Girls, Visions and Everything

by Sarah Schulman

Overview

From the prizewinning author of Let the Record Show, a "wry and playful" (Out) novel of lesbian sex, politics, and art in 1980s downtown New York.

It's summer in New York City and the streets are sizzling. Below 14th Street the girls at the Kitsch-Inn are hard at work on their new lesbian version of A Streetcar Named Desire. As the temperature rises, lesbian-at-large Lila Futuransky is looking for adventure, with her keys in her pocket and a copy of On the Road in her hand.

A fast-paced, spirited romp through politics and sexuality, Girls, Visions and Everything offers a funny, affectionate portrait of a group of struggling young artists trying to find meaning in their changing world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580050227
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	08/18/1999
Series:	Djuna Bks.
Edition description:	2ND
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, and The Gentrification of the Mind), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Editorial Reviews

Lila Futuransky is a lesbian living on the East Side of New York who admires Jack Kerouac and is determined to emulate her hero. She wanders around the city, takes many lovers, but then she meets Emily. They fall for each other, and soon Lila must choose between her love for Emily and her desire to continue living out her fantasy from On the Road. Unfortunately Schulman tries to imitate Kerouac's writing style rather than develop her own voice. Moreover, the narrative bogs down in Lila's wanderings, which lead to sketchy encounters with stereotypical druggies, homophobes and homosexual artists. There are too many unnecessary characters, and the setting, Manhattan's hip, wild, creative downtown scene, does not come alive.(October)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly