In autobiographical fiction, Terence Sellers aptly predicted her fate as a writer. Her chosen subject matter, sadomasochism, was considered too outré even within the 70s New York downtown scene in which she pursued her literary work. In one of her fictive works, Sellers depicts the life of a dominatrix -which she is in real life- who aspires to be an author. As noted, even within avant-garde underground artistic circles, she is viewed with a mix of reservation, fascination and consternation. The lads simply didn’t quite know what to make of her. Not even her male lovers to whom she is often generous. Sellers correctly foresaw that the literary establishment would bulk at finding easy acceptance with her and her art.
Sellers achieved cult status primarily with the publication of her novel, The Correct Sadist, in 1982 followed by The Obsession, a few years later and Dungeon Evidence in 1997. These works often bear bald witness to an enchanted, if edgy, bygone New York creative scene populated by avant-garde musicians, painters, actors and writers who largely functioned outside the ravenous pressures of external material concerns. Artists sought to make work that sprang purely from the subconscious and not via the diktats of desperate agents and marketing departments. Sellers has long since given up on mainstream American publishing while small presses offering inconsequential $2000 advances have no traction with her. Instead she prefers to upload work on her website which she has maintained since 1998. One of her closest brushes with courting a larger readership occurred in the 80s when Harper’s magazine was interested in featuring a chapter from The Correct Sadist. Sellers found the magazine’s re-worked chapter odious and offensive and promptly turned down the offer with the backing of Barney Rosset, her publisher at Grove Press. Currently she is busy at work on a new novel, “Unfinished Novel”, which dwells on her father’s failed literary ambitions embedded within her own efforts to realize hers via an arresting immersion in various literary cultures taking on Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemmingway as part of her rejected paternal history, on the one hand, and Rimbaud and Genet, as her own personal favorites, on the other. Again, the material texture and circumstances of real life provide the grist for literature in quite direct ways.
Sellers temperament, tastes and expectations are, in many ways, shaped by 18th century Europe. Sadomasochism, for her, operates according to a master/slave dialectic which is akin to basically Nietzschean worldview. Accordingly, under a natural scheme of things, egalitarianism is a fallacy and by extension, democracy is also a cruel joke as people are generally divided into rulers and followers. Holding such views would certainly make Sellers appear anachronistic in the present age, but this taint of anachronism also has an appeal for being one of a well-versed variety. It isn’t one that stems from being ignorant or barbaric. Rather it is the kind that comes from critically examining different epochs of human civilisation and then deciding old wine has more panache, charm and power than new.
Her language is almost self-consciously literary; one has the impression of a school mistress scrutinizing a text to discern if commas, periods and semi-colons have been appropriately placed. This arch literary lexicon contrasts sharply with her subject matter as one would have expected it to be funky, transgressive, endlessly breaking out of the staid academies in which language is often imprisoned. The over all effect of this contrast is attractive even as it is curious; sadomasochism loses its presumably filthy complexion and instead is allowed to saunter regally, partially exposed and seductively so, through the ornate chambers of a thoroughly sanitized and approved language. There is a rigorous discipline in the practice of bondage as an act of subversive invention. The elements of the practice are therefore quite intriguing with the elemental coupling of transgression and structure, excess and passivity, mastery and docility, and imaginative freedom and repression.
One of Sellers’ major accomplishments is maintaining the integrity of her art in a context endlessly devalued by constant commodification. In such a world, art no longer serves a primal creative impetus but the superficial whims of finance, marketing and entertainment. The only element resembling an affectation is her arch literary style which is a long way from the gloss and schmaltz which characterizes present day New York. And she has now moved out of the city which had provided so much inspiration in the past to avoid “trying to pay those rents.” There would be no point in doing so with the complete disappearance of old 70s bohemia. In an obviously autobiographical essay written by Sellers on the almost mythical vanishing entitled, “Is there life after Sadomasochism?”, two artists bemoan the temporary halting of activities in the secret social laboratories in New York where they had attempted to evolve forms of life other than those prescribed by the state and church. HIV/AIDS had been the cause for the cessation of the social experiment which Sellers incisively explores in her writings.
Sellers books are informed by events from her work and life and the results are often remarkable; there is a constant toing and froing between art and life in which both are transmogrified to an extent that it doesn’t really matter which is which when the outcome is so compelling. Excerpts from her One Decadent Life, freely available on the internet, make for interesting reading for various reasons. First, it is an insightful kaleidoscope of New York is downtown society between ’70-78 when figures such as William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, Richard Hell and the Ramones held sway at various points. It was also a time the likes of Keith Haring, Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller and Jean-Michel Basquiat found some resonance as artists working in different media. Movies such as Smithereens from 1982 and Downtown 81, featuring Basquiat as main protagonist, are powerfully evocative of that lost era as the Lower East Side generally resembled a veritable bombed out zone complete with crumbling and faded buildings, cracked sidewalks beneath a wracked ambience filled with numerous smack dens. It was indeed a junkie’s haven as well as a struggling artist’s refuge if not delight. In these materially derelict but spiritually rich New York zones is located what is described in One Decadent Life as “Art’s Vestibule” and which is where the ideals that animate the true creative impulses of society are forged. Before the homogenizing grind of gentrification, the meaning of art, self and identity, were radically pushed to the limits as facilitated by ideas drawn from punk and the beatnik ethic.
Sellers’ work addresses this bygone epoch of New York at a time when the relations between art and commerce were rather unstable and not as defined as they are now. In this context, it was possible to make art and by extension, re-make oneself at a certain healthy remove from the rude and crude intrusions of capital. One could become a downtown cultural icon by employing the “visionary imperative of a pen” as a character, Rene Lepine, in One Decadent Life, became. Rene Lepine had made his reputation as an art critic and a poet with a published book of poetry. Upon these two forms of writing was his legend built. Also, as a critic, he had made many an artist’s career and in the process came to acquire a sizeable art collection donated by artists who were understandably grateful. Along the way, Lepine becomes addicted to drugs, primarily smack and crack, and his habit together with a friend’s had incinerated his prized collection which “should have settled him nicely into retirement.” Lepine who is also known as “The Blessed” continues to find support in limited fashion in certain artistic circles even as he continually squanders it in others just as his powers and insights as poet and critic wane. At a point, he resides at the (in)famous ChelseaHotel where he attempts to recoup his past professional glories. Lepine, in addition, is renowned for his acerbic wit and verbal repartee which stand him in good stead in the face of unremitting cynicism from his detractors who would rather see him as a washed up junkie and not as a promising author whose gifts are in temporary default.
There is a legendary true life downtown figure who bears more than a striking resemblance to Rene Lepine: Rene Ricard. Ricard gained considerable fame in bringing Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat to the limelight via his work as an art critic. His 1981 article on Basquiat and the graffiti art movement published in Artforum is not only the first major piece on the artist but also provides the title for a 2010 documentary on him. During a period of intense artistic turmoil and social transformation, Ricard was uncannily able to isolate the elements that made Basquiat and a few others so distinctive within the transitional downtown scene. It is often said that his article, entitled “The Radiant Child” put the stars of the New York graffiti scene above the radar. Of course, Basquiat went on to produce a prodigious body of work that truly speaks for itself. Before becoming established as an art critic, Ricard had been a scenester at Andy Warhol’s factory where he acted in a couple of movies. And so he was not an unknown personage in the downtown milieu. Eventually he got immersed in a life associated with junkie squalor and was, for a time, homeless. In 1979, with the assistance of an art gallery, he brought out his first collection of poems and then ten years later, he published his second volume of verse.
There are remarkable similarities between Lepine and Ricard. Both are art critics. They are both well known figures in the downtown artistic scene of the 70s and 80s. They both ignited the careers of artists who subsequently became famous. They are both feared and respected for their acidic wit. They are poets who are not particularly prolific. They both eventually started to produce work that is regarded as painted poems. They both resided in the Chelsea Hotel, all of which is noteworthy.
Truman Capote had himself excommunicated from New York high society in a much earlier period by writing about his friends and their wives. He had hoped to become the American Proust but ended up being a social leper due to his perceived literary indiscretions. Sellers isn’t exactly a household name associated with the downtown scene and it is necessary to pause and wonder if some supposedly inadmissible contents of her corpus are responsible. Also, Sellers had a spat with the influential William Burroughs over what became her first published work, The Correct Sadist. During the 70s, she had lived with a lover, the artist Duncan Hannah, as she plied her trade as a dominatrix. Oftentimes, Angelique DeMars, obviously modeled after Sellers, in One Decadent Life, bemoans the fact that her so-called friends regard her profession as a dominatrix as a species of prostitution. Lepine, for example, calls her a high-class whore. Angelique is the author of a vanity edition of a literary expose on sadomasochism whose main setting is the downtown scene entitled “Dungeon Confessions”. Angelique expresses a slight degree of frustration at not being admitted into the higher echelons of literary establishment which, she tells us, are basically bourgeois and hence fundamentally conservative, as a result of her choice of profession. Such admission, she says, can only come long after she is dead, in which case, her physical presence would not threaten and invade the sedate dining halls of the literary establishment. Is Sellers not only predicting but actually announcing her fate here? In a recent interview, she hints as much.
Sellers spat with Burroughs began as a result of what she sees as a violation of her work, The Correct Sadist. She had enlisted the services of the photographer, Jimmy de Sana, in providing what would have been subtle illustration of her graphic narrative on sadomasochism. She had provided the milieu, models and props for de Sana’s work in the hope it would be included in her own book. As things turned out, de Sana met Burroughs who liked his photos and offered to write an introduction to de Sana’s book provided no other text was included. The implication of this was that Sellers work had to be expunged. She was understandably livid and engaged Burroughs in a war of words which still rankles when she thinks of it. She complains that Burroughs’ measly two paragraph intro is not only a direly unimaginative effort but also an unwarranted and violent intrusion upon what was to have been part of her work. The confrontation still leaves a bitter taste in her mouth and she has since learnt to separate the personality of the artist from the work. De Sana was claimed as the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and Sellers published her work without his photographs. She claims to be unaware of any lasting impact of the spat and that she once met Burroughs at a cocktail party, in the company of Allen Ginsberg, who raved about her book. Burroughs had looked lost and vacant. In her words, “ Jimmy’s photos were very weird and my subject, sadomasochism, was then very unfashionable. But it was shocking tha he thought he could tell the photographer, “I don’t want any other writing in the book,” and that I was dumped. In the end it was about me realizing I was too outré even for ‘bohemia.’ Sellers and Burroughs as intrepid purveyors of uncommon imaginary landscapes are re-united in High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, a volume edited by Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg that also has contributions from David Wojnarowicz, Dennis Cooper Kathy Acker, Karen Finley, Lynne Tillman, Gary Indiana, Cookie Mueller and some other like-minded writers. The authors in the volume are aligned by an unquenchable spirit of transgressivity, counterculture ethos, and fearless expression in a frightening age marked by the plague of HIV/AIDS, heteronormative bigotry and the repudiation of otherness.
It is clear that Sellers’ life and work overlap in which fact is often presented as fiction. Angelique complains that her profession is creating undue prejudices about her literary work in both straight society and within the underground milieu. In other words, there is a certain ambivalence towards her that is ultimately constricting. It is the kind of ambivalence that may be discerned in the public reception of Sellers’ oeuvre. Sellers claims she is unable to detect any lasting consequences stemming from her spat with Burroughs, the reputed “king of the underground.” But it is difficult not to wonder if this altercation had not entailed an unambiguous expulsion from certain powerful sectors of the underground. If we go by Sellers’ view that there have been no protracted consequences, it is certain that she was considered too outré by the underground and its crowned icons such as Burroughs. It is hard not to imagine that her vivid descriptions of the New York underground scene alienated some of its most influential players. Did, for instance, figures like Rene Ricard look into the reflective mirror of her fiction and loathed what they saw? Has Sellers followed the route of Capote and silently suffered the ordeal of excommunication within the labyrinthine bypaths of an influential underground creative scene? Sellers doubts this even as these nagging questions loom large. In any case, there hasn’t been much illuminating critical appraisal of her work. Semioticians in academia who had indicated a passing interest subsequently got cold feet when it was time to act.
On another level, the motif of sadomasochism at the apex of the HIV/AIDS pandemic must have encountered staunch resistance from various sectors of American society: state, church, school. Sadomasochism, in its underlying connotations, espouses a contrary lifestyle to one based on “family values.” It was hidden, for the most part, from public view and conventional institutions of knowledge and thus was to be, by turns, feared, vilified and finally, opposed. It is assumed that good citizens, even within the anonymity of the congested metropolis, aren’t supposed to indulge in it. Here, apart from two opposing lifestyles, two contending versions of sexuality also emerge. The first, sex as approved by the state and church in which the individual under the guidance of Venus is kept sedate and obedient. And sex, as understood within the context of sadomasochism under the indulgent watch of Dionysus, becomes the unrestrained unleashing of the libido. In other words, it entails the fearsome liberation of the ego, through channels of sexuality, beyond the constraints of both state and church. An author who pursues an ideal based on the latter option is bound to encounter serious resistance in most societies. Perhaps Sellers correctly sensed this and chose to support herself through other means of income with little expectations of material gains provided by her literary work. And just as earlier radical artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Jack Smith, she was able to effect a drastic severance between art and commerce which is yet another stance of opposition to prevailing orthodoxy. It appears Sellers foresaw the slow gestation and emergence of her own cult in the choices she made. At odds with the myopia and bigotry of straight society, she possesses neither the personal inclination not the circumstantial necessity to seek its patronage and acceptance. This, more than anything else, makes her a suitable candidate for widespread underground acclaim.
But even the underground might have found her a bit too much to handle and it is left to ultra-outre artistic personalities such as Genesis P. Orridge to appreciate her full worth. All the same, Sellers doesn’t seem unduly bothered. She has after all accomplished her aim of sticking to her vision with the least possible compromise. In her fearless exploration of her chosen themes, she reached a horizon of forbidding originality. What more could any artist possibly desire? The faddish vagaries of mainstream success aren’t meant for artists of Sellers’ ilk. Her devoted acolytes may be few but their loyalty is unstinting. Artists such as Sellers endow the word ‘rare’ with heightened poignancy which translates in popular parlance as cult status. The world she illuminates was eventually lost to gentrification, commodification and homophobic apathy to the blight of HIV/AIDS. Mainstream sensibilities absorbed what it could in the wake of the sordid aftermath, yet Sellers work stands as a testament to that erased world and serves as a flag of defiance to the sociocultural and economic strictures that continually seek to restrict the range of human possibility and expression.
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Sanya Osha is an author currently residing in Pretoria, South Africa. An Underground Colony of Summer Bees (2012), is his most recent novel.
