I’ve become slightly obsessed with a writer named Alexander Trocchi. Trocchi was a Scottish writer born in Glasgow in 1925. He probably should have died of a heroin overdose, since he was addicted to the drug for much of his life and lived as an addict on the streets of New York City for many years. Alas, he died of cancer in London in 1984. The gods are, as ever, cruel and mischievous. The dedicated smack addict perished from smoking too many cigarettes.
Trocchi was, by many accounts, a sleaze and a hustler. Hugh MacDiarmid, the great Scottish poet, once called him “cosmopolitan scum.” I’m not sure quite what that means, but MacDiarmid followed it up by adding that Trocchi was, “a writer of no literary consequence whatsoever.” There’s a biography of Trocchi that’s titled The Making of The Monster. That’s generally the kind of thing you’re going to learn when you set out to learn about Trocchi. He was a monster and his monstrousness stemmed from his unwavering commitment to being a junky. Often, it will be noted, MacDiarmid notwithstanding, that Trocchi’s heroin addiction was especially unfortunate since the man had genuine writing talent. The phrase “wasted potential” and similar terms are thrown around.
That’s probably true. There was a lot of wasted potential when it came to Alexander Trocchi. He did write one great book, though. It is called Cain’s Book and it is the story of a person, not at all unlike Alexander Trocchi, who wastes his life living on the docks, having random sexual encounters, and doing heroin. The book contains some of the sharpest and most poignant prose writing you’re ever going to encounter.
+++
I’ve never understood the story of Cain and Abel. Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t as good as Abel’s sacrifice I guess. That seems to annoy God quite a bit. But Cain is full of some wroth too. God notices this and asks Cain, “Why art thou wroth?” and also “why is thy countenance fallen?” Cain, we have to imagine, is really pouting around about the failed sacrifice. Just do what you’re supposed to do, advises God, and all will be well. Instead, Cain rather famously whacks his brother. And then is punished to become a complete outcast for whom nothing ever works out. Except, and this is the especially confusing part, that he is also given a mark. And this mark protects him. Cain, we must be clear here, isn’t shown to be remorseful at all, not about the shabby sacrifice nor about offing his brother. The only thing Cain is upset about is that his punishment is too strict and that he’ll be a target for other people to kill. And so he is given special divine protection.
Strange.
+++
It is often said by pundits and by those who write about books that Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi is grim and depressing, that it is plotless and pointless, existentially bleak and utterly without hope, though possessed of some poetic and lyrical writing. I wonder if the pundits who write this way about Cain’s Book aren’t the sorts of people who would prefer to read Abel’s Book. And there’s nothing wrong with this, per se. Abel was a good guy. He did things right. Cain was not a good guy. And he didn’t give a shit. He was Cain and he was going to go on being Cain.
One thing I don’t think Trocchi was trying to elicit in writing Cain’s Book was pity. No, he was doing something different. He was making a case. He was making a case for doing things the wrong way, for saying no and for refusing to be the kind of person you’re supposed to be. Trocchi makes this very clear in very many passages. He liked shooting smack because it made him feel comfortable and guilt-free and quite pleased with himself as he went about the business of doing things wrong and also of doing not-much at all.
+++
It is often said by biblical commentators that the key sacrificial problem with Cain and Abel is that Abel brought God the good stuff, the firstlings of his flock and what-not, whereas Cain did not. Fine point. But that’s not actually in the Hebrew Scriptures. There is nothing about Cain offering inferior goods. He brings God an offering of the fruit of the ground. And God just doesn’t like it. For whatever reason. It is almost as if Cain is just destined to lose, that he is a loser. He is, maybe, not that good a farmer. He gives his best, but his best is less than pedestrian. And then he gets pissed off and doesn’t want to play the game anymore. And God says fine, you are cast off, you are cast away. You will experience another way of living altogether.
+++
We don’t know how Cain lived his life after being cast away. We aren’t told. We don’t know why God gave him special protections, a mark that would ensure that his form of life was also blessed, sacred in its own perhaps hellish way.
We do have this passage from Cain’s Book, though:
At certain moments I find myself looking on my whole life as leading up to this present moment, the present being all I have to affirm. It’s somehow undignified to speak of the past or to think about the future. I don’t seriously occupy myself with the question in the “here and now,” lying on my bunk and, under the influence of heroin, inviolable. That is one of the virtues of the drug, that it empties such questions of all anguish, transports them to another region, a painless theoretical region, a play region, surprising, fertile and unmoral. One is no longer grotesquely involved in the becoming. One simply is. I remember saying to Sebastian before he returned to Europe with his new wife that it was imperative to know what it was to be a vegetable, as well.
Morgan Meis has a PhD in Philosophy and is a founding member of Flux Factory, an arts collective in New York. He has written for n+1, The Believer, Harper’s Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review and is a contributor at The New Yorker. He won the Whiting Award for non-fiction in 2013. Morgan is also an editor at 3 Quarks Daily, and a winner of a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant. A book of Morgan’s selected essays can be found here. His books from Slant are The Drunken Silenus. and The Fate of The Animals He can be reached at morganmeis@gmail.com.
