I knew I had my cbr16bingo Scandal book when I read the line “your soft saliva, loosed with orgy, drip!”
This category was giving me trouble. I thought I was going to do a children’s graphic novel series for it (there is one big scandal that leads to several littler ones by the looks of the first one I read) but how could I not pick Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes as my Scandal book? Her whole life was a scandal!
She was born to a mother taken in by a charismatic cult leader (her grandmother) and a father who believed the bunk about how wonderful, beautiful, he was
and how world changing he would be. She was raised with her biological siblings (brothers) and half-siblings (mixture), mothered by the long time mistress (who had been his lover before marrying) of her father (who lived with them in their commune). Her father and grandmother practiced free, open love, no child had their own bed let alone bedroom. Hints of incest, open bisexuality, and more would follow her for the rest of her life. Not to mention her first publisher was a con artist, her second never paid her (and would be in the middle of the Ulysses trial) and she would create sensational journalism by doing almost anything for stories.
The book is a romantic trip of the highlights of Djuna Barnes life. If her father was a manchild, she was a womanchild. Her hedonistic needs trumped all other things. Her love was writing and her physical lovers would come and go. Male and female would bed her, her first love leaving America due to anti-German sentiments, being Bohemian ruled, another dying of the Spanish flu. One of her best friends would be called by one patron at a party, “The Baroness of Obstreperous.” (She was a real Baroness who, with her lover, snuck a urinal into an art exhibit, and called it Fountain. And she told a police officer to “look longingly into her Dada.” As she was bent over.)
The book is not an easy read. While the content is not gratuitous, it is also over-the-top, dramatic, salacious. (You ever notice there are more words for gratuitous than not gratuitous?) I started writing this not even half-way through the online reader copy, knowing there was more insanity to come. I added some more scandal after reading around 100 pages. And yes, I know there will be more and I will have more opinions, but I’m already over 400 words!
And I didn’t even mention the artwork! Let me say that they are just as odd as the rest of things. Mostly black and white with the color red being used to show you Djuna (her flaming red hair) and a few other things. Things do not look fleshed out, but more sketches of what is to come (though this could partly be because it is a reader’s copy, however, I’ve read enough from this publisher to know they do go more artistic). They are just as important as the story, but mostly there to allow you to focus on our subject and those around her and the things around her which are there to support her.
Due in early October 2024, Street Noise Books has smacked you upside the head with another powerful read by Jon Macy (or JL Macy, I’ve seen both).