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Generation Loss, by Elizabeth Hand
Download Ebook Generation Loss, by Elizabeth Hand
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Cass Neary made her name in the seventies as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and the hangers-on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, earned her a brief moment of fame.
Thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out when an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Down East, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and she finds one final shot at redemption. Patricia Highsmith meets Patti Smith in this mesmerizing literary thriller.
- Sales Rank: #691983 in Books
- Published on: 2008-04-14
- Released on: 2008-04-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .77" w x 5.25" l, .61 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 300 pages
Amazon.com Review
Praise for Elizabeth Hand's previous novels:
"Inhabits a world between reason and insanity-it's a delightful waking dream."--People
"One of the most sheerly impressive, not to mention overwhelmingly beautiful books I have read in a long time."--Peter Straub
Cass Neary made her name in the 1970s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But 30 years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.
Questions for Elizabeth Hand
Jeff VanderMeer for Amazon.com: Your novel Generation Loss introduces readers to a very eccentric and sometimes selfish photographer named Cass. Are all artists inherently selfish?
Hand: Yes. You can't be an artist without being inherently self-involved, without believing that the world owes you a living, and that everything you do--anything, matter how sick or twisted or feeble or pathetic--is worthy of attention. This is the secret behind the success of stuff like American Idol and YouTube. This is the world Andy Warhol bequeathed to us.
Amazon.com: Isn't it partially that selfishness that results in great fiction? Isn't the antagonist of your novel in a way driven by selfishness?
Hand: I don't think I'd call it selfishness, to be truthful. I think creating any real art depends on an intense amount of focus¬--of filtering out the rest of the world as much as you can, to sustain and then impart your own vision or secondary world--what John Gardner called "the vivid and continuous dream." I think the antagonist of Generation Loss sees himself as being impelled by love--romantic love, carnal love, the pure love of artistic creation--not selfishness. Whereas Cass's motivation is something far darker and more sinister than love. She's seen the abyss; she lives there.
Amazon.com: Is Cass Neary a prototypical "bad girl"?
Hand: Well, she's your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily-tattooed American female photographer. So, yeah.
Amazon.com: So this is definitely not what you'd call "chick lit"?
Hand: Umm, probably not. If it were a movie, it would have a NC-17 rating. Or maybe NR. Is Lolita considered chick lit? That book had a huge influence on me, especially with this novel. I always wanted to create a narrator like Humbert Humbert, someone utterly reprehensible and unsympathetic who still manages to command a reader's attention and even an uneasy sympathy. I loved the idea of making a reader complicit with the crimes committed by a protagonist. The simple act of continuing to turn the pages makes you guilty by association.
Amazon.com: Did you have a particular artist in mind as the inspiration for the foul-smelling but visionary paintings in the novel?
Hand: No. That part I made up.
Amazon.com: C'mon. You're not allowed to just make things up. Spill the beans.
Hand: No, I really didn't have anyone in mind. There are elements of the work of photographers I admire--Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Sally Man, Joel-Peter Witkin--and of outsider artists like Henry Darger or Richard Dadd or Roky Erickson. But the whole concept of an artist creating his own emulsion paper--I thought of that, then researched it and learned that, indeed, some photographers work that way. I also consulted a photographic conservator who's an acquaintance and asked him, Is this possible? He said yes, and I took it from there.
Amazon.com: Are people in Maine as mean toward tourists as you describe?
Hand: No. Just me. Though folks who work at the general store three doors down from me really do sometimes wear a T-shirt that reads THEY CALL IT TOURIST SEASON, WHY CAN'T WE SHOOT THEM? So, okay, me and them.
Amazon.com: Have you ever driven a tourist off your property with a shovel?
Hand: Not yet. But I would. A few years ago friend said he pictured me up on the Laurentian shield, threatening outsiders with a pitchfork. That's pretty accurate.
Amazon.com: Weren't you once a tourist?
Hand: Never. I lived in DC for 13 years, and worked for a long time at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum--Tourist Central. That effectively killed any sympathy I might ever have had towards them.
Amazon.com: What's coming up for you?
Hand: Well, I'll be doing some touring and readings for this book, and I hope to record the entire novel as a podcast/audio book--I'm very excited to be performing again. I'm presently at work on a YA novel about Arthur Rimbaud called Wonderwall, to be published by Viking, and am brooding on another novel that might be something along the lines of Generation Loss, or not. I get restless and like to shift gears a lot. So we'll see.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hand (Mortal Love) explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller. Cass "Scary" Neary, a self-destructive photographer, enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame snapping shots of the punk scene's most squalid moments. Now forgotten and aging gracelessly, Cass gets a shot at rehabilitation when a friend assigns her to interview Aphrodite Kamestos, a photographer from the fringe of the '60s counterculture, whose morbid vision influenced Cass herself. On remote Paswegas Island off the coast of Maine, Cass finds a dissipated and surly Aphrodite who sees in Cass the darkest aspects of herself. Worse, Cass discovers that a remnant of a commune Aphrodite helped found has taken her bleak aesthetic to the next level in an effort to penetrate mysteries of life and death. Cass is a complex and thoroughly believable character who behaves selfishly—sometimes despicably—yet still compels reader sympathy. The novel's final chapters, in which Cass confronts a horrifying embodiment of the extremes to which her own artistic inclinations could lead, are a terror tour-de-force that testify to the power of great fiction to disturb and provoke. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Hand, mainly known for sf/fantasy stories, veers off in a new and exciting direction, drawing on but going well beyond the crime genre. Three decades ago, Cassandra Neary was an avant-garde photographer whose book, Dead Girls, was published to acclaim. But her hard-driving lifestyle, in concert with the rapid collapse of the counterculture, led to a downward spiral. Salvation appears in the form of an editor who offers her the chance to interview a reclusive photographer, Aphrodite Kamestos. But when Cass arrives at the photographer's private island, she finds that Kamestos had no idea she was coming. Rather than turn around and go home, Cass decides to use the opportunity to find out what she can about Kamestos, uncovering a few shocking secrets and one old mystery in the process. Hand combines elements of the traditional amateur-sleuth mystery with a visceral story of personal redemption, and her pulsating prose smacks us in the face with frank, fascinating discussions of sex and drugs and with staccato dialogue peppered with expletives. The utterly compelling protagonist, whose self-loathing competes with her hatred of life to see which can beat her into submission first, wins us over almost in spite of herself. Brilliantly written and completely original, Hand's novel is an achievement with a capital A. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
33 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Atmospheric
By Amazon Customer
I've been a fan of Elizabeth Hand since Waking the Moon. WtM remains my favorite of her books, followed by her short story collections Last Summer at Mars Hill and Cleopatra Brimstone, and her novel Black Light. I had a difficult time with 2004's Mortal Love, as I felt there was a rather tortured effort to make it more "literary" than its predecessors and the result was a beautifully written fever dream of a book that was just too hard to follow. So, I was curious to see what Generation Loss would be like, and in some ways, it seems to be something of a departure. I liked it, mind you, but there were some elements missing that usually surface in her books (the rich and evocative use of language, the supernatural element), and I could not quite figure out what kind of book this was meant to be. Horror story? Mystery? Fantasy? About halfway through, I had to stop and do an Internet search to see what I could find about the book, and was lucky enough to come across an interview wherein Ms Hand states that in GL, she attempts to cut down on the use of what she terms "purple" prose, and that she decided to dispense with the supernatural. Once I had this sorted out, I was able to sit back and just take the story on face value without waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Especially as the story winds its way to the end, due to the hints dropped here and there and because of the extremely spooky, Halloween-like atmosphere, I kept expecting (hoping for, actually!) some disaffected old god to step out from one of the bare and chilly trees, but you can relax: it's not going to happen, at least not in this book, although the sinister possibility does seem to be just a breath away.
So, just in case anyone else is wondering what kind of book this is going to be: it's a pretty straightforward story of a woman in one of the worst downward spirals I have ever seen, and not how she redeems herself, necessarily, but perhaps how she finds a place for herself. Generation Loss is the story of Cassandra Neary, a washed-up relic of the New York 70s punk scene. Cass is a photographer briefly famous for a series of shocking photographs, including some taken of a victim of a drug overdose found lying in the street. It's worth noting that upon discovering the body, no one, not even Cass, bothers to call the police. After all, he's already dead, what can anyone do? This scene is meant to illustrate Cass's utter disassociation from her own and other people's humanity, and does so very effectively, I might add. (I was reading this while clutching a strap on the train home, and my gasp of horror briefly alarmed my fellow strap-hangers.) I liked that Cass's problems are not merely presented as moral failings that she could correct if she wanted to; at one point, there is a brief, almost glossed-over mention of a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, although Cass certainly never seeks treatment. At any rate, over the 30 years since her incredibly brief near-glory, she works in the back room of a bookstore, has a series of affairs and one-night stands, and is drunk and/ or stoned most of the time. Her nickname is "Scary" Neary, and quite frankly, if Cass were real, I'd be scared to death of her too. Whatever glamour might have once clung to this all-too-real embodiment of the idea of "heroin chic" has long been replaced by desperation. At one point, Cass says that she is what parents are afraid what their children will become. Out of what seems to be pity, a friend sends Cass to Maine to interview an iconic photographer. Once in Maine, Cass begins to feel oddly at home as she meets the down-and-out denizens of the area. But there is a mystery afoot: young people and animals have been disappearing for quite some time. This mystery plays out resolutely and somewhat quietly in the background as Cass meets the photographer and her son and spends a few days with them, until the highly disturbing denouement. There are some themes here that deal with the nature of artistic genius, what happens when it disappears, how one copes when genius cannot be maintained, and how the loss or gain of it can be literally maddening depending on what you are willing to do for it. In some ways, there is an idea here adapted from Mortal Love, presented for the post-punk world.
I was a little disappointed that the supernatural element was omitted, as this is one of the things I enjoy most about Liz Hand's books. The language was indeed pared down, another disappointment to me, because I think she has such an incredible gift for language. But even so, the story is immensely atmospheric. Coastal Maine as portrayed here becomes a character in its own right... and also makes me understand why the last time I visited, the locals weren't nearly as pleased to see me as I was to see them.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A POPULAR FICTION WORK OF ART
By Randy Chandler
Brilliant book. As soon as I finished it, I had to start in on the next Cass Neary novel. For popular fiction, this is what I call a real work of art.
Fully realized characters, no-frills through-the-camera-lens descriptions so real that they put you inside the scenes, an organic plot and a setting that reflects the inner bleakness of protagonist Cass Neary--all these elements come together to make even the most jaded reader's heart race with excitement at discovering that a book can still be such an entertaining and rewarding experience.
GENERATION LOSS played a movie in my head. I saw the whole thing--which has to be by design because it is so in keeping with the Eye See You undercurrent theme of the story. Absolutely brilliant.
I am in awe. Thank you, Liz Hand.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Like watching a great thriller at the movies
By David V
Gritty, never put it down. Like watching a great thriller at the movies.
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