The BURIED Book Club discussion

Legendary pop-artist, playwright, screenwriter, former Mexcian boxer, and most importantly, novelist. All her novels except FC2's Art Does (Not!) Exist are out of print. Worth resurrecting.

Novels:

I Am the Beautiful Stranger (1965)
One or Another (1970)
To Smithereens (1972)
The Cosmopolitan Girl (1974)
Unwed Widow (1975)—written under the pseudonym Julia Sorel
Starburn: The Story of Jenni Love (1979)
Bad Guy (1982)
Art Does (Not!) Exist (1996)
Vulgar Lives (2007)

Found a copy of The Cosmopolitan Girl at a library sale. It will be read soon, I promise.

Hurray!

Wow what an interesting person. Her art is really good too: https://www.google.com/search?q=rosal...

Oh my god. I can't find synopses for any of these, but a copy of One or Another is on the way. Thanks!

One or Another: not even on Goodreads, but so good that I read it in one day and put it up: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

Thanks MJ, this was a total find! Which one next?

Good question. An arbitrary Amazon search turned up this title: Submissions of a Lady Wrestler. It looks like a romance novel and isn't on her list of published fiction. Jeez! I picked up a copy of To Smithereens, which seems one of her most popular works.

Just think of what other absurdities must lurk in her buried bibliography, then! I've got To Smithereens and the Cosmopolitan Girl on the way now, too.

oh neat, my local library has TWO copies of her The Line of Least Existence and Other Plays so i'll try to get to that this month.

edit: here's an audio/visual of her on smoking

Her play "Softly, and Consider the Nearness" is a dialogue between a woman and her TV.

The TV offers these tidbits: "Warm is the temperature that keeps fragile things from dying, and soft is the fragile thing when it yields itself to warmth."

&

"You learned how to use me through necessity; not all who love can overcome their technical ineptitude."

The bio at the end of The Line of Least Existence and Other Plays states that she won an Obie award for "Home Movies" for being the best off-Broadway play in 1964 and got a Rockefeller grant for playwriting.

In his introduction, Richard Gilman evokes the early Marx Brothers. The jacket flap mentions The Beatles.

In the titular work, there are three characters (Fred, Ed, and Dan) who are federal agents who pretend to be in a rock group called The Feds.

Her bibliography is an admin nightmare. Her pseudonym Julia Sorel has an author page, including that Rocky novel. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

I had no idea her pseudonym was so prolific, but good to know.

The Cosmopolitan girl

Also totally mad, without ever actually seeming irrelevant or nonsensical. Despite having a talking dog as a major character.

For those too lazy to go over to the Archive of reviews, my review of Drexler's The Cosmopolitan Girl is here.

BURIED folks, a user with the name of Rosalyn Drexler commented on my TCG review. No idea if they're the real deal. If anyone knows how to properly deal with situations like this, help. Please.

Aubrey wrote: "BURIED folks, a user with the name of Rosalyn Drexler commented on my TCG review. No idea if they're the real deal. If anyone knows how to properly deal with situations like this, help. Please."

Looks possibly authentic. Skimming through the internet, she perhaps ran across your review on google, signed up to goodreads to say Hi! sort of. Similar thing happened to me re: Bill Ripley's widow finding my review of his novel. Say Hi! right on back at 'er. Perhaps she'll drop by some of the other recent Drexler reviews.

Or, right here! Hello Ms Drexler. Happy to see you around.

Perhaps say "Hi, Rosalyn."

Would an 87-year-old Rosalyn Drexler read reviews of her old books on Goodreads? I would like to think so. You could ask her if she's the real deal, see what she says . . . (a fraud would be more keen to prove their fake identity)

A response offering welcome and a question of person has been established. Now to wait.

The real McCoy...always a good sport, Ms Drexler.

That's quite amazing. Nicely done Aubrey. (I just checked my Drexler reviews in hope, but no dice.)

Her comment is a little strange (new year? in September?) but she did ignore the invite as to her authenticity, so could be!

Methinks she's referring to the Jewish New Year.

Oh yeah, that did just happen. Could also be academic year, if Drexler is still faculty somewhere.

Drexler in the mid-60s, from the back cover of hardback I Am the Beautiful Stranger:

Nice! old hardcovers are great for the large format author photos evidentally.

Indeed. Note for Drexler fans: if anyone wants to read I am the Beautiful Stranger, I'm happy to scan the book. Suggest we share her out of print ones, as they will only get more oop over time.

I recently read Bad Guy - my review of it is here.

I liked it, I'm not sure if I liked it enough to read anything else by her though - is there anything else by her that needs to be tracked down though?

No one has read or reviewed Starburn to my knowledge. Drexler published (what appears to be) hackwork as Julia Sorel, although who knows, some of it may have merit.

MJ wrote: "No one has read or reviewed Starburn to my knowledge. Drexler published (what appears to be) hackwork as Julia Sorel, although who knows, some of it may have merit."

I have Starburn on my desk. But if Ronald gets there first ;; well, glory be unto thee!

And because I love blurbs, here's D Barthelme's for Starburn: The Story of Jenni Love :: "Rosalyn Drexler is always brilliant, gay, depressed, and hopeful--hurling watermelons, paper bags full of vodka, and tastefully poisoned candy kisses from a high window on the heads of unsuspecting passersby."

They seem to have been running that blurb for all it was worth, it's also on the back of the copy of Bad Guy that I read on they plane to Russia. (I still like her earlier work most, we'll see how I Am the Beautiful Stranger maintains (or not) that trend).

Hello dear fans of the inimitable Rosalyn Drexler,

I wanted to alert you to the existence of Lost & Found, an audio drama trilogy of works by Rosalyn that I released on CD last summer. Rosalyn and I collaborated via email and telephone on the project. She suggested the material, helped with the casting, participated in an accompanying interview, contributed the cover art and photographs from her archive. I produced and directed the audio plays. There are free snippets available online and the works can be downloaded via iTunes. They can also be purchased as a double-disc CD set with 8-page booklet. Several signed copies are available. Please visit the webpage for more detailed information and continue your exploration of Rosalyn's artistic output.

http://www.abatonbookcompany.us/Lost&...

Best wishes,
Lauri Bortz

Abaton wrote: "Hello dear fans of the inimitable Rosalyn Drexler"

Thanks for dropping by, Lauri, and putting us in the know. It's good to hear Rosalyn is still working on stuff. Sounds quite interesting.

As you might have guessed by the presence of this thread in a group called the BURIED Book Club that we think her books are not read enough and not talked about enough. I hope you might be available to write some reviews of her books here on goodreads to help spread the word. I plan to read her Starburn: The Story of Jenni Love soon.

Rosalyn is featured in a BBC Culture Show special, Pop Go the Women: The Other Side of Pop Art, available to watch now. You merkins probably can't access this, but you can look at the page and drool:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

unBURYing news! Three of Drexler's out of print novels have been reissued by Verbivoracious: Three Novels.

Excellent- nicely done you guys

Excellent. Which three?

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Excellent. Which three?"

I'm still learning to read computers ::

I am the Beautiful Stranger is a bold novel of teenage sexuality, familial dysfunction, and knotty self-awakening;
One or Another the darkly comic tale of collapsing marriage, infidelity, and racial unrest;
and The Cosmopolitan Girl explores the unlikely romance between a style-obsessed woman and her talking dog.

Nice, those are the first three, aren't they? Arguably the best!

The Cosmo Girl is actually the fourth one, To Smithereens is the third and was reissued by Lidia Yuknavitch's Chiasmus Press a few years ago (probably now out of print).

It sounds like that one may not have been as high-priority for reissue anyway! So very good.

Rosalyn Drexler's noir paintings:

http://hyperallergic.com/190459/rosal...