American Evil: Steven Zultanski’s Bribery, Liberal Guilt and the Quest for Authenticity

Abstract

<p> This article discusses American poet Steven Zultanski’s 2014 <em>Bribery</em>, a book of post-conceptual poetry which unfolds as a quest for authenticity, the aim being to address the sense of impasse and guilt that, according to the book’s speaker, are prevalent among the denizens of America, depicted throughout as the nexus of evil. For <em>Bribery</em>’s speaker, we argue, authenticity is a necessary part of his method which aims at beginning again and at circumventing neoliberalism’s individualising tendencies, which make his efforts to change the status quo feel futile. Similarly to earlier American writers like Franklin or Thoreau, self-development, for <em>Bribery</em>’s speaker, becomes a route towards precision and humility, a way to reimagine his community without elevating himself and resorting to easy moralism. <em>Bribery</em> is an experimental project that works methodically to generate something precise and surprising without relying on randomness and abstraction. <br></p>