Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person [Paperback]

Clint Catalyst (Editor), Michelle Tea (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2004

Thirty-seven writers. One rule. Each story must be told in the first person. Clint Catalyst (Cottonmouth Kisses) and Michelle Tea (The Chelsea Whistle) bring together what can only be described as a dream cast of literature's new avant-garde, sandwiched with a few writers appearing in print for the first time. Catalyst calls the end product "a wonderful sampling of oddities, like a dangerous box of chocolates or an unmarked prescription bottle." Oddities? Oh, yeah. These stories offer scary, funny, chaotic, moving, poignant, intimate glimpses into lives on the fringe, and they will get you up close and personal with speed freaks, scat freaks, gender benders, shoplifters, sober virgins, cybersexualists, Tourette's syndrome fetishists, and even a naked Butoh dancer. What can we say? We're not sure if we're proud or if we should apologize!

Contributors include:

JT LeRoy (The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Sarah)
Dennis Cooper (My Loose Thread, Period, Guide, Try, Frisk, Closer )
Eileen Myles (Cool For You, Chelsea Girls, The New Fuck You)
Kevin Killian (I Cry Like a Baby, Little Men, Shy )
Pleasant Gehman (Escape From Houdini Mountain, Princess of Hollywood, The Underground Guide to Los Angeles, Senorita Sin )
Alvin Orloff (I Married an Earthling )
Shawna Kenney (I Was a Teenage Dominatrix )
Thea Hillman (Depending on the Light )
Jayson Elliott (Clamor magazine)
Charles Anders (The Lazy Crossdresser )
Inga Muscio (Cunt: A Declaration of Independence )

Clint Catalyst is the Southern-fried, sissified, Goth--damaged, punk-spirited, hyper-hyphenated, degenerate author of Cottonmouth Kisses.

Michelle Tea is the author of the memoir The Chelsea Whistle, the Lambda Award-Winning dyke drama Valencia, and The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thirty-seven writers, ranging from veterans to neophytes, followed one rule for this anthology: each story had to be told in the first person. Aiming to offer "insight into the life of the outsider," these pieces reveal idiosyncratic and often disaffected worldviews; the main characters are struggling, troubled, intelligent observers of life's darker sides. In Charles Anders's "I Am So Smart," the lovelorn narrator thinks of his female crush, "You're all the genders I want to be naked with." In the comic "Love Boat and Lingerie" by Cara Bruce, the eponymous narrator recalls a bra-shopping (or shoplifting, rather) expedition when she was 14, high as a kite and questioning her sexuality: "I was now convinced that PCP made you gay." One of the collection's more shocking pieces is "The Shitty Schoolgirl" by Lisa Archer, in which a Ph.D. student blithely recounts defecating on blissful clients for fistfuls of cash. There are numerous short takes: Bee Lavender's haunting "The Theory of Maternal Impression," about a terrible and rare cancer and the historical implications of being considered a freak; Shawna Kennedy's cursory "Shiny Baubles," about bulimia and an abusive relationship; and Eileen Myles's potent "Liquid Sky," concerning the devastating effects of alcoholism. J.T. Leroy's "When to Be a Girl" is quick and rough, full of sharply portrayed angst and the palpable fear of not fitting in. Though wildly uneven, the collection is bound to make a splash with readers seeking edgy fiction.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Life on the fringe, up close and perhaps too personal--that's what this compilation offers: 37 first-person fictional testimonies, edited by gothy, punkish Catalyst, a self-described degenerate, and Tea, author of the Lambda Award-winning dyke drama, Valencia (2000). Laurie Stone constructs flash-fiction from listing what she likes, including tension, shoplifting, cruelty, fear, the smell of semen, and mother's milk. Horehound Stillpoint writes of fear, dropping acid, and unlikely connection. Dennis Cooper reverts to 1970s glam-scene drugs and clubs, especially the one he calls Rodney's English Disco, frequented by the famous, the soon-to-be-famous, and their groupies, who all treated it as rather a brothel. Uniting these earnest, energetic stories is loosely knit, coming-of-age reverence toward experience for its own sake and the ephemeral, married to in-your-face arrogance and a zest for life that's hard to resist. Readers will, of course, inevitably like some selections more than others. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books; 1 edition (February 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555837530
• ISBN-13: 978-1555837532
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #936,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a definate read for clint fans, April 14, 2004

By 

Jenny Furman "Book lover" (Stone Church,Pa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (Paperback)

its a great book! i loved the the "short" tales from the indivuals. even though you wont admit it, you can definately find a piece of yourself in some of the stories. Let your mind open and enjoy this not so average world we live in.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where Has This Gem Been Hiding?, March 1, 2009

By 

Just Jean "JJ" (The Dirty South, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (Paperback)

As a long-time fan of "transgressive" literature[...]written in the first-person narrative, I'm frustrated that it took me so long to find this compendium of just about the coolest writers of the 21st century.

[...]

Just like the character "Abby" played by Perrette on the hit series, there seems to be a dark undercurrent in the actress' background, as well. The complexity presented through the argument of "the person versus the first-person narrative" is rife within this sublime collection. Categorized as non-fiction, yet book-ended by an exclusive submission by the farcical J.T. Leroy "himself," contradictions abound...

Though it's the question marks that mark this book as the treasure it is: a testament of a movement, a moment, a somewhat secret society comprised of extravagant iconoclasts. As is often the case, I predict the rule-breakers and risk-takers herein will be revered in future days by many of the same critics who once reviled them. Case in point: the hit-or-miss publisher [Alyson] whose egregious disclaimer that "[they weren't] sure if [they] were proud or if [they] should apologize" about this brilliant collection speaks volumes in terms of milquetoast ambivalence. After all, these are the same pundits who praised J.T. Leroy's presence in the book and placed more of an emphasis on "his" presence than that of the co-editors.

It's no surprise this book is Alyson's bastard child not even their 'list of published works' will claim: even their cover choice is reticent.

If such a thing as a gutsy, audacious publishing house still exists, hear me out now:

This. This is a work that demands to be kept alive, to be kept in print...

Until then--
I await

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soul tenderizer penned by beautiful mutants, August 23, 2011

By 

Aesthette - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (Paperback)

Whether you're familiar with the work of Catalyst and Tea or not, this compilation is a must-read for anyone who insists on finding beauty in dissonance. Raw, dirty, candid, fragile and, strangely, unapologetically romantic in spite of it all.