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Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction
In this darkly funny, surprising memoir, the original “Lit Girl” and author of the era-defining Slaves of New York considers her life in and outside of New York City, from the heyday of the 1980s to her life today in a tiny upstate town that proves that fact is always stranger than fiction.
With the publication of her acclaimed short story collection Slaves of New York, Tama Janowitz was crowned the Lit Girl of New York. Celebrated in rarified literary and social circles, she was hailed, alongside Mark Lindquist, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jay McInerney, as one of the original “Brat Pack” writers—a wave of young minimalist authors whose wry, urbane sensibility captured the zeitgeist of the time, propelling them to the forefront of American culture.
In Scream, her first memoir, Janowitz recalls the quirky literary world of young downtown New York in the go-go 1980s and reflects on her life today far away from the city indelible to her work. As in Slaves of New York and A Certain Age, Janowitz turns a critical eye towards life, this time her own, recounting the vagaries of fame and fortune as a writer devoted to her art. Here, too, is Tama as daughter, wife, and mother, wrestling with aging, loss, and angst, both adolescent (her daughter) and middle aged (her own) as she cares for a mother plagued by dementia, battles a brother who questions her choices, and endures the criticism of a surly teenager.
Filled with a very real, very personal cast of characters, Scream is an intimate, scorching memoir rife with the humor, insight, and experience of a writer with a surgeon’s eye for detail, and a skill for cutting straight to the strangest parts of life.
With the publication of her acclaimed short story collection Slaves of New York, Tama Janowitz was crowned the Lit Girl of New York. Celebrated in rarified literary and social circles, she was hailed, alongside Mark Lindquist, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jay McInerney, as one of the original “Brat Pack” writers—a wave of young minimalist authors whose wry, urbane sensibility captured the zeitgeist of the time, propelling them to the forefront of American culture.
In Scream, her first memoir, Janowitz recalls the quirky literary world of young downtown New York in the go-go 1980s and reflects on her life today far away from the city indelible to her work. As in Slaves of New York and A Certain Age, Janowitz turns a critical eye towards life, this time her own, recounting the vagaries of fame and fortune as a writer devoted to her art. Here, too, is Tama as daughter, wife, and mother, wrestling with aging, loss, and angst, both adolescent (her daughter) and middle aged (her own) as she cares for a mother plagued by dementia, battles a brother who questions her choices, and endures the criticism of a surly teenager.
Filled with a very real, very personal cast of characters, Scream is an intimate, scorching memoir rife with the humor, insight, and experience of a writer with a surgeon’s eye for detail, and a skill for cutting straight to the strangest parts of life.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 22, 2015
37 people are currently reading
953 people want to read
About the author
Tama Janowitz
29 books263 followersTama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. The 2005 September/October issue of Pages magazine listed her as one of the four "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney.
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United States to attend Barnard College and the Columbia University School of the Arts and started writing about life in New York City, where she had settled down.
She socialized with Andy Warhol and became well-known in New York's literary and social circles. Her 1986 collection of short stories, Slaves of New York brought her wider fame. Slaves of New York was adapted into a 1989 film directed by James Ivory and starring Bernadette Peters. Janowitz wrote the screenplay and also appeared, playing Peters' friend.
Janowitz has published seven novels, one collection of stories and one work of non-fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tim Hunt, and their adopted daughter.
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United States to attend Barnard College and the Columbia University School of the Arts and started writing about life in New York City, where she had settled down.
She socialized with Andy Warhol and became well-known in New York's literary and social circles. Her 1986 collection of short stories, Slaves of New York brought her wider fame. Slaves of New York was adapted into a 1989 film directed by James Ivory and starring Bernadette Peters. Janowitz wrote the screenplay and also appeared, playing Peters' friend.
Janowitz has published seven novels, one collection of stories and one work of non-fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tim Hunt, and their adopted daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
November 16, 2016
Giving this 5* because I really enjoyed it—though it isn't perfect, deliberately so.
Janowitz danced in Studio 54, hung out with Andy Warhol, rose to fame as a writer in the 80s and had a fling with Lawrence Durrell. But she spends more time ranting about how random the signs are in her local supermarket, talking about her dad's apparent weed addiction, how her brother's trying to sue her, the times she got fired and what it was like looking after her dementia-stricken mother.
It seems that at any age we'll still obsess over trivial stuff in the present, berate ourselves for not having picked up on the meaning of anything, think about the past in a strangely non-linear order (as Knausgard does in Min Kamp and as Ferrante does in her Neapolitan novels I believe), struggle to relate to family and friends and yearn for other lives and how things could have been.
Mary Karr says that memoirs sell best not because of the juiciness of the details but the authenticity of the voice, and that's what we have here. It's not at all structured in the way of other typical memoirs, and Janowitz doesn't talk about her life in the same way as other random people whose lives I've been interested in. Examples that come to mind are John Waters and Henry Rollins, who both have done one-man spoken word things where they start sentences with "We would go down the..." and "We would be there with...", confidently asserting that what they did in the past was part of something. You wouldn't catch Janowitz doing this. It seems that whether or not you were "there when it happened" is not a fact but also function of who you are. In fact, for someone who externally seems like she owned New York at some point, she could not hack it and shouldn't really have tried, and I'm glad she's out now. There's a hilarious moment where a TV executive asks her to come up with a TV series based on an idea they had, and when she receives the info and gets a call she says something like 'Nothing's occurring to me honestly, but thanks for thinking of me', which is kryptonite to the executive who claims he'll make sure her reputation in TV is ruined, and she still pines that opportunity today. The worlds she wanted entry to were not ones where you got to say 'No' or be honest, but she just couldn't help being herself, which again is revealed in the structure of this memoir: 'I know what you want—or maybe I don't—but after all these years, this is what I've got.'
And aren't those the kind of lessons you come to a memoir for? To those who say it was "lacking", wouldn't you trade, as Janowitz has, juicy celebrity gossip for reassurance?
Janowitz danced in Studio 54, hung out with Andy Warhol, rose to fame as a writer in the 80s and had a fling with Lawrence Durrell. But she spends more time ranting about how random the signs are in her local supermarket, talking about her dad's apparent weed addiction, how her brother's trying to sue her, the times she got fired and what it was like looking after her dementia-stricken mother.
It seems that at any age we'll still obsess over trivial stuff in the present, berate ourselves for not having picked up on the meaning of anything, think about the past in a strangely non-linear order (as Knausgard does in Min Kamp and as Ferrante does in her Neapolitan novels I believe), struggle to relate to family and friends and yearn for other lives and how things could have been.
Mary Karr says that memoirs sell best not because of the juiciness of the details but the authenticity of the voice, and that's what we have here. It's not at all structured in the way of other typical memoirs, and Janowitz doesn't talk about her life in the same way as other random people whose lives I've been interested in. Examples that come to mind are John Waters and Henry Rollins, who both have done one-man spoken word things where they start sentences with "We would go down the..." and "We would be there with...", confidently asserting that what they did in the past was part of something. You wouldn't catch Janowitz doing this. It seems that whether or not you were "there when it happened" is not a fact but also function of who you are. In fact, for someone who externally seems like she owned New York at some point, she could not hack it and shouldn't really have tried, and I'm glad she's out now. There's a hilarious moment where a TV executive asks her to come up with a TV series based on an idea they had, and when she receives the info and gets a call she says something like 'Nothing's occurring to me honestly, but thanks for thinking of me', which is kryptonite to the executive who claims he'll make sure her reputation in TV is ruined, and she still pines that opportunity today. The worlds she wanted entry to were not ones where you got to say 'No' or be honest, but she just couldn't help being herself, which again is revealed in the structure of this memoir: 'I know what you want—or maybe I don't—but after all these years, this is what I've got.'
And aren't those the kind of lessons you come to a memoir for? To those who say it was "lacking", wouldn't you trade, as Janowitz has, juicy celebrity gossip for reassurance?
September 8, 2016
A memoir by the "Brat Pack" author of Slaves of New York.
Book Review: When I saw Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction, I'd been thinking of reading the '80s "Brat Pack" writers, Jay McInerny (Bright Lights, Big City), Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho), and Tama Janowitz, so this new release seemed the perfect way to jump into that project. It wasn't. Scream is a good title for this memoir, as in those horror movies with the audience yelling "Don't go into the basement!" But of course our intrepid heroine traipses merrily down the stairs. In this memoir, Janowitz comes off as someone who makes emotional decisions, does what she wants, makes bad choices, and then is angry at the rest of the world when life doesn't go well. Maybe that's the life of an artist, but everyone else in Scream is evil, stupid, dangerous, or a burden (she's reported to Adult Protective Services for her treatment of her very supportive mother, who was a well-respected poet). She notes, "for me, other human beings are a blend of pit vipers, chimpanzees, and ants, a virtually indistinguishable mass of killer shit-kickers, sniffing their fingers and raping." Janowitz even attacks the innocent: in "Ithaca there are vegetarian academics who teach morons at the prestigious university" (where her mother taught for 30 years), and even people she doesn't know (such as friends and family members of acquaintances). No mercy: "When you hear someone talking about someone else who does the same thing you do but is more successful at it than you are, you want to squelch that other person." She acknowledges that she's one of the people "on this planet who irritate others," but doesn't change her behavior -- she's "used to people's anger." It's strange that she hates Catcher in the Rye, since she and Holden Caulfield seem to have a lot in common.
There's also an unpleasant settling of old scores: Janowitz "can't stand" her husband, so she cheats on him; her brother and sister-in-law, she gets them too; her boyfriend's girlfriend, bashes her; her teenage daughter smokes pot and doesn't want to travel to Jordan for a summer program, but Janowitz (now stuck with her daughter for the summer) just needs to "kick [her] behind and talk some sense into her" and so takes her to a psychiatrist -- poor kid. The score-settling extends from her boss at Mademoiselle ("I do not know how stupid she was") to Andy Warhol who didn't buy her gifts at flea markets (but bought her dinner), down to saying nasty things about the daughter of her building's doorman, neighbors, service workers, and flunkies. When she tries to iron but destroys a model's expensive blouse during a photo shoot, she writes a childish and nasty letter blaming everyone else. She has her mother call editors to get her stories published. When her first book fails it's the reviewer's fault, not the writer's (no subsequent books to Slaves succeeded -- her second book Slaves of New York from '86 is the only one cited on the cover of Scream). Her mother's former colleagues at the university (y'know, the ones teaching the morons?) never invited her to teach there. There's a lot of how life was so much harder back in the day. Despite the subtitle, "A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction," the book focuses mostly on the dysfunction, and the glamour mostly seems seedy (19-year old Tama visiting and then sleeping with 63-year old Lawrence Durrell; yes she bashes him for it) or disappointing. I was hoping to get some insights into the writing, how that '80s style was created, but Janowitz doesn't like writing: "Writing, to me, was a living death," because "nothing is happening." She asks, "is that really a fun way to spend your life ... ?" No insights.
In fairness, some of the time Janowitz may have been trying to be funny, but beyond a few chuckles it wasn't that comedic. So much to say, but this book seems like it was rushed out to make a quick buck. While reading I couldn't help comparing Scream to Patti Smith's two excellent memoirs. Although Janowitz doesn't mention her Brooklyn (Park Slope) penthouse, she does briefly acknowledge the hardships of working class and older people, which I appreciated. Mostly this was just bitter, sad, and disappointing. But I'll still read Slaves of New York. [2 Stars]
Book Review: When I saw Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction, I'd been thinking of reading the '80s "Brat Pack" writers, Jay McInerny (Bright Lights, Big City), Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho), and Tama Janowitz, so this new release seemed the perfect way to jump into that project. It wasn't. Scream is a good title for this memoir, as in those horror movies with the audience yelling "Don't go into the basement!" But of course our intrepid heroine traipses merrily down the stairs. In this memoir, Janowitz comes off as someone who makes emotional decisions, does what she wants, makes bad choices, and then is angry at the rest of the world when life doesn't go well. Maybe that's the life of an artist, but everyone else in Scream is evil, stupid, dangerous, or a burden (she's reported to Adult Protective Services for her treatment of her very supportive mother, who was a well-respected poet). She notes, "for me, other human beings are a blend of pit vipers, chimpanzees, and ants, a virtually indistinguishable mass of killer shit-kickers, sniffing their fingers and raping." Janowitz even attacks the innocent: in "Ithaca there are vegetarian academics who teach morons at the prestigious university" (where her mother taught for 30 years), and even people she doesn't know (such as friends and family members of acquaintances). No mercy: "When you hear someone talking about someone else who does the same thing you do but is more successful at it than you are, you want to squelch that other person." She acknowledges that she's one of the people "on this planet who irritate others," but doesn't change her behavior -- she's "used to people's anger." It's strange that she hates Catcher in the Rye, since she and Holden Caulfield seem to have a lot in common.
There's also an unpleasant settling of old scores: Janowitz "can't stand" her husband, so she cheats on him; her brother and sister-in-law, she gets them too; her boyfriend's girlfriend, bashes her; her teenage daughter smokes pot and doesn't want to travel to Jordan for a summer program, but Janowitz (now stuck with her daughter for the summer) just needs to "kick [her] behind and talk some sense into her" and so takes her to a psychiatrist -- poor kid. The score-settling extends from her boss at Mademoiselle ("I do not know how stupid she was") to Andy Warhol who didn't buy her gifts at flea markets (but bought her dinner), down to saying nasty things about the daughter of her building's doorman, neighbors, service workers, and flunkies. When she tries to iron but destroys a model's expensive blouse during a photo shoot, she writes a childish and nasty letter blaming everyone else. She has her mother call editors to get her stories published. When her first book fails it's the reviewer's fault, not the writer's (no subsequent books to Slaves succeeded -- her second book Slaves of New York from '86 is the only one cited on the cover of Scream). Her mother's former colleagues at the university (y'know, the ones teaching the morons?) never invited her to teach there. There's a lot of how life was so much harder back in the day. Despite the subtitle, "A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction," the book focuses mostly on the dysfunction, and the glamour mostly seems seedy (19-year old Tama visiting and then sleeping with 63-year old Lawrence Durrell; yes she bashes him for it) or disappointing. I was hoping to get some insights into the writing, how that '80s style was created, but Janowitz doesn't like writing: "Writing, to me, was a living death," because "nothing is happening." She asks, "is that really a fun way to spend your life ... ?" No insights.
In fairness, some of the time Janowitz may have been trying to be funny, but beyond a few chuckles it wasn't that comedic. So much to say, but this book seems like it was rushed out to make a quick buck. While reading I couldn't help comparing Scream to Patti Smith's two excellent memoirs. Although Janowitz doesn't mention her Brooklyn (Park Slope) penthouse, she does briefly acknowledge the hardships of working class and older people, which I appreciated. Mostly this was just bitter, sad, and disappointing. But I'll still read Slaves of New York. [2 Stars]
June 18, 2016
Well, that was a wild ride. Tama's story is spasmodic, strange, sad, but engrossing. And the men in her family! Geeeeez... I couldn't put it down. More later.
October 7, 2016
I could relate to the situations in Tama Janowitz's memoir. I too, was hanging out in the East Village art scene in the 80s, although not with Andy Warhol. Janowitz writes about being a parent, about taking care of her aging failing mother, and about adapting to life in Upstate New York. Her early life seems interesting but difficult, with a psychiatrist pothead father and a few years spent with her mother and brother on the fringes in Israel. Not every section is dazzling, but many are funny and self-deprecating.
February 13, 2020
This was my first experience with Tama Janowitz and it will not be my last. This, of course, was a memoir, so her fiction could potentially be a little different, but I am excited to find out. This book was funny, and at times a little sad. But, overall it was engrossing and interesting. Also, the author did an excellent job narrating the audiobook.
December 4, 2016
This is probably the best book I've read all year. Tama Janowitz is funny, honest and has lead the most interesting life. I found her totally relatable and I'm glad I read this before Christmas because I can think of at least one person I'm gifting with this book. I want to support Tama to spite her a-hole brother.
December 19, 2016
This memoir is essentially a collection of the author's bad choices and their outcomes, which made it hard to read. I'm not sure I completely trust her as a narrator, and found her personality annoying and unlikable. Still, many of the stories were riveting and occasionally funny. I understand the "Dysfunction" part of the title, but the "Glamour" part is false advertising!
November 15, 2018
I don't understand the appeal of this author - she writes like a not-very-bright adolescent. She may have had some interesting experiences and ran in an interesting social circle, but that does not make HER an interesting person - her observations are basic and rather dull and her writing style is rudimentary at best.
October 3, 2018
Slaves of New York is one of my favorite books, so when I saw Tama Janowitz's memoir on sale, I grabbed it. I was not disappointed. This memoir is unconventional, like its author. It's written as if she's having an animated conversation with you, or like a letter to a friend.
March 3, 2020
This has made me love Tama 100x more. She’s just such a wonderful, underrated, beautiful soul. Her books are so unique and funny, and her voice so special. I loved reading this memoir to get to know more about her as a person. Reading about the bits in Paris and New York were my favourite, and the parts about her mother in the later years were heartbreaking. Above all, it has made me want to write, which I think is always a good thing. I’ll always be here to support Tama, absolutely always. Can’t wait to read the remaining few books of hers that I have.
July 3, 2021
I was one of those college kids who rushed to the bookstore and bought a hardcover copy of SLAVES OF NEW YORK and loved it. I confess that I have never read her novels, maybe because they weren't about artists in New York, but now that I am middle aged, I found much to relate to in her memoir.
It's easy to love and admire someone who has made a success of their life, but I can sympathize with those who mess up. In spite of being one-time It girl, Janowitz is now broke and in danger of going to jail. She writes frankly, and often hilariously of her midlife trials and tribulations. I felt quite fond of the author by the time I finished the book, and motivated to read her novels.
I listened to this as an audiobook, and I thought that her intonation was really odd at times. I think Janowitz is a better writer than audiobook narrator, though hearing these words in her voice probably made her more relatable.
It's easy to love and admire someone who has made a success of their life, but I can sympathize with those who mess up. In spite of being one-time It girl, Janowitz is now broke and in danger of going to jail. She writes frankly, and often hilariously of her midlife trials and tribulations. I felt quite fond of the author by the time I finished the book, and motivated to read her novels.
I listened to this as an audiobook, and I thought that her intonation was really odd at times. I think Janowitz is a better writer than audiobook narrator, though hearing these words in her voice probably made her more relatable.
August 28, 2016
I laughed my way through the author's reading of this book, sometimes with the clever musings such as the notion of her great grandmother, rather than being raped and pillaged, serving gefilte fish to the invading army, and sometimes at the histrionic whining- she was so poor she had to live in a blue collar town but owned a horse, her dad wouldn't tolerate her dog, oops make that 8 dogs. Being a woman of a similar age and background, the book sparked memories of my own adventures as I set out to seek my fortune though I'm happy to say mine has been a more fruitful journey. Maybe I was luckier in the people I met and maybe it was the stable loving family I came from but poor poor Tama, repeatedly a victim of mean people treating her badly-every single person she ever met except her mother....hmmmmm, could it be she's a difficult person? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I see the family resemblance in both her gifts and her challenges.
I recommend the audio version because such a personal story is best told by the author herself. Delightfully entertaining and wonderfully written though a little too much talk about money for my taste, her timeline is choppy and the husband is mentioned so peripherally it's hard to place him in the story. PS: I'm a friend of the philandering dad and have met her brother. I find the descriptions of them hilarious.
I recommend the audio version because such a personal story is best told by the author herself. Delightfully entertaining and wonderfully written though a little too much talk about money for my taste, her timeline is choppy and the husband is mentioned so peripherally it's hard to place him in the story. PS: I'm a friend of the philandering dad and have met her brother. I find the descriptions of them hilarious.
September 26, 2016
I had never heard of Tama Janowitz or Slaves of New York (I Googled her, though, and she has crazy hair, no?)--I checked this out from the library just because the e-book was available. Nevertheless, I found it fascinating and gobbled it right up. What, your 83-year-old dad's drug dealer is coming over? He is a psychiatrist who sleeps with his patients? You have 8 poodles? I'm always interested to see how people manage their lives, and how they choose one thing over the other, and how they deal with chaotic circumstances. It was a bit spotty--it jumped back and forth in time in a sometimes confusing way--and there was some repetition/restatement. Reviews of the book weren't great, like this one from the Boston Globe, but I would definitely recommend the book:
"But where Augusten Burroughs wove his horror story with rich detail, cutting insight, and plain old craft, Janowitz unloads anecdotes like freight from a dump truck — unsorted and a little smelly ... It’s hard to know how Janowitz feels; her inner world is buried under a pile of extraneous incidents, bewildering sarcasm, and whining."
"But where Augusten Burroughs wove his horror story with rich detail, cutting insight, and plain old craft, Janowitz unloads anecdotes like freight from a dump truck — unsorted and a little smelly ... It’s hard to know how Janowitz feels; her inner world is buried under a pile of extraneous incidents, bewildering sarcasm, and whining."
September 1, 2019
I am utterly floored by this book. I somehow found a lone copy in a dollar store and as I became engrossed in it, it continued to dawn on me that Tama Janowitz is not only one of the best storytellers of our time, but also had led a life that mirrored my own in so many ways. I had to re-read passages to believe my eyes. I found the sanity I had lost at the hands of my family...just as she seemed to. Her stories about her mother could not have been closer to my life-relationship with my own mother...and her relationship with her brother is exactly what I would have been faced with if my sister had the intelligence to be as emotionally and financially manipulative. Her aunts. Her father. It was actually scary reading it. Funny, because I did not love Slaves of New York (the book most people relate her with.) Now I have to go back and read Slaves, as well as her other 9 books, because never has an author spoken to me the way she has. I can only hope to meet or make contact with Ms Janowitz to simply thank her for writing this memoir. This is now, hands down, my favorite book of all-time. Brava, Tama! You are truly one of a kind and the epitome of a survivor.
August 18, 2016
I finished this a few days ago and forgot to review it - that's a good indicator of how much it stuck with me! This is labeled as a memoir and I guess I find that confusing, as the author (who is apparently famous?) jumps all around chronologically and I found myself never quite knowing how or why she made the leaps in time that she did. One short chapter will discuss the abusive relationship she had with her father, then she talks about being in a foreign country as a child, then she talks about somewhere she lived as a divorced (?) mother. But there's little description of who her husband or daughter are, or how other relationships developed. Maybe it would appeal to the ADHD brain.....I just couldn't keep track of it all. I'm giving it three stars because she described my old neighborhood in Amherst MA very accurately, which made me laugh! That being said, is this lady really famous? Her books have been made into movies? I've honestly never heard of her.
December 5, 2016
The writing was OK if you like autobiographies heavy with hyperbole and self-serving. The subject (Tama) is not evolved, although her stated devotion to her mother is somewhat redemptive. But, jeez, all the other pathetic, criminal, grasping, horrid people in her life....the irrational and contradictory stories about money. Is she poor or not? Her past moment of fame. Her EIGHT unlicensed poodles. She is always unsuspecting, clueless and mostly pathetic.
By her own admission, she doesn't want to write about nice people and she hasn't.
I WAS drawn in by the celebrity / big city fast life, gossipy first half and had read too much not to finish, but really, with more benevolence, less self absorption and her talent, TJ could write a best seller about life in upstate NY, which could still be edgy and clever, with herself the star and not the victim.
By her own admission, she doesn't want to write about nice people and she hasn't.
I WAS drawn in by the celebrity / big city fast life, gossipy first half and had read too much not to finish, but really, with more benevolence, less self absorption and her talent, TJ could write a best seller about life in upstate NY, which could still be edgy and clever, with herself the star and not the victim.
Read
September 2, 2016"You cannot slough off your family, but you can turn your back on New York City, where people come to find their accidental families.
The woman famously photographed in a ballgown in a meat locker downtown is now living in a trailer with eight dogs and dating her local contractor. I don't know why she gave us Scream, this self-portrait of a woman postlapse, but I can't help but look."
-Kaitlin Phillips on Tama Janowitz's Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction in the Fall 2016 issue of Bookforum
To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/023_...
The woman famously photographed in a ballgown in a meat locker downtown is now living in a trailer with eight dogs and dating her local contractor. I don't know why she gave us Scream, this self-portrait of a woman postlapse, but I can't help but look."
-Kaitlin Phillips on Tama Janowitz's Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction in the Fall 2016 issue of Bookforum
To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/023_...
November 8, 2016
Goodreads Giveaway - This is memoir as collage. Janowitz bounces around in short, tight chapters recounting her childhood, adolescence, young adult, adult life. The anecdotes range from stories of her encounters with artists and celebrities to tales of woe about her family. The most vivid of these tales are the ones revolving around her family - who are a chaotic and extraordinary cast of characters. The writing is very conversational and lends well to the narratives. My only complaint was that the book was so short, I wanted more.
August 20, 2016
Wow. This was an unexpected entertaining tale though sad at times. Glamour and dysfunction indeed! A balanced mix of gossip and name dropping is the glamour, the rest is all dysfunction. Heavy on lifelong familial struggles - extreme at times - mixed in with tales of nightmarish in-home parental care and nursing homes.
August 8, 2016
Janowitz is always funny and/or compelling, even when she's gossiping, bragging, or settling scores. You just can't help but be on her side! She also pays close attention to money and class, subjects glossed over by too many residents of the NYC privilege bubble.
December 24, 2016
Splendidly entertaining. I can't stop sharing anecdotes from this book about her strange/horrific family, tales of NYC in the 80s and supermarket woes. I have actually never read her fiction but now I will definitely read Slaves of New York.
September 8, 2016
Absolutely brilliant : by the end I just wanted to give her a big hug. Hilariously funny & made me laugh out loud
October 22, 2016
A memoir of how the author survived a sadistic father, a greedy, vindictive brother, and a mother who descended into dementia. She bounced back and forth between relative affluence and poverty.
November 23, 2016
You will never complain about your family again. If they're worse than this, I'm sorry. Laugh out loud funny.
November 1, 2021
Stream of consciousness that jumps around from times and places that Tama experienced, starting from childhood and going to the present (2016, when it was published.) There are liberal stories with vivid examples about her relationships with both of her parents. There is such shocking difference between their parenting styles, habits, and interactions with their daughter, with an impression that mom is a brilliant, supportive, long-suffering saint and father is an emotionally abusive, sex-addicted schizoid.
There is some about Tama and her husband, Tim, and their daughter, Willow, but not much. There are surprisingly touching and tender recountings in connection with her romantic connection, fondly named, "the contractor."
There are a plethora of Tama's struggles with "professionals" that are anything but -- or maybe the definition of professional in the dictionary is wrong? -- including nursing home caretakers, accountants, architects, attorneys, etc. I'm glad she decided to call them out for the unethical individuals that they are. There are also stories about terrible neighbors, including one's determination to kill one of her shrubs.
I love the running gag about the supermarket aisle signs -- with photos!
There is a lot of name- and place- dropping, but Tama is more matter-of-fact about them. They are described as one would list the ingredients in a recipe. Still nice to get an insider's look on where the elites of NYC live.
Inside all of the densely packed writing, you'll find the golden nugget of a damaged, resilient, humorous, independent human being with heart who is truly a philosopher queen. Tama has heroineically (I refuse to use the heroically!) portrayed herself as vulnerable, ignorant, gullible, and struggling in the book. Tama lets us figure out how we want to regard her with all of the facts with help from between the lines. What more can an autobiographist do for her readers?
Aside from all of that, this book, besides being harrowing, is darned funny. It's a roller coaster ride with no dead space. It is my first book by Tama (thanks Stacey!) and my appetite is whetted for more.
There is some about Tama and her husband, Tim, and their daughter, Willow, but not much. There are surprisingly touching and tender recountings in connection with her romantic connection, fondly named, "the contractor."
There are a plethora of Tama's struggles with "professionals" that are anything but -- or maybe the definition of professional in the dictionary is wrong? -- including nursing home caretakers, accountants, architects, attorneys, etc. I'm glad she decided to call them out for the unethical individuals that they are. There are also stories about terrible neighbors, including one's determination to kill one of her shrubs.
I love the running gag about the supermarket aisle signs -- with photos!
There is a lot of name- and place- dropping, but Tama is more matter-of-fact about them. They are described as one would list the ingredients in a recipe. Still nice to get an insider's look on where the elites of NYC live.
Inside all of the densely packed writing, you'll find the golden nugget of a damaged, resilient, humorous, independent human being with heart who is truly a philosopher queen. Tama has heroineically (I refuse to use the heroically!) portrayed herself as vulnerable, ignorant, gullible, and struggling in the book. Tama lets us figure out how we want to regard her with all of the facts with help from between the lines. What more can an autobiographist do for her readers?
Aside from all of that, this book, besides being harrowing, is darned funny. It's a roller coaster ride with no dead space. It is my first book by Tama (thanks Stacey!) and my appetite is whetted for more.
May 28, 2020
I've been a fan of Tama Janowitz since her "Slaves of New York" collection back in the 80s, which I still own in hard cover. She is the first - and one of the only - authors I asked to autograph a book, and I love how quirky and honest her writing is. One reviewer calls "Scream" "a giddily wacky memoir" and it's very Janowitz. It starts with some scenes with her father that, if dysfunction was a competitive sport, would win her a Silver Medal, if not the Gold. Tama, her husband and daughter have a tense visit at his luxurious home in a swamp. She gives us some childhood background, largely scraping by with her mother, before launching into the New York scene where she hobnobbed awkwardly with and around other artists, writers and musicians. Despite being portrayed in various magazines (usually on the cover) as living a glamorous, cosmopolitan life, Janowitz acknowledges it "should have been fun," but rarely was. She shares the stress of caring for her mother, finding aides and facilities, battling over costs, and describes upstate New York with the vivid fascination and hilarious descriptions she once gifted to the city. A riff on how the local grocery store aisles are organized literally made me laugh out loud. This author has been to hell, to a different hell, and to yet another kind of hell, and manages to stay witty, relevant and real.
February 24, 2021
Listen to the Audiobook vs reading it bc the author reads it. It's always special when the author reads their own book, especially if it's their memoir. You can't match the dramatic effect of the author's voice by reading the book (though I'm an advocate that reading generally is more satisfying). Obviously it makes sense to have read the author's books before listening to her memoir. Tama is fun, funny and certainly part of the New York 80's zeitgeist. Tama was on David Letterman 7 times for a reason - bc she was an entertaining quirky guest. I'm lucky to have met the author twice (there's my name drop implying my self-importance) and had Tama sign her books for me. Tama takes us on the interesting, certainly colorful, sometimes wild, other times stressful and grinding as any "regular person's" life. Tama mentions the lonely (and not necessarily lucrative) life of an author (even Hemingway discussed this) and no matter what level of success a real writer has it's a solitary endeavor. You won't be bored listening to this - hence my 5 star rating.
July 22, 2019
Tama Janowitz has always been wonderful, and this is another enthralling book.
One time when I was 24, I attended a baby shower for a coworker. I had credit card debt to pay off, so I ordered the $3 oatmeal. Everyone else had a cocktail and an entree. At the end of the meal someone decided we would split the check evenly and I ended up paying $16 for my oatmeal. Anyway, the same thing happened to Janowitz only it was 1-on-1 (!) and the other person was rich. She got to burn this friend later--and many other people--in this essay collection.
I hadn't realized that some of her early novels were based on true stories. I sort of want to revisit the book about the dad, but I don't want to spend any more time with him. Janowitz explains how weird abuse he suffered as a kid helped make him the jerk he seems to be today.
One time when I was 24, I attended a baby shower for a coworker. I had credit card debt to pay off, so I ordered the $3 oatmeal. Everyone else had a cocktail and an entree. At the end of the meal someone decided we would split the check evenly and I ended up paying $16 for my oatmeal. Anyway, the same thing happened to Janowitz only it was 1-on-1 (!) and the other person was rich. She got to burn this friend later--and many other people--in this essay collection.
I hadn't realized that some of her early novels were based on true stories. I sort of want to revisit the book about the dad, but I don't want to spend any more time with him. Janowitz explains how weird abuse he suffered as a kid helped make him the jerk he seems to be today.
August 10, 2025
I like Janowitz’s writing style; always have. It’s like she is a friend; an interesting but exhausting friend you have very little in common with.
I didn’t realize that Janowitz’s life was so much like her stories in “Slaves of New York;” so much so that in some cases the stories are barely fiction. The “Glamour and Dysfunction” promised on the cover are both true, spurred by a combination of talent, luck, offbeat parenting and artistically driven decisions. But even though I can’t relate to many of her experiences and certainly not her family dynamics, her thoughts and reactions are shared in a way that puts the reader right there with her.
This is the 5th memoir I’ve read this summer and the only one where I didn’t end up liking the person a whole lot less, so a high rating with one star removed for the many nonchalant mentions of animal cruelty and distress.
I didn’t realize that Janowitz’s life was so much like her stories in “Slaves of New York;” so much so that in some cases the stories are barely fiction. The “Glamour and Dysfunction” promised on the cover are both true, spurred by a combination of talent, luck, offbeat parenting and artistically driven decisions. But even though I can’t relate to many of her experiences and certainly not her family dynamics, her thoughts and reactions are shared in a way that puts the reader right there with her.
This is the 5th memoir I’ve read this summer and the only one where I didn’t end up liking the person a whole lot less, so a high rating with one star removed for the many nonchalant mentions of animal cruelty and distress.
November 2, 2022
I remember going to see Tama Janowitz read in 1987 at the height of her literary fame. Slaves of New York was exactly the kind of book our generation was waiting for—irreverent, dirty, cynical, and shallow, and at her reading she did not disappoint with her sophisticated NY punk style and delivery. Sadly, fame seemed to go to her head, and she went on to write a couple of terrible follow-up novels that flopped. She became something of a punch line about the excessive 80’s and then she disappeared. Well, now she has come out with a memoir that explains what happened to her and what a struggle her life has been. And it’s funny, very funny. It has everything in it I loved about Slaves and nothing of her bloated and lazy post-fame work.
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