To Smithereens — Hagfish

ADVANCE PRAISE:

“To Smithereens is transcendently weird and fun, like a pervy secret—it's exactly the way art and books should feel.”Halle Butler, author of Banal Nightmare

“A rough and funny artworld and showbiz throwdown from that sardonic, surreal and carnal New Yorkese voice that is like no other.”
Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel

ISBN: 9781965028025
Trade paperback
212 pages

$18.00

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Features a new afterword by the author

When Rosa, a depressed and drifting twenty-something, meets Paul, a middling art critic, an off-kilter romance commences. Paul longs to be dominated by physically powerful women and convinces Rosa to fulfill one of his fantasies: that she become a wrestler. Soon, Rosa joins a women’s wrestling team and embarks on a tour of the South, befriends her horny teammates and their jealous boyfriends, and learns to hold her own among a crew of seedy coaches and greedy promoters.

To Smithereens offers a light satire of art world personalities, a glimpse into Manhattan of the 1970s—with its seedy theatres, beguiling characters, and beloved freaks—and a riotous foray into mid-century women’s wrestling. Inspired by Drexler's own career in the ring (immortalized in Andy Warhol's lithograph "Album of a Mat Queen"), and first published in 1972, To Smithereens is an antic and indelible portrait of its time.

(C) Justin Bettman

ROSALYN DREXLER
Rosalyn Drexler was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. Alhough she began her art career as a sculptor, in the 1950s she shifted to painting, affixing images collected from comics, advertisements, tabloids, and other printed matter to canvas or board, which she painted over in bright, commanding colors. By the 1960s, she was regarded as a major contributor to the Pop art movement. Her contemporaries include Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol (whose lithograph “Album of a Mat Queen” features Drexler in her wrestling singlet), and her husband, painter Sherman Drexler.

Drexler’s contributions to Pop art are significant for their insistent social narrative. Her paintings are distinctly feminist and anti-establishment, portraying, among other themes, domestic violence, modern isolation, and the pain of social disenfranchisement.

She is the author of nine novels and four screenplays adapted for print, including the novelization of the film Rocky. She is also a playwright and screenwriter, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Obie Awards, and an Emmy for her work with comedian Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryor. She is also a former professional wrestler. She lives and works in Manhattan.

PRAISE FOR ROSALYN DREXLER:

"To Smithereens is an extraordinarily good book, but then so is everything Rosalyn Drexler ever wrote."
—The New York Times

"First rate writing and first rate humor."
—Gloria Steinem

"Rosalyn Drexler is always brilliant, gay, depressed, and hopeful."
—Donald Barthelme

"Intelligence and wit bind all of Drexler’s work, as strong as crazy glue."
—Christine Smallwood, Harper's