Four savage and remarkable autobiographical stories from one of the most acclaimed and controversial artists of his generation, each illustrated with powerful ink drawings by the author himselfFor most of his life, David Wojnarowicz considered himself the ultimate outsider and a true invisible man. "I'm a blank spot in a hectic civilization," he writes in this fierce and unforgettable collection of four blistering autobiographical pieces, illustrated with his own arresting ink drawings. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in New York City at the age of thirty-seven, left behind a body of work that was staggering in its variety and originality. Painter, writer, photographer, performance artist, and filmmaker, he made an indelible mark on virtually every stage of the national arts scene. Yet nowhere does his anger, love, or compassion show itself as strongly as in his writing, which prompted critics to call him the Jack Kerouac of his generation.The horrors of Wojnarowicz's past inform...

The savage, beautiful, and unforgettable memoirs of an extraordinary artist, activist, and iconoclast who lit up the New York art scene in the late twentieth centuryDavid Wojnarowicz's brief but eventful life was not easy. From a suburban adolescence marked by neglect, drugs, prostitution, and abuse to a squalid life on the streets of New York City, to fame—and infamy—as an activist and controversial visual artist whose work was lambasted in the halls of Congress, all before his early death from AIDS at age thirty-seven, Wojnarowicz seemed to be at war with a homophobic "establishment" and the world itself. Yet what emerged from the darkness was a truly extraordinary artist and human being—an angry young man of remarkable poetic sensibilities who was inordinately sympathetic to those who, like him, lived and struggled outside society's boundaries.Close to the Knives is his searing yet strangely beautiful account told in a collection of powerful essays. An...

From life in the streets and love in the alleys to fame in the spotlight and an untimely death—raw, biting, and brilliant selections from the personal journals of one of the most uniquely creative artists of the late twentieth centuryWhen his life ended at age thirty-seven—a casualty of the AIDS epidemic that took so many before their time—David Wojnarowicz had long since established himself as one of America's most vital artists and activists. In the Shadow of the American Dream is a stunning collection of riveting and revealing chapters from Wojnarowicz's extensive personal diaries—thirty volumes' worth of memories and lucid observations, some bitter, some sweet—that the author began writing when he was seventeen and continued until his death two decades later. Here is a brilliant chronicle of an artist's emergence—a young man's still achingly fresh memories of his unhappy adolescence and his glorious discovery of self. Wojnarowicz recalls...

Voices from the margins of American life tell their sad and shocking stories of trickery, betrayal, sex, and defeat in a poignant and powerful collection of more than forty short monologuesIn his full but regrettably brief lifetime, David Wojnarowicz was many things: a visual and performance artist whose radical work incensed the right-wing establishment, a tireless AIDS and anticensorship activist, and, most emphatically, a writer. His Waterfront Journals are a remarkable collection of fictionalized stories spoken in the voices of unforgettable characters the author met during his time spent living on America's streets and traveling her back roads. The narrators speak from the heart and from the depths of despair, creating an often shocking and powerfully moving mosaic of American life in the shadows. Here are junkies and boy hustlers, truckers and hoboes. A runner tells of his encounter with two drug-using priests who openly and proudly discuss their various sexual exploits....