Cleans Up Nicely - Paperback

by Linda Dahl Vogl (Author)

When twenty-something artist Erica Mason moves from laid-back Mexico to Manhattan in the mid-1970s, she finds a hard-edged, decadent, and evolving art scene. Her life there leads her to a self-destructive string of affairs with men, alcohol, and drugs, but also, ultimately, to the self-respect that has long eluded her.;

Front Jacket

When twenty-something artist Erica Mason moves from laid-back Mexico to Manhattan in the mid-1970s, she finds a hard-edged, decadent, and radically evolving art scene.

Peppered with characters who could only come from the latter days of the "turn-on-and-drop-out" '60s in then-crumbling New York (a spaced-out drummer who's completely given up on using or making money, a radical feminist who glues animal furs to her paintings of vaginas, and icons in the making like Patti Smith), Erica's New York is fast-moving, funny, and heartrending just like the city itself. Ultimately, her rite of passage is not only a love affair with art, men, alcohol, drugs, and music in the swirl that was the downtown scene in a radically evolving era in New York, but also a resurrection from addiction and self-delusion.

More than the study of a celebrated period of artistic expression, Cleans Up Nicely is the story of one gifted young woman's path from self-destruction to a hard-won self-knowledge that opens up a whole new world for her and helps her claim the self-respect that has long eluded her.

Author Biography

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with an honors degree in Latin American Studies, Linda Dahl worked as a freelance journalist in Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil, with a particular interest in the arts. Based in New York since the mid 1970's, her books reflect her interests in the arts and love of research. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (Pantheon, 1984) was called "a brilliant work of oral history" by Publishers Weekly. Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Pantheon, 2000), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Haunted Heart: A Biography of Susannah McCorkle (University of Michigan Press, 2006), wrote Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic "is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious and deeply intelligent." Her novel, Gringa in a Strange Land (Robert D. Reed Publishers), won the Writers in the Sky Award for Best Creative Writing of 2010.;
;;;; Linda has just completed a new novel, Cleans Up Nicely, to be published in
2013 by She Writes Press.
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