There's a comfortable simplicity in the writing. ThereÕs no reference to a ghostwriter although Amples education was a struggle through high school with dyslexia and the emotional instability her alcoholic father wrought. I think the simplicity has more to do with the wisdom and refinement of a masterful promoter and image-maker. The book gives a very clear sense of the energy, the honest essence of the real person. It conveys a sweetness of soul and an honest gentleness of heart. I believe I would like the person behind the image.During the sixties and seventies era, the strip club business suffered in sleeze. Ample was riding the 'free love' wave high and long with the rich and famous, drawing huge crowds at Cannes film festivals. She quit surfing when the waters got too dirty and moved into a a more overtly spiritual realm in Wicca.
Amples sharing of her struggle with her precognitive condition, her love of animals, and mostly her energy draws me to a recognition of a place on a subtler plane where we mingle spirits with gentleness and compassion. I love this woman and highly recommend her book.
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Burana, Lily. Strip City: Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America. Hyperion - Talk Miramax Books: New York, 2001. Lily Burana has built her second career as a journalist, and her writing skill shows in this book. I have great admiration for a woman who can, not only accomplish extremely skillful writing, and complete a manuscript, but also get it published and promote it well. I heard her speak on NPR and went right out to buy the book. |  |
Futterman, Marilyn Surinami. Dancing Naked In the Material World. Prometheus: USA, 1992.
On the front page is a picture of a dressing room. Clothes are thrown over two chairs, which frame a largish, square, bumpy butt. The owner is bent over at a clumsy angle. This photo documentary mostly contains pictures of unattractive poses, vapid smiles, lost eyes, attitude and open self-revealing vulnerability. About a fourth of the pictures are 'pretty'. Each picture is paired with a page of text, quotes and poems from the dancers, and a few quotes from their lovers, and customers.Futterman makes a point of stripping the glamour and magic from the business to reveal an ugly truthfulness. She emphasizes the pain, the loneliness and the addiction to the money. It touches on the illusion of power, fun, excitement and lingers in the dissatisfaction.
Its well done and makes its point with an even hand, passing with care the beauty and lingering in the fascination of the ugliness. She worked as a waitress as part of her research. From the book, it is clear why she chose not to dance. For the most part it's a nice piece of art, although the actual pages fell out from cheap glue.
Personally I would have found more satisfaction with greater attention to the spiritual aspect of the work, or in an exploration of why it exists. The closest she comes to the spiritual is in Sintanas four pages. The first is a promotional photo from her career in the dying burlesque industry. Clearly from the text, it was not a good experience. The second picture shows her chubbier, a little Butch, with a piercing stare and no nonsense attitude. The side bar outlines her retirement from dancing and her career in Wicca. At the time of the printing she was a full time minister and high priestess.
I am sad that neither the author nor the former stripper make a positive connection between the two careers. From what I know of both I can easily see the progression of knowledge from erotic sensual dancing flowing into and supporting her spirituality. From being a sex goddess she moves into a high position in a goddess worshiping religion. I wish Futterman had given more credence to that aspect of the business.
Lewin recounts the events of her life leading up to and including her fours years working at the Nudie-Tease in the Combat Zone in Boston. She started when I was about ten, in the midst of the disco era when cocaine was chic. Her parents split in the late 60s with the first wave of epidemic divorce when no one knew how to do it gracefully. So at 16 she found herself with way too much ÔfreedomÕ, i.e. not enough structure or support. That ÔfreedomÕ led her into horribly abusive situations. That, she claims, prepares her for stripping. I think it made her hard and numb.The book is written from her perspective as a trained psychologist, after she quit the drugs and dancing. With help from notes made during the time she was dancing, the book works to reclaim disparate parts of herself. Parts are poetic, thoughtful. Much of it is trying to fit memories splintered by the drug and the trauma into the primitive psychological theories of the time.
The theories do little to create a sense of cohesion but her insights from her direct experiences are so relate-able that you might find yourself in them. The fragments do create an interesting montage and provide a mental image of the person writing the book.
Her days of visually showing herself exposed are behind her. Lewis doesnt share a photograph of herself. Its a wise choice that eliminates the complications that would confuse her next career as a high school teacher and college professor.
This is the best book about the burlesque era. She has a wonderful voice, a great sense of humor, and the charm to bridge the stripping business with the courtesan archetype. Her ability to elevate the business and herself in status is worthy of emulation.
Mattson, Heidi. Ivy League Stripper: A True Story. St. Martin Press: USA, 1996.
The voice is clearly her own. From a simple healthy family background comes an uncomplicated viewpoint, straight on describing her experience, what she sees and what she thinks. It heartening to see her grappling with the issues every woman faces in this day and age: her feminist identity, learning to trust her innate knowledge, issues of harassment, becoming self possessed, independent and interdependent. Her writing style as she describes her Kinky Cop routine, and a typical busy night put the reader right in her spiked heels, getting an authentic sense of what it feels like to be her. The power rush she describes in the feature act reminds me of early in my career dancing for a very loud and appreciative audience, who, at the DJs prompting, and to the great ire of my stage mate, leaped up for a roaring standing ovation. She conveys the mood, the energy, and the excitement, with aplomb.Mattson has been dismissed for her holier than thou attitude (by Susan Bremmer in her Final project at Vermont College). I worked with a woman named Dominique at ƒlans in Danbury, CT. She was a relic from go-go days, who Mattson describes holding court over some rude fellows putting them in their place. Dominique also took umbrage with Mattson. It was something about not getting enough credit for teaching her to dance at the Foxy Lady.
In my own version of this I fault her on two points. First she has an irritating attachment to her Ivy League Image. When she takes a break from school before starting to strip, she cleans houses, and advertises herself as an Ivy League maid. The concept of struggling through the current moment of house cleaning or stripping for the vain glorious future heaven of being something special, ÔIvy LeagueÕ, betrays a bourgeois support of class status quo. The idea that the means of a humble girl doing something shameful, taboo or unpleasant somehow is justified in order to fulfill the American dream of raising to another social status seems small minded to me. I believe you do what you do. There is no excuse or justification in the future for acts committed in the present.
I also had trouble with parts of her sense of morality. When she sites her bodys wisdom and her innate sense of what is right for her, I have no problem. Rather I applaud her. Even the point when she attempts to clarify the difference in dancing naked, vs. being harassed by a well respected rabbi, the one being okay, and empowering, the second being not okay, that is clear to me. I have no problem with her assessing the situations and determining what she is willing to experience and not. I had trouble when she extrapolates the same concepts to include some forms of adoration and appreciation, some forms of love letters as being okay and not others. Her underlying thoughts seem murky. It appears to me that her gratuitous judgment of some poor schmucks infatuation with her as inappropriate is based more in her discomfort with the smallness of her own heart than any clear objective or even subjective assessment. In that instance, she does not make clear distinctions between what is a more universally inappropriate way to treat women (in general) and what she is personally uncomfortable with. She assumes that because she is personally uncomfortable with a situation or experience, without examining what sheÕs bringing to the situation, she passes a sweeping judgment for all of us.
All of our judgments about her holding herself above us may be a valid. The possibility of our own jealousy and envy is not to be denied. It is to be noticed, in oneself, the inclination to attempt to hold others down and back when they are succeeding where one fails. Certainly, I harbor a desire for an Ivy League education and the freedom wealth suggests. Certainly I want the feeble fruits of my adoration to be well received, as did the fellow who wrote her the letter that offended her (it would not have offended me). Seeing the poor distinctions between a personal sense of inappropriateness and more universal sense of morays or etiquette point out to me my own lack of clarity in the mechanisms of asserting these distinctions.
Many props to the woman who wrote the first autobiography of a stripper that I read. And she got the man to publish it for her. It's a good read.
Starr, Blaze and Huey Perry. Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry. Pocket book: New York, 1974.
This book was written with the comfortable ease of one accustomed to generations of oral history, of many hours of storytelling on a back woods mountain porch, with friends, relatives and moonshine for company.
This work gives a delightful peek into the Burlesque era of stripping. Some of it is recognizable to the current business. It has a naive charm about it. She claims her feminism from a modern day standpoint perspective. Naturally and easily she agreed to disagree wiith her childhood backwoods beau who she was paying to paint her house and while he ironically claimed he would never keep a woman who would not obey him. I also found it interesting that after her longtime lover, the governor of Louisiana died, she found her satisfaction in doing ÒGods workÓ, as her grandmother had.
Stephen, Shay. The Naked Eye: A True Account of a Strippers Journey. USA:Midnight Press,1997.
Stephends has not only completed her autobiography, she has not been supported nor become discouraged by the publishing industry. Instead she has published this work on her own and sells it herself. It's nicely produced, a good read, and I highly recommend supporting a sister by buying the book.
Meandering somewhat chronologically through her first four years of erotic dancing, she exposes her personal loves, dance, men, pets, travels. Stephen opens her journal for public perusal to reveal a snappy wit, and a strong capacity to see beyond peoples costumes. She tell us, "I have a unique view of the world from standing naked in the middle of it," and does 'social work in her underwear.'
She shares her view in a voice that starts out erratically. I imagined her dance to be full of pops, starts, snaps and jazzy poses. It reminded me of when I first started dancing. There were scenes and moments that demanded I put them down on paper. I collected napkins, table advertisements, paper bags and even match books with bits of ideas and images saved on them. They seemed to burst out of me in fits and starts.
While away on a professional tour in Canada her style begins to flow more easily. Partially because travel encourages a consistent relationship with ones journal, and as her confidence grows, her style starts to flow more smoothly.
Her humor is intoxicating. More than once I had to put the book down to snort or hoot out loud. Shes very quotable and often reflective, in the way that someone might take a quick check in the mirror to make sure that no boogers are showing nor stuff on the teeth. I deeply appreciate her capacity to see quickly through to the essence, the spirit of things, without a heavy arduous introspection.
In her book she describes friction dancing, and simulated sex in a glass boxed in room. These are things I am not capable of. I think its been hard on her. In her photograph thereÕs a sharpness about her features, like shes been badly treated. In her pictures she looks like a wild animal ready to bite in self defense.
Storm, Tempest and Bill Boyd. Tempest Storm: The Last Superstar of Burlesque. USA: Peacetree Publishers Ltd.1987
This book reveals the character of the woman with the longest stripping career on record. She tells lurid tales of childhood abuse, an Elvis affair, being married to a porn king and the ugly storms of living with his family from a previous relationship. Burlesque, smoke and mirrors and d.r.a.m.a.
