Reviews

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline by David Wojnarowicz

Only show reviews with written explanations

seamuscoon's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

ralowe's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

ran into kevin killian getting on the bus and showed off my copy of this. she told me that the publisher was a rich lady who owned a gallery on folsom and 9th and a bar on the corner. it was like an art bar or something where authors would write on the walls. this book is gorgeous, looking like a piece of the '90s. she designed it to look like a children's book. kevin more or less confirmed that the drawings were david wojnarowicz'. there's no editor's note, all that history gone. kevin said dodie and her ran into david in the 'Stro just walking there and was starstruck. i then asked kevin the all important question: whether or not there were any authors comparable today that saw the implications of their direct experience as the basis for a general anti-establishment worldview, that saw being a fag dying from aids as an identical extension of the structural violence of the police state, and she said no. god, what a bleak world. unfortunately, this edition, though gorgeous to look at, doesn't feature a selection of writings that's as cogent with that analysis as *close to the knives*. it's kind of crazy, when i ran into kevin i had just finished reading just now. i gave kevin a "queers hate techies" sticker i was using for a bookmark.

omemiserum's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

Lots of sex and violence, usually intersecting - incredibly graphic, visceral, horrifying, traumatic. At points, blurring reality and dreams. Perhaps unreliably narrated, because sickness does that to a person, yet still one of the most honest things I’ve read. Difficult to consume. The last section struck me the hardest, especially the final two pages. Reflections on sickness and death… assault… grief… irony… how to confront all of that? Through trying not to think about it, I guess. But here… not through choice, but through enforcement; through having life snatched prematurely, through feeling as the body grows weaker and fades into nothingness. Through erasure: erasure by a government that chooses not to see and a community that turns a blind eye because looking suffering head-on is impossible and confronting disease and mortality is hard when you’re young and lustful and hated by the world.

And yet; glad to have read it.

rachel_reads_it_all's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

2.75

elmo2's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark sad tense medium-paced

2.0

"The wound does something to me."

Felt bad tagging this as funny but the part about being pickpocketed while getting head kinda was. Doing time in a disposable body was my favourite story.