Katherine Dunn Boeken

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out ― with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes ― to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious ― and dangerous ― asset.As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Whether you have experience drawing or are completely new to it, this exciting workshop-style book provides practical, inspiring, and creative exercises which will expand your drawing skills and provide a framework for integrating illustration with other mixed-media techniques, With a focus on drawing what you love and what is familiar, you will be led through the development of several illustration exercises, which launch from jotted notes and eventually blossom into unique mixed-media creations. You will become familiar with a wide variety of media and approaches to drawing, learn how to work through "creative blocks," and discover ways to scan and layer your illustrations using a computer.

"Sally Gunnar has withdrawn from the world. She spends her days alone at home, reading drugstore mysteries, polishing the doorknobs, waxing the floors. Her only companions are a vase of godfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning suplies once a month. She broods over her deepest regrets: her blighted romances with self-important men, her lifelong struggle to feel at home in her body, and her wayward early twenties, when she was a fish out of water among a group of eccentric, privileged young people at a liberal arts college. There was Sam, an unabashed collector of other people's stories; Carlotta, a troubled free spirit; and Rennel, a self-obsessed philosophy student. Self-deprecating and sardonic, Sally recounts their misadventures, up to the tragedy that tore them apart. Colorful, crass, and profound, Toad is Katherine Dunn's ode to her time as a student at Reed College, filled with the same keen observations, taboo-shirking verve, and singular characters that made Geek Love a cult classic. Daring and bizarre, Toad is a brilliant precursor to the book that would make Dunn a misfit hero--even fifty-some years after it was written, it's a refreshing take on the lives of young outsiders treading the delicate lines between isolation and freedom, love and insanity, hatred and friendship." -- Jacket flap

Here is the slim, stunning debut novel from the acclaimed author of Geek Love. Attic follows a young woman named Kay who has joined a cult-like organization that sells magazine subscriptions in small towns. When Kay tries to cash a customer’s bad check, she lands in jail, and Dunn’s visceral prose gives us a vivid, stream-of-consciousness depiction of the space in which she’s held. As Kay comes to know the other inmates, alliances and rivalries are formed, memories are recounted, and lives are changed. Based on Katherine Dunn’s own formative coming-of-age experiences, Attic was critically lauded when it was first published in 1970. Now, it stands as an extraordinary, indelible work from one of our most celebrated writers.