9:36

In a book published in August 2000, I spun a metaphor to describe the entryist revolution: “You can’t hijack a plane unless you get on board.” Octave Parango was convinced that he could change things from the inside. Then, at the end of the novel, he realized that there was no one to fly the plane. Appointed head of his agency, he discovered it was impossible to revolutionize a system that was autonomous, an organization that had neither manager, nor management, nor purpose. Advertising’s capitalist society triumphant and globalized? A rapacious machine running in a vacuum. (The metaphor of a plane without a pilot was borrowed from an American comedy: Airplane!) On September 11, 2001, that image appeared to me in all its horrific significance. You have to board a plane in order to hijack it. But what if the plane commits suicide? We become a ball of fire and we’re no further on. If we get on board, it is because we want it to change direction, but if it’s only to plow it into a building? The only revolution is one external to this self-destructive system. Never board a plane. Accept the world, participate in advertising or the media and you’re certain to die in a colossal explosion live on CNN. Nowadays, entryism has become self-mutilation. The true revolution is effacement. What is important is not to play a part. It’s time to favor active desertion over passive resistance.

The boycott rather than the sit-in.

Stop blaming others, blaming the world. As the rich man’s Zola, it’s time for me to write: “Je m’accuse.”

I accuse myself of complacency and narcissism.

I accuse myself of pathological seduction.

I accuse myself of Park Avenue socialism.

I accuse myself of social climbing and venality.

I accuse myself of jealousy and of frustration.

I accuse myself of affected sincerity.

I accuse myself of trying to please even in this self-accusation intended to parry the blows to come.

I accuse myself of two-speed consciousness.

I accuse myself of appearing on Canal+ to avenge myself for not being a star.

I accuse myself of arrogant indolence.

I accuse myself of writing veiled autobiographies.

I accuse myself of not being the hetero Bruce Benderson.

I accuse myself of being facile at 9:36.

I accuse myself of not being capable of anything much other than the facile.

I accuse myself of being entirely responsible for my own depression.

I accuse myself of a complete lack of courage.

I accuse myself of abandoning my child.

I accuse myself of doing nothing to change what is wrong with my life.

I accuse myself of loving all that I disparage, especially money and fame.

I accuse myself of not being able to see farther than the end of my twin noses.

I accuse myself of self-satisfaction disguised as self-denigration.

I accuse myself of being incapable of love.

I accuse myself of only seeking the approval of women without ever interesting myself in their problems.

I accuse myself of esthetics without ethics.

I accuse myself of mental (and physical) masturbation.

I accuse myself of mental (and physical) onanism.

I accuse myself of imputing to my generation failings which are mine.

I accuse myself of confusing falling out of love with superficiality (there can be no falling out of love if one is incapable of love).

I accuse myself of looking for the perfect woman knowing that perfection does not exist, doing it so that I will never be happy and can therefore wallow in comfortable whining complaint.

I accuse myself of being uglyist.

I accuse myself of not giving a fuck about anything except myself.

I accuse myself of blaming others because I am jealous of them.

I accuse myself of wanting the best but settling for very little.

I accuse myself of having nothing in common with New York City except perhaps individualism and megalomania.

I accuse myself of burning all my bridges, running from my past, i.e. from myself, and of having no friends.

I accuse myself of vociferous stagnation and clumsy parenting.

I accuse myself of chronic irresponsibility, that is to say ontological cowardice.

I accuse myself of washing my dirty linen in public since 1990.

I accuse myself of leaving nothing in my wake but ruins.

I accuse myself of being infatuated with ruins because “Birds of a feather flock together.”

And now, the verdict:

I sentence myself to solitary for life.