Chelsea Girls [Paperback]

Eileen Myles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

stories, w/Nicole Eisenman's cover art

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New York writer Myles's ( Not Me ) autobiographical adventures recount her volatile '60s adolescence littered with vibrant memories of an alcoholic father and her awakening as a writer in the '70s. Myles revisits her risk-filled past because she wants desperately to be understood: "It's lonely to be alive and never know the whole story. . .I would like to tell everything once, just my part, because this is my life, not yours." She views becoming a poet as a "cultural accident" and depicts her calling as she knows and loves it--a life filled with drink, drugs, sex, love, loneliness and poverty. Although her tales are highly personal, they are nonetheless rather indifferently told: Myles feels nothing because she doesn't know what to feel and consequently wanders through her life as though she were curious tourist. She erects walls between herself and her emotions that also leave the reader feeling cut off. But Myles is nothing if not honest, and her accounts of her life are so harsh that they stick with the reader as closely as they stick with her.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This series of 28 autobiographical tales reflects the various stages of the author's life. The early stories depict the pain and poignancy of a young girl's adolescence in the 1960s. Growing up in a Catholic family in Boston, the narrator witnesses the death of her alcoholic father. The later stories take place in New York during the 1970s as the narrator struggles to write poetry and assert her sexuality. Some readers will find this collection off-putting. The writing is often stream-of-consciousness, sometimes with grating grammatical mistakes. Because the tales skip back and forth in time, not much continuity is established. In addition, graphic lesbian sex and a focus on alcohol and drugs pervade most of the stories. For large fiction collections or gay literature collections only.
Stephanie Furtsch, Purchase Free Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Books (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876859325
• ISBN-13: 978-0876859322
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,384,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A kinder queerer Henry Miller, December 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Chelsea Girls (Paperback)

Eileen Myles has an incredible gift for nailing down a moment, or for that matter, a sweep of years. Each image is carefully chosen and tacked into place, and what rises is the edifice of a life. The metaphor is probably too static. Myles's prose is exhilarating even at its bleakest, it's full of breathless speed. There's plenty that is bleak here--a sad alcoholic father who dies before his daugher's eyes; an awful, floundering gang-rape; poverty, drugs, booze, ambition thwarted and bitterly fulfilled. It's the great American sadness, and it would be unbearable if Myles didn't write with such wit, elegance, and an utter lack of self-pity. The writer that comes to mind is Henry Miller, but a Henry Miller who didn't hate women.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written memoir..., May 27, 2002

By 

Miss D. AwesomePants "Amazon Junkie" (Hoboken, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chelsea Girls (Hardcover)

This book is a series of stories about the author's interesting East-Village life. The stories are NOT told in chronalogical
order, but somehow seem to flow together seamlessly.
From her small, working-class town childhood in Massachusetts, to her wild teen years, to multiple rapes, [bad] summer jobs, struggling NYC artists, drug addiction, and un-healthy lesbian relationships.... Myles covers all subjects.
This book reads quickly, and is of particular interest to any young artist in NYC (or any major city.)
Oh. And, by the way, the hardcover edition is absolutely beautiful - bound in cloth and in wonderful autumn colors!