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andrewaackroyd's review against another edition
5.0
Part critical theory of transition engaging with queer and Marxist classics, part auto-theory/memoir/ethnography, and part porno dirtier than most smut ever written, Wark's book is like nothing I've read before.
visnisme's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
howdyclaudio's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
merricatinthemoon's review against another edition
4.25
✨ Agradecida de haber conocido a Mckenzie Wark <3
"Esta es una cultura que cree que las cosas son su propia propiedad privada, que no deben ser copiadas. Pero yo he oído a las aves lira, que cantan tan bien como cualquier pájaro, y pueden hacer las voces de más de uno. Imitan incluso cosas humanas (...) Hay un mundo invertido en el que las cosas se convierten en otras cosas, ni mejores ni peores: diferentes."
“Esto es más meme que memorias. No tanto ensayo personal como análisis impersonal. Su género: menos cuento de aventura que culo desventurado. No solo crítica literaria, sino también literalismo crítico. No es sobre llegar a la mayoría de edad, es sobre la edad de correrse. No es totalmente objetivo. A lo mejor estas no fueron las formas y las sensaciones exactas. Pero de todos modos puede que sea un libro que tiene /veracidad sexual/. Si algo se pone duro o húmedo, o se corre, o no se corre, al menos eso probablemente ocurrió. Y probablemente fue más sublime ridículo hermoso y feo de lo que aquí se describe."
"Díganle a la humanidad que soy feliz. Díganle a la humanidad que por al menos un minuto escapé de su esfera de expectativas"
"Esta es una cultura que cree que las cosas son su propia propiedad privada, que no deben ser copiadas. Pero yo he oído a las aves lira, que cantan tan bien como cualquier pájaro, y pueden hacer las voces de más de uno. Imitan incluso cosas humanas (...) Hay un mundo invertido en el que las cosas se convierten en otras cosas, ni mejores ni peores: diferentes."
“Esto es más meme que memorias. No tanto ensayo personal como análisis impersonal. Su género: menos cuento de aventura que culo desventurado. No solo crítica literaria, sino también literalismo crítico. No es sobre llegar a la mayoría de edad, es sobre la edad de correrse. No es totalmente objetivo. A lo mejor estas no fueron las formas y las sensaciones exactas. Pero de todos modos puede que sea un libro que tiene /veracidad sexual/. Si algo se pone duro o húmedo, o se corre, o no se corre, al menos eso probablemente ocurrió. Y probablemente fue más sublime ridículo hermoso y feo de lo que aquí se describe."
"Díganle a la humanidad que soy feliz. Díganle a la humanidad que por al menos un minuto escapé de su esfera de expectativas"
versfobia's review against another edition
5.0
Una maravilla. Se la suele comparar con Preciado (por el cruce entre teoría radical y autobiografía/autoficción) y Burroughs (por el estilo psicodélico de continuas descripciones sexuales y escatológicas que rompen toda secuencia u orden), pero para mí supera a ambos. Al no pretender fundar una teoría a partir de la vida propia, evita los riesgos que corre Preciado en libros como Testo Yonqui; las citas teóricas, artísticas, literarias que se cruzan en medio del texto son el único intento de teorización, y está hecho de la mejor manera: convocando a un universo múltiple de autorxs a dialogar. Al no pretender "contar una historia" sino (auto)ficcionalizar(se), no parece un mero ejercicio estilístico como ocurre a veces con Burroughs, sino un verdadero abordaje especulativo sobre lo que una biografía puede llegar a ser.
Gran edición de Caja Negra.
Gran edición de Caja Negra.
axelpin's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
petersonline's review against another edition
4.0
In a correspondence with Chris Kraus near the end of Reverse Cowgirl, McKenzie Wark's memoir-ish text on discovering your true gender identity through ass-fucking, she writes, "Who would have thought the narrator of this book would be living in Queens in a co-op with a shared garden? Who would have thought such a louche type would end up married to the same person for twenty years?" It's a part that stood out to me, as someone who often thinks about wanting a more stable life, but knowing that you possess a personality and identity that makes that pretty much impossible. I yearn for the stability of marriage, wanting to live in a home with two dogs, often wishing that I could fast-forward to 35 years old, when my wedding day will hopefully occur - and in turn my newfound stability. It's difficult to not want something more when you find yourself quitting your job and crying at work, both things I experienced in my own life while reading Reverse Cowgirl.
McKenzie Wark doesn't ever tell us if she's yearned for stability in the same way that I do, but when the book opens, it's clear that she's doing some experimenting. The section of the description on the jacket copy that caught my attention was the line, "Reverse Cowgirl is a comedy of errors, chronicling the author's failed attempts at being gay and at being straight across the shifting political and media landscapes of the late twentieth century." As someone who feels like they're "failing at being gay" at this moment in life, I was intrigued.
Opening in Sydney, Australia, Reverse Cowgirl is essentially a series of vignettes that chronicle Wark's early sexual relationships, and juxtaposes them at the end with the life she's found with her current partner, Christen. Wark's partners at the beginning of the story felt pretty homogeneous, not possessing a lot of obvious characteristics. In Reverse Cowgirl, they essentially act as walking penises. Edward, one of Wark's first partners, inspires her love of getting fucked in the ass, a feeling she chases throughout the entirety of the book. She repeats, in many sections of the book, "Fuck me til I don't exist," something she told to her boyfriend near the beginning of the book. She then asks, "I wanted to open this body to that world. But which world? Which body?" She craves the feeling of getting fucked, as it takes her out of her body and makes her feel distant from the body she occupies at the beginning of the book, pre-transition.
The vignettes in Reverse Cowgirl are profound and often funny. I was surprised, because Wark's background seems to be mostly in writing theory, that many of her sentences were poetic, and quite honestly beautiful. She gorgeously writes about the "awkward years", the time of flux. The time of finding yourself through various relationships that seem bigger than the sun. I often thought about a conversation I had in high school with a college-aged friend, sitting on her bed and lamenting the fact that I hadn't found a relationship or someone to love me, sick of going on dates with people I eventually got hurt by (not much, unfortunately, has changed). After hearing my rant, she said "the people I cried over even a year ago, I can barely remember their names now." It's simple, generic advice, but advice that I've held onto, and found a sense of comfort in. Though the awkward years are painful, and often damaging, they're clearly necessary. In Wark's case, they helped to form her entire identity.
Though some of the vignettes grew, at times, repetitive and tedious, I genuinely felt immersed in Wark's life throughout this brief text. She also utilizes intertextuality very well here. A "chorus" of lines from other authors are interspersed throughout the vignettes. In many of the sections, passages from people like Chris Kraus, Juliana Huxtable, Andrea Lawlor, Torrey Peters, etc. were shown and deftly connected back to the points and observations that Wark was making. Plus, I always like seeing what other authors the writer of a piece of non-fiction loves and is inspired by.
Reverse Cowgirl is a book I'm sure I'll be thinking about a lot throughout this next year, when I graduate and hopefully move to a new city. I'm letting it serve as a reminder that, in a weird sort of way, a life of stability can be found in the mess of what seems like instability.
McKenzie Wark doesn't ever tell us if she's yearned for stability in the same way that I do, but when the book opens, it's clear that she's doing some experimenting. The section of the description on the jacket copy that caught my attention was the line, "Reverse Cowgirl is a comedy of errors, chronicling the author's failed attempts at being gay and at being straight across the shifting political and media landscapes of the late twentieth century." As someone who feels like they're "failing at being gay" at this moment in life, I was intrigued.
Opening in Sydney, Australia, Reverse Cowgirl is essentially a series of vignettes that chronicle Wark's early sexual relationships, and juxtaposes them at the end with the life she's found with her current partner, Christen. Wark's partners at the beginning of the story felt pretty homogeneous, not possessing a lot of obvious characteristics. In Reverse Cowgirl, they essentially act as walking penises. Edward, one of Wark's first partners, inspires her love of getting fucked in the ass, a feeling she chases throughout the entirety of the book. She repeats, in many sections of the book, "Fuck me til I don't exist," something she told to her boyfriend near the beginning of the book. She then asks, "I wanted to open this body to that world. But which world? Which body?" She craves the feeling of getting fucked, as it takes her out of her body and makes her feel distant from the body she occupies at the beginning of the book, pre-transition.
The vignettes in Reverse Cowgirl are profound and often funny. I was surprised, because Wark's background seems to be mostly in writing theory, that many of her sentences were poetic, and quite honestly beautiful. She gorgeously writes about the "awkward years", the time of flux. The time of finding yourself through various relationships that seem bigger than the sun. I often thought about a conversation I had in high school with a college-aged friend, sitting on her bed and lamenting the fact that I hadn't found a relationship or someone to love me, sick of going on dates with people I eventually got hurt by (not much, unfortunately, has changed). After hearing my rant, she said "the people I cried over even a year ago, I can barely remember their names now." It's simple, generic advice, but advice that I've held onto, and found a sense of comfort in. Though the awkward years are painful, and often damaging, they're clearly necessary. In Wark's case, they helped to form her entire identity.
Though some of the vignettes grew, at times, repetitive and tedious, I genuinely felt immersed in Wark's life throughout this brief text. She also utilizes intertextuality very well here. A "chorus" of lines from other authors are interspersed throughout the vignettes. In many of the sections, passages from people like Chris Kraus, Juliana Huxtable, Andrea Lawlor, Torrey Peters, etc. were shown and deftly connected back to the points and observations that Wark was making. Plus, I always like seeing what other authors the writer of a piece of non-fiction loves and is inspired by.
Reverse Cowgirl is a book I'm sure I'll be thinking about a lot throughout this next year, when I graduate and hopefully move to a new city. I'm letting it serve as a reminder that, in a weird sort of way, a life of stability can be found in the mess of what seems like instability.