Paradoxia

While the Ripper was abroad in Yorkshire, New York was stalked by its own phantom killer, Son of Sam, while its rapidly diminishing police force were otherwise engaged giving out leaflets entitled Welcome To Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors.

Abe Beame was Mayor over a burned-out necropolis of demolished buildings, crumbling infrastructure and tripling crime rates, a city President Gerald Ford told to "drop dead". This was the stage on which Lydia Lunch began her assault on the senses and sensibilities of her nation, at the tender age of 16.

Her account of not only surviving but grabbing… show more.

Lydia Lunch’s memoir, Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary, has been compared to Dostoyevsky, De Sade, and William Burroughs. Having toured with her, I would add another name: Mae West. Like West, the author informs her so-called “depravity” with a strain of pure, unfettered comedy. “I’m the bloodsucking murder junkie,” she announces with something like glee, “who loves to watch big strong men beg for their lives like tiny baby girls.” Lunch was subverting gender long before “gender” itself was in the national vocabulary. And she walks the line from victim to perp with her own brand of unapologetic, unflinching truth.… show more.