To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
Latest editorial
Clarissa in times of Covid
RON JACOBS relishes a riotous epistolary novel of revenge against sexual harassment and patriarchy
NO PRISONERS TAKEN: Virginie Despentes
[Georges Biard/CC]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
Dear Dickhead
Virginie Despentes, MacLehose Press, £14.99
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is a French author. A runaway, sex worker, punk rocker and iconoclast, her newest novel, titled Dear Dickhead, features a protagonist accused of sexual harassment and stalking his assistant.
This protagonist, who is a popular crime novelist, is called out by his victim during the period of the so-called #Metoo movement. The victim conducts her campaign on a personal blog that functions as a journal wherein she describes her experiences, the mental health crisis the harassment caused and her desire to destroy the man who victimised her.
The result, as it is played out in the novel’s pages, is vivid, sometimes humorous, painful and problematic. It is a battle of the sexes played by 2020 rules. The house formerly dominated by the male of the species doesn’t always have the odds in its favour.
Similar stories
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
RON JACOBS is enthralled by an account of the surveillance and political repression on the left in the US
RON JACOBS welcomes a survey of US punk in the era of Reagan, and sees the necessity for some of the same today