On Saturday, getting lost in the insane crowds at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I attended two panels of fiction writers. The contrast between the two was unsettlingly clear.
In the morning, five female authors discussed their latest YA (Young Adult) novels and the differences between YA and non-YA work:

Growing Up: Young Adult Fiction
Moderator   Ms. Cecil Castellucci
Ms. Robin Benway
Ms. Deb Caletti
Ms. Lauren Myracle
Ms. Lisa Yee

The panel was fun and admittedly “girly.” The authors get paid to represent the day-to-day inner turmoil of coming of age teen girls. The panel talked about how much fun writing YA can be. Mark and I used Cecil Casetllucci’s novel The Plain Janes for our graffiti unit and the students generally really liked it. I think YA lit gets a bad rap; it’s not considered “real” literature but is also the common dominator of what our students are expected to read for leisure. Likewise, looking at the popularity (with adults) of the Twilight series and Harry Potter, I think the no-rules-apply approach of YA has a broad appeal. Frankly, YA is fun to read and feels much more open than those stuffy adult novels most of us hold in front of us at airports and cafes.

Later, in the afternoon, I went to the following session (notice how the Festival offers absolutely no useful descriptions of these sessions?):

Writing from Different Angles
Moderator   Mr. Michael Silverblatt
Mr. Bernard Cooper
Ms. Katherine Dunn
Mr. Geoff Dyer
Mr. Pico Iyer

Aside from the fact that two of my all-time favorite literary works were written by panelists on this stage, I can say that this panel was downright incredible. These superstars in the literary world (or, as Silverblatt joked an awesome fictitious law firm: Dyer, Iyer, Cooper, and Dunn) discussed the blurred distinction between fiction and non-fiction. The discussion went everywhere and my efforts to capture it will not do justice to the intellect displayed.

At the end of the day, I was struck by the way these two panels both catered to passionate readers and yet spoke in languages that couldn’t have been more different. The YA panel was fun. The women speaking were happy to discuss their craft and enjoyed the pleasantry of the YA genre. On the other hand, the masters of literature in the afternoon discussed the serious, intellectual work that is required of literature; this was difficult, important stuff. The gender distinction is striking too (talking with Rhea after the panel, it felt like, though Katherine Dunn is a huge force in contemporary literature, her classic text feels so embraced because it does not feel feminine at all).

And while we spent an hour listening to the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, I was left thinking about the false distinction between real literature and “the other stuff.” I think there is a lot of merit in the best that YA has to offer. I realize that many high school English departments would challenge me if I merely taught the works of the YA panelists; that the works of Silverblatt’s confidants would be acceptable reading as a literary experience. The limitations found in this distinction seem to hurt the field of literature at large. In the same way that youth culture in the classroom can occasionally be a source of contention, deciding what is “good” literature versus what is one’s “guilty pleasure” is a dangerous path for both readers and writers. What would YA look like if it presented itself more seriously? Likewise, what would happen if literary literature (my new label) lightened up a bit? How would these shifts trickle into our classrooms?

The reason you need to read Boggs: A Comedy of Values is because it changes the way you see the world. That’s as simply as I can put it. It’s not a new book. It’s a slight tome, under 150 pages of narrative juice. However, the book and the artist at the heart of the account are too entertaining to simply pass on.

Before jumping into why J. S. G. Boggs matters to you, I should probably say that Lawrence Weschler is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. He’s written about my favorite places in the city and his series of convergences strike at the heart of what the Beyond Pedagogy reading group was striving for. Weschler knows how to tell an entertaining story, even if it is occasionally a cerebral one. When I think favorably about the work in the New Yorker, it’s often that its one of the few mainstream places for long-form journalism to spread its wings; I think of that Professor Seagull account, of the early ‘90s two-parter on surfing with “Doc” in San Francisco, of Trillian’s description of Kenny Shopsin, of the magic that is Ricky Jay, and I think of Weschler’s work at large. As a writer, it was these long pieces that influenced what I wanted to write and how I wanted to approach a story. I also realized that my limitations in terms of patience and – frankly – skill in execution meant that such efforts should be largely left to more focused scribes. Nevertheless, sometimes while listening to the manic squabble of Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, or maybe witnessing the frantic scratches for sound at one of the infinite Jon Brion shows I’ve attended, I imagine great unfolding profiles about looming personalities I hope to read (or, as Zappa said, “He not only dreams imaginary guitar notes, but, to make matters worse, dreams imaginary vocal parts to a song about the imaginary journalistic profession”).

With that out of the way, here’s what you should know about Boggs: he’s an artist. Mainly, he creates drawings and paintings of and about money. As a result, he’s been arrested and involved in numerous lawsuits for counterfeiting currency: U.S. currency, British pounds, Australian notes.

Actually, these drawings aren’t even what Boggs considers his art. Instead, he’ll take a drawing of, say, a ten-dollar note (of course only drawn on one side of paper) and attempt to “spend it.” For instance, he might take it to a restaurant and see if his meal can be bought with the ten-dollar picture. In exchange, Boggs expects a receipt and any change left from the transaction (an $8.45 meal would require the person involved in the exchange to actually pay Boggs $1.55). This transaction and its verifying documents is Boggs’ art. In the art market such Boggs paintings often go for thousands of dollars, but Boggs prefers making these transactions with people that aren’t familiar with his reputation.

Reading about this process was thrilling. I started thinking about long-term implications this can have on classroom practice, on replication and authenticity, on the palimpsest-ual allure of spending images of those things that are to be spent (palimpsest being a word I’ve been returning to in my thinking of late). I’m still thinking through these ideas and cannot offer any new insights, but Weschler offers a useful entry point:

Boggs had almost accidentally stumbled upon the terrain but then decided to pitch his tent there along the fault line where art and money abut and overlap – and his current work has definite ramifications in both directions. The questions it raises start out as small perturbations: How is this drawing different from its model (this bill)? Would you accept it in lieu of this bill? If so, why? If not, why not? But they quickly expand (as you think about them, as you savor them) into true temblors: What is art? What is money? What is the one worth, and what the other? What is worth worth? How does value itself arise, and live, and gutter out?

Later in one of the book’s closing sections, Weschler describes one of Boggs more ambitious extensions of his conceptual art. This too allows me to consider the role of participation and teacher-learners in a Freirean frame. It’s all too tempting, I suspect, to write off what Boggs is doing as purely theoretical or art-practice only. I am, however, now reviewing the education terrain in my class because of silly thumbprints and five-dollar notes in the Boggs-o-verse:

… Boggs informed me one afternoon toward the end of 1992, he’d decided to raise the ante considerably. He was about to embark on what he was calling “Project Pittsburgh.” He had fashioned an entirely new edition of Boggs bills – brand-new drawings in denominations ranging from one, five, ten, and twenty dollars on up through ten thousand. He’d laser printed a million dollars “worth” of these bills – enough to fill a bulging suitcase. Starting on January 1, 1993, … he was going to try to spend these bills in his usual fashion, by getting people to accept them knowingly in exchange for goods and services; only this time he’d be adding a new twist: he was going to encourage anyone who accepted his bills to keep them in circulation. This time, he was using the back side of the bills as well: an elaborate lacework design filigreed around five empty circles. Anyone accepting a bill was to immediately press his or her thumbprint into one of the empty circles (“just like being arrested,” Boggs noted, with evident satisfaction), and the bill would not be deemed to have completed its life cycle until it had changed hands five times, acquiring a full complement of thumbprints. “I want others to share in the fascinating experience of trying to get people to accept art as face value,” Boggs said, which expansive generosity. “And I, in turn, want to share in my collectors’ experiences of trying to track these pieces down.” Be that as it may, the practical consequence of Boggs’ experiment was that he was going to be creating five million dollars of value out of nothing – an alchemical transformation likely to provoke the Internal Revenue Service every bit as much as the Secret Service. (Boggs assured me that he stood ready as always to cut the IRS its own fair share of Boggs notes.)

As much as I feel inept about art and the art world, I’d be interested in applying these philosophical constraints to an educational cohort. From experiences during the Black Cloud game, it’s clear that the in-roads that art clears toward learning are ones that students access differently than what paths may be taken in traditional English classes. More than anything, projects like Boggs’ are about the individual’s experience. About being un-situated (in some sort of corollary to Lave and Wenger)and building a re-situated understanding of the world around you.