves shook and
flew.
Be easy now,
belong.
Let her mom-arms
shelter you.
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.


thenation--2020-12-02--This Supreme Court Case Could Wreck the New Deal Legal Order

The Federalist Society finally has a case before the Supreme Court that could roll back large swaths of the regulatory state and civil rights laws .
On November 13 , the court granted an appeal from a corporate farm seeking to void California regulations that give union organizers access to its property to talk to farmworkers about their union rights .
The farm owners , backed by the California Farm Bureau and a wide spectrum of conservative organizations , argue in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that the regulations violate the owners ’ Fifth Amendment right to exclude unwanted visitors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have ruled that the regulations are constitutional .
So if the Supreme Court is bothering to take the case , there is a reasonable likelihood that , with Amy Coney Barrett ’ s ascension , there are now five justices ready to overturn the lower courts and move forward with the most radical economic goals of the conservative legal movement .
And make no mistake ; while the court majority may try to sell the striking down of California ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its existing doctrines , they will in fact be crossing a major Rubicon in overturning bedrock legal precedents that have upheld New Deal and civil rights–era economic policies for decades .
Democrats Must Keep Their Eyes on the Supreme Court The Fifth Amendment argument made in this case is little different from that made by Barry Goldwater and others who denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as violating businesses ’ property rights to exclude whomever they wished to from their property .
Rebuking that viewpoint , the court , in its 1964 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that companies could not invoke the Fifth Amendment to refuse entry to their property : A company “ has no ‘ right ’ to select its guests as it sees fit , free from governmental regulation.
” The holy grail of the legal right has been for the courts to insist that government compensate corporations when regulations encroach on their property ; this is what conservative legal scholars call unconstitutional “ regulatory takings.
” But while the court has moved rightward over the decades , it has largely refused to roll back major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using this “ regulatory takings ” argument , even where the economic value of property has been substantially reduced due to regulations .
Now , with an expanded conservative majority on the court , Cedar Point Nursery presents an opportunity for right-wing legal activists to take another bite at the apple .
The argument is that giving union organizers access to employer property is not a constitutional economic regulation but a “ temporary physical invasion ” ( supposedly prohibited by the Fifth Amendment ) .
In this , the plaintiffs are invoking the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fifth Amendment violations , namely where government policy mandates permanent physical changes or access to private property , such as installing cable equipment , extraction wells , bike lanes , or beach access paths across property .
Such “ permanent physical invasions ” require compensation , according to a scattering of court decisions .
While these decisions were generally opposed by most liberal justices , their impact on public policy has been relatively limited , given the court ’ s overall refusal to entertain broader “ regulatory takings ” challenges .
With Cedar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even temporary “ physical invasions ” declared unconstitutional takings .
That ’ s a critical change , since the California farmworker regulations in question don ’ t give unions unlimited access to employer property , but only offer access for a limited number of months during the year and then only for an hour before and after work shifts , as well as during lunch , all limited to non-work areas of the property where employees congregate .
Given the pervasiveness of rules , in all sorts of public policy , that grant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this seemingly subtle shift from the words “ permanent physical invasion ” to “ temporary physical invasion ” would convert the Fifth Amendment into a wrecking ball and render large areas of current public policy unconstitutional .
A brief in support of striking down the California farmworker regulations filed by the Institute for Justice—a conservative litigation outfit funded by the Koch family , among others—is clear in this goal .
Expressing frustration that the bar for proving a “ regulatory taking ” is so high , the brief points to classes of regulations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be unconstitutional “ temporary physical invasions.
” The IJ cites disapprovingly a ruling by the First Circuit that upheld the constitutionality of a Maine law requiring hospitals to provide health care to indigent residents , a law that the IJ argues allows “ periodic and intermittent ” physical invasions ( i.e.
, access to hospital beds ) by those patients , which therefore should violate the Fifth Amendment .
Similar logic could strike down laws requiring landlords to accept “ invasions ” ( i.e.
, rentals ) by Section 8 tenants or laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( i.e.
, enrollment ) by disabled students , or pretty much any rules requiring firms to serve clients or customers they would prefer not to .
Rules regulating which contractors a company may use on its property would also be struck down if Cedar Point Nursery prevails at the Supreme Court , according to the IJ , which argues for overturning a D.C .
Circuit precedent that upheld a requirement that hotels in Washington may not discriminate in deciding which licensed taxis can use their cab stands .
And if companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they don ’ t want , it ’ s a pretty slippery slope to striking down much of federal labor law that prevents employers from excluding ( i.e.
, firing ) pro-union employees from their property .
The big question is how much of a chainsaw the new court majority is willing to take to precedent—which conservative justices have been shy about doing , particularly in regards to labor law .
In this case , though , they would be discarding precedents often authored by conservative predecessors , including William Rehnquist , Ronald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Most pertinent to the Cedar Point Nursery case is the 1980 Pruneyard Shopping Ctr .
decision , which held that California law , which protected the right of a labor union to leaflet inside a private mall , did not violate the Fifth Amendment .
As Rehnquist wrote then , “ It does not violate the United States Constitution for the State Supreme Court to conclude that access to appellants ’ property in the manner required here is necessary to the promotion of state-protected rights of free speech and petition.
” While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to argue that Pruneyard is limited to “ publicly accessible ” spaces like malls , in 1984 the court—again supported by conservative justices like Rehnquist—cited Pruneyard in upholding a Minnesota law requiring private clubs like the Jaycees to allow women members .
And federal labor law has granted non-employee union organizers access to mining and logging camps and other non–publicly accessible locations without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment .
A 1992 case , Lechmere Inc. v. NLRB , limited where the National Labor Relations Board could ignore state property law in granting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advocates for Cedar Point Nursery make much of—but this was a statutory interpretation of a federal law with no mention of the Fifth Amendment at all .
And the NLRB and the courts have continued to regularly grant union organizers access to non–publicly accessible employer property wherever state law says unions have the right to such access .
In fact , two years after Lechmere , in a case highlighting the right of federal inspectors and non-employee union representatives to access private coal property , the court largely dismissed any Fifth Amendment challenge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claims “ misconstrue Lechmere , ” since the right to exclude union organizers derives from state property law , which the court noted states can redefine .
And at the federal level , “ Congress ’ interest in regulating the mining industry may justify limiting the private property interests of mine operators.
” Despite this overwhelming pile of precedents justifying California ’ s farmworker union regulations , there is nothing to stop the current court majority from overriding all of them and opening the door to what would no doubt then be a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should refuse to let the court majority gaslight the public that such a decision is merely a minor change in doctrine ; they should instead trumpet that it is a profoundly radical move by a court far to the right even of GOP predecessors like Rehnquist .
We need to create a public drumbeat on the importance of this case—and , if the court rules against the farmworkers , highlight how unmoored from precedent this new right-wing majority really is .
In the end , if nothing else , this will at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expand the court when the political opportunity arises .

This article appears in the March 22/29, 2021 issue.
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Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The Federalist Society finally has a case before the Supreme Court that could roll back large swaths of the regulatory state and civil rights laws.
On November 13, the court granted an appeal from a corporate farm seeking to void California regulations that give union organizers access to its property to talk to farmworkers about their union rights. The farm owners, backed by the California Farm Bureau and a wide spectrum of conservative organizations, argue in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that the regulations violate the owners’ Fifth Amendment right to exclude unwanted visitors from their property.
Both the California Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have ruled that the regulations are constitutional. So if the Supreme Court is bothering to take the case, there is a reasonable likelihood that, with Amy Coney Barrett’s ascension, there are now five justices ready to overturn the lower courts and move forward with the most radical economic goals of the conservative legal movement.
And make no mistake; while the court majority may try to sell the striking down of California’s labor regulations as just a small extension of its existing doctrines, they will in fact be crossing a major Rubicon in overturning bedrock legal precedents that have upheld New Deal and civil rights–era economic policies for decades. Related Articles Can American Labor Survive Prop 22? Wilfred Chan Democrats Must Keep Their Eyes on the Supreme Court Elie Mystal
The Fifth Amendment argument made in this case is little different from that made by Barry Goldwater and others who denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as violating businesses’ property rights to exclude whomever they wished to from their property. Rebuking that viewpoint, the court, in its 1964 Heart of Atlanta Motel decision, argued that companies could not invoke the Fifth Amendment to refuse entry to their property: A company “has no ‘right’ to select its guests as it sees fit, free from governmental regulation.”
The holy grail of the legal right has been for the courts to insist that government compensate corporations when regulations encroach on their property; this is what conservative legal scholars call unconstitutional “regulatory takings.” But while the court has moved rightward over the decades, it has largely refused to roll back major consumer, environmental, or employment legislation using this “regulatory takings” argument, even where the economic value of property has been substantially reduced due to regulations.
Now, with an expanded conservative majority on the court, Cedar Point Nursery presents an opportunity for right-wing legal activists to take another bite at the apple. The argument is that giving union organizers access to employer property is not a constitutional economic regulation but a “temporary physical invasion” (supposedly prohibited by the Fifth Amendment). In this, the plaintiffs are invoking the key area where the court has found Fifth Amendment violations, namely where government policy mandates permanent physical changes or access to private property, such as installing cable equipment, extraction wells, bike lanes, or beach access paths across property. Such “permanent physical invasions” require compensation, according to a scattering of court decisions. While these decisions were generally opposed by most liberal justices, their impact on public policy has been relatively limited, given the court’s overall refusal to entertain broader “regulatory takings” challenges. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Current Issue View our current issue
With Cedar Point, the goal is to have even temporary “physical invasions” declared unconstitutional takings. That’s a critical change, since the California farmworker regulations in question don’t give unions unlimited access to employer property, but only offer access for a limited number of months during the year and then only for an hour before and after work shifts, as well as during lunch, all limited to non-work areas of the property where employees congregate.
Given the pervasiveness of rules, in all sorts of public policy, that grant people periodic access to private property, this seemingly subtle shift from the words “permanent physical invasion” to “temporary physical invasion” would convert the Fifth Amendment into a wrecking ball and render large areas of current public policy unconstitutional.
A brief in support of striking down the California farmworker regulations filed by the Institute for Justice—a conservative litigation outfit funded by the Koch family, among others—is clear in this goal. Expressing frustration that the bar for proving a “regulatory taking” is so high, the brief points to classes of regulations that the court should instead declare to be unconstitutional “temporary physical invasions.”
The IJ cites disapprovingly a ruling by the First Circuit that upheld the constitutionality of a Maine law requiring hospitals to provide health care to indigent residents, a law that the IJ argues allows “periodic and intermittent” physical invasions (i.e., access to hospital beds) by those patients, which therefore should violate the Fifth Amendment. Similar logic could strike down laws requiring landlords to accept “invasions” (i.e., rentals) by Section 8 tenants or laws requiring charter schools to accept “invasions” (i.e., enrollment) by disabled students, or pretty much any rules requiring firms to serve clients or customers they would prefer not to.
Rules regulating which contractors a company may use on its property would also be struck down if Cedar Point Nursery prevails at the Supreme Court, according to the IJ, which argues for overturning a D.C. Circuit precedent that upheld a requirement that hotels in Washington may not discriminate in deciding which licensed taxis can use their cab stands. And if companies cannot be forced to hire contractors they don’t want, it’s a pretty slippery slope to striking down much of federal labor law that prevents employers from excluding (i.e., firing) pro-union employees from their property.
The big question is how much of a chainsaw the new court majority is willing to take to precedent—which conservative justices have not been shy about doing, particularly in regards to labor law. In this case, though, they would be discarding precedents often authored by conservative predecessors, including William Rehnquist, Ronald Reagan’s pick for chief justice. Most pertinent to the Cedar Point Nursery case is the 1980 Pruneyard Shopping Ctr. decision, which held that California law, which protected the right of a labor union to leaflet inside a private mall, did not violate the Fifth Amendment. As Rehnquist wrote then, “It does not violate the United States Constitution for the State Supreme Court to conclude that access to appellants’ property in the manner required here is necessary to the promotion of state-protected rights of free speech and petition.”
While the advocates for Cedar Point Nursery try to argue that Pruneyard is limited to “publicly accessible” spaces like malls, in 1984 the court—again supported by conservative justices like Rehnquist—cited Pruneyard in upholding a Minnesota law requiring private clubs like the Jaycees to allow women members. And federal labor law has granted non-employee union organizers access to mining and logging camps and other non–publicly accessible locations without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment.
A 1992 case, Lechmere Inc. v. NLRB, limited where the National Labor Relations Board could ignore state property law in granting unions access to employer property—a case the advocates for Cedar Point Nursery make much of—but this was a statutory interpretation of a federal law with no mention of the Fifth Amendment at all. And the NLRB and the courts have continued to regularly grant union organizers access to non–publicly accessible employer property wherever state law says unions have the right to such access. In fact, two years after Lechmere, in a case highlighting the right of federal inspectors and non-employee union representatives to access private coal property, the court largely dismissed any Fifth Amendment challenge to such access, arguing that such claims “misconstrue Lechmere,” since the right to exclude union organizers derives from state property law, which the court noted states can redefine. And at the federal level, “Congress’ interest in regulating the mining industry may justify limiting the private property interests of mine operators.”
Despite this overwhelming pile of precedents justifying California’s farmworker union regulations, there is nothing to stop the current court majority from overriding all of them and opening the door to what would no doubt then be a torrent of radical new decisions.
Advocates should refuse to let the court majority gaslight the public that such a decision is merely a minor change in doctrine; they should instead trumpet that it is a profoundly radical move by a court far to the right even of GOP predecessors like Rehnquist.
We need to create a public drumbeat on the importance of this case—and, if the court rules against the farmworkers, highlight how unmoored from precedent this new right-wing majority really is. In the end, if nothing else, this will at least stiffen the spine of Democratic leaders to expand the court when the political opportunity arises.


thenation--2020-12-02--Now Is the Time to Make Good on the Promise of Justice for All

“ With liberty and justice for all.
” Even as a fifth grader with my hand held over my heart , I knew those emphatic words were an aspiration , not yet an affirmation in America .
Growing up the child of an incarcerated parent , I had seen firsthand injustices it would take years to put words to .
Today , after months of community uprisings against police violence and systemic racism , our nation is in a moment of reckoning .
Across our country , people from all backgrounds have rallied , protested , and voted for long-overdue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ move with urgency to build a more just America .
An America where our policies and our budgets affirm that Black Lives Matter .
This moment has drawn attention to the injustices perpetuated by our legal system—a system quick to criminalize people and slow to invest in the resources and supports needed to truly build safe and thriving communities .
On the heels of their historic election victory , President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris have an opportunity and responsibility to respond to the diverse and multigenerational movement that elected them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purported to advance it—look like in America .
A year ago , in close partnership with activists , advocates , and those most impacted , I introduced the People ’ s Justice Guarantee outlining a path toward justice .
As this new administration prepares to take office , the People ’ s Justice Guarantee offers a bold and expansive framework to transform our criminal legal system , meet the scale of the crisis before us , and finally make good on America ’ s promise of justice for all .
Centering five key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human dignity , and safety—the People ’ s Justice Guarantee lays out a vision for a more equitable and just nation .
A nation where our communities are safe because we take care of everyone , including our most vulnerable and marginalized neighbors .
A nation where the legal system centers our collective freedom , rather than our oppression .
Where we are focused on our people , not profits .
Where those in need are met with compassion , not criminalization .
Where our path to justice and healing is driven and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closest to the pain are closest to the power .
Under the current system of mass incarceration , false notions of public safety have meant the brutal criminalization and over-policing of Black , brown , and Indigenous communities .
While the officials who designed these racist policies claimed they were doing so in the interest of public safety , it ’ s clear the reality is quite the opposite .
The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet with Black Americans incarcerated at over five times the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million people with mental illness are arrested annually , and over a million are imprisoned each year for drug possession .
Countless others are incarcerated for crimes of poverty .
This systemic injustice has ruined lives , torn apart families , and decimated entire communities .
Nearly half of all adults living in the United States have experienced incarceration in their family , and more than 5 million children have had a parent in jail or prison during the course of their childhood—myself included .
How a Trip to Prison Cost Kenneth Clark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is why the People ’ s Justice Guarantee calls for a new era of mass decarceration and an end to the for-profit prison industry that has shamefully monetized the practice of inflicting pain , suffering , and destabilization on our Black and brown communities .
While dismantling mass incarceration is a critical priority , it must be accompanied by a radical transformation of the way we invest in public safety .
Budgets are statements of our values , which is why we must divest from the inherently unjust carceral system and reinvest in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead of spending over a billion dollars to place police officers in schools—perpetuating the school-to-confinement pathway that disproportionately harms Black and brown students , LGBTQ+ students , and those with disabilities—we should be investing in counselors and other trauma-informed staff to allow students to learn , grow , and thrive .
Rather than spend nearly $ 200 billion to keep people behind bars for decades , we should be providing resources for formerly incarcerated individuals to successfully reenter society .
Creating a just legal system is not impossible .
It is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simple .
And we are seeing that public pressure is driving action .
This month , Los Angeles County passed Measure J , becoming one of the first counties to commit to addressing racial injustice by investing in community-based medical and mental health treatment , affordable housing , and jobs .
Additionally , over a dozen cities and counties across the country passed ballot initiatives to advance policies that will root out racial inequities in the legal system , including legalizing marijuana and strengthening police accountability .
These successful initiatives demonstrate nationwide support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system .
In this moment of reckoning , we must be bold .
For too long , we have been told to compromise when it comes to our collective liberation and pursuit of justice .
Another world is possible—if we work for it .
Together , we have the power to make that world a reality and deliver the People ’ s Justice Guarantee .

This article appears in the December 28, 2020/January 4, 2021 issue.
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“With liberty and justice for all.” Even as a fifth grader with my hand held over my heart, I knew those emphatic words were an aspiration, not yet an affirmation in America. Growing up the child of an incarcerated parent, I had seen firsthand injustices it would take years to put words to.
Today, after months of community uprisings against police violence and systemic racism, our nation is in a moment of reckoning. Across our country, people from all backgrounds have rallied, protested, and voted for long-overdue change. The people demand that we move with urgency to build a more just America. An America where our policies and our budgets affirm that Black Lives Matter. This moment has drawn attention to the injustices perpetuated by our legal system—a system quick to criminalize people and slow to invest in the resources and supports needed to truly build safe and thriving communities.
On the heels of their historic election victory, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris have an opportunity and responsibility to respond to the diverse and multigenerational movement that elected them by fundamentally redefining what justice—and the institutions purported to advance it—look like in America.
A year ago, in close partnership with activists, advocates, and those most impacted, I introduced the People’s Justice Guarantee , outlining a path toward justice. As this new administration prepares to take office, the People’s Justice Guarantee offers a bold and expansive framework to transform our criminal legal system, meet the scale of the crisis before us, and finally make good on America’s promise of justice for all. Current Issue View our current issue
Centering five key principles—shared power, freedom, equality, human dignity, and safety—the People’s Justice Guarantee lays out a vision for a more equitable and just nation. A nation where our communities are safe because we take care of everyone, including our most vulnerable and marginalized neighbors. A nation where the legal system centers our collective freedom, rather than our oppression. Where we are focused on our people, not profits. Where those in need are met with compassion, not criminalization. Where our path to justice and healing is driven and informed by community. And where those closest to the pain are closest to the power.
Under the current system of mass incarceration, false notions of public safety have meant the brutal criminalization and over-policing of Black, brown, and Indigenous communities. While the officials who designed these racist policies claimed they were doing so in the interest of public safety, it’s clear the reality is quite the opposite. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet , with Black Americans incarcerated at over five times the rate of white people. Nearly 2 million people with mental illness are arrested annually, and over a million are imprisoned each year for drug possession. Countless others are incarcerated for crimes of poverty. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
This systemic injustice has ruined lives, torn apart families, and decimated entire communities. Nearly half of all adults living in the United States have experienced incarceration in their family, and more than 5 million children have had a parent in jail or prison during the course of their childhood—myself included. Price of Prison How a Trip to Prison Cost Kenneth Clark His Right to Be a Parent Sylvia A. Harvey
This is why the People’s Justice Guarantee calls for a new era of mass decarceration and an end to the for-profit prison industry that has shamefully monetized the practice of inflicting pain, suffering, and destabilization on our Black and brown communities.
While dismantling mass incarceration is a critical priority, it must be accompanied by a radical transformation of the way we invest in public safety. Budgets are statements of our values, which is why we must divest from the inherently unjust carceral system and reinvest in programs and services that uplift our communities.
Instead of spending over a billion dollars to place police officers in schools—perpetuating the school-to-confinement pathway that disproportionately harms Black and brown students, LGBTQ+ students, and those with disabilities—we should be investing in counselors and other trauma-informed staff to allow students to learn, grow, and thrive. Rather than spend nearly $200 billion to keep people behind bars for decades, we should be providing resources for formerly incarcerated individuals to successfully reenter society.
Creating a just legal system is not impossible. It is a matter of political will, plain and simple. And we are seeing that public pressure is driving action.
This month, Los Angeles County passed Measure J, becoming one of the first counties to commit to addressing racial injustice by investing in community-based medical and mental health treatment, affordable housing, and jobs.
Additionally, over a dozen cities and counties across the country passed ballot initiatives to advance policies that will root out racial inequities in the legal system, including legalizing marijuana and strengthening police accountability. These successful initiatives demonstrate nationwide support and momentum for reforming our criminal legal system.
In this moment of reckoning, we must be bold. For too long, we have been told to compromise when it comes to our collective liberation and pursuit of justice.
Another world is possible—if we work for it. Together, we have the power to make that world a reality and deliver the People’s Justice Guarantee.