What do you think?
Rate this book
After Claude
Harriet is leaving her boyfriend Claude, “the French rat.” That at least is how Harriet sees things, even if it’s Claude who has just asked Harriet to leave his Greenwich Village apartment. Well, one way or another she has no intention of leaving. She will stay and exact revenge—or would have if Claude had not had her unceremoniously evicted. Once moved out, Harriet is not about to move on. Girlfriends patronize and advise, but Harriet only takes offense, and it’s easy to understand why. Because mad and maddening as she may be, Harriet sees past the polite platitudes that everyone else is content to spout and live by. She is an unblinkered, unbuttoned, unrelenting, and above all bitingly funny prophetess of all that is wrong with women’s lives. In a surprise twist, she finds a savior at New York's Chelsea Hotel.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
63 people are currently reading
4117 people want to read
About the author
Iris Owens
9 books13 followersIris Owens (née Klein) (1929–2008) was born and raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of a professional gambler. She attended Brooklyn College, was briefly married, and then moved to Paris, where she fell in with Alexander Trocchi, the editor of the legendary avant-garde journal Merlin and a notorious heroin addict. Owens supported herself by producing pornography, or DBs as she referred to Dirty Books, (under the name of Harriet Daimler) for Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press. She also married an Iranian prince. Resettled in NYC, Owens wrote After Claude (1973). A second novel, Hope Diamond Refuses, loosely based on her second marriage, was published in 1984.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews
May 29, 2011
I’d not heard of this book, first published in 1973, or writer but found it browsing in a bookstore’s section reserved for New York Book Review books and was seduced by the blurbs and publisher. For example, from Leonard Michaels, “I haven’t read a more wittily offensive serious novel…” Truth be told it doesn’t disappoint. Harriet, the anti-hero of this acerbic comedy of mis-manners is a train wreck of a character and our very unreliable narrator. But her unreliability as a narrator takes a back seat to her unreliability as a manager of her own life. She’s combative but willing to at least theoretically play second-fiddle to the man of her dreams, even when they tend to be nightmares. She believes herself to be easy-going, open-minded, generous, an ideal friend and lover. In reality, she is a difficult, judgmental, parasitic without resources or sensitivity to how demanding she is on the patience and resources of others. She is intelligent and has a sharp tongue with an observant eye for weakness and a gifted sophist’s ability to argue any point, no matter how unanchored to any normal understanding of appropriateness.
The book begins, “I left Claude, the French rat.” It tells the story in flashbacks that make clear that she “left” Claude in the same sense that someone who gets eighty-sixed from a bar through the sustained efforts of the bartender, the bouncer, and the police has “left” the bar. After being put up on her ex’s dime at the Chelsea Hotel, she falls for a guru who works as a lieutenant for a cult that preys on vulnerable young women. The beauty of Harriet is that she is both vulnerable and invulnerable. She is, as I said, only theoretically submissive and, despite her sense of what she’s doing, she is doing anything but that. She is demanding, contrary, and wickedly protective of her blinkered world view, erupting in biting sarcasm, righteous wrath, and self-destructive combat, a one person M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) system. After Claude is quite funny and zealously uncorrect by any side or circle’s standards, orthodox or reformed, revolutionary or reactionary, libertarian or proscriptive, left or right, feminist or sexist. Phyllis Schafly and Gloria Steinem are guaranteed to be offended. Timothy Leary and Reverend Falwell awed and shocked respectively. Hugh Hefner and Gene Simmons intimidated beyond the power of Viagra to help the one or make-up the other. Harriet will make you laugh, wince, cringe, look away, stare, blink, look back and laugh again. She is the female precursor of Larry David’s character in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and equally unabashed, subjectively sure of herself, and perpetually wrong in her choices, thinking, and responses. Even when you win with them, you lose. But for the reader it’s all win.
The book begins, “I left Claude, the French rat.” It tells the story in flashbacks that make clear that she “left” Claude in the same sense that someone who gets eighty-sixed from a bar through the sustained efforts of the bartender, the bouncer, and the police has “left” the bar. After being put up on her ex’s dime at the Chelsea Hotel, she falls for a guru who works as a lieutenant for a cult that preys on vulnerable young women. The beauty of Harriet is that she is both vulnerable and invulnerable. She is, as I said, only theoretically submissive and, despite her sense of what she’s doing, she is doing anything but that. She is demanding, contrary, and wickedly protective of her blinkered world view, erupting in biting sarcasm, righteous wrath, and self-destructive combat, a one person M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) system. After Claude is quite funny and zealously uncorrect by any side or circle’s standards, orthodox or reformed, revolutionary or reactionary, libertarian or proscriptive, left or right, feminist or sexist. Phyllis Schafly and Gloria Steinem are guaranteed to be offended. Timothy Leary and Reverend Falwell awed and shocked respectively. Hugh Hefner and Gene Simmons intimidated beyond the power of Viagra to help the one or make-up the other. Harriet will make you laugh, wince, cringe, look away, stare, blink, look back and laugh again. She is the female precursor of Larry David’s character in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and equally unabashed, subjectively sure of herself, and perpetually wrong in her choices, thinking, and responses. Even when you win with them, you lose. But for the reader it’s all win.
March 23, 2011
This was an enjoyable read, you have to love Harriet, at least if you're a masochistic feminist like myself. At first she seems like a smart strong woman, but to my disappointment she isn't one. Anxious to read another by Owens. Some lines I liked are; "Claude pretended not to hear me, an act of male intelligence that never fails to impress me", there's nothing that warms a girl's heart like a smile on the face of a sadist", and "I have.. learned never to be amazed at what men will resort to when cornered by a woman's intelligence".
April 2, 2015
AFTER CLAUDE by Iris Owens may be the funniest book I’ve ever read. I’m not one for cliches, but she makes me stupid with praise: I didn’t want to read the book too quickly because I didn’t want it to end. Owens only wrote one other novel, out of print, and prior to AFTER CLAUDE had published a handful of erotic novels under a pseudonym (also the name of AFTER CLAUDE’s hilariously caustic narrator). I’m searching them all out for, sadly, Owens died a number of years ago so I can’t stalk outside her Manhattan apartment and become her best friend. I need her company. Every other line of this woman-scorned narrative made me laugh out loud. The character Harriet is fiercely intelligent and scathingly judgmental, her Achilles’ Heel being an obsessive neediness for a man, whether that be the “French rat” of the title or a hippie guru she meets at the Chelsea Hotel, for like a Greek hero she must suffer a tragic flaw. But she’s perfect to me. Maybe that’s because of the time and place of the novel, early 1970s New York City, which were formative hometown years for me. Perhaps it’s just that I love a woman with a rapier wit. What can I say, Iris/Harriet is my type. But read the book, I won’t be jealous. Her talent is big enough for all of us.
Read
September 15, 2024DESPUÉS DE CLAUDE es un libro que solo podría haber escrito una neoyorkina con una vida turbulenta y fascinante, como es el caso de Iris Owens. Lo que cuenta es, simplemente, una ruptura... ¡pero qué ruptura!
Esta novelita breve, lúcida y graciosísima nos presenta a una protagonista ególatra, desquiciada e insoportable que cree que todo el mundo es horrible menos ella y que, por supuesto, actúa en consecuencia. Su novio se harta de su compañía y le da un ultimatum, y ese es el detonante para que se introduzca en una espiral autodestructiva que sirve para que el público lector conozca su pasado, sus amistades y su particular filosofía de vida.
A pesar de que el final no está al nivel del resto del libro, Iris Owens demuestra en esta obra ser una escritora mordaz y una mujer inteligentísima. Contra todo pronóstico, su humor cáustico y plagado de referencias culturales y de la época ha envejecido muy bien; lo intolerable de muchos de sus chistes y comentarios resultan refrescantes en una época en la que el humor se entiende de otra manera completamente diferente. Además, la valentía de hacer protagonista a una mujer insoportable (pero nada caricaturesca sino muy real) resulta bastante transgresora cuando se lee desde una época que tiende a los héroes incuestionables y sin matices.
En definitiva, me ha parecido una lectura gamberra y entretenidísima que me ha servido para descubrir a una autora fascinante y para adentrarme en un entorno único. Y buena parte de este mérito recae en la labor de su traductora al castellano, Regina López Muñoz, quien consigue plasmar a la perfección el tono ligero, lo afilado de los chistes y el ritmo endiablado de la autora.
Esta novelita breve, lúcida y graciosísima nos presenta a una protagonista ególatra, desquiciada e insoportable que cree que todo el mundo es horrible menos ella y que, por supuesto, actúa en consecuencia. Su novio se harta de su compañía y le da un ultimatum, y ese es el detonante para que se introduzca en una espiral autodestructiva que sirve para que el público lector conozca su pasado, sus amistades y su particular filosofía de vida.
A pesar de que el final no está al nivel del resto del libro, Iris Owens demuestra en esta obra ser una escritora mordaz y una mujer inteligentísima. Contra todo pronóstico, su humor cáustico y plagado de referencias culturales y de la época ha envejecido muy bien; lo intolerable de muchos de sus chistes y comentarios resultan refrescantes en una época en la que el humor se entiende de otra manera completamente diferente. Además, la valentía de hacer protagonista a una mujer insoportable (pero nada caricaturesca sino muy real) resulta bastante transgresora cuando se lee desde una época que tiende a los héroes incuestionables y sin matices.
En definitiva, me ha parecido una lectura gamberra y entretenidísima que me ha servido para descubrir a una autora fascinante y para adentrarme en un entorno único. Y buena parte de este mérito recae en la labor de su traductora al castellano, Regina López Muñoz, quien consigue plasmar a la perfección el tono ligero, lo afilado de los chistes y el ritmo endiablado de la autora.
February 20, 2025
The Owens wit explodes like a spray of riotous bullets.
But the anti-heroine becomes overbearing. POV character
Harriet is smart, funny, crude & rude and, often, simply
obnoxious. One cannot separate Harriet - Iris. (The inner monologue should be dramatised).
But the anti-heroine becomes overbearing. POV character
Harriet is smart, funny, crude & rude and, often, simply
obnoxious. One cannot separate Harriet - Iris. (The inner monologue should be dramatised).
June 10, 2025
Directa al no muy nutrido pero sí apreciado grupo de novelas que me han arrancado más de una carcajada, junto a:
El General Ople y Lady Camper, de GEORGE MEREDITH
Ellos y yo, de JEROME K. JEROME
Mi familia y otros animales (y sus continuaciones), de GERALD DURRELL
La lista sería mucho más amplia si estuviésemos hablando de sonrisas y si, además de novelas, incluyese ensayos, obras de teatro, cómics y cuentos.
No está La conjura de los necios porque, aunque me gustó mucho la primera vez que la leí de jovencito, la intenté releer hace poco y se me cayó de las manos: todas las escenas de la trama de coincidencias y confusiones en las que no aparece Ignatius me parecieron un peaje demasiado caro para disfrutar de sus momentos estelares (más escasos de lo que recordaba).
No está Sin noticias de Gurb porque no me hizo la más mínima gracia.
El General Ople y Lady Camper, de GEORGE MEREDITH
Ellos y yo, de JEROME K. JEROME
Mi familia y otros animales (y sus continuaciones), de GERALD DURRELL
La lista sería mucho más amplia si estuviésemos hablando de sonrisas y si, además de novelas, incluyese ensayos, obras de teatro, cómics y cuentos.
No está La conjura de los necios porque, aunque me gustó mucho la primera vez que la leí de jovencito, la intenté releer hace poco y se me cayó de las manos: todas las escenas de la trama de coincidencias y confusiones en las que no aparece Ignatius me parecieron un peaje demasiado caro para disfrutar de sus momentos estelares (más escasos de lo que recordaba).
No está Sin noticias de Gurb porque no me hizo la más mínima gracia.
January 25, 2013
this book was incredible. i tend to have a problem with first person stories, as the voice they're told in stays the same throughout and hence the change never really feels complete; they always make me feel really claustrophobic and irritated by what generally amounts to a glamorization of idiosyncrasy. not that i don't tend to enjoy them in the beginning; in the beginning first person is always fun. it just tends to wear on me after a while. but this book, holy shit, it just plows on through and out the other side of that first person narrator and into some whole other universe! never read anything like it in my life. still don't really understand how she did it.
November 3, 2018
Hysterically funny and smart. What a hilarious bitch of a heroine! Like a female Ignatius Reilly rallying against the world around her. Captures the rhetoric and mind games of con men perfectly.
May 7, 2024
Thoroughly entertaining, albeit a bit maddening. Never have the words: bitch be crazy ever fit so well.
“ There are times when I’d rather converse with a crazed mugger than reason with myself. ”
“A gun could do the job, but that was a man’s way.”
Women gotta stand on our own two, get up sisters. Lest we end up unhinged like Harriet.
The NY Times led me to this book about a week ago when they sent me this article via email with the recommendation: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/bo...
“ There are times when I’d rather converse with a crazed mugger than reason with myself. ”
“A gun could do the job, but that was a man’s way.”
Women gotta stand on our own two, get up sisters. Lest we end up unhinged like Harriet.
The NY Times led me to this book about a week ago when they sent me this article via email with the recommendation: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/bo...
October 13, 2025
master class in narrative voice
Read
November 26, 2017Half a year later and this one still stings when I look at it. The absolutely relentlessly nasty recollections of a shallow, meaningless Manhattanite and the endless injuries she does herself and others, presented with extraordinary bitterness. I’ve been thinking of this one a lot lately, for one reason or another. Suffice to say it’s sharply written and devastating, but also I suspect too mean for most readers. I don’t think its misogynistic, exactly, but if a man had written something which so savagely plumbs the depths of a woman’s psyche they would have a hard time at cocktail parties, let’s just put it that way. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s enormously clever, however. Keep, and I’ll see what else I can dig up by Ms. Owens likewise.
July 22, 2025
A novel of two halves. I adored Harriet's caustic wit--the first half is terrific read aloud--even if it began to wear a bit. The last third, set in the Chelsea hotel, was rather odd. Truly down and out, Harriet falls for a Manson-esque sex guru who brings her to orgasm in a disquieting and pornographic scene. It was as if Iris ran out of ideas of what to do with Harriet and so put in some of the naughty bits she wrote for Maurice Girodias.
February 14, 2017
i need to think about this one
June 29, 2019
Yuck. First half was good. Second part... did someone slip something into my drink?
April 16, 2013
I hadn't heard of Iris Owens until the night Mike Young gave me this book, and a few pages in I knew she was a legend. Here is the oddness of Purdy and Jane Bowles, and the dreamy inner life of Lore Segal's Lucinella, but this book stands on its own legs, led by the sassiest narrator I've ever met. A bit much at times, and offensive to many, this gem has the most exciting sentences I've read since Gaetan Soucy's The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches. The descriptions in this book occasionally left me so floored that I had to put the book down and go to sleep.
September 16, 2024
Nota: 4 sobre 5
Premisa:´
Harriet está en una relación con Claude, aunque es más convulsa de lo que ella se imagina. De hecho, está ya terminada aunque no es demasiado consciente. Porque vive al margen de las cosas, es capaz de tergiversar las circunstancias y percibirlas en su beneficio a pesar de que, en realidad, supongan su declive absoluto. Pero todo esto no va a quedarse así, y conocer a alguien va a hacer que todo pegue un vuelco.
Opinión:
Sabía que me iba a reír con esta historia. Tras leer la sinopsis estaba preparada para un humor irónico y mordaz. Pero es cierto que me he encontrado una novela con más posibles lecturas de las que me esperaba, un texto que invita a la reflexión en relación a la forma de relacionarnos (sobre todo en el ámbito amoroso) y también una crítica a cierto tipo de patrones conductuales que están muy presentes en mucha de la gente que nos rodea.
El viaje que proporciona esta novela es, cuanto menos, inesperado. En un primer momento no te queda más opción que quedarte anonadado con el personaje de Harriet. Su personalidad, la forma de retorcer la realidad, sus intentos de manipulación y su percepción de la realidad totalmente distorsionada y narcisista. Es inevitable reírse, pero a la vez te hace consciente del verdadero orzuelo que puede suponer esta persona en tu vida. Pobre Claude, solo despierta compasión.
Y posteriormente, llega el cambio. Inesperado, abrupto, inteligente. De hecho, te hace replantearte si estás leyendo la misma novela, si la autora ha traspapelado unos papeles y se han colado en este manuscrito. Pero no, es la continuación perfecta para la primera parte, aunque en un primer momento no te lo parezca. El final es idóneo para el personaje, inflige una suerte de justicia poética necesaria. Y cómo no, esto es lo que te deja meditando, lo que hace que Harriet te invada el pensamiento a lo largo de los días y valores si su devenir es justo y merecido, o no.
Quizá me hayan faltado páginas. Quizá también la visión personal de algún otro personaje de la trama. Creo que podría haber dado una visión más completa y que el jugo que te proporciona el libro fuese más denso y completo. Pero aún así, esta novela ha sido todo un disfrute, un tónico refrescante, una fuente de carcajada y desconcierto, una mezcla explosiva.
Premisa:´
Harriet está en una relación con Claude, aunque es más convulsa de lo que ella se imagina. De hecho, está ya terminada aunque no es demasiado consciente. Porque vive al margen de las cosas, es capaz de tergiversar las circunstancias y percibirlas en su beneficio a pesar de que, en realidad, supongan su declive absoluto. Pero todo esto no va a quedarse así, y conocer a alguien va a hacer que todo pegue un vuelco.
Opinión:
Sabía que me iba a reír con esta historia. Tras leer la sinopsis estaba preparada para un humor irónico y mordaz. Pero es cierto que me he encontrado una novela con más posibles lecturas de las que me esperaba, un texto que invita a la reflexión en relación a la forma de relacionarnos (sobre todo en el ámbito amoroso) y también una crítica a cierto tipo de patrones conductuales que están muy presentes en mucha de la gente que nos rodea.
El viaje que proporciona esta novela es, cuanto menos, inesperado. En un primer momento no te queda más opción que quedarte anonadado con el personaje de Harriet. Su personalidad, la forma de retorcer la realidad, sus intentos de manipulación y su percepción de la realidad totalmente distorsionada y narcisista. Es inevitable reírse, pero a la vez te hace consciente del verdadero orzuelo que puede suponer esta persona en tu vida. Pobre Claude, solo despierta compasión.
Y posteriormente, llega el cambio. Inesperado, abrupto, inteligente. De hecho, te hace replantearte si estás leyendo la misma novela, si la autora ha traspapelado unos papeles y se han colado en este manuscrito. Pero no, es la continuación perfecta para la primera parte, aunque en un primer momento no te lo parezca. El final es idóneo para el personaje, inflige una suerte de justicia poética necesaria. Y cómo no, esto es lo que te deja meditando, lo que hace que Harriet te invada el pensamiento a lo largo de los días y valores si su devenir es justo y merecido, o no.
Quizá me hayan faltado páginas. Quizá también la visión personal de algún otro personaje de la trama. Creo que podría haber dado una visión más completa y que el jugo que te proporciona el libro fuese más denso y completo. Pero aún así, esta novela ha sido todo un disfrute, un tónico refrescante, una fuente de carcajada y desconcierto, una mezcla explosiva.
June 8, 2018
Ever since I read Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding back in the autumn of 2014, I’ve been searching for something similar, another hidden gem of a book with a spiky (anti-)heroine in the central role. While Iris Owens’ striking novel After Claude – first published in 1973 – doesn’t quite reach the same heights as Cassandra, for the majority of its 200 pages it comes pretty close. The story centres on a trainwreck of a woman, so outrageously forthright in her interactions with those around her that there are times when she makes Cassandra seem like a relatively normal, well-adjusted human being.
You can read my review here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2017...
You can read my review here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2017...
June 7, 2012
Compulsively stomach-turning story of a parasitic, snobby, lazy, contemptuous, bitch of a heroine who abuses everyone around her while maintaining that she herself is the victim.
This is a richly original comic story that I find myself quoting over and over again.
And I think I am the only one who remembers the TV commercial for it from my childhood. I wanted to read it at age 10. I finally did.
This is a richly original comic story that I find myself quoting over and over again.
And I think I am the only one who remembers the TV commercial for it from my childhood. I wanted to read it at age 10. I finally did.
January 3, 2011
I loved this. Kenneth Tynan called it "hilariously bitchy". I agree.
Read
April 27, 2024one of the least reliable and most unhinged narrators i’ve ever encountered
October 6, 2025
I gave this two stars simply because by Chapter 8 or so the only feeling I had about this book was that I didn’t want to be reading it anymore. It got better by the end but I can’t forget that. I persisted because I am not a quitter!
The reason I didn’t want to read it anymore was because I just was so fucking tired of Harriet. I am a big unlikeable character defender. I will defend Holden Caulfield, Esther Greenwood, Daisy Buchanan, etc. But Harriet was just so misanthropic, condescending, and unbelievably antisocial that I actually couldn’t take it anymore. I’m also using antisocial in the psychology sense, not to say she was introverted or shy. Like requiring a diagnosis. Anyways, all of this I wouldn’t have a problem with if there seemed to be a better POINT to it. I just didn’t really get why it was so important to see such an extreme perspective of like, being so hateful and driving people away and begging them to stay but looking down on everyone. Maybe the point was that this all stemmed from the same insecurity and weak sense of self that led her to be susceptible to trying to join a cult at the end. That plot point is why I almost gave this three stars. I simply can’t forget how much I was annoyed by Harriet in the middle though. I think Owens just overdid it. I disliked Harriet the same way I disliked the narrator from My Year of Rest and Relaxation. There’s just only so much callousness one can read.
I have such mixed feelings about this book because there were so many funny and witty turns of phrase but it just felt like this book was oozing terrible hateful vibes. So I can’t say I liked it. But I am having a stronger reaction to it than I do to most books, so maybe that means it’s good art.
~~~
Here are the many many quotes I liked. Iris Owens is obviously a fantastic writer, there’s just something about the worldview of this book that I found really grating to read.
From the introduction: “This predilection of bright women to twist themselves into bizarre submissive postures from which only humor can release them is something diehard feminists will never address […] After Claude is definitely a meditation on the ends to which intelligent women will resort not to use their in-telligence.”
“If there's one slur I resent, it's having my personal powers, good or bad, credited to a factor over which I have no control.”
“"Stop suffering so much," I cried. “It's getting all over the taxi.””
“How dare men ask you to be fair, before they throw you in the lion pit.”
“If not for an inborn craving for flattery, French ears would have gone the way of fins, tails, and tonsils. Was that a clue? Had I, in my frank American fashion, neglected to lay on the adulation that Claude felt was his birthright?”
“I solve my problems while awake and, as a result, spend my sleeping hours resting, not receiving inane messages.”
“To men who are not basically fond of women, every additional ounce of flesh is like a thorn in their side.”
“”I'm not asking for heaven, Claude, I'm just asking to be held."”
“At first Rhoda-Regina was genuinely grateful for my company, but it soon became clear to me that she wanted all the advantages of my stimulating personality with none of the inevitable dues […] I am not a genie. I do not vanish into a bottle upon solving my master's problems.”
“For all I knew, I was Rudolf Hess rising and shining in Spandau, because if he's as crazy and subject to persecution manias as his attorneys purport, what worse thing could he wish on himself than to wake up as me?” Like this line is just insane.
“As Socrates remarked on the hemlock, It's the intention that counts.”
“It was like receiving a reprieve after the execution.”
The reason I didn’t want to read it anymore was because I just was so fucking tired of Harriet. I am a big unlikeable character defender. I will defend Holden Caulfield, Esther Greenwood, Daisy Buchanan, etc. But Harriet was just so misanthropic, condescending, and unbelievably antisocial that I actually couldn’t take it anymore. I’m also using antisocial in the psychology sense, not to say she was introverted or shy. Like requiring a diagnosis. Anyways, all of this I wouldn’t have a problem with if there seemed to be a better POINT to it. I just didn’t really get why it was so important to see such an extreme perspective of like, being so hateful and driving people away and begging them to stay but looking down on everyone. Maybe the point was that this all stemmed from the same insecurity and weak sense of self that led her to be susceptible to trying to join a cult at the end. That plot point is why I almost gave this three stars. I simply can’t forget how much I was annoyed by Harriet in the middle though. I think Owens just overdid it. I disliked Harriet the same way I disliked the narrator from My Year of Rest and Relaxation. There’s just only so much callousness one can read.
I have such mixed feelings about this book because there were so many funny and witty turns of phrase but it just felt like this book was oozing terrible hateful vibes. So I can’t say I liked it. But I am having a stronger reaction to it than I do to most books, so maybe that means it’s good art.
~~~
Here are the many many quotes I liked. Iris Owens is obviously a fantastic writer, there’s just something about the worldview of this book that I found really grating to read.
From the introduction: “This predilection of bright women to twist themselves into bizarre submissive postures from which only humor can release them is something diehard feminists will never address […] After Claude is definitely a meditation on the ends to which intelligent women will resort not to use their in-telligence.”
“If there's one slur I resent, it's having my personal powers, good or bad, credited to a factor over which I have no control.”
“"Stop suffering so much," I cried. “It's getting all over the taxi.””
“How dare men ask you to be fair, before they throw you in the lion pit.”
“If not for an inborn craving for flattery, French ears would have gone the way of fins, tails, and tonsils. Was that a clue? Had I, in my frank American fashion, neglected to lay on the adulation that Claude felt was his birthright?”
“I solve my problems while awake and, as a result, spend my sleeping hours resting, not receiving inane messages.”
“To men who are not basically fond of women, every additional ounce of flesh is like a thorn in their side.”
“”I'm not asking for heaven, Claude, I'm just asking to be held."”
“At first Rhoda-Regina was genuinely grateful for my company, but it soon became clear to me that she wanted all the advantages of my stimulating personality with none of the inevitable dues […] I am not a genie. I do not vanish into a bottle upon solving my master's problems.”
“For all I knew, I was Rudolf Hess rising and shining in Spandau, because if he's as crazy and subject to persecution manias as his attorneys purport, what worse thing could he wish on himself than to wake up as me?” Like this line is just insane.
“As Socrates remarked on the hemlock, It's the intention that counts.”
“It was like receiving a reprieve after the execution.”
November 6, 2025
Extravagantly vicious and deranged.
October 29, 2025
Firstly: not to be ignored - the amount of gross slurs and opinions (yay 1970s america). Check the author bio, it’s a wild ride.
This book was revolting, the main character was absolutely awful in every way, every situation ended in the worst possible outcome, and yet the sentences and observations and ways of phrasing things were soooo good(minus some very obvious dated and fucked opinions).
This book was revolting, the main character was absolutely awful in every way, every situation ended in the worst possible outcome, and yet the sentences and observations and ways of phrasing things were soooo good(minus some very obvious dated and fucked opinions).
August 24, 2021
This was...outrageous.
October 10, 2018
Another book that could have been spoiled by the dust jacket, but I'm conscientious now. Don't know anything, be ignorant and let it all spill out across the pages.
I'm writing this on my phone from South Carolina. My phone suggests after "don't" I'll type "beget".
But the book jacket says, "At last, out of the chorus of wounded, depressed, and suffering female voices so frequently heard in our current 'women's books' comes the outraged and outrageous voice of Harriet."
First edition apologies. The author writes too much in the opening about how she hopes everyone who ever went to the Chelsea Hotel will forgive "the narrator's excesses regarding the celebrated New York City landmark." Even though she's not there more than 50 pages, and is hardly disparaging in context. The narrator hates everything with such gorgeous cognitive dissonance that it doesn't really matter if she thinks the Chelsea is a dump. It probably was. It definitely was.
For all the supposed agency, the heroine is still stuck behind men misunderstanding the feminist movement. By the end she's begging to be enveloped in a cult. Classically hippie, where free love comes at the exploitation of women's work. Men think, dream big, get high, raise a proverbial fist to the man while infantilized women scurry around picking up. Somebody has to howl at the moon, and somebody has to scrub clean the dirty footprints incurred, empty the ashtrays, repurpose the wine bottles. The greatest failing of the hippie generation wasn't that their ideals were unachievable, or temporal, or discarded with the spoils of buying in. No, it was the treatment of the women, the refusal of equality.
The book is nestled inside the discourse of 1973. Doesn't that sound so far removed from '69? Maybe the women were faltering, stuffed into the same obedient roles as their mothers. But they had the promise of transcendence.
Harriet is remarkable because of her refusal to see things as they are. Not in the Didion heroine way, where the women announce their intentions to distort. Harriet just does. It's the strength and restraint of the author just to trust the reader to see it. The book reveals all this. Never read a book jacket ever again.
I'm writing this on my phone from South Carolina. My phone suggests after "don't" I'll type "beget".
But the book jacket says, "At last, out of the chorus of wounded, depressed, and suffering female voices so frequently heard in our current 'women's books' comes the outraged and outrageous voice of Harriet."
First edition apologies. The author writes too much in the opening about how she hopes everyone who ever went to the Chelsea Hotel will forgive "the narrator's excesses regarding the celebrated New York City landmark." Even though she's not there more than 50 pages, and is hardly disparaging in context. The narrator hates everything with such gorgeous cognitive dissonance that it doesn't really matter if she thinks the Chelsea is a dump. It probably was. It definitely was.
For all the supposed agency, the heroine is still stuck behind men misunderstanding the feminist movement. By the end she's begging to be enveloped in a cult. Classically hippie, where free love comes at the exploitation of women's work. Men think, dream big, get high, raise a proverbial fist to the man while infantilized women scurry around picking up. Somebody has to howl at the moon, and somebody has to scrub clean the dirty footprints incurred, empty the ashtrays, repurpose the wine bottles. The greatest failing of the hippie generation wasn't that their ideals were unachievable, or temporal, or discarded with the spoils of buying in. No, it was the treatment of the women, the refusal of equality.
The book is nestled inside the discourse of 1973. Doesn't that sound so far removed from '69? Maybe the women were faltering, stuffed into the same obedient roles as their mothers. But they had the promise of transcendence.
Harriet is remarkable because of her refusal to see things as they are. Not in the Didion heroine way, where the women announce their intentions to distort. Harriet just does. It's the strength and restraint of the author just to trust the reader to see it. The book reveals all this. Never read a book jacket ever again.
July 6, 2018
Probably a case of 'wrong reader' rather than 'wrong book,' but if this had been 30 pages, it still would have felt too long.
Harriet is a mooch, who has managed to stretch Claude's generosity into a six-month stint as his roommate (she had worn out her welcome with her last roommate by convincing a stranger to wait inside the roommate's room and indulge her in a rape fantasy. Hilarious, right?). Harriet is annoying, all too willing to criticize basic elements of Claude's life, but unwilling to, say, get a job or find a place of her own.
We see the witty, clever Harriet come out whenever she is getting kicked out of a place to live. Quite often these stunts cross the line--attempted rape, for example, or changing the locks of an apartment before leaving--but these are the times we see Harriet at her best...if that's what you wish to call it.
The final third of the book (it takes Claude 2/3rds of the book to ditch Harriet) shows the main character getting some of what she deserves. Still, Iris Owens published more books of pornography in her lifetime than she published actual novels like AC, and the final 3rd feels more like her early career than a resolution of the plot set out for Harriet.
Not good readings. Good riddance.
Harriet is a mooch, who has managed to stretch Claude's generosity into a six-month stint as his roommate (she had worn out her welcome with her last roommate by convincing a stranger to wait inside the roommate's room and indulge her in a rape fantasy. Hilarious, right?). Harriet is annoying, all too willing to criticize basic elements of Claude's life, but unwilling to, say, get a job or find a place of her own.
We see the witty, clever Harriet come out whenever she is getting kicked out of a place to live. Quite often these stunts cross the line--attempted rape, for example, or changing the locks of an apartment before leaving--but these are the times we see Harriet at her best...if that's what you wish to call it.
The final third of the book (it takes Claude 2/3rds of the book to ditch Harriet) shows the main character getting some of what she deserves. Still, Iris Owens published more books of pornography in her lifetime than she published actual novels like AC, and the final 3rd feels more like her early career than a resolution of the plot set out for Harriet.
Not good readings. Good riddance.
April 22, 2014
Lance Cleland (Workshop Application Magnet): Look, nothing is going to make you read After Claude by Iris Owens more than her author bio, which is as follows:
“Iris Owens (née Klein) (1929–2008) was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of a professional gambler. She attended Barnard College, was briefly married, and then moved to Paris, where she fell in with Alexander Trocchi, the editor of the legendary avant-garde journal Merlin and a notorious heroin addict, and supported herself by producing pornography (under the name of Harriet Daimler) for Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press. Back in the United States, Owens wrote After Claude, which came out in 1973. A second novel, Hope Diamond Refuses, loosely based on her marriage to an Iranian prince, was published in 1984.”
Game. Set. Match. Read!
“Iris Owens (née Klein) (1929–2008) was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of a professional gambler. She attended Barnard College, was briefly married, and then moved to Paris, where she fell in with Alexander Trocchi, the editor of the legendary avant-garde journal Merlin and a notorious heroin addict, and supported herself by producing pornography (under the name of Harriet Daimler) for Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press. Back in the United States, Owens wrote After Claude, which came out in 1973. A second novel, Hope Diamond Refuses, loosely based on her marriage to an Iranian prince, was published in 1984.”
Game. Set. Match. Read!
January 20, 2013
Started out funny, then you realize she's only got one track: bitter and acerbic. It gets old really quickly and devolves into Confederacy of Dunces style ickiness. Then for the last 10 or 20 pages it gets good. Then it's over.
This book was written in the '70s and it may be a product of its time (hence the similarity to Dunces), but it's just not funny. The "jokes" are just depressing. Harriet is completely self-unaware, and yeah, I get that's supposed to be part of the "humor," and she's not supposed to be a likeable character, but there's nothing to hold onto here. It just goes on & on & on and she's relentless with the bitter attacks. And I can't believe I read the whole thing!
This book was written in the '70s and it may be a product of its time (hence the similarity to Dunces), but it's just not funny. The "jokes" are just depressing. Harriet is completely self-unaware, and yeah, I get that's supposed to be part of the "humor," and she's not supposed to be a likeable character, but there's nothing to hold onto here. It just goes on & on & on and she's relentless with the bitter attacks. And I can't believe I read the whole thing!
December 12, 2013
What an odd book to read while in New York City on a 'sort of' vacation. "After Claude" has a leading character that is someone from hell to know. Truly a horrible person bent on total destruction. Cringe-worthy reading moments doesn't stop the reading train here. It was a hard book for me to put down. I don't even know if I like it or not, but there is a touch of the Dorothy Parker poison in its Manhattan make-up. I'm happy to go through this trauma.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews