How does language speak truth to power? More specifically, how can language be used to rebel against power? The protagonists of Katherine Dunn’s three novels — 1969’s Attic, 1971’s Truck, and 1989’s Geek Love — are all positioned on the outskirts of society, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. (Dunn also wrote extensively about boxing: her 2009 book One Ring Circus collected her nonfiction about the sport, and her unfinished novel The Cut Man bears a title that alludes to the sport.) At the time of her death in 2016, Geek Love had been a cult classic for decades. In a lengthy article exploring its influence for Wired, Caitlin Roper called it “a dazzling oddball masterpiece.” She’s not wrong. It’s a novel that was nominated for both the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award, and that juxtaposition speaks volumes about Dunn’s aesthetic even if you haven’t read a word she’s written.
Now entering the world is a new book from Dunn: On Cussing, which has its origins in a lecture that Dunn gave to the Pacific University’s MFA in Writing program. There’s a steady growth in the number of lectures-turned-books in the world today. Some, like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel lecture My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs, serve as a quick introduction to the author’s craft; others, like David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water and Neil Gaiman’s Art Matters, read…
