Author | Cintra Wilson |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Fiction |
Publisher | Harper Perennial |
Publication date | 2004 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | |
Pages | 368 |
ISBN | 0-00-715460-7 |
OCLC | 52459920 |
813/.6 21 | |
LC Class | PS3573.I45685 C65 2004 |
Colors Insulting To Nature is the fictional follow-up novel to Cintra Wilson's previous collection of non-fiction essays in A Massive Swelling . Within the novel, Wilson takes the central theme of her essays, which is America's obsession with celebrity culture, and makes it the starting point for her narration, focusing on the Normal Family, in particular, the aspirations of 13-year-old, Liza.
Set in the early 1980s, Liza Normal goes on numerous theater and commercial auditions, at the behest of her mother Peppy, who costumes the child in a strapless evening gowns, heavy make-up, and false eyelashes. Humiliations repeat for Liza, as she and her family encounter endless degradation, after opening a dinner theater in Marin County, California. Throughout the first half of the novel, Liza is forced to perform in a dilapidated firehouse, which functions as the theater, as well as the family's home, attend school where she is constantly ridiculed and tormented, and at one point, raped. After this, Liza undergoes several phases, the first of which is a gravitation toward the punk rock aesthetic, specifically embracing and cultivating the look of Plasmatics performer, Wendy O. Williams. Liza eventually becomes involved with a drug pusher, and at one point becomes addicted herself during her stint at "Elf House," which Wilson describes as a commune of hippies who have a fetish with elves and speaking in "Quenya, the J.R.R. Tolkien version of High Elf language." It is during this time, that Liza, while working for Centaur Productions—a company that creates and distributes Slash fiction, that she concocts an "alter ego, Venal de Minus, [1] into a phone sex phenomenon and Las Vegas stage act," [2] achieving a new definition of success that is a spin-off of the earlier theater ambitions initially sought by her mother.
Lords and Ladies is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fourteenth Discworld book. It was originally published in 1992. Some parts of the storyline spoof elements of Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. She is the author of nine novels and a collection of essays. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International Dublin IMPAC Award and The Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, Absolution was awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Diane Ackerman is an American poet, essayist, and naturalist known for her books and films.
Armageddon's Children is a fantasy novel by American writer Terry Brooks, the first in his trilogy The Genesis of Shannara, which bridges the events of Brooks' Word and Void trilogy with his Shannara series. It takes place in an apocalyptic world around the year 2100 and details the events during the Great Wars, a historical conflict referenced frequently in the Shannara books. It is followed by the novel The Elves of Cintra.
Cintra Wilson is an American writer, performer and cultural critic. Dubbed "the Dorothy Parker of the cyber age", she is best known for her commentary on popular culture which is often humorous and irreverent in tone. She contributed to the New York Times for its "Critical Shopper" series and is considered one of the 50 "most influential people working in New York fashion". Wilson is also a regular contributor to the Hartford Advocate for her political column "The C Word". Her books include Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease, Colors Insulting to Nature, and Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny. She wrote a bi-weekly column called The Dregulator, which critiqued the tabloid culture and was syndicated in a number of alternative weeklies. She was a frequent contributor to Salon.com from 1994–2007.
Dicey's Song is a novel by Cynthia Voigt. It won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1983.
Ben Greenman is an American novelist, magazine journalist, and publishing executive who has written more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books, including collaborations with pop-music artists like Questlove, George Clinton, Brian Wilson, Gene Simmons, and others. His books have been translated into many other languages, including Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, and more. From 2000 to 2014, he was an editor at The New Yorker. He now serves as executive editor of Auwa Books, an imprint founded by Questlove in collaboration with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Elves of Cintra is a fantasy novel by American writer Terry Brooks, the second in his epic fantasy trilogy The Genesis of Shannara. The series bridges the events of Brooks' Word & Void series with The Sword of Shannara and the subsequent trilogy. It immediately follows the novel Armageddon's Children. It details events during the Great Wars, a historical conflict referenced frequently in the Shannara books. The conclusion to the trilogy and the sequel to The Elves of Cintra is The Gypsy Morph, which was released in August 2008.
Joy Williams is an American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Best-known for her short fiction, she is also the author of novels including State of Grace, The Quick and the Dead, and Harrow. Williams has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, a Rea Award for the Short Story, a Kirkus Award for Fiction, and a Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
Galaxy Craze is a British-American novelist and former actress.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is an American prose and poetry writer.
A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations is the first book written by Cintra Wilson. The book consists of a collection of essays which focus on America's obsession with celebrity culture and how, according to Wilson, celebrity status and the desire to attain it, is a "grotesque crippling disease" that affects nearly every American who participates in and reacts to the mass media. Celebrities from Celine Dion to English post-punk front man from The Fall, Mark E. Smith, are examined as victims of a larger, imaginary machine that uses artists for a period of time, and then discards them once they become unprofitable. In her book, Wilson focuses a good deal of attention to the influence that New York City and Los Angeles play on people and their appetite for fame as well as the media's ability to manipulate consumers into believing that celebrities are somehow more physically equipped for success and that what is aggressively sought after and the envy of so many people is nothing more than a facade.
Dare Me is a 2012 mystery novel written by Megan Abbott. The novel centers on American cheerleading. The book explores themes of friendship, obsession and power.
Sherry M. Thomas is an American novelist of young adult fantasy, historical romance, and contemporary romance. She has won multiple awards including the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Historical Romance for Not Quite a Husband in 2010 and His at Night in 2011.
Elizabeth Inness-Brown is an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and contributing editor at Boulevard. She is a retired professor of English at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont and lives in South Hero, Vermont—one of three islands comprising Grand Isle County—with her husband and son. Inness-Brown has published a novel, Burning Marguerite, as well as two short story collections, titled Here and Satin Palms. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, North American Review, Boulevard, Glimmer Train, Madcap Review, and various other journals. Inness-Brown received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for Writing in 1983 and has done writing residencies at Yaddo and The Millay Colony for the Arts. In 1982, her short story "Release, Surrender" appeared in Volume VII of the Pushcart Prize.
Mandy Keifetz is an American novelist, playwright, and poet. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Brooklyn Rail, .Cent, Penthouse, Vogue, QW, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and others. She was a Fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002 and her plays have been staged in London at the Young Vic and Theatre503, in Cambridge at the Junction Theater and at the Judith E. Wilson Studio, in Montréal at the Théâtre Ste. Catherine, in Oslo at the Samtid Festivalen and in New York at Where Eagles Dare Studios.
Keeper of the Lost Cities is an upper-middle-grade fantasy series by Shannon Messenger that has appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list for a total of ten weeks.
Elizabeth Benedict is an American author best known for her fiction, her personal essays, as the editor of three anthologies, and for The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. Her novels are: Slow Dancing, The Beginner's Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, Almost, and The Practice of Deceit. Her first memoir, Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own, was published in May 2023. She lives in New York City and works as a college admissions consultant.
Alexandra Lapierre is a French author of novels, biographies, and short stories.
Ellen Sussman is a New York Times bestselling author of four novels. She was born in Trenton, New Jersey and resides in Sebastopol, California with her husband. Sussman's work features settings and characters from France to Bali to the United States. She lived in Paris from 1988 to 1993 with her first husband and two daughters.