I Am the Beautiful Stranger

by Rosalyn Drexler

"Rosalyn Beautiful Stranger" by Arne Glimcher Excerpts from To Smithereens, Art Does (NOT!) Exist, and Vulgar Lives all by Rosalyn Drexler 23 color illus, 56 pp 8 ½ x 9 inches

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Rosalyn Drexler, a painter, playwright, and novelist, has been on the scene in several arts for many years. She is well known in Soho art galleries, infamous off-Broadway, and highly regarded as a fiction writer.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drexler’s debut novel is in the same mould as her others: sassy, quick-witted and dark-tempered comedies with fierce female protagonists. Selma Silver is the star of this candid novel: a thirteen-year-old precocious dreamer and schemer who narrates the tale in the form of a “novel-diary,” covering (I assume) her entire teenage period in 1940s NY with her foul-mouthed working-class parents. Since the character is sexually adventurous at an early age, the book no doubt shocked those with bourgeois sensibilities like Chester McBuffington III, and was marketed with heavy (and false) comparisons to Lolita. Drexler’s prose is straightforward and blunt, but oozes acerbic wit. Selma (one assumes) is a Drexler stand-in (her upbringing is Selma’s) and as readers we can imagine all sorts of fun autobiographical elements in the text, if we please. Great work, RD.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

How apt to be reading this immediately after the sections in The Second Sex dealing specifically with sexuality. Or is de Beauvoir so comprehensive her in analyses that any female coming-of-age story would seem theoretically intertwined. In any event, Drexler's novel, her first, has a bitter quintessence to it, even as it balances between satiric levity and a blunt doom-vision of reality.

I have the old hardcover 1st edition, but as those seem pretty disappeared now, this has been helpfully reissued with her other two essential novels as Three Novels.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking book.

Rosalyn Drexler is my favorite writer I’ve stumbled upon in a minute. Feels like when I first found Brautigan as a teenager. I’m just thrilled by what she can do with words.