Customer Reviews

Pink Steam

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

 

 

Dodie Bellamy's PINK STEAM is essentially twenty-two semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical essays thrown out over the course of one hundred ninety page to no particular point except the language itself--which is in this case a tangled effort to emulate Burroughs and other of his ilk. The end result is largely that of prose-poem pretentions.

This is not to say that Bellamy has no talent. She does indeed: her characters are often memorable, her images are often imaginative, and she can turn a phrase with the best of them. Obsessed with pop culture, her reflections run the gamut from Judy Garland to David Bowie to Sylvia Plath and from King Kong to Doris Day to Barbie, and the way in which she looks upon these icons is often unexpected. Her characters, which range from lusted-over gay friends to compulsive shoplifters to transient lovers, are often fascinating as well.

But there is no getting around the fact that PINK STEAM is incredibly, incredibly over-written. Bellamy seems determined to endow every inch of her prose with poetic qualifications. Metaphors, similes, ironies, changes in spacing between words, shifts between first and third person, and idiosyncratic punctuations don't so much crowd the pages as they meet for unpleasant confrontation. At one point she writes "Any woman who let's a man get her under his thumb is a fool." It is indicative of the book that I did not know if the incorrect use of "let's" was deliberate or accidental. It is perhaps even more indicative of the book that I didn't much care one way or another.

I can't say that I'd call it pink, but I'd certainly call it steam, and I do mean steam in great abundance. This is a "niche market book" that virtually redefines the word "niche." I give it three stars on the basis of Bellamy's occasional flashes of brilliance--but I cannot recommend it in any general sense.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Pink Steam is amazing. This collection is day glow, polka-dotted, sickly sweet like button candy, but with a tanas root under-taste, like those milkshakes Doctor Saperstein prescribed the heroine in "Rosemary's Baby". There is a diabolical quality to the writing, which shakes the reader up, forcing us to pay attention. Although experimentation reigns supreme, there is an inevitability to the stories that gives them propulsion, and keeps the reader hungry for more ...the woven texture of combined pop cultural reference, personal exploit and sharp insight locks together to form an original object d'arte. This tapestry creates a living, breathing web, speckled with dew and sweat, catching light and refracting it into blood-jewels, bubble gum pieces with liquid insides. This is a book you'll come back to again and again.