Customer Reviews

The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book has never really got a fair shake. After SLAVES OF NEW YORK got so much acclaim, Janowitz was unfairly treated with the backlash reserved for those who become famous "too fast". A Cannibal In Manhattan was not a great work, but CROSSDRESSER most certainly was. It's extremely funny, whimsical, and daring. I've read it several times, and no other book in existence has ever made me laugh so hard. SLAVES was great, but I seem to be one of the few who feels this is even better. (I also like Kirsty MacColl, Flannery O'Connor, Scott Heim, Sam Phillips, John Waters, Todd Solondz, and French & Saunders, just in case you're wondering.)

I had to agree with the reader who lost interest when Pamela couldn't tell that the head she had picked up from the highway was an actual one. I found the first half fairly funny, but the road trip and everything afterwards was over the top. It wasn't just the head -- burning down her father's house? Keeping the head all the way to Maine? How stupid can a person be? That I was supposed to sympathize with Pamela's misadventures is insulting. The only bright spot was Abdhul -- he deserved better.

This book is a mess.

Janowitz's short stories are far better. Essentially what it seems she's tried to do here is "novelize" a series of short story ideas, totally without success. Janowitz specializes in off the wall characters, but there is a fine line between off the wall and simply bizarre, and Janowitz crosses it with a vengeance here.

And it's not just the characters, but the situations as well. There's a long aside about dealing with a severed head that's pointless, ridiculous and adds not a whit to the story.

It's unfortunate--the basic concept of finding a wayward child in trouble, running off to save the boy, then coming back as a man (this was a very mannish woman to begin with) might have had some interesting possibilities for humor and social insight. But the situation is so buried in detritus and the set of characters so contrived neither insight--nor much humor-emerges.

Ms. Janowitz would be well served by steering a bit more toward the mainstream and worrying a bit more about developing a story rather than a reputation.

This is an odd book that actually makes only passing reference to the title (explained a little towards the end), which I assume is mainly for shock value and to entice you to pick it up (it worked for my friend, who lent it to me).

Our anti-heroine is entertaining enough, and at times her trials and tribulations are outright funny, but after a while this all begins to wear a little thin. Her antics become so disastrous, that it is actually difficult to take it all in. Just somewhere along the line, I needed her to have a break from all the havoc!

So whereas this is not what it seems, and it tries to hard to be funny, it may be appealing to readers who like a relatively fast paced book. But it fell a little short for me.

Tama Janowitz's creation, Pamela Trowel, is one of the most self-defeating and sorry protagonists I've seen. Janowitz piles on the problems for Pamela, but doesn't equip her with the sense or the wit to cope. It's one thing for an unrelenting series of bad things to happen to a character, and quite another when the protagonist does nothing about them, or worse, brings them on herself. For instance, seeing a bad psychiatrist who holds his sessions in a bar is something that should be easily remediable. The point where I decided the book wasn't worth it anymore was where Pamela comes across a severed head in a plastic bag, decides it's one of those fake severed heads from a novelty shop, and merrily takes it to the kid she is sort-of, kind-of kidnapping. Well, oops, it was an actual bloody, messy severed head, and we are supposed to believe that she couldn't tell the difference. No, and if she truly is that ignorant, I have no interest in her story.

For the first 3/4 of the book, the unrelated incidents don't seem like much of a plot... just one bad day after another for the main character. The last 1/4 is pretty funny & I even laughed out loud a couple times. However, when I told a friend about it, she accused me having bad taste & said I wouldn't know funny from stupid.

As an avid cross dresser myself, I expected to find a book that would open a window into my world, with the occasional "aha!" moment and humourous insights into my sort of life. So I was a little disspaointed that the treatment was so shallow. Non-transvestites may enjoy the book, but I would not reccomend it to transvestites.

I found this book delightfully, quirkily hilarious. I can't think when I laughed so much while reading a novel. I think this would be a cool, quirky cult film. The humor is somewhat weird and sicko, but the heroine and the little boy are so endearing and the situations so ludicrous that the whole thing comes off as charming.

This book really made me laugh. It's sick, crude, and weird. Just trying to explain it is very hard because it's just one horrible thing after another. I laughed out loud, something rare for me to do during a book. The only problem I had with it is the ending just because I was hoping for a happier one I suppose. One of the reviews mentions how the title doesn't have much to do with the book but I beg to differ. I think it has a double meaning. Not only is it talking about a horrible accusing support group she went to once but it is also referring the the modern state of a man's postion. She often talks about how horrible the woman's movement was a disaster and now men had no place. They played this helpless role where they are no longer men but not quite women. Therefor, mentally, all men are crosser dressers. Instead of complaining about this any further though Pamela accepts the modern man and takes on the role as a man herself.

Guess I have anticipated too much. It took me more than a week to finish this book. I feel that the momentum and the pace of the novel is rather slow and there isn't any reference to cross-dressing that was long due until the last part. I had read the novel on the pretext of the title , thinking that it was going to be a novel (something akin to gay fiction)about Pamela's identity crisis that she's facing and how she might have later thrived in her new identity.Something that appears to be humorous despite the underlying seriousness on a quest for a true 'self'. Unfortunately, the novel isn't so. In addition, I feel that this metamorphosis that Pamela had undergone was too abrupt. The part where she was discovered in her purple panties and that leading her to the male cross dresser support group was also rather incredulous. There wasn't much said about the male cross dresser support group and Pamela had only gone for 1 session. Hence, how can the title be founded on just this one isolated incident when there are many sub-plots in the story? I thought this as rather misleading and I seriously recommend a change in title. Perhaps something like "The misadventures of Pamela Trowel"?