ADMISSION ACCOMPLISHED: The Lesbian Nation Years (1970-75)

by Jill Johnston ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1998

These dated Village Voice columns might never have resurrected themselves if the perpetually adolescent Johnston (Jasper Johns: Privileged Information, 1996) were not a lesbian separatist, and if it weren't perennially hip to be contrarian. Johnston is, as she says with such overbearing glee, ""hopelessly narcissistic."" She never tires of recounting with nauseating bravado her cheap sexual exploits, of ""anal orgasm"" and ""masturbation fantasies [that] are virtuosic."" Of course, being a self-styled revolutionary, she considers monogamy an ""archaic form of bondage"" and the mother-daughter bond one of ""elephantal cuntsequence."" As a ""lesbian chauvinist,"" naturally, she asserts that ""all women are lesbians except those who don't know it yet,"" and in the caustic style so typical of this book she barks that ""women don't like to be fucked by men any more and in fact never did."" She thinks it fiendishly Joycean to parody Catholic liturgy as follows: ""Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!"" Next to real writers like Andrea Dworkin, whose bold verbiage did indeed change the way we thought, Johnston is a callow hack. Since many of these pieces were already reprinted in her previous books Lesbian Nation and Gullibles Travels, one wonders why they needed yet another airing. Thankfully, Johnston has given up her Gertrude Stein act of late and gone on to finer things than the joys of groupie fame--that is, biography and criticism, those quaint arts of writing about other people.

Pub Date: March 1, 1998

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 350

Publisher: Serpent's Tail--dist. by Consortium

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998

Categories: NONFICTION