A celebrated performance artist's mesmerizing riffs on sex in American politics.

Based on her widely praised performance piece Unicorn Gratitude Mystery ("Wickedly funny," as described by The New York Times), Karen Finley's Grabbing Pussy explores the Shakespearean dynamics that surface when libidos and loyalties clash in the public and private personas of Donald Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner, and now Harvey Weinstein.

Standing in the tradition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Finley's words jolt the reader into new insights about the ways the darkly private can drive the public realm in dizzying twists and turns. The aggression of intimacy, the disparity of gender, and the vital importance of hair are all encompassed in Finley's exhilarating canter.

Finley is regularly performing, having just completed a sell-out run at Redcat in Los Angeles, and before that, a repeat run at the Laurie Beechman Theater in New York City. She will be reading from this book around publication as she travels across the country giving performances and talks.

About the Author
KAREN FINLEY is a performance artist whose work has long provoked controversy and debate. She has performed at the Lincoln Center (NYC), the ICA (London), the Steppenwolf (Chicago), and the Bobino (Paris). Her art is widely collected, including by Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Obies, two Bessies, and a Ms. magazine Woman of the Year Award. Her previous books include Shock Treatment, Enough is Enough, Living It Up, A Different Kind Of Intimacy, George and Martha, and The Reality Shows. Finley is a professor in the department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Reviews

Praise for Grabbing Pussy

"In Grabbing Pussy (OR Books), performance artist and professor Karen Finley achieves the unthinkable: out of America's unstoppable news cycle and its disturbing undercurrents of psychosexually charged politics, she forges poetry with a punk sensibility (plus, a dash of unfiltered raunchiness, in keeping with the times), skewering Donald Trump, the Clintons, Harvey Weinstein, and Anthony Weiner in the process. Reading the collection-especially aloud-in one sitting is akin to diving headfirst into a freezing body of water; one emerges refreshed, invigorated, and slightly shaken: brace yourself." -Vanity Fair

Grabbing Pussy delivers on its promise, as both incisive political commentary and explosive, emotional, acerbic, gymnastic prose poetry. -LA Weekly

"With irreverent humor and searing insight, Finley tackles our current political miasma." -Hyperallergic "Finley (The Reality Shows, 2011, etc.) finds her ultimate target in the current president. Unsparing . . . diatribes serving as an implicit rebuttal of the 'kill 'em with kindness' approach." -Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Karen Finley

"Karen Finley is a profound theater-artist. Her artistry is due in part to her ability to alchemize 'news' and make it art. She takes the viewer by the throat as she screams, cajoles, and seduces us into some awareness of the world at large. Finley's brilliance lies in this fact, too: her insistence that we look at our respective souls by having us view her characters own, even as we want to look away. She is irreplaceable." -Hilton Als

"This is the power of Shock Treatment, its direct engagement; 'One day, I hope to God,' she writes in 'Aunt Mandy,' 'Bush / Cardinal O'Connor and the Right-to-Lifers each / returns to life as an unwanted pregnant 13-year-old / girl working at McDonalds at minimum wage.' The irony or maybe not is that those sentiments remain relevant; the names may have changed but the landscape not so much. We are still, a quarter of a century later, fighting the once and future culture war, in a country that is as divided, as bifurcated on these issues as it has ever been." -David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times

"Overflowing with crude unmitigated rage, Shock Treatment clawed at the bulwarks of homophobia, misogyny, racism, and casual violence, inspiring women like Kathleen Hannah, Michelle Tea, and Miranda July to step up . . . Twenty-five years later, Finley might be less ferocious but she remains astute." -Silke Tudor, SF Weekly

Book Information
ISBN 9781944869953
Author Karen Finley
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint OR Books
Publisher OR Books