Saturday, October 08, 2011

Laurie Weeks: Zipper Mouth



















The wild rains began early, an ideal excuse to stay in and read Laurie Weeks' Zipper Mouth (The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2011) from cover to cover.

Zipper Mouth: a tour de force of trenchant observations and incandescent sentences! I intend to read it again soon for the sheer excitement of its language.

Zipper Mouth: evokes fond memories of Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes (1994) and Drinking: A Love Story (1996) by Caroline Knapp, with a touch of Susan Gordon Lydon's Take the Long Road Home: Memoirs of a Survivor (1993).



















Zipper Mouth: like dropping a new dose of Arthur Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873) and his Illuminations (1886), mixing it in a cocktail of William S. Burroughs (and perhaps Augusten X. Burroughs), maybe some Patti Smith, plus some "French cinema" of the avant-garde variety, and let's not forget David Lynch, specifically Eraserhead (1977). Something wild and mind-expanding.  

Zipper Mouth: highly recommended for the adventuresome.

Today's Rune: Growth.   

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Love the title, "zipper mouth." Cool image too.

jodi said...

Erik-first, I agree with Charles and second, I'm gonna read this one for sure! Thanks for the plug! Sorry about the rain-it's a perfectly gorgeous fall here!

the walking man said...

I don't know about the book but I do know a few hundred mouths that could use that device installed on them.

Pariah's Log said...

Laurie's personality screams through her writing, revealing a crass refinement, a vulnerable toughness tempered by a heart of golden light under siege.

Laurie is the part of Idaho nobody knows about, the REAL Idaho--wildly beautiful, fucked up, and never to be controlled. Zipper Mouth is feral Idaho, loosed upon the streets of New York City and inside the seat of the soul.