Cool For You [Paperback]

Eileen Myles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

Grainy and stripped, this gritty novel traces the downbeat progress of a girl growing up in working-class Boston. “Eileen Myles is a genius!” — Dorothy Allison

Editorial Reviews

Review

"one of the savviest voices and most restless intellects in contemporary lit." -Dennis Cooper; "Part manifesto in a deadpan style with absurdly funny episodes... follows a unique trajectory in pursuit of the surprising and new."-Time Out New York"

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press; 1st edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188712859X
• ISBN-13: 978-1887128599
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,196,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars National Treasure: Custodian of Consciousness, June 10, 2001

By 

M. Ewert "Marcus Ewert" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cool For You (Paperback)

Eileen Myles's Cool For You rocks so hard it hurts. Like most memoirs, it's moving, and often sad, but where other books devolve into wee wistful prettiness, Cool For You stays rigorous- like a breaststroke, performed again, and again, and again.

Ms Myles inhabits several different descriptors- Irish Catholic, working class, lesbian, alcoholic...- which she refuses to codify into "identities", though illumines beautifully nonetheless. It's embarrassing to admit, but here I am at age 30 reading the book, and for the first time in my life really getting the horror of the snares set out for people just based on class alone. But, anyway, Ms. Myles brings all this to vivid reality before her reader- like her tale of working in a rancid home for mentally retarded adults, hungover, and bingeing on fistfuls of M&Ms- the candy used on the patients for behavior modification. Occasionally she'll switch gears entirely, putting aside the story-telling mantle and delving into off-the-cuff but nevertheless brillaint philosophizing, like the mini-rant about why the image of a female Christ could never power a whole vast culture like the male version has, because the figure of a suffering woman is a given, if not a redundancy.

Myles is a philosopher from an alien logical system- one where no one ever, ever tries to make a totalizing statement.

As a big fan of Ms. Myles' poetry, I believe that the book's flat-footed, precarious, lyrical, and epigrammatic voice stems from decades of verse-making, esp. of the hip and savvy New York School style that she is the sole remaining inheritor of. Her metaphors and descriptions are just this side (-the genius side) of disaster- in the hands of anyone else- anyone who had the slightest lapse of faith they'd collapse, leaving a big old mess. In her hands though, they punch you through conditioned ways of seeing into something rougher, and more beautiful.

An eastern European writer (Vaclav Havel? Milan Kundera?) once said something to the effect that no one actually cares about the future- that for both nation-states and the individual control of the future is only appealing in so far as it means control of the past- rewriting the official history to come out always looking good. But neither Myles' voice nor story(s) are self-seeking. Coincident with this she never tries to crystallize the past, to present it as one whit more fixed or comprehensible than right here right now, you the person reading these words. (The running story of her instutionalized grandmother, to whom the book is dedicated, is a toccata of gaps, mysteries, and paraphrase.) A conscious, chosen, and endlessly repeated act of moment-by-moment non-resolution.

That's rare discretion, and so very precious. If it were up to me, Eileen Myles would be a National Treasure.

-Piki M

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of an Artist-American, November 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cool For You (Paperback)

Proof that the best novelists are poets, Myles's Cool for You combines an artist's interior flood of sensations and a regular citizen's attempt to piece together the story of her institutionalized grandmother. Cool for You is too insightful to be lumped with memoirs. (In fact, it's categorized as a novel.) It's everything Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is touted as being, but Myles outmuscles, out-testosterones, and plain out-does sterile Joyce. There's a vitality here that you're familiar with if you're lucky enough to have heard and seen Myles read. This book's about institutions of all sorts--loony bins and Catholic school, summer camp and college--and an individual's busting free of them. This is a beautiful book, achingly truthful, funny, wise. I highly recommend Myles's world.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cool for Us, October 17, 2001

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cool For You (Paperback)

Too many novels/memoirs get lost in pretty words and pat observations which lead to little or no insight into the "real" author. Eileen Myles doesn't play this game. Memories of sexual experiences, horrible jobs, too much booze, and a family life that doesn't resemble reruns of Ozzie and Harriet spill onto the page without artifice and without regard for chronology. The result is a dizzying, beautiful, tough and honest view into one woman's life. I couldn't stop turning the pages as I wandered deeper into Ms. Myles's memories and connected, at times, with her sense of displacement. There's also much humor in this book: Ms. Myles has an ability to paint scenes of her Catholic school experiences that can make you laugh out loud. More authors should write this honestly.