Dancing Queen: The Lusty Adventures of Lisa Crystal Carver (Paperback)

by Lisa Carver (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Lisa Carver is America's horniest optimist. With Dancing Queen she writes an ode to all things that make her pants itch, whether it's a visit to the gynecologist, a look at Lawrence Welk's helmet-haired backup singers, or the pulsing of Fabio's surreal pecs. In essays entitled "Other Ladies' Bodies," "In Favor of Underwear," and "The Manifest Destiny of Anna Nicole Smith" she articulates self-consciously white-trash erotics drawn from images of America's popular culture. If you've enjoyed her self-produced zine, Rollerderby, you won't want to miss this, her first book; and if you've yet to discover her zine work, Dancing Queen serves as the perfect introduction to this self-proclaimed leader of "Generation L."

From Publishers Weekly
Maybe lusty isn't quite the word. Maybe raunchy would be better. In these 16 essays, Carver hilariously celebrates her various obsessions, such as sex, "trashy" stuff and herself. This is a lot more amusing than it might seem, even if you're not the type who's interested in someone else's sexual fantasies, hairstyles and ruminations about Anna Nicole Smith, Lawrence Welk, K mart, white trash, underwear, Olivia Newton-John, Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan (whom she labels "The Rat Fink and Princess Horsie") and other cultural detritus. The book is worth buying for her roundup of romance novel genres alone. "The plot was a bunch of rich people go shopping," says Carver, perfectly summing up Scruples, although she does appreciate Judith Krantz's ability to write sex scenes. "The delicious Judith Krantz formula is that something horrible happens to you?like your brother or a female neighbor seduces you against your will?thus you don't have to admit to wanting sex but you get to have it anyway." Carver's prose is smart, sassy, even endearing. Carver, who has put out a popular 'zine called Rollerderby, sums up her own personality, which is completely reflected in her writing: "I'm zesty and smart and cute and sleazy and direct and confrontational." she says, adding on a more serious note that "Poverty, all the sleazy pleasures and nowhere-left-to-fall freedoms it brings, is half of what made me what I am. The other half of me comes from scrambling to get out." Perhaps she's not to everyone's taste, but in a world of cultural pretension, campy posing and clumsy writing, her feisty and fresh voice is a tonic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; 1st edition (November 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805043926
• ISBN-13: 978-0805043921
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,076,781 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational, December 18, 2001

By	Nikki (Chepachet, RI USA) - See all my reviews

Lisa Carver, as a writer, makes it okay for us to embrace every part of ourselves. I think she is a better role model for teen girls that people like Brittney Spears could ever be. She understands herself, her sexuallity, and the world we live in (for the better and the worse). She takes the shame out of being poor, and encourages you to enjoy life. I could only call her inspirational.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loving Lisa, July 27, 2001

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I was late coming into touch with Lisa Carver. _Dancing Queen: A Lusty Look at the American Dream_ (Henry Holt) was published five years ago, and I didnt know it. I got to know her writing from her uninhibited diary entries at the fine adult site Nerve.com (The Community of Thoughtful Hedonists). So, I was glad to take a look into _Dancing Queen_ in order to understand the past of this peculiar woman. It is a slim volume of her essays on white trash, kissing, other ladies bodies, and more. It is enormous fun. Whats nice is that as different as Lisa is from anybody, she is happy and optimistic. Ive done lots of stupid things, but Ive enjoyed myself. _Dancing Queen_ is about _liking_ stuff. Its about how pleasing it can be to be poked and probed  by the hairdresser, by the gynecologist, by killer bears, by the thirty-six-year-old ski instructress in _Princess Daisy_. She is impatient with those who dont have fun; she cannot comprehend a whole essay by a woman who was upset that some men hooted at her, for instance. I _like_ to be hooted! She gives us rants that certainly are self-indulgent, but you cannot expect anything different from someone who indulges herself with such lewdness, shamelessness, and fun.

Not only are her opinions odd, but it is obvious she enjoys getting them into words. In the chapter about her sensual enjoyment of a trip to the gynecologist (It is the _illicit_ pleasure caused by _necessary_ procedures performed by _removed_ professionals that gets my temperature rising.), she says that a certain kind of girl likes a visit to the gynecologist as much as Christmas: It only happens once a year and she gets lots of things she wants. She skips to the clinic while visions of speculums dance in her head. She gushes over the ghost-written novels of perfect specimen Fabio (Hes always mentioning condoms in his pirate books) and informs us that They contain bold lines like:

1. I am a man of the sea. 2. Go hide in the fields, woman. 3. Mayhaps she thinks I am doing something bad.

It was this sort of literature that fired her pre-adolescent fantasies: At twelve, I had as much sex drive as the entire U.S. Army and absolutely no idea what to do with it. Not to worry; she has since learned. They sold me a roadmap to ecstasy covered in highways of trouble, and I couldnt wait to visit every site on the map.

Lisa is hilarious when discussing just a trip to the hairdresser, or K-Mart, or Olivia Newton John, but the best chapter in the book is entitled An Iron Fist in a Polyester Glove: Lawrence Welk. What is he doing here? Well, when Lisa was little, To me, the constant, ultra-close-ups of moist-lipped, moist-eyed, soft-bosomed lady singers lined up side by side in matching outfits like chickens to be plucked were an open call to perversion. She has since made an extensive study of Lawrences several autobiographies, where she must have learned that he originally picked up an accordion and set out to conquer the world, as Lawrence Welk & His Hotsy Totsy Boys. While she doesnt gloss over Lawrences famous temper, she finds, surprisingly, a kindred spirit, someone who had a dream: extreme close ups of _nice_ people singing nice songs and dancing anachronistic dances against insanely cheerful backdrops. Its a beautiful dream!

This isnt for everyone. Lisa is frank, naughty, and lustful. She throws sexual fantasies in even when discussing a sequence of post-Glasnost Russian leaders. If you like smart people who write enthusiastically well, and if you appreciate that to be peculiar is also to be interesting, this is certainly worth a look. Oh, and hot off the Lisa Diaries on Nerve.com: Lisa is trying to get pregnant again. That kid is going to have plenty to think about.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did she sell her soul to write this well?, November 25, 1999

By	Thomas Harris (Athens, AL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I admit to being insanely jealous of Lisa Carver. In the first place, she is getting a lot more sex than I am. In the second, she writes better than I do, too. Even though we grew up at opposite ends of the country (she in New Hampshire and me in Alabama), my own rural upbringing makes it easy for me to relate to her tales of the White Trash subculture. I know those K Marts and ''Lawrence Welk Show'' reruns too well. And what makes me even more jealous is that she has no formal training as a writer. She has only the hard-knocks experience of producing a 'zine. Her chapter on the difference between K Mart and Wal-Mart alone is worth the purchase price (even if I'm a Wal-Mart partisan, myself). The insanely brilliant discussion of the sado-masochistic undertones of Lawrence Welk is just an added bonus. I came away from ''Dancing Queen'' with a newfound respect for Trailer Trash -- even if I still have no intention of dating any.