Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories

by Cookie Mueller, Olivia Laing (Introduction), Hedi El Kholti (Editor)

Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Mueller's 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times.

Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Short Stories, Essays, Queer, Biography, LGBT

430 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1990

About the author

"Cookie Mueller was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch-doctor, an art-hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl." -John Waters

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except that you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.”

A series of autobiographical pieces by a countercultural icon, actress, author, model for artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. Cookie Mueller’s writings are the legacy of a memorable woman whose short life was an attempt to exist on her own terms even when the price for living freely was an exorbitant one. Mueller may have been born in the 1940s and grown up in the repressive atmosphere of 1950s’ America but she consistently refused to conform. Her stories serve up in small, beautifully-realised fragments scenes from her experiences. These pieces are sometimes disturbing, sometimes bleakly funny, sometimes blatantly offensive but always irreverent and laced with copious amounts of drugs, sex and alcohol: a teenager in suburbia equally infatuated with an older, dissolute boy and her high-school girlfriend; a traveller in 1960s' San Francisco who narrowly escapes an encounter with Charles Manson and becoming a sacrifice for a local satanic cult; working as one of John Waters’s Dreamland actors; a stint as a go-go dancer whose biggest fan may be a serial killer.

Mueller’s tales convey a sense of what it was like to live on the edge, she survived addiction, time in a psychiatric unit, rape, and all the trappings of so-called casual, everyday misogyny. She drove her long time girlfriend and her many lovers to distraction. But her writings also showcase her dauntless spirit, her impressive ability to pick herself up, brush herself off and start all over again. It was AIDS that finally vanquished Mueller and her collection’s rounded off with a brief letter she wrote in 1989 when she knew she hadn’t long to live, it’s both a recognition of being trapped in something she compares to a war zone with her friends falling all around her, on a battlefield where there are no bombs, no bullets, just people dying in a whisper; and a final moving tribute to the lost.

[Matthew Gallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that ultimately makes you feel like society circa 2016 is horribly tedious and humorless compared to what was going on during the underground art/film/music world of the 1960s and 70s, when the line between literal insanity and art was very thin. It's a short book -- maybe an hour or so of reading -- filled with zany and often drug-fueled adventures and heartbreaking insight, like at the end when Cookie (who died of AIDS) is exchanging letters with her friend (who also died of AIDS). I would rather read this book twenty times in a row than one volume of straight-bro 'literary genius' KOK.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very first line is:
"I had two lovers and I wasn't ashamed."

According to WorldCat there are only 46 libraries in the world that have this text on shelf. It's tiny, by the way, I always forget that I can find out how tall books are from their catalog record, not that it always matters. It's my job though, to measure the height of books in centimeters. I think the ILL librarian here thinks I am an idiot cause all the ILLs I get are like, child-sized 33⅓ books and assorted forgotten short story collections. The twist is that the full text is actually printed in a compendium of Mueller, which is more available, at least as far as library holdings go (although it is also OOP and some jerks have the nerve to list it at $250 on Amazon).

But the garland is never as lustrous. This is the first book in Semiotext(e)'s "Native Agents" series. It's selective and rare and just like that I'm a first edition hound again. And you know, slightly (totally) manically trying to get my hands on all I can find from the glamorous doomed dead blonde, the junkie bombshell. You don't have to judge. Just because you started wearing a beat-to-hell punk tee with sharp heels doesn't mean you invented high-low. We've all been there.

I'm no disciple of John Waters by the way. I worship at the altar of Grrl.

There is a 500+ page Cookie Mueller encyclopedia at the VCU library. In the Reference Collection . Like, I need to find out more about TV Party, do you have a concordance where I could find that and not check it out? Is it near the Dictionary?



The real ingenuity of Cookie Mueller's writing isn't the lunacy in situ but the little chestnuts dropped into the narrative like monkeyshines, to see if we're really paying attention. Like, Amos Poe waited to make sure this actress got deported OK. Or, I didn't want to drink some Indian's pee. I accidently got shock treatment at the mental institution cause I got in the wrong line (it wasn't so "Frances Farmer" she says). I threw a 200 pound flaming stove up from the galley of a sailboat and it landed in the ocean. We ate the chicken I fucked in Pink Flamingos, it was delicious. I tied my toddler son to a tree with the goat while my friend's farmhouse burned to the ground. I left my first novel on a shelf in the library when I was 11 and never saw it again. And the best one, with the least explanation, I went to Baltimore to pack my clothes and find someone to take care of my pet monkey. That one was right after she moves to a pig farm like two days after meeting a handsome dude at a gas station.

The pet monkey is never mentioned again, although a great deal of the Germany story hinges on the fact that she couldn't bear to leave her monkey fur coat in the hotel room after Amos Poe skips on the bill, so she grabs it before climbing a retaining wall to avoid the Polizei. I mean, the image alone is worth millions more words. But brevity is the soul of enchantment, most days. Before we sequester ourselves with redundant canon, let's take a moment to reflect on the tiny books, the ones that just shimmer and shoot us into the realm of the known unknown.

[quim]

ay cookie mueller ojalá supieras lo orgullosos que vamos todos ahora con este libro en el metro

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

DEAR COOKIE,

There really aren't enough stars for you in my opinion. I'm too busy typing through tears of deep admiration and love and just damn emotions. BUT your life was crazier than any of us can imagine and yet you write about it with such pluck, humor and an almost innocence about it all.

AIDS. I am 51 and will never get over the heartbreak of losing so many. Of burying friends before I was 21. Of sitting in hospices holding the papered hands of glorious men as their brilliance swirled down into the sarcoma and the frailty.

So I say: Cookie I am sorry that you endured and succumbed to the horrors of AIDS.
But I will also say this: You shined on at the right time. You would hate it here now. I can't wait to see you in the realms and you can tell me your herbal remedies in your matter of fact way while we smoke cigarettes and laugh and laugh and laugh.

LOVE FROM EARTH,
Mary

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué libro tan LLENO DE VIDA, tengo ganas de saltar por la ventana (joyfully)

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Why does everybody think I’m so wild? I’m not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.”

If the name rings a bell, you probably remember Cookie as a star in John Waters’s early trash movies. You wouldn’t say Cookie was a great actress, but she was a hell of a writer. She has the best sense of humor. She took me away from all my problems for a little while and had me laughing out loud all the way through, which very rarely happens when I read. (Her writing is so intimate that I feel I have to call her by her first name.) Her life was like the ball in a pinball machine, bouncing from one crazy adventure to the next, and she loved it and makes it seem possible, which makes it so much sadder toward the end of the book (which is arranged chronologically) when the lives of her closest friends, and ultimately herself, are cut short by AIDS.


Cookie and Vittorio’s Wedding: The Ring, NYC, 1986.


Cookie at Vittorio’s Casket, NYC, Sept. 1989.


Cookie in Her Casket, NYC, 1989.

By Nan Goldin.

[Ivan Roberts-Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect voice. Funny, wise, sad, street. You read this and as soon as you're done you want to lend it to every person you know.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

cookie was one of a kind. what a gift, this collection. it feels like driving around with your most wise and interesting friend while they tell you about their crazy life and it also feels like an essential American text. I savored it and I’ll return to it often

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

MASTERPIECE absoluta

[Marc Martínez-Campayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cada uno de los amigos que he perdido era una persona extraordinaria, no solo para mí, sino para cientos de individuos que conocían su trabajo y su lucha. Eran el tipo de personas que elevaban la calidad de nuestras vidas, su guerra era contra la ignorancia, contra la ruina de la belleza y el abandono de la cultura. Eran personas que odiaban la mezquindad, la intolerancia, el prejuicio, la mediocridad, la fealdad y la miopía espiritual; la ceguera que hace de la vida algo hueco, insípido e inaceptable. Esas personas intentaron abrirnos los ojos.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now defer to Mueller's expertise in all matters. I should really get a copy of her collected advice columns I guess? Perfection in conversational vignettes of a life lived exceptionally.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

READING VLOG

“𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵����𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘴.”

Cookie is the kind of friend I wish I had when I was down bad. Bad bad. So far down that it looked like up to me bad.

She tells the kind of stories at the end of the bar when you’ve had one too many and everything is funny and sad and beautiful.

It’s dirty Babitz. Incredibly New York. A love letter to John Waters. Love for all her friends. Love for life. For the absurd, for the ways we move through pain and fight against the blues that captivated grim and grimy times.

A wonderful collection so easy to get through. Conversational in tone, she’s a true storyteller. When to stay and when to leave, in sentiment, in plot. She knows when to twist the knife because she has seen all the horrors adjacent.

Luck, Laughs, Lust, Love, Cookie <333

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘹𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘮 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺. 𝘜𝘯𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘤𝘬 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.”

[Joel Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that softly and sharply impacts your life

[Alfredo Rottenmeier · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Estás tan saturado de auto ficción e historietas personales que crees que nada que remotamente huela al relato de si mismo merece la pena?

Bienvenido al club, te invito porque dejo una vacante. Leer a Cookie Mueller me ha devuelto una fe perdida en la exploración de la vida.

El presente volumen es una recopilación de escritos personales, pequeñas historias en realidad, de la vida de la propia autora. No conocía a Cookie, pero por estás páginas desfilan todos los personajes que fueron algo en el underground estadounidense de los 60 y 70. Y Cookie Mueller está en absolutamente todos los fregados. Como libro de anécdotas curiosas tiene un valor incalculable, pero quedaría en un mero divertimento si no fuera por la forma tan adictiva, genial y clarividente en la que la actriz de serie B describe unas aventuras sórdidas, marcianas, fabulosas.

Y bajo ese brillo gelatinoso una melancólica prosa, una mirada del mundo lúcida y limpia entre tanto taxi de mala muerte y pico de caballo.

Cookie Mueller podría haber escrito 50 novelas con todas estas historias. Pero estuvo ocupada viviéndolas.

[Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

ayyyyy tenía muchísimas ganas de que me encantase este libro... pero no ha podido ser :( me he sentido un poco como cuando alguien te cuenta su vida sin dejarte hablar, todo el rato "y luego, y luego...". una sucesión de anécdotas que empiezan, terminan (algunas ni eso) y se quedan flotando en un limbo donde no pasa nada.

muchas drogas, mucha prostitución... que no es algo que me suela incomodar pero todo está narrado con una distancia tan fría que diluye el impacto y claro llega un punto en el que te das cuenta de que llevas páginas y páginas esperando algo que no llega.

entiendo el valor del libro como retrato de una vida y de un contexto muy concreto, incluso cierto encanto en esa despreocupación por gustar, pero como experiencia de lectura… se queda muy cerca de nada.

[Amy Biggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very solid! What a talented writer gone too soon. She had such a unique way of painting scenes and moments and weaving in her natural sense of humor — made even better by her exciting and unpredictable life.

Parts of this I enjoyed more than others — it’s her entire life’s work, so the first few parts are autobiographical, then a part that’s short stories, and then her column Ask Dr. Mueller, and a collection of her art criticism. I think my favorite parts were the autobiographical sections, but there were some outstanding short stories in the *weird but fun* genre (my fave).

Truly *the* cool girl story/essay collection. So many good nuggets.

“Was there no way other than time to heal a broken heart? Time took too much time. By then I’d be dead.”

Editor's note (me, i'm the editor): She is prone to some language that now would never be published today and some mild fatphobia. Pretty in keeping with the 1990 original publish date and didn't effect my reading experience *too* much.

[Crisgburbu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bueno, es que me ha encantado, chiflado, enloquecido, maravillado y flipado. Qué tía tan genial y qué gran compilación de textos. Un recorrido trepidante por la contracultura de los 70. Me ha fascinado asomarme, cual fisgona en el ojo de una cerradura, a las anécdotas de Mueller; sexo, drogas, desamores, viajes, muertes y nacimientos. Qué dureza la de aquellos años y qué gusto la ligereza consciente con la que lo cuenta. Lo que más me ha embelesado ha sido el humor que sostiene todo. Mueller no se tomó a sí misma demasiado en serio, porque, para seria, la vida, lo que hizo de la suya una tremendamente tierna, divertida y honesta.

[Floflyy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avec ces quelques 160 pages, Cookie Mueller rentre dans mon panthéon. Pas très loin de Patti Smith elle trouve sa place auprès des âmes libres, révoltées, poètes et sincères. Ses récits transpirent de folie et nous transportent dans cet underground de San Francisco ou New York. On croise Divine, John Waters ou Morrison, on danse, on boit, on fume et on baise. Puis on est triste, parce que c'est déjà fini.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the name Cookie Mueller resonates at all, then you must be a devotee of early John Waters, who cast Cookie in a few of his films, including the infamous 'Pink Flamingoes'. Other than his later, more commercial fare, that's actually the only one of his or her films I've seen - but I was captivated by this book's description anyway, and its astonishing 4.41 GR rating and 97% 'liked' ratings. The book is not your standard autobiography - instead, it's mainly little vignettes of harrowing and/or bizarre moments from her life, including plentiful name dropping along the lines of Janis Joplin and members of the Manson Family. Cookie was never much of an actress, but she's a born writer, if the fact she completed a 351 page novel about Clara Barton prior to turning 11 is any indication - as is the poetical title she's given this collection.

[Fostergrants · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this little book packed full of so much life. there are no apologies or deeply emotional revelations, endless blah blahing about what this or that "meant" - ugh. there is a matter of fact peek at the adventures of a free spirit living on the edges, underbellies, undergrounds, fences, drugs and pantyhose and borrowed beds. i wanted to assume that these 'memories' were going to be drug hazed and romanticized but there were quite a few social observations that revealed the brains behind the author. very enjoyable and sweetly quick read.

[sasha]

cookie was my closest friend for the past two days, chatting to me in this heat, through this heat, on a bench, splitting a beer with me, lying in bed together, and i fell in love with her so deeply. thank you.


sometimes i read a book at exactly the right time and it runs parallel to and through me. this was one of them.

[will e · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cookie…. Mate… what a thrill it was to read your stories. She really did walk so Julia Fox could run. So much energy in these pages, you could really feel Cookie LIVING. And such a brilliant writer and storyteller! The last part of the book (her column) was my least fave but I’m giving 5 stars because it was such an enjoyable read. Live fast die young Cookie god bless ya hun

[Nuria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi día más loco seguramente fuese el más aburrido de Cookie Mueller. Ha sido todo un viaje, hermoso y desgarrador 🩷

[Celine]

Cookie Mueller is one of the few people that I would genuinely describe as fearless - not because she was without fear, but for the way that she lived her life exactly as she wanted to.

This collection is divided between personal essays, fiction and clippings from her advice column. All are wonderful and all carry her voice, effortlessly. To read her writing, is to sit with a friend and split a bottle of wine, listening to them ramble. She is the coolest person you'll spend time with, and you'll never get enough of it.

It's easy to fall for Cookie, even when you're reading about her doing something truly wild. She'll take you from describing a hitch-hiking roadtrip involving a chainsaw, to a gutting reflection on the definition of happiness, and all of it is funny and vulnerable and wrenching.

There was and is and will never be anyone like her. A true woman on fire.

[Alfredo Pagoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un hecho que las personas estúpidas no saben lo estúpidas que son; solamente saben que hay gente que dice cosas que no les interesan.

Era una fantástica pésima actriz, la mejor.

[Amanda Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. The only reason it does not have 5 stars is because it is her collected writing so the first half of the book is stories about her life and the second half is pieces from her various columns talking about art, or advice or New York and I much preferred stories about her own life so I found the second half hard to get through. But some of her personal anecdotes will stay with me for a long time. I’d recommend this book to anybody but especially young women creatives.

I fell in love with Cookie and I hadn’t even heard of her before I saw this book on the ‘Staff picks’ shelf of Dog Eared Books on Valencia. Her life was too short and wild and beautiful.

[Lars Meijer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hongerig naar méér.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll probably change my whole personality now

[Pablo Ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hay vidas que son mucho más interesantes que cualquier ficción. Me ha gustado la visión del mundo de Cookie Mueller y sobre todo, me ha entretenido bastante y me ha hecho desconectar durante muchos ratos de todo. Lo recomiendo.