They torture all the women and children
Then they've put the men to the gun
Because across the human frontier
Freedom's always on the run
—from "Guns on the Roof" by The Clash
Kashana Cauley's novel The Survivalists deals with questions of race, class, and the problems of late capitalism in a story that revolves around guns and fear of the future. Aretha is a lawyer who is sick of going on dates with men who are more concerned with everything but her. The only person she spends quality time with is her friend of fifteen years, Nia. At this point in her life, she is 32 years old, she meets Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur and his two roommates, Brittany and James; she soon discovers that James and Brittany run guns and have a bunker in the backyard (thanks to Brittany, who learned how to create one watching YouTube videos) of their three-story Brownstone in Brooklyn. Aretha and Aaron enjoy each other's company and eventually decide to pursue a romantic relationship. Soon Aretha moves into the Brownstone and her world is overturned. At first, she is fearful of all the guns, and the bunker, and Brittany's standoffish and cold demeanor and James' obsession with spending his time on the roof with a rifle blindly gazing off into the distance. But, after Aretha is fired from her job as an attorney, with nowhere to turn, she starts going on gun runs with Brittany and James, and eventually with James alone, where she is paid a cut of the money. Cauley is able, with considerable humor, to weave a dark tale about the failures of late capitalism: the problems of unemployment, housing, fear of an unstable future; but is love really possible in late capitalism?
Does anyone believe in the American Dream and an utterly stable future that could not be subject to potential pitfalls and disasters? Aretha is obsessed with making partner at her law firm. She is like all of us, who need to feel in control of her life. She had followed "what everyone had called the 'path' back in law school, that supposedly seamless trip from associate to partner and the money and the house and the 2.5 kids and the meaning that it was assumed came with it …" but "What if she'd just made some money and written some briefs and her boat never took her, river-style, into a greater body of water?" What if it doesn't work out, and you're left with a large amount of student debt? Aretha has just such a monetary burden on her shoulders and when she is fired from her firm, because some other worker claimed her work as her own, she losses her faith in the "right path" to success. Capitalism is all about competition, and fairness often doesn't play a part in this system. Aretha would "try to forget how often everyone in the building was encouraged to go to war against one another." Often love doesn't survive if there is competition between lovers. Aretha realizes that "the winning future plan was to give up all the existential weight attached to having a soul." And, furthermore, these lawyers' "souls had melted into their suits a few hundred thousand dollars ago." Losing her job causes her to be set adrift in the world, without a safety net.
And what about that picket fence in the suburbs? Affordable housing is as much of a problem today as it was, say, in the 80s. Lance Freeman wrote, "In 1989, 17% of renters paid more than 50% of their income for rent; in 1999, 20% did. Thus, during the period of the longest economic boom in history scarcely any progress was made in the arena of affordable housing." When Aretha first moved in the Brownstone, she felt elated that she would now be living with a man she loved and have some control over her life; but he was usually not around because he often went on trips to Columbia and Ecuador to strike deals with coffee manufacturers. Aaron runs his coffee business from the Brownstone. But this house isn't a utopic community. Initially and for a time after, James and Brittany are suspicious of Aretha, and she finds it hard to break the ice with them. Rents are outrageously high in Manhattan, and people who are forced to move out to the boroughs, eventually end up living in a house with roommates. This migration to the Burroughs began years ago. Now, there are no cheap apartments anymore, only single rooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom. So for Aretha, being in a house with Aaron is partly fulfilling her dream of property ownership. But it is a dream that will be complicated and force her to abandon herself to take risks. She knows running guns is illegal but there is thrill associated with breaking the law. Aretha thinks: "Was it a crime that after thirty-two years of following the rules, she wanted to feel something?" Thinking about the law and those who oppose it, she compares her 18-year-old self, who stood idly by while her friends shoplifted, of the freshman in college who didn't drink, to the lawyer sitting in class, both always "happy to divide the world between the purity of the law and the nothingness of opposing it." But she also wants to be more "than what she did for money." It is the freedom that comes with joining a community.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) regulated firearms at the federal level and required citizens and legal residents to be at least 18 years of age in order to purchase shotguns or rifles and ammunition. All other firearms such as handguns could only be sold to people 21 and older. James tells Aretha that he sells guns "to make sure our people are prepared." Who are these people? White or Black? Those who are in favor of owning a gun site the 2nd amendment which speaks of "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It's mostly white people who speak out about their right to own guns. Why not Black people? While reading I was reminded of the Mulford Act of 1967, a California bill that prohibited carrying loaded firearms in public without a permit; it was passed by Republican assemblyman Don Mulford and signed into law by Ronald Reagan who was then governor of California. The goal of the bill was to disarm members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching. Cauley has spoken of her parents in Wisconsin who owned several guns. A Black person with a gun is considered more of a threat than a white person with a gun. But in reality, most of the school mass shootings were committed by angry young white men.
Dylan Roof is an example of just one white angry young man (like James in the novel) who, using a handgun, killed nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, in order, as he said during an interrogation to start a "race war." Brittany tells Aaron after she called the police about a break in that they laughed at her: "No one gives a shit about Black people. All we have is ourselves." Aretha "thought of the suburbs as alternating between boredom and violence thanks to her parent's childhood stories of the white people who showed up to throw rocks through house windows when black people moved into previously all-white Chicago suburbs, and modern bouts of people stomping each other to death at the entrances of stores on Black Friday and then claiming 'It can't happen her,' even though it had just happened there." Often "black presence" is conceived of as a 'threat' to the 'homogeneous, white, national "we" This form of cultural racism has its roots in the belief that 'Black' cultural values should be suspected of promoting violent or criminal lifestyles and should therefore be responded to by tactics that have been described as policing against black people.
Part of the reason they have guns in their home is because Brittany was once robbed at gunpoint while James and Aaron were not home. And of course, millennials, who grew up in an unstable economic world, have things to worry about; in Brittany's words: "Hailstorms. Rainstorms. Hurricane. Avalanches. A total, permanent loss of power. Internet outages. Poisoned water. Poisoned food. Food shortages. Land sinking under water forever. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Martial Law. Pandemics. You know, the stuff all of us worry about every day." But is all this worth worrying about all the time? Can someone go too far in their anxiety about the future? Is such worry in some sense generated by the media saturated world we live? When fabricated images become so much a part of our lives, it is necessary to ask the question of whether anything is authentic anymore (James was accused of plagiarism in his previous job as journalist). Images on our phone can be manipulated, photoshopped; everybody knows that. But still we look and look and look, scrolling up and down Facebook, for example. In such a media saturated culture, images are generated for our consumption on a monumental scale, and these images have seeped into our consciousness to inform how we act and who we are; life itself is nothing, now, but a proliferation of images and noise, in surround sound; people are not who they were once, unique, and with an inner life, but rather, actors in the great drama of life, starring in their own movie, informed by what they have seen on the screen, fearing or relishing exposure.
But there is another dangerous silent character in the novel: the termites; Cauley writes:
But the bulk of the energy in the house belonged to the termites. They chewed and swallowed and chewed again. When a second colony of termites showed up, the soldier termites and the worker termites fought. The winners killed the losers. Slit them up from end to end just a few feet from where a handful of people ate and slept and fucked and insisted they were prepared for disasters of unimaginable size and scope fare beyond what, if anyone had asked, they'd have said termites could do to them.
So behind the walls of the Brownstone, the termites worked invisibly until finally ¼ of the Brownstone's roof collapses. The final ironic moment in the novel: preparing for a future disaster they failed to prepare for what happened right under their nose.
And to add to the collapse of Aretha's dream of having a house, James, the White guy in the group, who spent most of his time on the roof with a rifle, is seen, at the end of the novel, being taken away by the police in handcuffs for apparently killing someone. And Aretha discovers that Aaron and Brittany were intimate. But Aretha is not going to be made a fool of, so at gunpoint she tells Aaron and Brittany to put all the guns in a bag; she then gets all the contacts from James' phone and the keys to Aaron's car and proceeds to sell all the guns; and she keeps all the money. Near the end of the novel, it is suggested that Aretha has plans to leave New York as so many before her have left because it was not possible to survive in such an expensive place. She texts her friend Nia and apologies for being such a "shitty friend" and asks if she could stay with her. Nia texts back, "Of course, girl." In late capitalism, love may not be possible which is why friends are so important. In this respect The Survivalists is about the survival of the friendship between Aretha and Nia, who ultimately saves her friend from what Aretha now knows was a dangerous situation with people she was wrong to trust.
In electrifying prose that balances humor with seriousness, often in the movement of single sentence, The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley is able to navigate various issues relevant to our time, such as unemployment, racism, the fear of an unstable future, and the importance of friendship. Aretha is faced with choices that we all eventually have to make as we attempt to survive in an increasingly unstable job market and an uncertain future. In an interview Cauley says, "Some people like to give up on conclusion sometimes, 'Well, you know, maybe we're powerless.' I hate that stuff. I want you to be making an argument. I want to hear that, you know, climate change, we can do something about it. Or even just 'This is an experience that happened to me, and it's worth your time to read about.' So Aretha is an arguer, but all of fiction is an argument. Most good nonfiction is an argument as well."
The publication of The Survivalists should spark discussion of important issues of our time. Heather Alberro writes in "Utopia isn't just idealistic fantasy—it inspires people to change the world" that "In shattering the perceived rigidity of the present, utopianism paves the way for change. Perfect worlds may not be realisable or even desirable, but that doesn't mean we should shy away from imagining and striving for a better future. Societies without extreme inequality and environmental degradation are surely within the bounds of possibility. Whether in the form of a creative novel, a social movement, or a political proposal, dreaming can help us get there." Though the utopic community in the novel was problematic, it is just such coming together to dream of better world that is necessary. And it involves continually discussing the issues, arguing for the truth, and never backing down from doing the right thing. The Survivalists should be read by everyone concerned with pressing issues of our times. And it is also humorous, witty, and sharply intelligent.
The Survivalists, by Kashana Cauley. New York, New York: Soft Skull Press, January 2023. 288 pages. $27.00, hardcover.
Peter Valente is a writer, translator, and filmmaker. He is the author of twelve full length books. His most recent books are a collection of essays on Werner Schroeter, A Credible Utopia (Punctum, 2022), and his translation of Nerval, The Illuminated (Wakefield, 2022). Forthcoming is his translation of Antonin Artaud, The True Story of Jesus-Christ (Infinity Land Press, 2022), a collection of essays on Artaud, Obliteration of the World: A Guide to the Occult Belief System of Antonin Artaud (Infinity Land Press, 2022), and his translation of Nicolas pages by Guillaume Dustan (Semiotext(e), 2023).
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