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Drawing Blood Hardcover – December 1, 2015
| Molly Crabapple (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Art was my dearest friend.
To draw was trouble and safety, adventure and freedom.
In that four-cornered kingdom of paper, I lived as I pleased.
This is the story of a girl and her sketchbook.
In language that is fresh, visceral, and deeply moving—and illustrations that are irreverent and gorgeous—here is a memoir that will change the way you think about art, sex, politics, and survival in our times.
From a young age, Molly Crabapple had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a radical. After a restless childhood on New York's Long Island, she left America to see Europe and the Near East, a young artist plunging into unfamiliar cultures, notebook always in hand, drawing what she observed.
Returning to New York City after 9/11 to study art, she posed nude for sketch artists and sketchy photographers, danced burlesque, and modeled for the world famous Suicide Girls. Frustrated with the academy and the conventional art world, she eventually landed a post as house artist at Simon Hammerstein's legendary nightclub The Box, the epicenter of decadent Manhattan nightlife before the financial crisis of 2008. There she had a ringside seat for the pitched battle between the bankers of Wall Street and the entertainers who walked among them—a scandalous, drug-fueled circus of mutual exploitation that she captured in her tart and knowing illustrations. Then, after the crash, a wave of protest movements—from student demonstrations in London to Occupy Wall Street in her own backyard—led Molly to turn her talents to a new form of witness journalism, reporting from places such as Guantanamo, Syria, Rikers Island, and the labor camps of Abu Dhabi. Using both words and artwork to shed light on the darker corners of American empire, she has swiftly become one of the most original and galvanizing voices on the cultural stage.
Now, with the same blend of honesty, fierce insight, and indelible imagery that is her signature, Molly offers her own story: an unforgettable memoir of artistic exploration, political awakening, and personal transformation.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper
- Publication dateDecember 1, 2015
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.06 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100062323644
- ISBN-13978-0062323644
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Crabapple is smart and wicked and wicked smart, a master of imagery and perception, and so her art always works on multiple levels. So too the book. She’s not afraid to provide contradictory thoughts and feelings. Drawing Blood might be the sexiest thing you read this year.” (Daily Beast)
“This beautiful book, generously graced with so many illustrations, is artfully designed and fun to browse for the images alone…But Crabapple’s tight, vibrant, jabbing prose, and prescient asides are the reason to buy this work. Her narrative is well-crafted, expertly told, and completely compelling.” (Seattle Times Book Review)
“The book reads like a notebook of New York, a cultural history of a certain set. Filtered through her eyes, we see 9/11, the aftermath of the crash, Occupy Wall Street, Hurricane Sandy and onward... [Crabapple is] a new model for this century’s young woman. (New York Times Book Review)
“Celebrated New York journalist Crabapple is also one of America’s best, most original artists. Her memoir tells the story of her remarkable life, from her days modeling for Suicide Girls to her groundbreaking Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School and her work with Occupy Wall Street.” (Men’s Journal)
“Hers is a story of art as liberation…Molly detects the bright and beautiful as well as she does the dark and fearful in the world not just because her eye is keen, but also because her eyes are so wide open.” (Alana Massey, Buzzfeed Books)
“Among the book’s delights are the frequent examples of her work, from jittery sketches to lush, colorful paintings — both words and images are the product of a keen eye and devastating pen.” (Boston Globe)
“Jaw dropping, awe inspiring, and not afraid to shock, Crabapple is a punk Joan Didion, a young Patti Smith with paint on her hands, a twenty-first century Sylvia Plath. There’s no one else like her; prepare to be blown away by both the words and pictures.” (Booklist (starred review))
“Lavishly illustrated, the book offers a candid portrayal of an artist’s journey to self-knowledge and fulfillment.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Artist, writer, and activist Crabapple was compelled from a young age by the need to draw because it gives her a sense of self worth. Her struggles as an impoverished artist are rendered here in raw, vivid prose, accompanied by her arresting illustrations.” (Publishers Weekly)
“Using illustrations to bolster the written material, Drawing Blood, out now, is a more intimate memoir than we’re used to seeing, one that is blazingly honest and unafraid to offer up something real to chew on.” (Paper Magazine)
“Artist Molly Crabapple delivers a violently felt and intimately revealing memoir.” (Book Riot)
“Hands down, the best book I’ve read all year…an incredible book that has everyone talking… This raw, unrepentant memoir sheds light on Molly Crabapple’s early career, her first forays into reporting, and her tireless quest to improve as an artist. The lavish illustrations are just the icing on the cake.” (Heavy.com)
“Molly Crabapple’s pen is a scalpel, and she’s not afraid to turn the blade on herself. Beautifully excruciating.” (Patton Oswalt)
“Molly Crabapple could be this generation’s Charles Bukowski. She’s a great artist whose life is also a work of art.” (Matt Taibbi)
“In a few short years, Molly Crabapple has proved to be one of the most determined and effective political artists working in these sorry times. I wish there were a hundred or even two or three like her.” (Joe Sacco)
“Molly writes like she draws: the spare lines have a reporter’s keen accuracy, but can barely contain the boisterous, messy, soulful life splashing about within. Inspiring, intimate, and just a bit intimidating, this book is a must.” (Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and writer-director of The Avengers)
“Molly Crabapple is turn by turn irreverent, respectful, enraged and then trembling with awe, and all of this is a tender meditation on the power of art to transform a singular life into one that can be emblematic for us all: powerful and magical.” (Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas and GraceLand)
“Molly Crabapple writes that her ‘pen is a lockpick,’ and with it she has revealed truths about life, culture, and politics in America that are compelling, artistic, and memorable-as is this revealing new memoir. An engaging read by one of the nation’s most gifted activists.” (Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy)
From the Back Cover
“Molly Crabapple could be this generation’s Charles Bukowski. She’s a great artist whose life is also a work of art.”—Matt Taibbi
In language that is fresh, visceral, and deeply moving—and with illustrations that are irreverent and gorgeous—here is a memoir that will change the way you think about art, sex, politics, and survival in our times.
From a young age, Molly Crabapple had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a radical. After a restless childhood on New York’s Long Island, she left America to see Europe and the Near East, a young artist plunging into unfamiliar cultures, notebook always in hand, drawing what she observed.
Returning to New York City just before 9/11 to study art, she posed nude for sketch artists and sketchy photographers, danced burlesque, and modeled for the world-famous Suicide Girls. Frustrated with the academy and the conventional art world, she eventually landed a post as house artist at Simon Hammerstein’s legendary nightclub the Box, the epicenter of decadent Manhattan nightlife before the financial crisis of 2008. There she had a ringside seat for the pitched battle between the bankers of Wall Street and the entertainers who walked among them—a scandalous, drug-fueled circus of mutual exploitation that she captured in her tart and knowing illustrations. Then, after the crash, a wave of protest movements—from student demonstrations in London to Occupy Wall Street in her own backyard—led Molly to turn her talents to a new form of witness journalism, reporting from places such as Guantánamo, Syria, Rikers Island, and the labor camps of Abu Dhabi. Using both words and artwork to shed light on the darker corners of the American empire, she has swiftly become one of the most original and galvanizing voices on the cultural stage.
Now, with the same blend of honesty, fierce insight, and indelible imagery that is her signature, Molly offers her own story: an unforgettable memoir of artistic exploration, political awakening, and personal transformation.
About the Author
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is a contributing editor for Vice and has written for the New York Times, the Paris Review, and the Guardian, among other publications. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. She lives in New York City.
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Product details
- Publisher : Harper (December 1, 2015)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062323644
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062323644
- Item Weight : 1.46 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.06 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,584,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #401 in Individual Artist Essays
- #1,930 in Individual Artists' Books
- #3,552 in Artist & Architect Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, was published by HarperCollins in 2015. Brothers of the Gun, her illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, will be published by One World/Penguin Random House in May 2018. Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a Yale Poynter Fellowship, a Front Page Award, and a Gold Rush Award, and shortlisted for a Frontline Print Journalism Award. She is often asked to discuss her work chronicling the conflicts of the 21st Century, and has appeared on All In with Chris Hayes, Amanpour, NPR, BBC News, PRI, and more. The New Yorker described her 2017 mural "The Bore of Babylon" as "a terrifying amalgam of Hieronymus Bosch, Honoré Daumier, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Rubin Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society.
Customer reviews
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2015
Top reviews from the United States
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Molly gives vivid descriptions of strip clubs, burlesque dancers, artists, protests, and a lifestyle that many can only imagine. The characters leap off the page illustrated by a vivid written style that draws in words as well as Molly makes art. The book has been described as an unflattering mirror held up to conventional middle-class lives. This is a true but harsh description. I don't sense that Molly regrets her life. Life is to be enjoyed, struggles are to be overcome. If you have self-belief and talent Molly shows you can succeed.
Is this a feminist tract? No! The point is made that it is harder for women to succeed in the art world just as it is in many other endeavours. It is also too easy to sneer at the routes someone has to take before they reach a point of success. The book starts out with an angry tone. It mellows towards the end but is increasingly cynical about conventional political society. The book is lavishly illustrated and the drawings show an evolving artistic style that remains lush and vivid.
Here's to raising an absinthe to Molly Crabapple and her art and future success.
Not to entirely trash her efforts, the drawings are pretty good and my class bonded over our hatred of Molly (so, class bonding was nice).
The book is difficult to summarize in a review (or the time I have to write this review). So I will just write that I loved the book. I bought a paper copy for my step-daughter and she loved the book. Like me she found it compellingly readable. So read this book. I think that you'll like it.
Molly was a rebel in school, and as she details that I think the reader will experience sympathy because we all wanted to run out of the building at times even if we were basically obedient. She was not, however. Now she is grown up and still making waves -- and beautiful art.
Top reviews from other countries
Social exclusion and the nearing edge of the community she lives in, Molly abandons her childhood and splits her thoughts from the body. Though she manages the distance of adaptation, pride and respect towards herself. She starts travelling around the world at a young age, to make her impressions and thoughts about it last. While travelling she develops a sensitive view for details, expression and interpretation of the stories she lives through. The confrontation between vulnerability, making decisions and keeping her creativity, is a static undertone of the book. Steadily the author keeps the focus on the work that fulfils her. Not even in dark times of having no financial perspective, falling into the shadow world of sex work, and deciding to have an abortion. She makes honest decisions to herself and stands for them. The way she goes is an inspiring and frightening example, how hard it is for artists, activists or free thinker, to settle in our world. The power of money, the profit out of connections to high society and its abyss are a part of finding oneself. Dead end streets, Bubbles and periods of disappointment are forming her fighting spirit without turning fanatic.
Molly's head is constantly clear, she becomes a good entrepreneur and develops sensitiveness for the capitalistic world she lives in. Molly Crabapple has an exact understanding of how to wander between two universes when you are a three thinker. In her late twenties she makes a living out of her art and realises that her work got stuck. It has become reproductive and the character of their drawings is too static. Through her journalist friend from London, Molly becomes a part of the upcoming occupation culture in these days. Political changes and the upcoming transformation of society are firing her wish to be an active part of the protest. So the content of her work becomes political and do not only lead to an arrest and frustration about the happenings but also to some enormous energy to go on. From now on she writes articles and draws scenes from the real and outside world to make a statement. Out of an angry black owl who never accepted her own failure, became an angry phoenix whose wings are strong enough to create a storm that encourages other people. Molly Crabapple is inspiring other by constantly working against grievance and not giving in to people who doubt about her.
This book is full of the inner drive to stand for what inside us, wanting to be lived. Molly is a synonym for creativity, idealism and passion for art as a language that is very much underrated. Her story is a great journey through and to herself and a steady process of learning. Molly's narrative style is authentic, shocking and enforces to rethink our way of acting. The story may be just a small one out of thousand that are written in this world each day but it leaves the reader stronger than he was before. I wish a lot more people would try to make a statement out of the ordinary, of what they are able to create in their own language. Wherever verbal communication and language itself are ending, music and art are building bridges of understanding. Molly Crabapple is one of those bridges of the East River and I really hope she will resist the floods and the weather for a long time.
Drawing Blood is more than only a recommendable book about how to draw as a way of protest, from the button of the heart.
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Ab der ersten Seite zieht einen der liebevoll boshafte und ungeschönt ehrliche Erzählstil voller Passion für ihre Arbeit, mit in die Geschichte. Eine Geschichte über Aufrechterhaltung des Selbstwerts, Berufung, Charakterstärke, Idealismus und Erkenntnis. Ihre Worte hinterlassen eine kontinuierliche Spannung beim Lesen und einen Hauch von Magie, der durch das Zeichnen ihrer Gedankenwelt entsteht. Es sind die Memoiren einer jungen Frau, die von Kindesbeinen an diesen alles übertönenden Drang in sich versprüt, zu zeichnen. Dabei hat sie Eltern, deren starke Charaktere und Sicht der Welt sie ermutigen, niemals aufzugeben. Molly Crabapple ist nicht einfach ein begabtes Mädchen, das mit Stiften umgehen kann. Nein, sie lebt für ihre Zeichnungen, die ihrem Dasein Selbstwert verleihen und ihre Kollision mit der Außenwelt abbremsen. Zeichnen ist ihr Austausch zwischen ihrem eigenen Innen und Außen und reflektiert dabei unweigerlich und beständig ihr Dasein.
Frühe Ausgrenzung, soziale Isolation und der nahende Rand der Gesellschaft sind ihr dadurch oft näher, als die Erinnerungen an die verhasste Kindheit und ihr eigener Körper. Und doch schafft sie immer den Spagat zwischen Funktion, Anpassung an die Situation, Stolz und Respekt sich gegenüber. Das gesamte Buch über verliert sie sich nie in ihren Grundsätzen, verkauft nie ihre Seele für den Erfolg. Molly Crabapple reist schon früh um die Welt, um sie in ihrer bunten Handschrift zu verewigen, ihre Essenz einzufangen. Sie trifft dabei auf Menschen und deren Geschichten, entwickelt ein außerordentliches Gespür für Details, Ausdruck und Bedeutung der Geschichten, die sie zeichnet. Die Konfrontation mit der eigenen Verletzlichkeit, Entscheidungsfindung und Erfindergeist, sind ständig präsente Themen des Buches. Die Autorin schafft es fortwährend, den Fokus auf ihre Arbeit und ihre Berufung des Zeichnens nicht zu verlieren. Auch nicht, als sie aus Mangel an finanziellen Perspektiven, in die Schattenwelt des körperlichen Ausverkaufs gerät und unter anderem für sich die schwierige Entscheidung trifft, eine Abtreibung vornehmen zu lassen. Molly Crabapple trifft ehrliche Entscheidungen und steht für diese ein. Der Weg den sie geht, beschreibt auf erstaunlich beflügelnde und erschreckende Weise eine Gesellschaft, in der Querdenker, Künstler und Gedankengutvisionäre ohne Vitamin B nur schwer Fuß fassen können. Die Macht des Geldes, der profitablen Beziehungen zur Oberschicht und deren Abgründen, sind Teil ihres Findungsprozesses. Sackgassen, Seifenblasen und Phasen voller Enttäuschung formen ihren Kampfgeist, ohne dabei fanatistisch zu werden.
Stets behält sie einen klaren Kopf, entwickelt einen guten Unternehmergeist und ein Feingefühl für die kapitalistische Welt, in der sie lebt. Molly Crabapple versteht es, wie man als Freidenker zwischen zwei Abseitswelten umherwandelt und sich dabei auf respektvolle Art all das zunutze macht, das einen weiterbringen kann. Als Molly Ende zwanzig durch ihren Bekanntheitsgrad von Ihren Arbeiten lebt, begreift sie, dass ihre Bilder stagnieren, einen reproduktiven Charakter bekommen haben. Durch den Kontakt zu einer befreundeten Journalistin in England, wird Molly ein Teil einer jungen Protestkultur und realisiert, dass sie in der Lage ist, mit ihrer Arbeit eine geistige Haltung zu repräsentieren. Die politischen Veränderungen und die Wandlung der Gesellschaft zum Kontrollstaat, lösen in ihr den Wunsch nach Partizipation aus. Ihre Arbeiten werden politisch, aktivistisch und führen nicht nur zu Verhaftung und Frustration über die Ereignisse, sondern auch zu einer enormen Energie, diese zu überwinden. Fortan schreibt sie Berichte, Artikel, zeichnet reale Geschehnisse aus persönlicher Überzeugung. Aus der wütenden, kleinen schwarzen Eule, die ihre eigene Unfähigkeit nicht duldet, wird im Verlauf des Buches ein wütender Phoenix, dessen Flügel genug Wind erzeugen, andere mit ihrem Schaffen zu berühren, mitzuziehen und zu inspirieren.
Die Eule hat mich beim Lesen bildlich wie ein Totem von Molly verfolgt. Als ein häufig verwendetes Symbol der Weisheit, sitzt sie mir als Leser stetig auf der Schulter und liest mit.
Hier findet Selbstfindung durch den inneren Trieb zur Kreativität, Idealismus und der Leidenschaft für eine weit unterschätzte Sprache, frei von Akustik statt. Dieses Buch ist eine spannende Reise durch und zu sich selbst, ein fortwährender Lernprozess. Die Autorin ist authentisch und ihre Erzählungen schockieren, beleben und regen zum Nachdenken an. Diese Geschichte vermag im Vergleich zu den großen Werken unserer literarischen Welt eine von vielen sein, die tagtäglich auf dieser Welt erzählt werden, aber sie lässt den Leser stärker zurück, als er es zuvor war. Ich wünschte mehr Menschen würden auf ihre Weise aus dem Alltäglichen die Magie herausholen, die es benötigt, um etwas zu verändern. Ein Mensch, dessen Charakter so stark ist, dass er die Konfrontation als Herausforderung sieht, wird immer die Verbindungen knüpfen die es benötigt, um an sein Ziel zu gelangen. Immer dort, wo die Sprache eine Barriere bildet und Worte nicht mehr greifen, bauen Musik und Kunst Brücken des Verständnisses. Molly Crabapple ist eine von diesen Brücken über dem East River und ich hoffe, sie trotzt noch lange den Fluten und dem Wetter um sich herum.
Drawing Blood ist ein mehr als empfehlenswertes Buch darüber, wie man vor allem mit Herzblut zeichnend, die Welt beeinflussen kann.
I love her prose. Her writing flows while also being, at once, precise and concise. She adds the exact amount of feeling and linguistic flourishes to convey her meaning and push the reader forward -- never an ounce more. It is a great read. I recommend it wholeheartedly.



