“Like writing, fisting is both a replicable skill and a rarefied art form.” This brachioproctic line begins writer Tausif Noor’s “Hand In Glove” (Artforum, 12 April 2019), a joyfully loaded review of William E. Jones’s novel I’m Open to Anything, released in 2019 by Los Angeles independent publisher We Heard You Like Books. In this searching conversation, Lauren and Tausif discuss Jones’s oeuvre, the importance of independent publishing, and celebrate sexual transgression while lamenting that writing can often feel, like Jones’s description of fisting, “a cork popping in reverse.”

Tausif Noor is a critic and contributing editor of Momus, currently based in Philadelphia while beginning a PhD in History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the former Spiegel-Wilks Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate of Dartmouth College, where he studied art history; and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he received his MA in Art and Politics. From 2014-15, he was a Fulbright Scholar in India, and has held internships at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Imperial War Museum in London, and the not-for-profit agency Culture+Conflict, based in the UK. His writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues for the India Habitat Center and Karma Gallery in New York and in venues such as Artforum, frieze, and ArtAsiaPacific, among others.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with assistant production from Mitra Shreeram, and music by Ulysses Castellanos. Thank you to every member of our valued Momus team for the collective effort of putting out “criticism in conversation.” We’d also like to thank Tausif Noor for this thoughtful, provocative conversation. And our deepest thanks to our listeners for their attention, and to those who donate to the podcast – it truly makes a difference. Please visit our Patreon site to learn more about how you can help ensure the podcast’s future.