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Tout juste débarquée de sa campagne, la jeune Antonia devient strip-teaseuse à San Francisco. Arrivée là presque par provocation, en combattante lesbienne féministe, elle devient vite accro à l’argent facile et au regard des hommes. Mais quand cette ancienne boulimique sujette aux addictions tente de reprendre le contrôle de sa vie, sa mère tombe malade. Pour payer ses soins, Antonia doit remonter sur scène, voire aller plus loin encore, quitte à risquer la prison…
De San Francisco à Los Angeles en passant par La Nouvelle-Orléans, Antonia Crane dépeint l’industrie du sexe, sa face sombre, mais aussi la solidarité qui s’y déploie. Tour à tour Stevie, Violet, Candy ou Lolita, c’est cachée derrière des pseudonymes aguicheurs qu’elle explore les tréfonds du désir humain. Et appréhende la solitude qui tenaille ses clients autant qu’elle.
Porté par un regard tendre et sans fard, ce premier roman autobiographique raconte l’histoire d’une fille prête à tout pour sauver sa mère, et d’une femme bien décidée à construire elle- même sa liberté, et à s’affranchir jusqu’à s’accepter, enfin.
De San Francisco à Los Angeles en passant par La Nouvelle-Orléans, Antonia Crane dépeint l’industrie du sexe, sa face sombre, mais aussi la solidarité qui s’y déploie. Tour à tour Stevie, Violet, Candy ou Lolita, c’est cachée derrière des pseudonymes aguicheurs qu’elle explore les tréfonds du désir humain. Et appréhende la solitude qui tenaille ses clients autant qu’elle.
Porté par un regard tendre et sans fard, ce premier roman autobiographique raconte l’histoire d’une fille prête à tout pour sauver sa mère, et d’une femme bien décidée à construire elle- même sa liberté, et à s’affranchir jusqu’à s’accepter, enfin.
296 pages, Paperback
First published February 24, 2014
22 people are currently reading
1597 people want to read
About the author
Antonia Crane
10 books84 followersAuthor, teacher, performer, cat tamer.
I love to read sad shit that twists my gut and I also love beautiful joyful stories that highlight triumph of the human spirit.
I love to read sad shit that twists my gut and I also love beautiful joyful stories that highlight triumph of the human spirit.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
February 2, 2016
This woman could really write. She makes you feel along with her. I can't say I'm enjoying the book. Her end of the sex trade is sleazy and her mother's dying but I feel it too. Disgusted and sad, like she did. I wish more authors could write like this.
_____
Another drug addict makes the most of her looks by going into sex work and later decides a post grad degree in writing is the way to go. I recently read In My Skin by Kate Holden. I thought Kate was pretty graphic with her descriptions of the sex acts she did, but she had nothing on Antonia who really calls not a spade a spade but a big bloody fucking shovel. I wonder how this will develop?
_____
Another drug addict makes the most of her looks by going into sex work and later decides a post grad degree in writing is the way to go. I recently read In My Skin by Kate Holden. I thought Kate was pretty graphic with her descriptions of the sex acts she did, but she had nothing on Antonia who really calls not a spade a spade but a big bloody fucking shovel. I wonder how this will develop?
June 16, 2019
I’m forty years old, still stripping and giving handjobs to pay my rent. I have no clue how to leave this industry and enter the work force. This is the work force. The way out is the way in is the way out.
I will never understand why sex work is not fully legal as long as all individuals involved are safe and consenting.
Spent follows Antonia Crane’s life as an addict, stripper, and sex worker. She sobers up only to become addicted to the job. During these tumultuous years she learns of her mother’s cancer and must face reality.
Spit, grit, and zero political correctness are the makings of Spent. There is nothing special about the prose, but the content kept me interested. I left this memoir hoping I never disappoint my mother.
I will never understand why sex work is not fully legal as long as all individuals involved are safe and consenting.
Spent follows Antonia Crane’s life as an addict, stripper, and sex worker. She sobers up only to become addicted to the job. During these tumultuous years she learns of her mother’s cancer and must face reality.
Spit, grit, and zero political correctness are the makings of Spent. There is nothing special about the prose, but the content kept me interested. I left this memoir hoping I never disappoint my mother.
May 14, 2014
I'm finding it hard to articulate the way Antonia Crane inspires me with this book. We are close to the same age (I'm a little older) and we have some things in common, but I think what I found most encouraging was her grit--she just keeps going and does what she has to do. She doesn't seem to feel sorry for herself and shows an always evolving self awareness. And she doesn't give up. SPENT is authentic and courageous and honest.
May 14, 2014
Antonia Crane opens her new sex-worker memoir, Spent, from Barnacle Books, with one of the least glamorous, non-erotic sex scenes I've read in recent memory.
Recruited as a sensual-massage therapist by her friend Kara, Crane finds herself in a compromising situation. The allure of easy money has brought her to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on Christmas Day for a four-hand massage. The client, a widower with a skin condition who is "covered in tiny scabs," predictably wants sex and is willing to double the fee. Are they interested?
With a quick glance from Kara, Crane bolts to the bathroom for condoms, and then they go to work: "I looked into Kara's blank blue eyes and our tongues met in circles around the latex condom. I tasted the sour plastic of new tires, party balloons, and hospital gloves."
What's remarkable about the scene isn't its lack of eroticism; it's how quickly Crane slides down sex work's slippery slope. All it takes is a glance from Kara for her to go from happy-ending masseuse to prostitute—an ugly word that comes into play only when the police get involved—and I don't think I'm giving much away by revealing that Crane eventually gets booked on pandering charges. Johns generally prefer the term "escort services," burying the word "sex" in the language of commerce that reduces the escorts to "service providers," a class of women defined by the needs of the men they serve.
Crane is having none of that. She embraces the term "sex worker," for it defines the work, and it's often hard work that she performs. When you need your car repaired, you go to a mechanic, not an automotive-services provider. For Crane, stripping, lap dancing, performing in peep shows, screwing on camera or providing sexual services of any kind is sex work. This attentiveness to language makes Spent an intoxicating read.
Crane's memoir is divided into five sections that explore the various ways a beautiful, intelligent girl from a middle-class family in Humboldt, California, can end up a professional sex worker: Bulimia and body-image issues as a young girl. Divorce and reckless drug use during her teenage years. Relationships scarred by drug addiction and sexual trauma. And years of sober stripping that lead to forays into other kinds of employment before being lured back to easy money and transactions that keep getting darker and darker.
Crane is too savvy a writer to suggest there's a causal relationship between her damaged past and reckless decisions. She owns her choices. Spent is neither an explanation nor a mask. Crane is unstintingly frank and often very funny: "She handed me her curly brown wig that smelled like it had been held captive in a bucket of Downy fabric softener since 1985."
While the setting and circumstances are often somewhere between tawdry and lurid, the writing is sharply focused: "A tranny in a wheelchair was bumming change out front while smoking a Pall Mall. 'Nice wig,' she said. I dropped a couple of quarters in her Styrofoam cup. She glared at me. 'You idiot. That's my coffee.'"
Crane doesn't deliver a blow-by-blow account of every phase of her life, sordid or otherwise. For instance, we don't learn about how she came by her elaborate tattoos and are likewise spared the quotidian details of her relationships—romantic or not. In between stripping gigs, she finishes school and gets an MFA. The relationship that frames the narrative is the one she has with her mother and her mother's bile duct cancer, which ultimately proves terminal.
The scenes immediately before her mother's demise, when "[t]he room shrunk with the heat of our bodies waiting for death," are the most harrowing. Because she's always broke, Crane has to hustle for plane fare to visit her dying mother. At the hospital, she's appalled by the poor treatment her mother's receiving and can't escape reminders of the strip club where she works. "The hospital looked shabby and unkempt, and this pissed me off to no end. Her room smelled like Pleasures: bleach and air freshener." As her mother nears the end, Crane makes a shocking decision that left me stunned.
If you're looking for cheap thrills or redemption by reconciliation, you won't find it in Spent; what you will encounter is the brave, bold voice of a writer who refuses to let the emptiness of her past get in the way of living life to the fullest.
Recruited as a sensual-massage therapist by her friend Kara, Crane finds herself in a compromising situation. The allure of easy money has brought her to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on Christmas Day for a four-hand massage. The client, a widower with a skin condition who is "covered in tiny scabs," predictably wants sex and is willing to double the fee. Are they interested?
With a quick glance from Kara, Crane bolts to the bathroom for condoms, and then they go to work: "I looked into Kara's blank blue eyes and our tongues met in circles around the latex condom. I tasted the sour plastic of new tires, party balloons, and hospital gloves."
What's remarkable about the scene isn't its lack of eroticism; it's how quickly Crane slides down sex work's slippery slope. All it takes is a glance from Kara for her to go from happy-ending masseuse to prostitute—an ugly word that comes into play only when the police get involved—and I don't think I'm giving much away by revealing that Crane eventually gets booked on pandering charges. Johns generally prefer the term "escort services," burying the word "sex" in the language of commerce that reduces the escorts to "service providers," a class of women defined by the needs of the men they serve.
Crane is having none of that. She embraces the term "sex worker," for it defines the work, and it's often hard work that she performs. When you need your car repaired, you go to a mechanic, not an automotive-services provider. For Crane, stripping, lap dancing, performing in peep shows, screwing on camera or providing sexual services of any kind is sex work. This attentiveness to language makes Spent an intoxicating read.
Crane's memoir is divided into five sections that explore the various ways a beautiful, intelligent girl from a middle-class family in Humboldt, California, can end up a professional sex worker: Bulimia and body-image issues as a young girl. Divorce and reckless drug use during her teenage years. Relationships scarred by drug addiction and sexual trauma. And years of sober stripping that lead to forays into other kinds of employment before being lured back to easy money and transactions that keep getting darker and darker.
Crane is too savvy a writer to suggest there's a causal relationship between her damaged past and reckless decisions. She owns her choices. Spent is neither an explanation nor a mask. Crane is unstintingly frank and often very funny: "She handed me her curly brown wig that smelled like it had been held captive in a bucket of Downy fabric softener since 1985."
While the setting and circumstances are often somewhere between tawdry and lurid, the writing is sharply focused: "A tranny in a wheelchair was bumming change out front while smoking a Pall Mall. 'Nice wig,' she said. I dropped a couple of quarters in her Styrofoam cup. She glared at me. 'You idiot. That's my coffee.'"
Crane doesn't deliver a blow-by-blow account of every phase of her life, sordid or otherwise. For instance, we don't learn about how she came by her elaborate tattoos and are likewise spared the quotidian details of her relationships—romantic or not. In between stripping gigs, she finishes school and gets an MFA. The relationship that frames the narrative is the one she has with her mother and her mother's bile duct cancer, which ultimately proves terminal.
The scenes immediately before her mother's demise, when "[t]he room shrunk with the heat of our bodies waiting for death," are the most harrowing. Because she's always broke, Crane has to hustle for plane fare to visit her dying mother. At the hospital, she's appalled by the poor treatment her mother's receiving and can't escape reminders of the strip club where she works. "The hospital looked shabby and unkempt, and this pissed me off to no end. Her room smelled like Pleasures: bleach and air freshener." As her mother nears the end, Crane makes a shocking decision that left me stunned.
If you're looking for cheap thrills or redemption by reconciliation, you won't find it in Spent; what you will encounter is the brave, bold voice of a writer who refuses to let the emptiness of her past get in the way of living life to the fullest.
April 30, 2014
Antonia Crane strips, lap dances, executes hand-jobs, and grieves over the death of her mom like a real pro in her debut memoir Spent – which is absolutely true if you're only looking at the veneer of what she presents. Because there's a darkness Crane sometimes tends to gloss over; as if going to a stranger's hotel room on Christmas night to pull a rubdown a la ménage à trios and along with her co-sex-worker discovers the stranger's feet and genitals are rotting off his body – but they still pull it off (pun intended) because she's short on rent. This is not the story of a high-end $3000 a night call girl that makes it out by getting married and turns into a soccer mom in Brentwood. Crane's world is the preverbal blue-collar stripper working her way through grad school fraught with self-doubt, negative body image, messed up relationships, financial woes, and then of course the underlining narrative of her mother dying of cancer. If you're looking for a happy airhead stripper memoir, well, this is not the book for you. But if you want the inside skinny on what sex-work is really like – then you should definitely read Spent.
April 12, 2014
It took a little while for this memoir to win me over. The prose was more flowery and dramatic than I generally like ("We held the night up by our arms as the hours collected lint in our pockets; black swollen pupils big as walnuts, locked in a trance. Everyone else fell away like burnt sun.") After 50 or so pages, though, I really began to fall in love with the story and the author, her bravery. I also realized that the prose is an important part of the telling of her story and it worked, adding to the narrative instead of detracting from it.
I'd definitely recommend this book. I want to be friends with Antonia Crane.
Oh! And the book is gorgeous, really beautiful.
I'd definitely recommend this book. I want to be friends with Antonia Crane.
Oh! And the book is gorgeous, really beautiful.
October 2, 2020
In a word: disappointing.
Antonia Crane's 2014 nonfiction book, "Spent: A Memoir," focuses on her many years in the sex work industry as an exotic dancer and prostitute.
Crane refuses to accept that she is a prostitute. Most of this book describes vile, degrading sexual activity in gruesome detail, only to have Crane reject the label of selling sexual activity as prostitution, and/or deny that she is selling sexual activity for money. She seems to believe that handjobs and being fingered at clubs do not constitute "sex," and that only "streetwalkers" are truly "prostitutes." The level of cognitive dissonance Crane displays throughout this book is stark.
If you want a memoir that contains emotional or psychological depth, this is not it.
But if you want to be revolted, sickened, saddened, and horrified by the real-life work of stripping/exotic dancing, and have never encountered material like this before, then this book will be much more rewarding. Crane presents her sex work like a combat vet displaying their battle scars, only Crane insists that her self-degradation is self-empowerment. "Spent" wants the reader to know, without a doubt, that "prostitution is a victimless crime," and that the sexual humiliation and sexual degradation of women is empowering.
I can tolerate a lot of graphic content, but after 189 pages of Crane performing sex acts on people she loathed, and then wrote about in the most contemptuous way, I started skimming. I managed to make it to the last page (pg 274), but it was a trial. I put this book down feeling like I'd lost a piece of my soul and a whole lot of brain cells.
Crane expresses contempt for her customers, and she is happy to steal from them. She is a woman whose heart is closed off from true intimacy, and her book was not written to explore her emotional interior at all. "Spent" is a disordered litany of Crane's extremely degrading work as a stripper and prostitute. The sentences are all written to punch the reader in the stomach, over and over. There's a mean-spirited edge in every well-crafted line. Crane is a proficient writer, hardhearted and clever. But she is certainly not wise, soulful, or insightful at all.
For readers who are pro-porn and pro-stripping, rest assured that Crane also supports those views. No matter how worthless and empty sex work is for her, she is addicted to it, and she is deeply addicted to telling herself that this work is empowering. In the very last handjob she gives in the book, she walks out of the room to change, and listens to the man sob on the massage table. The chapter just ends right there. "Spent" is extremely depressing, and extremely real. Reading Crane's descriptions of sex work is like looking at a slab of rotten meat crawling with maggots. There is nothing wholesome or ennobling here. Sex work is societal rot, and Crane describes the putrid filth of it extremely well.
But no matter how empty and pointless it all is, how hollow the work leaves her, or how violated she feels, Crane touts this work as empowering. If you are a hardcore sex work supporter who enjoys reading about vile, dehumanizing sex and promoting prostitution as a great career for women, then definitely read this memoir.
Crane displays an alarming lack of understanding about power systems and patriarchy. She also takes a cheap shot at Andrea Dworkin. Honestly, I want to one-star the book for that. It was extremely uncalled for, and only proves how ignorant Crane is.
After being arrested for prostitution, Crane is put into a jail cell with an 18-year-old girl who asks her, "Why are you a prostitute?"
From page 221:
"That's a good question," I said. If she were Andrea Dworkin, she would accuse me of being a brainwashed drone of the patriarchy, succumbing to the violence against women. But I'd never thought of myself as a prostitute. *Until now.*" [After this teenage girl called her one, she means.]
*****
^^I want to state a few things about how fucked up Crane's assessment of Dworkin and her life's work really is.
1. Dworkin was a survivor of prostitution and domestic violence. She did NOT judge other women for being prostitutes or for being survivors of violence. Not EVER. She NEVER called prostitutes or sex workers "brainwashed drones of the patriarchy." I have read numerous Dworkin books. I promise you: what Crane is claiming here is a lie. Crane doesn't know what the fuck she is talking about when she brings up Andrea Dworkin, and it really pisses me off.
2. Dworkin had more compassion and empathy for ALL people, of all genders and sexes, than Crane has ever had, or will ever have. Crane's mentality is a shining example of what bell hooks calls "a female patriarch." Dworkin was not a female patriarch. She fought for women's liberation, and she spoke truth to power. Dworkin is reviled and condemned by the patriarchy, and for good reason. Nothing is more damaging to power than telling the truth, and Dworkin was a radical truth-teller.
3. Dworkin unflinchingly examined her own soul, and the beating heart of power in all of society. It's why her work is so trenchant, and enduring. Crane wishes she were as intelligent and as thoughtful as Dworkin. Long after Crane is dead, people will still be reading Andrea Dworkin. But "Spent: A Memoir" will have no such lasting power. This book is simply one woman's nonsensical tirade that her self-destructive choices were actually true empowerment, and that Dworkin's condemnation of the patriarchy is the enemy. Sorry, but no; please try again.
4. Crane's memoir is entirely damning of sex work, despite her repeated claims otherwise. Nothing in this book portrays sex work in a positive, or even vaguely self-empowering light. Not even the two pages she devotes to the stripper union she helped create make me feel any shred of support for this industry. The sex in this book is some of the grossest material I've ever read, and since I read a LOT of nonfiction books about modern pornography, that's really saying something.
*****
Overall, I really hated this book. It's shallow. It's deeply patriarchal. It's gross.
Crane takes a cheap shot at Dworkin. Like any good patriarch should.
But in the end, this memoir portrays stripping as one of the most horrifically shitty, degrading jobs a person could ever do. This book makes working for minimum wage at Taco Bell look like being a CEO at Apple in comparison to being a stripper.
Crane thinks she is spitting in Dworkin's eye with this book. I disagree. I think this book is 274 pages of resounding proof that Andrea Dworkin was absolutely right.
I would certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the real lives of strippers. But I would also recommend you read bell hooks, Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Jackson Katz, Andrea Dworkin, Jean Killbourne, Audre Lorde, and other writers who do a better job examining the patriarchy for what it is.
I think Crane's short-form work is much better than her memoir. The long-form narrative of this book was disjointed, choppy, and sometimes confusing. Her shorter pieces are much stronger, such as this Opinion piece in "The New York Times" --
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/op...
^^"Stop Stealing from Strippers," published on August 13, 2015
As to rating this memoir --
Five stars for writing honestly about stripping. One star for shitting on Andrea Dworkin. One star for equating self-degradation with self-empowerment.
Three stars overall.
Antonia Crane's 2014 nonfiction book, "Spent: A Memoir," focuses on her many years in the sex work industry as an exotic dancer and prostitute.
Crane refuses to accept that she is a prostitute. Most of this book describes vile, degrading sexual activity in gruesome detail, only to have Crane reject the label of selling sexual activity as prostitution, and/or deny that she is selling sexual activity for money. She seems to believe that handjobs and being fingered at clubs do not constitute "sex," and that only "streetwalkers" are truly "prostitutes." The level of cognitive dissonance Crane displays throughout this book is stark.
If you want a memoir that contains emotional or psychological depth, this is not it.
But if you want to be revolted, sickened, saddened, and horrified by the real-life work of stripping/exotic dancing, and have never encountered material like this before, then this book will be much more rewarding. Crane presents her sex work like a combat vet displaying their battle scars, only Crane insists that her self-degradation is self-empowerment. "Spent" wants the reader to know, without a doubt, that "prostitution is a victimless crime," and that the sexual humiliation and sexual degradation of women is empowering.
I can tolerate a lot of graphic content, but after 189 pages of Crane performing sex acts on people she loathed, and then wrote about in the most contemptuous way, I started skimming. I managed to make it to the last page (pg 274), but it was a trial. I put this book down feeling like I'd lost a piece of my soul and a whole lot of brain cells.
Crane expresses contempt for her customers, and she is happy to steal from them. She is a woman whose heart is closed off from true intimacy, and her book was not written to explore her emotional interior at all. "Spent" is a disordered litany of Crane's extremely degrading work as a stripper and prostitute. The sentences are all written to punch the reader in the stomach, over and over. There's a mean-spirited edge in every well-crafted line. Crane is a proficient writer, hardhearted and clever. But she is certainly not wise, soulful, or insightful at all.
For readers who are pro-porn and pro-stripping, rest assured that Crane also supports those views. No matter how worthless and empty sex work is for her, she is addicted to it, and she is deeply addicted to telling herself that this work is empowering. In the very last handjob she gives in the book, she walks out of the room to change, and listens to the man sob on the massage table. The chapter just ends right there. "Spent" is extremely depressing, and extremely real. Reading Crane's descriptions of sex work is like looking at a slab of rotten meat crawling with maggots. There is nothing wholesome or ennobling here. Sex work is societal rot, and Crane describes the putrid filth of it extremely well.
But no matter how empty and pointless it all is, how hollow the work leaves her, or how violated she feels, Crane touts this work as empowering. If you are a hardcore sex work supporter who enjoys reading about vile, dehumanizing sex and promoting prostitution as a great career for women, then definitely read this memoir.
Crane displays an alarming lack of understanding about power systems and patriarchy. She also takes a cheap shot at Andrea Dworkin. Honestly, I want to one-star the book for that. It was extremely uncalled for, and only proves how ignorant Crane is.
After being arrested for prostitution, Crane is put into a jail cell with an 18-year-old girl who asks her, "Why are you a prostitute?"
From page 221:
"That's a good question," I said. If she were Andrea Dworkin, she would accuse me of being a brainwashed drone of the patriarchy, succumbing to the violence against women. But I'd never thought of myself as a prostitute. *Until now.*" [After this teenage girl called her one, she means.]
*****
^^I want to state a few things about how fucked up Crane's assessment of Dworkin and her life's work really is.
1. Dworkin was a survivor of prostitution and domestic violence. She did NOT judge other women for being prostitutes or for being survivors of violence. Not EVER. She NEVER called prostitutes or sex workers "brainwashed drones of the patriarchy." I have read numerous Dworkin books. I promise you: what Crane is claiming here is a lie. Crane doesn't know what the fuck she is talking about when she brings up Andrea Dworkin, and it really pisses me off.
2. Dworkin had more compassion and empathy for ALL people, of all genders and sexes, than Crane has ever had, or will ever have. Crane's mentality is a shining example of what bell hooks calls "a female patriarch." Dworkin was not a female patriarch. She fought for women's liberation, and she spoke truth to power. Dworkin is reviled and condemned by the patriarchy, and for good reason. Nothing is more damaging to power than telling the truth, and Dworkin was a radical truth-teller.
3. Dworkin unflinchingly examined her own soul, and the beating heart of power in all of society. It's why her work is so trenchant, and enduring. Crane wishes she were as intelligent and as thoughtful as Dworkin. Long after Crane is dead, people will still be reading Andrea Dworkin. But "Spent: A Memoir" will have no such lasting power. This book is simply one woman's nonsensical tirade that her self-destructive choices were actually true empowerment, and that Dworkin's condemnation of the patriarchy is the enemy. Sorry, but no; please try again.
4. Crane's memoir is entirely damning of sex work, despite her repeated claims otherwise. Nothing in this book portrays sex work in a positive, or even vaguely self-empowering light. Not even the two pages she devotes to the stripper union she helped create make me feel any shred of support for this industry. The sex in this book is some of the grossest material I've ever read, and since I read a LOT of nonfiction books about modern pornography, that's really saying something.
*****
Overall, I really hated this book. It's shallow. It's deeply patriarchal. It's gross.
Crane takes a cheap shot at Dworkin. Like any good patriarch should.
But in the end, this memoir portrays stripping as one of the most horrifically shitty, degrading jobs a person could ever do. This book makes working for minimum wage at Taco Bell look like being a CEO at Apple in comparison to being a stripper.
Crane thinks she is spitting in Dworkin's eye with this book. I disagree. I think this book is 274 pages of resounding proof that Andrea Dworkin was absolutely right.
I would certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the real lives of strippers. But I would also recommend you read bell hooks, Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Jackson Katz, Andrea Dworkin, Jean Killbourne, Audre Lorde, and other writers who do a better job examining the patriarchy for what it is.
I think Crane's short-form work is much better than her memoir. The long-form narrative of this book was disjointed, choppy, and sometimes confusing. Her shorter pieces are much stronger, such as this Opinion piece in "The New York Times" --
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/op...
^^"Stop Stealing from Strippers," published on August 13, 2015
As to rating this memoir --
Five stars for writing honestly about stripping. One star for shitting on Andrea Dworkin. One star for equating self-degradation with self-empowerment.
Three stars overall.
November 26, 2018
Very entertaining, interesting memoir. Dirty and gritty. Loved it.
November 10, 2014
Writing memoir as a woman these days is a dangerous profession as the general reading public is quick to criticize and/or judge women who write about their sexuality and/or their experiences as sex workers. I rank Antonia Crane right up there with Rachel Resnick, Kerry Cohen, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Chloe Caldwell as women who write memoir they way they want to write it without pandering to their audience or trying to pacify or appease the masses.
Spent isn't a happy story. It's not even redemptive, if you define redemption as a sex worker who announces at the end of the book that she married Richard Gere's character from Pretty Woman. As of the printing of the book, Antonia Crane is still working in the sex industry. She hasn't found a "Prince Charming." No one has "rescued" her. She is, however, close to rescuing herself.
Like Rose Hunter, who wrote a story collection called "Another Night at the Circus" that details her experiences as a hooker, Antonia Crane doesn't apologize for her work in the sex industry. Nor does she spend a lot of time psychoanalyzing the reasons she ended up in the industry. We understand the writer doesn't have a relationship with her father. We understand she idolizes her beautiful mother. We understand she dislikes her body, suffers from bulimia, and finds validation, like many young women, in the male gaze, in male approval, in feeling desired by men. Sex work is an addiction just like alcohol or drugs or food, and we understand that, too.
Perhaps the best line in the book is this one, when Antonia Crane speaks of her mother. "She hadn't raised me to sell my body for money, but she hadn't raised me not to sell my body for money either." The reader can interpret that any way he or she wants. It's loaded. It's complex.
Admittedly, I had to set this book a side a couple days because the story was breaking my heart. This isn't a criticism. In fact, it's testament to Antonia Crane's ability as a storyteller. Her narrative got under my skin. Antonia Crane writes without flinching. She also writes with lyrical flair. Her prose mesmerized me the same way she mesmerizes men spinning around that pole.
XO.
Spent isn't a happy story. It's not even redemptive, if you define redemption as a sex worker who announces at the end of the book that she married Richard Gere's character from Pretty Woman. As of the printing of the book, Antonia Crane is still working in the sex industry. She hasn't found a "Prince Charming." No one has "rescued" her. She is, however, close to rescuing herself.
Like Rose Hunter, who wrote a story collection called "Another Night at the Circus" that details her experiences as a hooker, Antonia Crane doesn't apologize for her work in the sex industry. Nor does she spend a lot of time psychoanalyzing the reasons she ended up in the industry. We understand the writer doesn't have a relationship with her father. We understand she idolizes her beautiful mother. We understand she dislikes her body, suffers from bulimia, and finds validation, like many young women, in the male gaze, in male approval, in feeling desired by men. Sex work is an addiction just like alcohol or drugs or food, and we understand that, too.
Perhaps the best line in the book is this one, when Antonia Crane speaks of her mother. "She hadn't raised me to sell my body for money, but she hadn't raised me not to sell my body for money either." The reader can interpret that any way he or she wants. It's loaded. It's complex.
Admittedly, I had to set this book a side a couple days because the story was breaking my heart. This isn't a criticism. In fact, it's testament to Antonia Crane's ability as a storyteller. Her narrative got under my skin. Antonia Crane writes without flinching. She also writes with lyrical flair. Her prose mesmerized me the same way she mesmerizes men spinning around that pole.
XO.
March 28, 2015
I have to admit I am a sucker for the sort of 'bad-girl memoir', probably because I figure that were I more attractive, I would quite possibly have been a stripper or sex worker at some point in time.
The great thing about this particular memoir is that, not only is it very readable, but the author does not get into the trap of so many of her partners in crime; so many people who have done sex work tend to try too hard to sound 'learned' in their memoirs, or 'so much more' than the profession they are/were in, which really just makes a lot of them come off as either full of themselves or total hypocrites--but this book does not do that.
In fact, it serves itself well as simply a memoir. The stripping is a harsh counterbalance to an even harsher part of Crane's life--the fact that her mother is dying of a very painful form of cancer, she is a former addict, and all those other cards that can line up for a pretty shitty life. But, she also admits the allure of sex work in a way that does not make it feel like a last-ditch attempt for love, as so many others wish to view it, but as a personal choice, which it is. If more people read books about sex work like this one, that basically just sees it as a yes, seedy and sometimes disgusting job that still makes money due to high demand, perhaps people would not be so quick to judge those who do sex work or to say that the only people who do it are horrible and broken or those kind of blowhard ballbusters who get off on controlling people. Sometimes people do choose those professions for themselves, for a variety of reasons; and it was refreshing to hear someone in that line of work that was not trying to use it to forward an agenda one way or another, just simply tell her story, and the story of the mother who loved her.
The great thing about this particular memoir is that, not only is it very readable, but the author does not get into the trap of so many of her partners in crime; so many people who have done sex work tend to try too hard to sound 'learned' in their memoirs, or 'so much more' than the profession they are/were in, which really just makes a lot of them come off as either full of themselves or total hypocrites--but this book does not do that.
In fact, it serves itself well as simply a memoir. The stripping is a harsh counterbalance to an even harsher part of Crane's life--the fact that her mother is dying of a very painful form of cancer, she is a former addict, and all those other cards that can line up for a pretty shitty life. But, she also admits the allure of sex work in a way that does not make it feel like a last-ditch attempt for love, as so many others wish to view it, but as a personal choice, which it is. If more people read books about sex work like this one, that basically just sees it as a yes, seedy and sometimes disgusting job that still makes money due to high demand, perhaps people would not be so quick to judge those who do sex work or to say that the only people who do it are horrible and broken or those kind of blowhard ballbusters who get off on controlling people. Sometimes people do choose those professions for themselves, for a variety of reasons; and it was refreshing to hear someone in that line of work that was not trying to use it to forward an agenda one way or another, just simply tell her story, and the story of the mother who loved her.
February 4, 2014
A powerful, important story honestly told. Antonia Crane is the real thing.
January 13, 2016
Antonia Crane opened "Spent" so strongly, it felt like I had something alive, like a beating heart in my hands. It's intense, reflecting the pace and promises of a life led in the industry. I appreciate this book because I can vouch for it. There are places she wrote about where I have been as well; her descriptions are exact, an even clearer mirror of my own memories.
The strength of her narrative is her mother, and their relationship, punctuated by embellishments of spaghetti squashes and busting tomatoes. "Spent" reaches beyond the stage; the men and their wallets, and into spaces of care-giving, family relationships/responsibilities, and into the questioning space of validity in "the straight world." What is it like, to be addicted to the ritual of sex work? Read "Spent," and learn.
I did not expect to hear about the Tenderloin and The Lusty in this book, and this was a fantastic surprise, as I am researching as I write about the people I knew back when I lived in California.
I loved this book, I couldn't put it down! I read it in the bath-tub, with my body aching, and her words made just so much sense...
Fascinating, eloquent and raw; a beautifully-designed book about world in the roseglow.
The strength of her narrative is her mother, and their relationship, punctuated by embellishments of spaghetti squashes and busting tomatoes. "Spent" reaches beyond the stage; the men and their wallets, and into spaces of care-giving, family relationships/responsibilities, and into the questioning space of validity in "the straight world." What is it like, to be addicted to the ritual of sex work? Read "Spent," and learn.
I did not expect to hear about the Tenderloin and The Lusty in this book, and this was a fantastic surprise, as I am researching as I write about the people I knew back when I lived in California.
I loved this book, I couldn't put it down! I read it in the bath-tub, with my body aching, and her words made just so much sense...
Fascinating, eloquent and raw; a beautifully-designed book about world in the roseglow.
June 28, 2015
Brutally honest and beautifully written.
Read
September 19, 2014"I'd say anything for twenty-five dollars."
October 15, 2025
Excellent livre. Je l'ai fini en 4 jours, c'était très dur de le lâcher. Pourtant, il est parfois très dur à lire.
Antonia Crane nous embarque avec elle dans les backstages du travail du sexe, et de sa vie. Le récit est cru, honnête, mais ne tombe pas dans la shock value gratuite. L'autrice raconte sa vie, c'est tout. On sent les peaux rêches de ses clients sous nos doigts, on est écœuré par les odeurs d'huile de coco et de pépin de raisin (à $15 !!), on admire les femmes qui tourbillonnent autour des barres de pole dance, on s'enfonce dans les canapés miteux des salons de danses privées. On plane avec elle, on souffre avec elle, on espère avec elle, on se bat avec elle. Antonia Crane est une excellente écrivaine, peu peuvent s'enorgueillir de faire voyager leurs lecteurs comme ça.
C'est la 1ère fois que je lis les mémoires d'une travailleuse du sexe, et je ne suis pas déçue du voyage. Je recommande !
Antonia Crane nous embarque avec elle dans les backstages du travail du sexe, et de sa vie. Le récit est cru, honnête, mais ne tombe pas dans la shock value gratuite. L'autrice raconte sa vie, c'est tout. On sent les peaux rêches de ses clients sous nos doigts, on est écœuré par les odeurs d'huile de coco et de pépin de raisin (à $15 !!), on admire les femmes qui tourbillonnent autour des barres de pole dance, on s'enfonce dans les canapés miteux des salons de danses privées. On plane avec elle, on souffre avec elle, on espère avec elle, on se bat avec elle. Antonia Crane est une excellente écrivaine, peu peuvent s'enorgueillir de faire voyager leurs lecteurs comme ça.
C'est la 1ère fois que je lis les mémoires d'une travailleuse du sexe, et je ne suis pas déçue du voyage. Je recommande !
September 29, 2020
I was hoping for more on the work Crane did to push for sex worker unions and rights. That said, this is a great, if stark and blunt, memoir of a woman who finds herself drawn into stripping and the sex trade. For me, the best part is that none of the sexual parts are written in a way that's mean to "feel sexy" so instead of wincing through porn-level descriptions of sex acts it's a vivid, realistic, unsexy portrayal of the many layers of difficulties surrounding the porn industry, stripping, and the sex worker life (from one woman's experience). Highly recommend.
September 8, 2018
Not for everyone!!! A detailed look into the world of a sex worker, and I assume there are some exaggerations in it as well. But it’s intriguing and gripping to see inside a “hidden” secret world and that’s what I liked about it.
July 19, 2018
This writing is bonkers!! Highly recommend, Antonia Crane has a voice that pierces.
March 28, 2014
(No spoilers I swear-just a great memoir)
Spent is a wildly bold, unapologetic look at the life of an author. What is an author? William Carlos Williams was a country doctor turned author. My point-there are many varied ways, alleys, country roads and or streets one can walk down to become an author. This particular way/path was a very different way, and a different life. A sometimes sad and then maybe hopeful way-to find the "roses in a field of thorns" so to speak. Then after that, there's a possible re-invention of that life. (No spoilers for you)
Then the question goes: Can this author re-invent herself without abandoning her original world? I wouldn't call this book a memoir about the sex industry/exotic dancing as that's just putting this narrator in a box. I think we do that enough with all people, let alone sex workers. I feel that it's more about recognizing the truth of the self and being who you want to be-judgement or not. Sometimes our own narrative, is the true poem that we are afraid to write down and examine.
And yes, at times these pages will be uncomfortable to read-as that's what good writing does. I felt the allure, pain, joy, empowerment, and powerlessness in there. Life isn't just black and white. And I more so felt the author's POV in many instances-which I felt was a stronger way to tell this narrative, as just being the simple 'voyeur in the room' would have been an easy way out. I also really felt, and appreciated the tough, complex relationship she has with her family and that whole idea of 'home.'
The list goes on-it's all of that which is what makes this memoir an important read. It finally asks-what makes a person a person? Can't we be many things? Even when society judges us (and we judge ourselves) so harshly that-those other possibilities can become difficult. Difficult, but not impossible.
I am giving five stars as this is pure literary (and real life) bravery. Five stars for those narrative moments that turn into lovely poetic waves-they'll move you right into the sea.
Spent is a wildly bold, unapologetic look at the life of an author. What is an author? William Carlos Williams was a country doctor turned author. My point-there are many varied ways, alleys, country roads and or streets one can walk down to become an author. This particular way/path was a very different way, and a different life. A sometimes sad and then maybe hopeful way-to find the "roses in a field of thorns" so to speak. Then after that, there's a possible re-invention of that life. (No spoilers for you)
Then the question goes: Can this author re-invent herself without abandoning her original world? I wouldn't call this book a memoir about the sex industry/exotic dancing as that's just putting this narrator in a box. I think we do that enough with all people, let alone sex workers. I feel that it's more about recognizing the truth of the self and being who you want to be-judgement or not. Sometimes our own narrative, is the true poem that we are afraid to write down and examine.
And yes, at times these pages will be uncomfortable to read-as that's what good writing does. I felt the allure, pain, joy, empowerment, and powerlessness in there. Life isn't just black and white. And I more so felt the author's POV in many instances-which I felt was a stronger way to tell this narrative, as just being the simple 'voyeur in the room' would have been an easy way out. I also really felt, and appreciated the tough, complex relationship she has with her family and that whole idea of 'home.'
The list goes on-it's all of that which is what makes this memoir an important read. It finally asks-what makes a person a person? Can't we be many things? Even when society judges us (and we judge ourselves) so harshly that-those other possibilities can become difficult. Difficult, but not impossible.
I am giving five stars as this is pure literary (and real life) bravery. Five stars for those narrative moments that turn into lovely poetic waves-they'll move you right into the sea.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2020
The perfect mix of sex, vulnerability, sadness, courage, strength, and self discovery.
July 18, 2015
I hovered between 3 and 4 but ended up settling on a 4 because it's no fault of the author that I've read way too many stripper/ sex worker memoirs in my time. In the end, this was one of the better ones, a bit of a cross between Diablo Cody and Lidia Yuknavitch. Gritty stories of sex work and stripping anchored by stories of her mother and her passing, which I found particularly heart wrenching. I think this felt like one of the most honest memoirs I've ever read although it left me wanting to know more; of her relationships, her study, her writing, her life. Hopefully there's more books to come. The only thing that I balked at was the persistent use of the word t***** instead of more appropriate terms. Given that this book was only published last year, I'd be surprised if she wasn't aware of how the usage of this term is offensive, even if she didn't intend to be.
April 26, 2014
Enjoyed this book immensely, both for its spare, poetic prose, and its no bullshit humanity. Crane refuses to tie her story up with a neat narrative bow, and instead allows her readers the dignity of their own discomfort. This is not your typical recovery/redemption memoir--no one learns a lesson in the end, and Crane has no time for self-pity. Neither, is it a porny sex memoir masquerading as literature. Instead, life is offered as is, without gloss or nostalgic Instagram filter, a montage of indelible images from Crane's years as a sex worker. A gorgeous book, at times heartbreaking, but always compelling, and impossible to put down.
June 25, 2016
Very well written memoir about a person who chooses to become a sex worker because she sees it as an avenue to move away from her dysfunctional family and to make a great deal of money. She takes you through the ups and downs of her life to this point in time. It is not normally something I would read, but it is so well written and compelling that I couldn't stop reading. I can't say enough about the author's ability to write in an engrossing way.
February 2, 2018
Despite my low expectation, this books turned out to be actually great. One of the reasons it took me this long to finally grab the copy, read and finish was because of less attention than what this publication could really deserve and all of these woes were due to its small press treatment? The author's candor was one of the very few that I ran into in these sex work memoirs and that I could agree with.
September 3, 2016
Interesting. A look into the world of sex work but not as a victim or someone who was coerced into a lifestyle they hated. Instead for this author, it was a choice made for specific reasons that met their needs and provided the income and control over their lives they wanted. A different perspective than the usual stripper/hooker/sex worker story.
July 10, 2014
I really liked Crane's tone and thought her writing was nicely...balanced. Like gross things were gross but she wasn't sensationalizing or glamorizing anything. It just seemed real (even when the stuff happening was unbelievable)! I felt respect and understanding and not pity, which was nice in reading something that could have easily turned into either Pretty Woman or Prozac Nation.
October 21, 2014
At the risk of sounding cliche, this memoir was so very raw and real. Sometimes disgusting, sometimes depraved, sometimes uplifting - Crane holds nothing back as she takes you through her history in the sex work industry. A gripping read, and one that will likely haunt me for some time.
February 10, 2014
My review of Spent in ForeWord: https://www.forewordreviews.com/revie...
June 8, 2014
A touching, vulnerable and heartbreaking memoir, but one still filled with hope. Full review coming at The Nervous Breakdown.
July 2, 2016
Absolutely one of the best memoirs I've ever read! Mesmerizing and powerful! Get it!
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