...grim, and hilarious, Janowitz’s primal scream exposes...the highs and lows of her writing life, and the boons and traumas of fame and love.
The account of Janowitz’s desolation...is genuinely affecting.
In this fantastic mid-life memoir, Tama details everything from her mother’s dementia to her daughter’s angsty teenage years.
...grim, and hilarious, Janowitz’s primal scream exposes...the highs and lows of her writing life, and the boons and traumas of fame and love.
[A] giddily wacky memoir
...Scream, a sharp memoir that follows her life from ‘80s excess to a calmer, though no less astutely observed, present day.
The account of Janowitz’s desolation...is genuinely affecting.
07/18/2016
Recounting her glory days as one of New York's bright young writers in the 1980s and her more recent struggles caring for her ailing mother, novelist and short story writer Janowitz slides too often into melodrama and griping in this tiresome memoir. Janowitz grew up in a toxic family environment even after her parents divorced; she lived with her mother and brother in various spots around western Massachusetts. She paints an unpleasant portrait of her pot-smoking, sex-loving psychiatrist father, who berated her no matter what she did. Achieving the fame she did with her 1986 short story collection, Slaves of New York, came at the cost of myriad rejections and even the embarrassment of having to submit work under a man's name ("Tom A. Janowitz") in an admittedly successful effort to get published in the Paris Review. Throwaway anecdotes about her time spent in London (where she met the Sex Pistols) and New York in the era of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol are overshadowed by the whiny tone she slips into when recalling, often repetitiously, the past decade or so of life in upstate New York, far removed culturally and geographically from her previous pad in Brooklyn. The most affecting moments come when Janowitz reflects on her now deceased poet mother's impact on her life and career, but these flashes of insight are lost in the mishmash of this poorly constructed work. Agent: Christopher Schelling, Selectric Artists. (Aug.)
[A] giddily wacky memoir” — Washington Post
“Janowitz’s greatest strength has always been her bluntness, and there’s certainly no lack of it in Scream.” — The Guardian
“The account of Janowitz’s desolation...is genuinely affecting.” — Harper's Magazine
“Although her life has been unique, there are universal elements, which she writes about with honesty and humor.” — Bustle
“[This time] Tama turns the criticism on herself and offers insight, humor and detail in a way that’s not afraid to touch on the strange parts of life.” — Buzzfeed
“...grim, and hilarious, Janowitz’s primal scream exposes...the highs and lows of her writing life, and the boons and traumas of fame and love.” — Booklist
“...Scream, a sharp memoir that follows her life from ‘80s excess to a calmer, though no less astutely observed, present day.” — Town & Country
“...first-rate memoir that cuts with razor-sharp insight through the truth about living life after youth.” — DuJour
“In this fantastic mid-life memoir, Tama details everything from her mother’s dementia to her daughter’s angsty teenage years.” — Brit + Co
Although her life has been unique, there are universal elements, which she writes about with honesty and humor.
[This time] Tama turns the criticism on herself and offers insight, humor and detail in a way that’s not afraid to touch on the strange parts of life.
...first-rate memoir that cuts with razor-sharp insight through the truth about living life after youth.
Janowitz’s greatest strength has always been her bluntness, and there’s certainly no lack of it in Scream.
[A] giddily wacky memoir
2016-05-25
Chronicles of fame, mishaps, and assorted grievances.In 1986, Janowitz (They Is Us, 2009, etc.) became "semi-famous," she writes, with the publication of the story collection Slaves of New York, putting her in the company of the Literary Brat Pack along with Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis. "Here's what we had in common," she writes: "the fact that our books were not supposed to become big sellers and were never expected to get any attention, but actually did." Janowitz continued to publish novels and stories, some made into films; she attended glitzy, star-filled parties and counted among her celebrity friends Joan Rivers ("warm, yet driven to achievement"), Lou Reed ("easy to talk to"), Andy Warhol, with whom she dined a few times a week, and Elizabeth Hardwick, her teacher at Barnard College. Janowitz's frank, sometimes funny, often repetitious memoir imparts tart literary gossip but focuses mostly on her hardscrabble life: living in poverty with her mother after her parents divorced and, even as a successful writer, always worried about money. Homes included a "former meat locker" in Manhattan, a claustrophobic trailer with no running water, and a crumbling house in upstate New York, which she shared with a bunch of rowdy poodles. The author recounts her unstable, philandering father, a psychiatrist addicted to marijuana who sent her hate letters each time she visited; her sullen teenage daughter; and her mother, whom she moved from one nursing home to another as her dementia worsened and whose decrepit house she spent years cleaning out. After her mother died, her vindictive brother besieged her with angry emails threatening to charge her with embezzlement from their mother's retirement funds. Fearful, irritating, and needy, the author tends to see the dark side of every experience. She glosses over posh travel assignments, for example, to detail an abortive effort to interview a belligerent hit man. A tone of whininess undermines the author's sharp perceptions.