Semiotexte

On the screen, a blond woman is sucking a penis. Moaning. Lisa is leaning back against the screen, crackling electric static, wrapping her body up against it. Moaning. Is there no escape from the image?

In Reading Brooke Shields artist, novelist, and ex-underground impresario Eldon Garnet becomes an overweight failed cultural critic roused from fifteen years of inertia by the opportunity to interview Brooke Shields. To Garnet's narrator, Brooke Shields is the greatest living exemplar of the self-reflecting emptiness of contemporary fame. He both loves and hates her. In this deviously witty parable, Garnet proves that fame, however fabricated and illusory, is part of our culture's life force that cannot be denied.

We watch as Brooke admires a butterfly on a leaf, carefully holding it on her outstretched finger before it flies away. She dives naked into the crystal clear water of what must be the Blue Lagoon, swims. Tropical birds. Standing in shallow water, her expression, one of peaceful contentment, suddenly changes to worry: looking down into the water, a dissipating red stain: raising blood stained hands to her face. Those pouting large lips, her full open mouth twisted, screaming, 'Oh Richard, Help'.

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“A terrific book, an unforgettable pop novel.”

— Globe and Mail, Toronto