Love Me Tender (Contemporary American Fiction) [Paperback]

Catherine Texier (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 2, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140100164
• ISBN-13: 978-0140100167
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,763,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Slick, Hip, and Pointless, February 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Love Me Tender (Contemporary American Fiction) (Paperback)

I purchased Love Me Tender because of the promising blurb on the back cover from Hubert Selby; if Catherine Texier were half as good as Selby, the book would be a masterpiece of sorts. Like Selby, Texier attempts to evoke an apocalyptic urban landscape. And like Selby, she works with the same type of characters: the subculture of misfits and lowlifes---misunderstood people in search of redemption. Where Selby deals with the blue collar characters, Texier sticks with what she knows---artsy types into flagrant sex and drugs, your typical Soho panache of people who wear black, sniff speedballs, and fuck anything that moves. Texier's characters lack passion for life, love, and anything more than a quick fix, and the emotion is (intentionally?) translated into the writing itself: Apathy is an easy thing to express in fiction---Raymond Carver is probably the godfather of this genre; Brett Ellis and Jay McInerney his loyal followers. The problem here: Who gives a fuck if the main character dies of a drug overdose? Who cares if he fucks a (male) horse for that matter? The point of Love Me Tender is to be hip and slick: The world is a callous place where cool/cruel people congregate to overindulge and shock---if your idea of shocking is intraveinous drug abuse and bisexuality. Nobody really cares about anything except for instant gratification, something that Love Me Tender does not offer, even for a moment