Graffiti writers in New York City, 1973. (Photo: Jon Naar)
Back in 1973, Norman Mailer and Jon Naar collaborated on The Faith of Graffiti. The book combined Mailer’s essay about the kids who were writing their names on the walls and subway cars in New York City at the time with Naar’s photographs. The Faith had been out of print for years, until HarperCollins reissued it this past January. I’ve read large pieces of Mailer’s essay over the years, but never had the opportunity to sit and absorb it in its intended format, as a book of words and images. So many of today’s books about graffiti are defined by glossy pictures and provide little or no historical context from an author — often there’s no text at all. Books like this end up in clearance bins after being zeroed out from the displays at Urban Outfitters, or countless other culture emporiums.
That’s what makes Mailer’s dense ruminations on the origins of the culture so special. He understood the rush these kids experienced when putting their name in the streets, how it was an important act to leave a mark in a world that rarely seemed to notice or care about you. How it was, and still is, a coded language that connects a group of people who have chosen to communicate — with each other, and the world — through a public backchannel:
Besides, they do not use their own name. They adopt a name. It is like a logo. Moxie or Socono, Tang, Whirlpool, Duz. The kids bear a not quite definable relation to their product. It is not MY NAME but THE NAME. Watching The Name Go By. He still does not like it. Yet every graffiti writer refers to the word. Even in newspaper accounts, it is the term heard most often. “I have put my name,” says Super Kool to David Shirey of the Times, “all over the place. There ain’t nowhere I go I can’t see it. I sometimes go on Sunday to Seventh Avenue 86th Street station and spend the whole day” — yes, he literally says it — “watching my name go by.” (Excerpt from The Faith of Graffiti)
What I like about this excerpt is that it intimately looks at what attracts legions of young kids to graffiti. Everyone often says it’s all about fame, which to a certain degree is true. But it’s also about compulsion more than anything. Back in 2005, when I interviewed Conda for a piece I wrote for the Pittsburgh City Paper, he said something that echoes this idea: “Even if I say, ‘I don’t want to vandalize anyone’s property,’ I still want to have my name in the street. I think I’ll be an old guy, writing my name in an elevator or walking down the street, [and when] no one’s looking, I’ll write my name on a mailbox. I don’t see it as something I can necessarily stop doing.”
