Scream

July 18, 2016
Recounting her glory days as one of New York's bright young writers in the 1980s and her more recent struggles caring for her ailing mother, novelist and short story writer Janowitz slides too often into melodrama and griping in this tiresome memoir. Janowitz grew up in a toxic family environment even after her parents divorced; she lived with her mother and brother in various spots around western Massachusetts. She paints an unpleasant portrait of her pot-smoking, sex-loving psychiatrist father, who berated her no matter what she did. Achieving the fame she did with her 1986 short story collection, Slaves of New York, came at the cost of myriad rejections and even the embarrassment of having to submit work under a man's name ("Tom A. Janowitz") in an admittedly successful effort to get published in the Paris Review. Throwaway anecdotes about her time spent in London (where she met the Sex Pistols) and New York in the era of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol are overshadowed by the whiny tone she slips into when recalling, often repetitiously, the past decade or so of life in upstate New York, far removed culturally and geographically from her previous pad in Brooklyn. The most affecting moments come when Janowitz reflects on her now deceased poet mother's impact on her life and career, but these flashes of insight are lost in the mishmash of this poorly constructed work. Agent: Christopher Schelling, Selectric Artists.

June 15, 2016
Chronicles of fame, mishaps, and assorted grievances.In 1986, Janowitz (They Is Us, 2009, etc.) became "semi-famous," she writes, with the publication of the story collection Slaves of New York, putting her in the company of the Literary Brat Pack along with Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis. "Here's what we had in common," she writes: "the fact that our books were not supposed to become big sellers and were never expected to get any attention, but actually did." Janowitz continued to publish novels and stories, some made into films; she attended glitzy, star-filled parties and counted among her celebrity friends Joan Rivers ("warm, yet driven to achievement"), Lou Reed ("easy to talk to"), Andy Warhol, with whom she dined a few times a week, and Elizabeth Hardwick, her teacher at Barnard College. Janowitz's frank, sometimes funny, often repetitious memoir imparts tart literary gossip but focuses mostly on her hardscrabble life: living in poverty with her mother after her parents divorced and, even as a successful writer, always worried about money. Homes included a "former meat locker" in Manhattan, a claustrophobic trailer with no running water, and a crumbling house in upstate New York, which she shared with a bunch of rowdy poodles. The author recounts her unstable, philandering father, a psychiatrist addicted to marijuana who sent her hate letters each time she visited; her sullen teenage daughter; and her mother, whom she moved from one nursing home to another as her dementia worsened and whose decrepit house she spent years cleaning out. After her mother died, her vindictive brother besieged her with angry emails threatening to charge her with embezzlement from their mother's retirement funds. Fearful, irritating, and needy, the author tends to see the dark side of every experience. She glosses over posh travel assignments, for example, to detail an abortive effort to interview a belligerent hit man. A tone of whininess undermines the author's sharp perceptions.

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August 1, 2016
The literary it gal after Slaves of New York (1986) appeared, flamboyantly outfitted, camera-attracting, unflinchingly explicit, caustically funny, and worldly wise, Janowitz published a string of eviscerating novels and a lashing essay collection, Area Code 212 (2004). She now reappears with a staggering memoir affirming that she came by her over-the-topness naturally, given her mean, inappropriate, pothead psychiatrist father and, after the divorce, the struggles of her poet mother. With her high-voltage candor, switchblade outrage, and seething astonishment at just how appalling people can be, Janowitz whips back and forth in time, describing the absurdity and anguish of her efforts to care for her dementia-afflicted mother in upstate New York and her crazy youthful adventures, including precipitating a relationship with writer Lawrence Durrell, taking part in a surprise photo shoot with the Sex Pistols, and partying with Andy Warhol. Sniping, scathing, grim, and hilarious, Janowitz's primal scream exposes the poisoned wellspring that gave rise to the gritty and canny ludicrousness of her novels, the highs and lows of her writing life, and the boons and traumas of fame and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)