Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781558618664
Publication Date: 10-07-2014

Available as an ebook on:
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Who do you think about (maybe too much), who fascinates, inspires, even repels you? Each writer offers a daring personal view on a public person. These original essays include Mary Gaitskill on Linda Lovelace, Rick Moody on Karen Dalton, Johanna Fateman on Andrea Dworkin, Hanna Blank on MFK Fisher, Kate Zambreno on Kathy Acker, Justin Vivian Bond on Karen Graham.

"Porn, oysters, abjection:  Icon, a smart plunge into fandom's sober fringe, will excite anyone who has ever harbored ambivalent and obsessive love for an idol. Uncanny affinities tie together the essays in this compelling collection, packed with surprising detours, punchy revelations, and a refreshing abundance of unconventionality. For the methods and intimacies of Icon, I feel a satisfying surge of kinship." —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays

"The writers in Icon are icons in their own right, their words bluntly confessional more than devotional. These essays are batons--pass them forward." —Evelyn McDonnell, author of Queens of Noise

"These nine exquisite essays piece together dazzling mirror shards of biography, memoir, and homage. Seeking to live in community with great souls past and present, the writers gathered here forge electric collaborations with the dead, the lost, the rued, the canonized, and the newly loved." —Sara Marcus, author of Girls to the Front

"Icon illustrates the multiple ways in which we construct and read identity, and what it means to envy, adore, worship, and hate public figures. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, Icon reminds us that our icons say a lot about ourselves." —Tristan Taormino, author of Opening Up