Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories
The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.

Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Muellerís 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times.

Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."
1139840458
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories
The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.

Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Muellerís 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times.

Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."
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Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories

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Overview

The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.

Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Muellerís 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times.

Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781635901665
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 04/26/2022
Series: Semiotext(e) / Native Agents
Pages: 432
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cookie Mueller (1949–1989), nee Dorothy Karen Mueller, played leading roles in John Waters’s Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, and Multiple Maniacs. She wrote for the East Village Eye and Details magazine, performed in a series of plays by Gary Indiana, and wrote numerous stories that would only be published posthumously. She died in New York City of AIDS-related complications at age 40.

Olivia Laing is the author of Crudo, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and translated into fifteen languages.

Chris Kraus is the author of four novels, including I Love Dick and Summer of Hate; two books of art and cultural criticism; and most recently, After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography.

Table of Contents

Introduction Olivia Laing 7

Part 1 Baltimore, 1964-1969 17

Two People-Baltimore, 1964 19

Alien-1965 23

No Credit, Cash Only-Baltimore, 1967 25

Haight-Ashbury-San Francisco, 1967 34

Waiting for the New Age 45

The Pig Farm-Baltimore & York, Pennsylvania, 1969 48

Breaking into Show Biz 57

John Waters and the Blessed Profession-1969 60

Route 95 South-Baltimore to Orlando, 1969 64

Abduction & Rape-Highway 31, Elkton, Maryland, 1969 72

Part 2 Provincetown, 1969-1976 85

Female Trouble 87

Divine 91

Provincetown-1970 94

Sailing 101

The Birth of Max Mueller-September 25, 1971 108

Pink Flamingos 114

British Columbia-1972 122

Tattooed Friends 132

Jamaica-1975 137

The Stone Age-Sicily, 1976 147

Part 3 New York, 1978-1989 153

Go-Going - New York & New Jersey, 1978-79 155

Careening around in Career Vehicles 166

Sam's Party-Lower East Side, NYC, 1979 174

Dogs I Have Known 182

The Berlin Film Festival-1981 186

Edgar Allan Poe on Ice-1982 196

Another Boring Day 207

Narcotics 215

The Stone of New Orleans-1983 225

Out of the Bottle and into a Danish Remedy 236

The Italian Remedy-1983 242

Edith Massey: A Star 250

Fleeting Happiness 255

Manhattan: The First Nine Years, the Dog Years 258

Part 4 Fables, 1981-1988 263

The Third Twin 265

Brenda Losing 269

The Mystery of Tap Water 273

I Hear America Sinking or a Suburban Girl Who Is Naive and Stupid Finds Her Reward 275

The Truth about the End of the World 280

Which Came First 285

The One Percent 289

The Simplest Thing 297

Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls 305

Part 5 Columns, 1982-1989 327

Cookie Mueller 329

Ask Dr. Mueller (East Village Eye) 331

Art and About (Details Magazine) 356

Ronnie Roach (High Times) 408

Part 6 Coda, 1989 413

My Bio-Notes on an American Childhood 415

A Last Letter 422

Sources 427

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