Barf Manifesto

by Dodie Bellamy

A paper written for "Intimate Recognizing Liberatory Forms of Documentary and Life Writing," curated by Kass Fleisher and presented at the Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, December 28, 2007.

Genres: Nonfiction

30 pages, Chapbook

First published January 3, 2008

About the author

Dodie Bellamy is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist and editor. Her work is frequently associated with that of Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, and Eileen Myles. She is one of the originators in the New Narrative literary movement, which attempts to use the tools of experimental fiction and critical theory and apply them to narrative storytelling.

She ist married to Kevin Killian.

Reviews

[Rodney]

Barf Manifesto makes a totally compelling case for the virtues of the personal, messy, digressive, and awkward against the chic distance always ready to sing experimental writing into the rocks. In the course of working out what it is that makes Eileen Myles’s “Everyday Barf” tick, Bellamy ranges from her mother’s death to the “snooty pockets” of the MLA to the embarrassment of clogging Myles’s toilet in a diptych of academic “talks” that mirror back on themselves and set up affinities of contrast like an Op Art study of Bridget Riley’s (who also figures in the piece.) The paradox of Bellamy’s manifesto is that in putting so much of herself in, barf and all, she gains a kind of heroic authority to undo the spell that turns writers into pure and odorless literature machines: “Sophistication is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of it.”

[Carrie]

I read the whole thing waiting to get change at Thai Stick. I am often, often forgotten about but I get more reading done than people who are noticed. Incidentally, the Tofu Huarapa Krob is much much better than the Pad Huarapa.

I've not barfed since 1995. Is that weird?

[Donna]

Great book. Dodie Bellamy is a genius.

[Crystal]

I'd lost hope of ever getting my hands on this but Ugly Duckling Presse has added quite a few more of their out of print chapbooks on their Online Chapbook Archive since I'd last checked:

https://uglyducklingpresse.org/archiv...

So with my recent battle with concentration and will this was a perfect read.

The portrayal of friendship with that image of Eileen Myles ordering Bellamy to pump and pump the plunger long after Bellamy has tired, a brief cloud that causes much embarrassment on Bellamy's part and causes her to remove Myles' name from her acknowledgements in a book she published at the time. Bellamy removing embarrassing sentences from essays to appear more like a Serious Writer and then later regretting it. The desire to cut all that is embarrassing and human as writers create their public image seems especially relevant today with many writers, especially younger writers, cultivating their 'brand'.

[Megan]

two essays/lectures on eileen myles' "everyday barf". singular, fascinating, funny, weird. favorite part: when dodie bellamy relates the time when she clogged eileen myles's toilet and eileen myles has no mercy in making dodie bellamy pump and pump with the plunger while she stands there barking orders. blech!

[Rita Mota]

The Barf is confused and in a state of flux!

[Emily Beall]

o excess of delight--i'm happy dodie bellamy keeps writing essays!