Generation Loss: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Elizabeth Hand (Author)
Key Phrases: boat hook, kill fee, Burnt Harbor, John Stone, Jack Daniel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Praise for Elizabeth Hand's previous novels:

"Inhabits a world between reason and insanity-it's a delightful waking dream."--People

"One of the most sheerly impressive, not to mention overwhelmingly beautiful books I have read in a long time."--Peter Straub

Cass Neary made her name in the 1970s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But 30 years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.

Questions for Elizabeth Hand

Jeff VanderMeer for Amazon.com: Your novel Generation Loss introduces readers to a very eccentric and sometimes selfish photographer named Cass. Are all artists inherently selfish?

Hand: Yes. You can't be an artist without being inherently self-involved, without believing that the world owes you a living, and that everything you do--anything, matter how sick or twisted or feeble or pathetic--is worthy of attention. This is the secret behind the success of stuff like American Idol and YouTube. This is the world Andy Warhol bequeathed to us.

Amazon.com: Isn't it partially that selfishness that results in great fiction? Isn't the antagonist of your novel in a way driven by selfishness?

Hand: I don't think I'd call it selfishness, to be truthful. I think creating any real art depends on an intense amount of focus¬--of filtering out the rest of the world as much as you can, to sustain and then impart your own vision or secondary world--what John Gardner called "the vivid and continuous dream." I think the antagonist of Generation Loss sees himself as being impelled by love--romantic love, carnal love, the pure love of artistic creation--not selfishness. Whereas Cass's motivation is something far darker and more sinister than love. She's seen the abyss; she lives there.

Amazon.com: Is Cass Neary a prototypical "bad girl"?

Hand: Well, she's your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily-tattooed American female photographer. So, yeah.

Amazon.com: So this is definitely not what you'd call "chick lit"?

Hand: Umm, probably not. If it were a movie, it would have a NC-17 rating. Or maybe NR. Is Lolita considered chick lit? That book had a huge influence on me, especially with this novel. I always wanted to create a narrator like Humbert Humbert, someone utterly reprehensible and unsympathetic who still manages to command a reader's attention and even an uneasy sympathy. I loved the idea of making a reader complicit with the crimes committed by a protagonist. The simple act of continuing to turn the pages makes you guilty by association.

Amazon.com: Did you have a particular artist in mind as the inspiration for the foul-smelling but visionary paintings in the novel?

Hand: No. That part I made up.

Amazon.com: C'mon. You're not allowed to just make things up. Spill the beans.

Hand: No, I really didn't have anyone in mind. There are elements of the work of photographers I admire--Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Sally Man, Joel-Peter Witkin--and of outsider artists like Henry Darger or Richard Dadd or Roky Erickson. But the whole concept of an artist creating his own emulsion paper--I thought of that, then researched it and learned that, indeed, some photographers work that way. I also consulted a photographic conservator who's an acquaintance and asked him, Is this possible? He said yes, and I took it from there.

Amazon.com: Are people in Maine as mean toward tourists as you describe?

Hand: No. Just me. Though folks who work at the general store three doors down from me really do sometimes wear a T-shirt that reads THEY CALL IT TOURIST SEASON, WHY CAN'T WE SHOOT THEM? So, okay, me and them.

Amazon.com: Have you ever driven a tourist off your property with a shovel?

Hand: Not yet. But I would. A few years ago friend said he pictured me up on the Laurentian shield, threatening outsiders with a pitchfork. That's pretty accurate.

Amazon.com: Weren't you once a tourist?

Hand: Never. I lived in DC for 13 years, and worked for a long time at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum--Tourist Central. That effectively killed any sympathy I might ever have had towards them.

Amazon.com: What's coming up for you?

Hand: Well, I'll be doing some touring and readings for this book, and I hope to record the entire novel as a podcast/audio book--I'm very excited to be performing again. I'm presently at work on a YA novel about Arthur Rimbaud called Wonderwall, to be published by Viking, and am brooding on another novel that might be something along the lines of Generation Loss, or not. I get restless and like to shift gears a lot. So we'll see.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hand (Mortal Love) explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller. Cass "Scary" Neary, a self-destructive photographer, enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame snapping shots of the punk scene's most squalid moments. Now forgotten and aging gracelessly, Cass gets a shot at rehabilitation when a friend assigns her to interview Aphrodite Kamestos, a photographer from the fringe of the '60s counterculture, whose morbid vision influenced Cass herself. On remote Paswegas Island off the coast of Maine, Cass finds a dissipated and surly Aphrodite who sees in Cass the darkest aspects of herself. Worse, Cass discovers that a remnant of a commune Aphrodite helped found has taken her bleak aesthetic to the next level in an effort to penetrate mysteries of life and death. Cass is a complex and thoroughly believable character who behaves selfishly—sometimes despicably—yet still compels reader sympathy. The novel's final chapters, in which Cass confronts a horrifying embodiment of the extremes to which her own artistic inclinations could lead, are a terror tour-de-force that testify to the power of great fiction to disturb and provoke. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: Small Beer Press (April 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931520216
• ISBN-13: 978-1931520218
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #552,493 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric, May 27, 2007

By	fireandfog "fireandfog" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

I've been a fan of Elizabeth Hand since Waking the Moon. WtM remains my favorite of her books, followed by her short story collections Last Summer at Mars Hill and Cleopatra Brimstone, and her novel Black Light. I had a difficult time with 2004's Mortal Love, as I felt there was a rather tortured effort to make it more "literary" than its predecessors and the result was a beautifully written fever dream of a book that was just too hard to follow. So, I was curious to see what Generation Loss would be like, and in some ways, it seems to be something of a departure. I liked it, mind you, but there were some elements missing that usually surface in her books (the rich and evocative use of language, the supernatural element), and I could not quite figure out what kind of book this was meant to be. Horror story? Mystery? Fantasy? About halfway through, I had to stop and do an Internet search to see what I could find about the book, and was lucky enough to come across an interview wherein Ms Hand states that in GL, she attempts to cut down on the use of what she terms "purple" prose, and that she decided to dispense with the supernatural. Once I had this sorted out, I was able to sit back and just take the story on face value without waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Especially as the story winds its way to the end, due to the hints dropped here and there and because of the extremely spooky, Halloween-like atmosphere, I kept expecting (hoping for, actually!) some disaffected old god to step out from one of the bare and chilly trees, but you can relax: it's not going to happen, at least not in this book, although the sinister possibility does seem to be just a breath away.

So, just in case anyone else is wondering what kind of book this is going to be: it's a pretty straightforward story of a woman in one of the worst downward spirals I have ever seen, and not how she redeems herself, necessarily, but perhaps how she finds a place for herself. Generation Loss is the story of Cassandra Neary, a washed-up relic of the New York 70s punk scene. Cass is a photographer briefly famous for a series of shocking photographs, including some taken of a victim of a drug overdose found lying in the street. It's worth noting that upon discovering the body, no one, not even Cass, bothers to call the police. After all, he's already dead, what can anyone do? This scene is meant to illustrate Cass's utter disassociation from her own and other people's humanity, and does so very effectively, I might add. (I was reading this while clutching a strap on the train home, and my gasp of horror briefly alarmed my fellow strap-hangers.) I liked that Cass's problems are not merely presented as moral failings that she could correct if she wanted to; at one point, there is a brief, almost glossed-over mention of a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, although Cass certainly never seeks treatment. At any rate, over the 30 years since her incredibly brief near-glory, she works in the back room of a bookstore, has a series of affairs and one-night stands, and is drunk and/ or stoned most of the time. Her nickname is "Scary" Neary, and quite frankly, if Cass were real, I'd be scared to death of her too. Whatever glamour might have once clung to this all-too-real embodiment of the idea of "heroin chic" has long been replaced by desperation. At one point, Cass says that she is what parents are afraid what their children will become. Out of what seems to be pity, a friend sends Cass to Maine to interview an iconic photographer. Once in Maine, Cass begins to feel oddly at home as she meets the down-and-out denizens of the area. But there is a mystery afoot: young people and animals have been disappearing for quite some time. This mystery plays out resolutely and somewhat quietly in the background as Cass meets the photographer and her son and spends a few days with them, until the highly disturbing denouement. There are some themes here that deal with the nature of artistic genius, what happens when it disappears, how one copes when genius cannot be maintained, and how the loss or gain of it can be literally maddening depending on what you are willing to do for it. In some ways, there is an idea here adapted from Mortal Love, presented for the post-punk world.

I was a little disappointed that the supernatural element was omitted, as this is one of the things I enjoy most about Liz Hand's books. The language was indeed pared down, another disappointment to me, because I think she has such an incredible gift for language. But even so, the story is immensely atmospheric. Coastal Maine as portrayed here becomes a character in its own right... and also makes me understand why the last time I visited, the locals weren't nearly as pleased to see me as I was to see them.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars (4.5 stars) "You and me, we carry the dead on our backs.", April 6, 2008

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Generation Loss (Paperback)

Damaged goods. Punk music scene photographer Cass "Scary" Neary achieves a sort of aberrant notoriety with her book "Dead Girls". Drawn to the nihilistic mentality of the 70s punk movement, the drug-fueled Cass revels in anti-materialistic rebellion, careless of her body, pushing to the edge and over, increasingly drawn to the pure, if dark, images of subjects no longer animated by a life force. Enamored of the bridge between here and gone, Cass lurks with her camera in shadowy corners, filthy alleys, recording the last moments of wasted lives. Her second book barely acknowledged, Cass remains inspired by those photographers who capture the stark underbelly of the real world. Thirty years later, Neary is as disconnected as ever, living frugally, seeking respite in drugs and alcohol. When she is offered a gig interviewing her idol, the iconic photographer Aphrodite Kamestos, who lives on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, a more-seasoned Cass is drawn one more time into an adventure that is as treacherous as it is seductive.

Danger is familiar to a woman who still bears the scars of a traumatic encounter in a vacant lot ("It's always 4 a.m. beneath a broken street lamp."), her instinctively ignoring warning signs to pay homage to a long love affair with the eye of the camera, the infinite beauty of genius. Such is the early work of Aphrodite, removed from the prying eyes of hangers-on and acolytes. To be in the presence of such talent is its own reward, regardless of Aphrodite's reaction to any intrusion. From the familiar squalor of her digs in New York City, Cass plunges into the heart-stopping chill of Maine, ill-prepared but determined to garner some nugget, proof that her long search for perfection is not in vain. Genius is like fool's gold, irresistible. Accidentally meeting Aphrodite's son the night before her choppy passage to Paswegas Island, Cass is jarred by a vague intuition of danger, distracted as well by a profusion of posters of the lost, tattered notices, "Have you seen this person"? A world-weary survivor, Cass's instincts are self-serving, cynical, a driven woman whose hopefulness is buried under years of disaffection and regret, her imagined and drug-addled responses routinely confrontational.

Her passage into unfamiliar territory sprinkled with epithets, Hand's protagonist challenges us to see beyond the façade, to care about Cass in spite of her behavior, blazing through the eccentric lives of island residents, sniffing out dishonesty, danger and genius in equal measure. Island dramas tragically play out, Cass the unlikely catalyst who is more in sync with her surroundings than she will admit. In an adrenaline-shot climax, Cass meets genius and evil face to face, haunted by the hypnotic images that call to her artist's soul. A provocative and unpredictable character, Cass is compelling in her abandon, her struggle to reclaim sanity in the face of annihilation, a prickly, surprising heroine. Hand captures that most elusive of subjects, the artist's quest for the perfect, redemptive image and the chaos that attends such vision. Never ethereal or pure, this is murky territory, strewn with despair and failure, as heady as the first injection of heroin into a throbbing vein, a reckless impulse to discover the Holy Grail or know the searing touch of the hand of God. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spooky; scary as all HellandDamnation; beautiful., June 8, 2007

By	Stephen Richmond "Librarian/Teacher/Reader an... (Newton, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

No one writes like Elizabeth Hand. Joyce Carol Oates has her "Handian" moments, but then she turns around and takes off in equally wonderful, but very different directions. No, Hand is unique. Silken prose; deft characterizations; environmental descriptions which accelerate the real into the hyper- and surreal. Plots thick as the Maine fogs and storms, and dark, dark mindtwists that fascinate, enchant, as they startle and disgust. This book, like her entire oeuvre, is compelling reading and not to be missed for fans. To those new to the work of Elizabeth Hand, this would serve as a powerful introduction, capturing and captivating from the first page. Those who love JCO or just adore great prose styling like that of Guy Gavriel Kay or Isabel Allende or Donna Tartt or Poppy Z. Brite or the master himself, Marcel Proust will find so much to love and enjoy here.