Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller
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Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller Details
Review But the book is a kind of masterpiece. Chloé nailed it; her commitment and devoted effort, not to mention her style, in creating this book, do Cookie justice, which is saying a lot. Cookie was unique and so, similarly, is this great book. (Richard Hell Electronic Beats Magazine)Mueller died of AIDS-related causes on November 10, 1989, and Chloé Griffin has written a book titled Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller, which pays homage to her life and is told through the voices of her friends, lovers, and family. One of the best reads of 2014. (Honey Dijon Style.com)Griffin flows together the voices of almost 90 people―including John Waters, Mink Stole, Lynne Tillman, and Max Mueller―into a book-length river of recollection aimed at capturing Cookie, who died in 1989, a major force in the downtown art scene; a phenomenon, as Gary Indiana puts it in Edgewise, “like a woman in flames […] something like I’d never seen before in my life.” (Earnest Jarrett The Brooklyn Rail)To the people who knew her personally, whose voices tell her story in artist Chloe Griffin kaleidoscopio new oral-history tome, Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller (B_Books), she played even more myriad and fascinating roles. For the first time, through Griffin's book, we see Cookie as her friends and lovers saw her: as inspiration, protector, dancer, instigator, drug dealer, wild card, criminal, life of the party, goddess, mental patient, hostess, confidante, artist, mother, savior.Griffin tells Cookie's story by deftly weaving together interviews and insterspersing them with excerpts from Cookie's books and diaries so that her own voice gets into the mix. Though the chorus of remembrances can contradict each other or become repetitive, that's part of the point; there's no one truth to Cookie's life. (Emily Gould Interview)Mueller’s tale was too rich to capture in a traditional, linear biography, and knowing that wouldn’t do a free spirit like her justice, author Chloé Griffin took a different approach in her new book, Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller. Griffin labored for years, traveling and conducting extensive interviews with Mueller’s friends, family and former colleagues for their intimate accounts. The book includes interviews with John Waters, Mink Stole, and Mueller’s only child, Max. Through oral history and photographs, Griffin weaves together a more complete look at the elusive legend’s life, and it’s as heartfelt and sincere as it is badass. (Lydia Siriprakorn Frontier LA)In the pages of EDGEWISE, a labour of love of some eighty years, Griffin collected the memories of the people who knew Cookie best, compiling a sensitive and thrilling oral history that captures her life from her childhood in suburban Maryland, through the wild times with John Walters, Divine, Sue Lowe, Mink Stole, the others in Baltimore, to the times in Provincetown, where she lived with her son, Maz, and her lover of many years, Sharon Niesp. (Pati Hertling BOMB Magazine)Instead of an ordinary biography, Berlin-based artist Chloé Griffin's Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller is an oral history of the people who knew underground writer and actress Cookie Mueller, best known as a character in John Waters's movies Pink Flamingos and Multiple Maniacs: her friends, members of her family, and her colleagues, who shared their stories of the time they spent with the artist. For several years, Griffin traveled around recording conversations and taking photos that she distilled into a book spanning all periods of Cookie's life. (Corinna Pichl Bookslut) Read more
Reviews
Like many, before reading this book, I only knew Cookie Mueller from her early work with John Waters. This amazing book explores the many sides of a complex, brilliant woman--a poet, a columnist, an art reviewer, a socialite, a fashionista and trend setter, a club kid (before such a concept existed), a mother, a wife, a bisexual lover, a drug addict, a victims of the AIDS epidemic, and an incredibly kind and generous soul. This book was leagues better than I expected it to be, neither tabloid expose, nor an after death white-washing of the more sordid side of her life, this biography is told by the people who knew her best--her lovers, her son, her friends, her colleagues, etc. I just couldn't put this one down and wish it could have went on forever.
