Close to the Bone: Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire [Paperback]

Jane Creighton (Author), Jerry Stahl (Author), Catherine Texier (Author), Lois Gould (Author), Philip Lopate (Author), Peter Trachtenberg (Author), Terminator (Author), Laurie Stone (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 6, 1998

Close to the Bone scouts the territories of sex, the family, loneliness, the city, addiction, and AIDS, but these are not passive tales of victimization. Rather, these writers speak in voices that are unflinching, unerring, and filled with revelation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Laurie Stone won the 1996 National Book Critics Circle award for excellence in reviewing, her impassioned acceptance speech describing new trends in autobiographical writing sketched a blueprint for this collection. "Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire" is the subtitle's entirely accurate characterization of eight essays written in a style that Stone dubs "post-therapeutic." What does that mean? A flinty disinclination to comfort is the most notable trait: these writers bare psychic and physical wounds most of us would hesitate to discuss with anyone but our therapist, and they disdain the easy reassurance of tabloid TV, which assumes that getting everything out in the open will make it OK. The pseudonymous Terminator's "Baby Doll," a horrific account of his battered childhood, is the collection's most disturbing entry; Stone's "Hump" is the most conventional (overbearing mother, some consensual, not-too-heavy sadomasochistic sex). Book authors Catherine Texier (Breakup), Lois Gould (Mommy Dressing), Peter Trachtenberg (Seven Tattoos), and Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight) are represented with shorter pieces just as bitingly candid as their full-length works. Not for the sentimental or the squeamish, these stories are compulsively readable and hard to forget. --Wendy Smith

From Kirkus Reviews

On the crest of the ongoing memoir wave comes the inevitable anthologization of ``personal'' essays, in this grouping of eight diverse pieces edited and with an introduction by Nation theater critic Stone (Laughing in the Dark, p. 1095). Stone's excellent introduction, which addresses the memoir in our time and the culture of confession and recovery, reminds us why she is one of our most valued critics. Saying that she is suspicious of the genre and conscious of its pitfalls, she registers her respect for those writers who have ``mined self-knowledge and come clean with the goods,'' who ``retrieve themselves through language, lofting out of the murk of closeted secrets with the ordering instrument of candor.'' For her selections here she says she wanted material that was relatively unexplored in literature, and so here mixes ``daylit tales and fringescapes.'' Fringescapes, indeed. Phillip Lopate's quiet, extended reflection on his father, who lives in a nursing home, is a tame piece of storytelling as presented here alongside Jane Creighton's hothouse story of sibling incest, the 17-year-old writer named Terminator's graphic depictions of sexual abuse, Stone's own provocative descriptions of her experiences with bedroom dominance and submission, and Jerry Stahl's exhilarating picaresque of running wild and whacked with crackheads. Also included are father-portraits by Lois Gould and Catherine Texier, who describes her mother the French tart, and her meeting over lunch, as a grown woman, of the man previously present only at her conception. This book gathers much fine work, but is mainly for serious readers of autobiographical writing and admirers of writing ``on the edge.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080213582X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135827
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,441,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Close to the Heart!, May 5, 2001

By 

Emily Frasier (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Close to the Bone: Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire (Hardcover)

This is a book where I found a lot of great writers! This is the book that first published JT LeRoy under the pseudonym "Terminator". His story "Baby Doll" is as powerful, moving and unforgettable as his novel "Sarah" which I bought after reading this book. Jerry Stahl's story in here is genius, anyone that knows a fledgling drug addict will benefit greatly by reading Stahl's story. Anyone interested in writing that is honest, moving and inspires self-examination, this THE book to get!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT ANTHOLOGY OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY!, September 24, 2004

By 

JR Pinto (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Close to the Bone: Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire (Hardcover)

Close to the Bone is one of the best anthologies of its kind and it is a wonderful sampling of the modern personal essay. "We could all go on Oprah for some reason or other," editor Laurie Stone writes. "It's not enough that creepy things have happened, since everyone's life, prodded enough, looks like a crime scene with chalk outlines." In this collection, Stone includes authors who have found "the story in their experience."

This is the first appearance of young J.T. LeRoy (here credited as Terminator). LeRoy is the author of the autobiographical novel Sarah, about a pre-teen transvestite prostitute who hustles with his mother at West Virginia truck stops. The essay "Baby Doll" functions as a prequel to that novel.

There are other great essays by authors such as Phillip Lopate, Peter Trachtenberg, and Stone herself. Close to the Bone can be funny and disturbing by turns, but it is never boring.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Memoirs with attitude, March 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Close to the Bone: Memoirs of Hurt, Rage, and Desire (Paperback)

For those who like to read and write quality memoirs, the best thing about the book was its introduction -- which makes the point that quality memoirs are "post-therapeutic" and dwell in ambiguity. Too bad too many of these memoirs fail to live up to the guides Stone set for herself.

The best memoirs here were the least sensational -- Lopate and Texier's detailed, anticlimactic stories of their fathers and families were head and shoulders above the rest. Some inclusions, like Lois Gould's, were well-written but did not really stand on their own. The worst were the most sensational -- Terminator's silly cartoon sex comedy, which sounds too fabricated to ring true. Stone's own entry is credible, but when she starts going into her own sex life, I just went into snooze-a-thon mode and flipped the pages until she started talking about human nature again. Why do these "hip" writers love sex so much and do such a bad job writing about it?