Memories That Smell Like Gasoline
Memories That Smell Like Gasoline
Memories That Smell Like Gasoline
Description
Description
Not content to be a tremendous photographer, painter, filmmaker, performance artist and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954-92) was also the author of three classic books: Close to the Knives, The Waterfront Journals and Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, now back in print from Artspace. This volume collects four tales--"Into the Drift and Sway," "Doing Time in a Disposable Body," "Spiral" and the title story--interspersed with ink drawings by the artist. "Sometimes it gets dark in here behind these eyes I feel like the physical equivalent of a scream. The highway at night in the headlights of this speeding car speeding is the only motion that lets the heart unravel and in the wind of the road the two story framed houses appear one after the other like some cinematic stage set..." From these opening sentences of the book (in "Into the Drift and Sway"), Wojnarowicz lets loose a salvo of explicit gay sexual reverie harshly lit by the New York cityscape.
About the Author
About the Author
David Wojnarowicz was an accomplished artist, writer, and activist, born September 14, 1954. He came to prominence in New York in the 1980s, part of a cohort of East Village artists including Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, and Peter Hujar. His work--from the graffiti that first brought him recognition in his teens to the photography and films produced before his AIDS-related death at the age of thirty-seven--center his experience on the margins of American society. His multi-media artworks and political advocacy were the focus of a Whitney retrospective, which named both as signs of his "radical possibility."
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Nightboat Books is an extremely important publisher, and it crowdfunded the publication of this book by artist Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992. I can't get enough of his work . . . I'm so glad that independent publishers are here to make sure Wojnarowicz's work, which feels like it could've been written yesterday, is never forgotten."
--Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times "Instead of giving in to political exhaustion, Wojnarowicz fanned his rage and channeled it into a message of--not hope, exactly, but insistence. I am here."
--Christine Smallwood, New York Times "[H]is rightful place is also among the raging and haunting iconoclastic voices, from Walt Whitman to William S. Burroughs, who explore American myths, their perpetuation, their repercussions, and their violence. Like theirs, his work deals directly with the timeless subjects of sex, spirituality, love, and loss."
--The Whitney Museum of American Art "[Wojnarowicz] took his outsider citizenship as a subject and weaponized it."
--New York Times "Raw and visceral."
--Booklist "Wojnarowicz's already impressive shadow seems to have grown longer over the past few years . . . It's moving, if maddening, that we keep uncovering new gifts from a visionary whose life was cut short by a callow administration."
--Brittany Allen, Literary Hub
--Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times "Instead of giving in to political exhaustion, Wojnarowicz fanned his rage and channeled it into a message of--not hope, exactly, but insistence. I am here."
--Christine Smallwood, New York Times "[H]is rightful place is also among the raging and haunting iconoclastic voices, from Walt Whitman to William S. Burroughs, who explore American myths, their perpetuation, their repercussions, and their violence. Like theirs, his work deals directly with the timeless subjects of sex, spirituality, love, and loss."
--The Whitney Museum of American Art "[Wojnarowicz] took his outsider citizenship as a subject and weaponized it."
--New York Times "Raw and visceral."
--Booklist "Wojnarowicz's already impressive shadow seems to have grown longer over the past few years . . . It's moving, if maddening, that we keep uncovering new gifts from a visionary whose life was cut short by a callow administration."
--Brittany Allen, Literary Hub
"Across his art and writings, Wojnarowicz touches a world he knows will break, a world he hopes to memorialize in words and images, to break and be broken with others . . [Memories] should be in every travel bag this summer--Wojnarowicz forever and ever."
--Alina Stefanescu, On the Seawall
"Raw, tender, horrific, compassionate. Everything we have left of David Wojnarowicz is to be cherished."
--Laurel Kane, White Whale Bookstore
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Nightboat Books
Pub date:
2025-07-22
Length:
96 pages
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