From Publishers Weekly
This collection of spoken and journalistic pieces by New York writer-performer Estep is an uneven effort. The "Confessions" fare the worst in the transition from fugitive magazine to book (many of them appeared first in the monthly Shout): tales of Brooklyn apartment-hunting, short-term shack-ups with German composers and Italian painters, and bikers swilling Pabst Blue Ribbon are fun to read while waiting for the train but start looking awfully alike next to each other in a book. The "Old Rants" section, which collects the spoken-word pieces that rocketed Estep from Lower East Side poetry slams to a Lollapalooza tour (ah, the '90s!), come off with much less urgency than Estep puts into her performances. But Estep's journalistic narratives, including portraits of Iggy Pop, Jerry Stahl and the jockey Chris Antley are charming. In one piece on horse racing, Estep's passion for horses and the seedy world of the racetrack comes through in spades: "[W]e're on the A train heading out to Aqueduct and I've got the Daily Racing Form spread out in my lap and we're sitting with our shoulders touching as the train rattles through the bowels of Queens and I explain how to read each horse's past performance and how to factor in the many many things one has to factor in, from the weight of the jockey to the win percentage of the trainer to the last time the horse raced." This is Estep at her best, as her words rush to meet the minimalist and episodic speed of the race, but such comings together are less frequent here than all but diehard fans will want.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
“Maggie Estep is the bastard daughter of Raymond Chandler and Anaïs Nin. Her prose is hard-boiled and sexy; she turns a good phrase and shows some leg. Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals is one hell of a great book! By the way, when Chandler and Nin left her at the orphanage, she was adopted by Charles Bukowski and Dick Francis.”
—Jonathan Ames, author of What’s Not to Love?
Charting Life at Its Most Bizarre . . .
is an obsession for Maggie Estep, and in
Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals this obsession reaches a fever pitch that is as readable and as entertaining as it is strange.
Here is your chance to experience the world according to one of our most original and honest voices.
Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals showcases some of the best of what Maggie Estep has to offer. Here, gathered together for the first time, are Maggie’s infamous spoken word pieces—including “Sex Goddess of the Western Hemisphere,” “Hey Baby,” and “I’m an Emotional Idiot,”—that landed her on MTV and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. This varied collection also brings together a myriad of writing styles, such as diary-style magazine columns, articles highlighting Estep’s friends and heroes—from punk godfather Iggy Pop to Permanent Midnight author Jerry Stahl—and short stories that feature Maggie’s own brand of original fiction.
From her many smoking relapses, to her obsession with horses and horse racing, to her manic love life, to her motley assortment of friends, to her battles with an onslaught of killer attack “biker” fleas, to an epistolary short story that is a collaboration with Rick Moody, Maggie Estep offers a humorous if twisted view of reality in
Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals.
