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Karen Finley's Not as Crazy as You Think

© Christine Hamm

Book Review

"I shot myself because I love you,
if I loved myself, I'd be shooting you."-- Karen Finley

Before I read her book, I didn’t know Karen Finley wrote, much less that her writing is so excruciatingly vivid. But one thing’s for certain: Karen Finley feels your pain. She is a foul-mouthed Sylvia Plath, minus the pearls and masochism.

Most of you have probably heard of Karen Finley. She was notorious a few years ago for smearing chocolate all over her body during a performance piece funded by the NEA. Before I encountered A Different Kind of Intimacy, I knew her for her food related performance art and for being the artist at the head of the NEA funding controversy of the ‘80's. During that time, I read numerous articles ABOUT her in the Village Voice, New York Times and New Republic. Similarly, I had many discussions ABOUT her and her “art” (those quotation marks are the sneers undergrads put around phenomenon that they don’t understand) with my friends in college. But Karen Finley remained to me a voiceless image. The articles discussing her, even the positive ones, never quoted her monologues and barely touched on the focus of her performance pieces. Instead, there were long-winded, philosophical discussions about the nature of art, censorship and the role of government.

But besides being really naked on stage, Karen Finley can really write. And she can speak. This book chronicles her struggles as a performance artist and includes the monologues she used in her pieces.

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I dreamed we were in a small room. Between us was a stack of construction paper. With my paper I made lists of ways to get out of the room. When my head came out of my to-do list I saw Constantine... From foiled gum wrappers he made silver candle sticks... Then he snapped off his hands at his wrists to make us our wine goblet.
Crystal, of course.
Since his hands were gone, he asked me to unzip his chest, and from his heart flowed a red-velvet burgundy...
I had wine like this the day I met Julia Child.
Remember, he said, it isn't that you lived but how you lived.
Then he said, I think I'll think about dessert.
Then he was gone.
We will all be getting out of here one day.
But while we are waiting,
let us have something sweet.

From "Positive Attitude", a piece about friends dying from AIDS.

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