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Lee & Elaine
Ann Rower’s forgotten turn-of-the-millennium classic that looks at the lives of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning with obsessed, louche brilliance.
Maybe it was the car, the dangerous thrill of driving around, fast. I’m from the suburbs. I love driving, especially a red car, even a rental. Nothing is really mine. Maybe that’s what I love. Is that sick? I skidded a little, taking a turn too quick, looking at the water not the road. I knew the roads weren’t that safe. There had been many famous accidents out here. I almost did a Jackson—Jackson Pollock’s drunk car tree Saturday night death on this same road. But I was struggling to eat a muffin, not slugging from a pint like he must have been, while juggling his scared girlfriend and her terrified friend.
Separating from her long-term partner Jack and beginning a passionate affair with a much younger female student, the narrator of Lee and Elaine takes time off to write. Leaving Manhattan for an off-season Springs, East Hampton rental and haunting the Green River Cemetery where artistic giants of the mid-twentieth century are buried, she becomes obsessed with the lives and friendship of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, who were both artists and the wives of famous men. They were always so peripheral, she writes. Suddenly I wanted to find out about these women. Find them, period.
First published by Serpent’s Tail’s in 2002, the novel was republished as an ebook in 2013 by Emily Books. Written with Rower’s trademark louche and brilliant, mouthy, and deceptively casual style, it remains a forgotten classic of the turn of the millennium. With piercing and hilarious straightforwardness, the narrator turns the process of unearthing art-world gossip and tearing down her own life’s substructure into a searching and original examination of sexuality and friendship, art and ambition.
Maybe it was the car, the dangerous thrill of driving around, fast. I’m from the suburbs. I love driving, especially a red car, even a rental. Nothing is really mine. Maybe that’s what I love. Is that sick? I skidded a little, taking a turn too quick, looking at the water not the road. I knew the roads weren’t that safe. There had been many famous accidents out here. I almost did a Jackson—Jackson Pollock’s drunk car tree Saturday night death on this same road. But I was struggling to eat a muffin, not slugging from a pint like he must have been, while juggling his scared girlfriend and her terrified friend.
Separating from her long-term partner Jack and beginning a passionate affair with a much younger female student, the narrator of Lee and Elaine takes time off to write. Leaving Manhattan for an off-season Springs, East Hampton rental and haunting the Green River Cemetery where artistic giants of the mid-twentieth century are buried, she becomes obsessed with the lives and friendship of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, who were both artists and the wives of famous men. They were always so peripheral, she writes. Suddenly I wanted to find out about these women. Find them, period.
First published by Serpent’s Tail’s in 2002, the novel was republished as an ebook in 2013 by Emily Books. Written with Rower’s trademark louche and brilliant, mouthy, and deceptively casual style, it remains a forgotten classic of the turn of the millennium. With piercing and hilarious straightforwardness, the narrator turns the process of unearthing art-world gossip and tearing down her own life’s substructure into a searching and original examination of sexuality and friendship, art and ambition.
282 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2002
About the author
Ann Rower
4 books12 followersA die-hard New Yorker, Ann Rower has always lived, worked, and written in and around the city. She is the author of If You're a Girl, a collection of short stories; and Armed Response and Lee & Elaine, both novels. Rower has contributed to periodicals such as BOMB, Journal of Contemporary Fiction, and High Risk 2. She has also worked for the innovative Wooster theatre group and other performance groups.
Rower taught writing for decades at the School of Visual Arts. For her work, she received several awards and honors. Rower got a Jules and Avery Hopwood Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Gary Carey Award from the Humanities and Sciences Department at the School of Visual Arts.
Rower taught writing for decades at the School of Visual Arts. For her work, she received several awards and honors. Rower got a Jules and Avery Hopwood Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Gary Carey Award from the Humanities and Sciences Department at the School of Visual Arts.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 22, 2026
ciertamente no es muy espectacular, no subrayé ni una línea, pero me tuvo clavadísima, sentí como si me contaran un chisme muy bueno, creo que porque todas las personas y lugares que salen me interesan. que fuerte descubrir tu sexualidad tan grande, pero vivan las lesbianas!
July 26, 2026
Would give 3.5. It’s definitely a different type of narrative, kind of like the fictional character in the books story towards finishing this fiction book I’m reading. Enjoyed the glimpse at the end into the imaginary friendship between Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner.
June 30, 2026
a solid 2.5 for me. i wanted to like this more than i did. pretty plotless fiction with a difficult narrator, which I’m usually into, but was ultimately disappointing
June 26, 2026
I've struggled with eating this book. I've changed a couple of times, which I think speaks volumes.
Predecessor of the new generation of autofictional writers, Ann Rower was writing this in the early 00s. The style might or might not be my favourite, but it is undeniable that Rower is exploring themes that are crucial not only for queer literature, feminist literature and life writing, but also for the whole brand of experimental writing of the self and the studies around the intersections between auto/biographical and auto/theoretical. In this, micro histories, oral histories, memoir, biography, fabulation, fiction and non fiction blend and refuse to be domesticated and pigeonholed. Surely not a coincidence that it was published by Semiotexte, Chris Kraus' and Silvère Lotringer's publishing endeavour, that so brilliantly and acutely embraced the ironic and non ironic hybridisation of all things literary.
However, I don't think it ever really strikes the balance between the auto and the biographical. On the one hand, it's really clever in unapologetically showing the process of writing in a non conventional anti intellectualism that doesn't impoverish the narrative, on the contrary it makes it more effective. On the other hand, it never centres on the writing itself, and the book on Lee & Elaine appears much more as an afterthought, an escamotage than the core of the work. Which is a pity, because there's so much that could have been written and done that it feels quite uneven and uncooked for a novel that ambitious.
"Lee & Elaine" undoubtedly remains a poignant predecessor to a lot of contemporary autofictional works, and it does truly shine in several passages. But in hindsight I think that - although reading it in 2002 would have probably rocked my world - reading it now left me quite unimpressed.
Predecessor of the new generation of autofictional writers, Ann Rower was writing this in the early 00s. The style might or might not be my favourite, but it is undeniable that Rower is exploring themes that are crucial not only for queer literature, feminist literature and life writing, but also for the whole brand of experimental writing of the self and the studies around the intersections between auto/biographical and auto/theoretical. In this, micro histories, oral histories, memoir, biography, fabulation, fiction and non fiction blend and refuse to be domesticated and pigeonholed. Surely not a coincidence that it was published by Semiotexte, Chris Kraus' and Silvère Lotringer's publishing endeavour, that so brilliantly and acutely embraced the ironic and non ironic hybridisation of all things literary.
However, I don't think it ever really strikes the balance between the auto and the biographical. On the one hand, it's really clever in unapologetically showing the process of writing in a non conventional anti intellectualism that doesn't impoverish the narrative, on the contrary it makes it more effective. On the other hand, it never centres on the writing itself, and the book on Lee & Elaine appears much more as an afterthought, an escamotage than the core of the work. Which is a pity, because there's so much that could have been written and done that it feels quite uneven and uncooked for a novel that ambitious.
"Lee & Elaine" undoubtedly remains a poignant predecessor to a lot of contemporary autofictional works, and it does truly shine in several passages. But in hindsight I think that - although reading it in 2002 would have probably rocked my world - reading it now left me quite unimpressed.
May 13, 2026
Picked this up on a whim on a visit to our favorite bookstore in Knoxville (shoutout to Union Ave for supplying all the hidden gems). Would have given the first half of this book 2-3 stars, but the second half really swept me off my feet.
To put it plainly, this book is a midlife exploration of sexuality facilitated by primary source research into the lives of two dead artists to whom the narrator has developed a parasocial relationship. A little exposition-heavy, but I really enjoyed it on the whole.
To put it plainly, this book is a midlife exploration of sexuality facilitated by primary source research into the lives of two dead artists to whom the narrator has developed a parasocial relationship. A little exposition-heavy, but I really enjoyed it on the whole.
April 27, 2026
i really liked this! it’s definitely not for everyone, but i love being stuck in ann’s head. also props for getting me into a piece of art history i knew nothing about.
July 31, 2026
Well stuff happened in this book, ghosts didn’t appear till the end.
August 22, 2026
THIS IS WHY I DO IT!!!!!!
May 22, 2026
enjoyable
June 16, 2015
Enjoyable!
was this book an autobiography somehow? (i guess not but however...)
it read like a romance of Jean-Luc Godard, but in a story frame of La Notte by Antonioni
was this book an autobiography somehow? (i guess not but however...)
it read like a romance of Jean-Luc Godard, but in a story frame of La Notte by Antonioni
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July 23, 2017It is kind of un-star-able.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews