June 26–July 3, 1997

critical mass|books

City Girls

By a.d. amorosi

Fernanda Eberstadt.

From the wealth and influence of Fernanda Eberstadt to the stealth beat-boho glory of Cookie Mueller, we get two strong individualists and their portraits of New York City's art world aflame. That both are women is significant. That even one of them outran the existence they once lived is more formidable still.

In Eberstadt's When The Sons of Heaven Meet The Daughters of The Earth (Knopf, 404 p., $25),the former Warhol Factory employee and friend to the likes of Salle, Schnabel and Haring rolls out something of a roman a clef; a romantic story set in the Manhattan '80s art scene. While no one in the main troika of characters is mentioned by name (everybody from Andy to Gena Rowlands takes a bow), the book bristles with nightlife types — hapless performance artists, listless musicians and poor painters, all happy in their financial, umm, simplicity — and describes the places they exhibit themselves with finely etched detail. Eberstadt knows from where and when she speaks and can put it down with great flourishes of artifice.

Her greatest artificeis the character of Isaac Hooker, a socio-religious painter from New Hampshire who abandons his teacher/girlfriend for the big city. He is optimistic, individualistic and idealistic until he hooks up with the Geblers, a power-feeding duo who run an arts foundation dedicated to the kind of linear, near-corporate art that Isaac loathes.

That Isaac beds the Gebler woman is hardly a surprise. That he can struggle and remain whole after his starshine fades is invigorating. That this novel is being called Tom Wolfian is silly. Unlike the journalistically incisive Bonfire, this book reads more like a cross between Robert Altman's The Player and a Harold Robbins page-turner. No beds are on fire (except maybe in a bad painting) in a cheesy passionate embrace; Eberstadt's prose is too crisp and too informed to be drenched in sentiment. Yet her characters always seem to have their fingers on their chins in mockery, gossip or critique, and their legs crossed with something that only coldly resembles lust.

Whether it's lust in the dust, booze in the fridge or homeopathic remedies for everyone, Cookie Mueller's tales — found in the posthumously released Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller (High Risk, 294 p., $16) — are bare-boned and bare-assed; city-smart like Eberstadt, but raw, crude and common. And positively stunning in their frightful humor and tacky honesty. Like the above-mentioned Isaac, Mueller — the link between John Waters, Warhol, punk rock, strippers, art goofs, offbeat clothiers and the HIV-positive — is the type to try anything without pretense. In a series of articles for the likes of Details, BOMB and Semiotexte, Mueller captures the immediacy of her culture as if she were writing it as it was occurring. The world is reduced to the space at the tip of her pen. Whether she's telling tales of Baltimore's woebegone white trash and her dozen bogus jobs, or her travels to Negril, Italy, the Berlin film festival and Jamaica (all on no money), her Pink Flamingos superstardom or her efforts to remedy everything from AIDS to spider bites to cutting cocaine, Mueller was always clever, cool and attentive to the reader-as-intimate.

This is not the work of a primitive; it's that of a thinker, a mind considerate of all people, all sides. As the constant outsider (though I'm sure she never knew it), she brings an open-eyed humor and vision to the most jaded scenarios. She just as quickly and severely can snap open your peepers with jarring fear as she does in the rendering of a potential rape by two hillbilly types. Like a great mystery writer, Mueller can make you sweat bullets in fear. It's ironic that as socially informed as Eberstadt is, Mueller's writing is exactly the party that she'd like to be invited to. Eberstadt might visit, but Mueller lived there.