and my german publisher who's the great biographer of kafka points out that kafka's first book sold 600 copies. i discovered the other day that beckett, the first book sold three copies. they had distribution problems. [laughter] and, you know, those books would just not be published now by a large firm. there's just no way it would get through the machinery. and when i interview young people wanting to come and work with us, you know, they know that there is a profit and loss sheet kept on them, the amount of money made by each book is recorded, and they know to the last decimal point what their percentage is. so that's a very effective way of controlling people because if you're going to threaten your career by publishing the kind of book that -- [inaudible] you know, you're going to think twice. and it's interesting that over the years, you know, we've talked an enormous amount about how dictatorships control the press, how people are controlled under the communist regime and so on. but, you know, the capitalist control is every bit as sterile. you're not going to get away with murde

it was like something out of kafka where i wake up in the morning and found myself being denounced in congress. and of course, i never imagined that it would happen. the piece was not intended to be offensive or provocative, you know. at the time, i barely had any kind of reputation or audience so i didn't expect for it to do what it did. but, you know, it had its ups and downs, to say the least. (anderson) it was part of a larger series. you were working with several other kinds of objects immersed in different fluids. could you talk a little bit about the series itself? well, actually, i had begun working with, specifically, milk and blood and later went on to piss. but at first, the fluids were being used in a very abstract way. you know, sort of, you know, using them as pure color or pigment in the same way an artist would use paint, you know. but ultimately, i decided to refer it to some sort of representation within the fluids. and piss christ was the first object, the first photograph created where i submerged an object in the urine. and religion had been an important theme in