Lynn Breedlove

Breedlove is a super interesting person and, I would say based on a single live reading I saw a while ago of some unpublished work, a strong writer and performer... but you'll get only glimpses of that here. The book is as far as I can tell a direct transcription of stage/standup material, just the spoken words, and there are obvious problems with that approach—at least for any performer whose humor isn't 100% verbal: you lose the delivery and the physical performance, which doesn't just show more affect the tone but sometimes is essential to even knowing what the idea is. There's a fair number of lines in this where if you haven't seen the show, you'll just be getting a mysterious half-joke with an invisible punchline. I actually can enjoy reading stuff like that, because it gives a weird kind of negative-space view of how performing and storytelling works, and because you can be surprised by weird little maybe-unintentional turns of phrase that stand out in print differently than in speech. The most memorable example I've seen of that is The Essential Lenny Bruce; Breedlove mentions Bruce in the preface, and there are bits where I think you can see the influence pretty clearly. show less

Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show by Lynn Breedlove. Manic D Press, San Francisco, 2009. Softcover, 128 pages. Illustrated.

This little book’s big impact will continue to grow, along with that of Lynn Breedlove’s previous novel Godspeed. Breedlove’s life is full of drama and scandal and vice and redemption, but what’s important about One Freak Show is the perspective.

Breedlove is the outsider’s outsider – both a beloved figure in several communities and a member of no community show more on Earth. Think you’ve felt alienated? Next to Lynn Breedlove, the rest of us self-defined weirdos are like lemmings. Try being an angry peacenik, the front person for a dissolved punk band, a cosmic teacher who consorts with sex workers and drug addicts, while your gender identity changes several times a day, you are always a party of one, no matter how lovable you are. Who can relate to your life experiences? Most people would retreat into a hermit’s cave, but Breedlove has chosen instead to create an ever-changing performance called “One Freak Show,” touring Europe with it before capturing it between the covers of this book.

One Freak Show is written in short, energetic bursts, with a page now and then of song lyrics or quotes from very young children. Breedlove is not interested in being Spaulding Gray, pouring out Proustian reams on the merits of choosing a sandwich or taking a walk. I found that I could not just sit down with it and read it all at once, though the whole thing is only 128 pages. I also found resistance within myself about reading the book in order. I felt more comfortable opening the book at random and reading two or three pages, then stopping to process it. The photo illustrations include both historical passage points in the author’s life, and documented ephemera from an ever-changing life in art and music.

My favorite thing about One Freak Show is that Breedlove’s writing is provocative without being hostile. I’ve spent so much time reading and watching work whose sole purpose was to vent the creator’s anger and disgust. Often I’ve felt slimed by someone who had promised edgy insight and then spewed bile all over me after I paid twelve bucks and sat on a really hard plastic chair for two hours. Lynn Breedlove never makes me feel disrespected even when the two of us are as far apart as opposite points on a compass.

And funny? Lemme tell you. Breedlove’s imagining what it would be like if the crew from MTV’s “Cribs” or one of the reality shows came to see a punk artist’s real living space is hilarious. And then there’s this: “Down the middle of my once-perfect abdomen, I have a six-inch scar, though. Chicks dig scars. They want to know what happened. I tell them: I got in a knife fight with a surgeon He won. It was only ‘cause I was asleep.”

One Freak Show isn’t all fun and games. If you can’t stand mentions of pornography, street drugs, or peeing on trees in the woods, this book will be too “outsider lit” for you. It’s not graphic or shocking, but there are two or three perverse things on nearly every page. There’s also plenty of contradiction, with occasional Breedlove vs. Breedlove arguments. Now that’s the work of the outsider’s outsider’s outsider: nobody’s always in your corner, even you.

Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show is honest, entertaining, and sparely written. The chapters are short and separated by topic, so you always know what you’re about to get. Fans of Breedlove’s earlier book, Godspeed, will get a large charge out of this second book by someone who is shaking up the world 128 pages at a time. show less

This is a suprising great novel from former Tribe 8 member Lynn Breedlove. From its first words, it grabs the reader and pulls him/her into the world of Jim, a self proclaimed tranny dyke, as she explores the world from California to New York, after being dumped by her lover, a sex worker named Ally. Comic at times, yet heart-breaking as we see Jim spiral in drug use and loss love, Breedlove's novel is beautiful in everyway, from its characters (from Jim to her mom) to its prose style, show more poetically rendered within its 287 pages. It is a good read for anyone interested in queer studies and queer lifestyles, such as those defined in Judith Halberstam's "In a Queer Time & Place," but great works of fiction should never be limited to an audience, and works such as "Godspeed" should be read by anyone as part of the American literary canon to be ranked, as Halberstams says, with Burrough's "Naked Lunch." I am just deeply surprised that this hasn't recieved more literary acclaim as within my own library it ranks as one of my favorite pieces of writings. show less

This was pretty good. Lynn Breedlove is a member of Tribe 8, which I gather is a lesbian punk band. The book features a butch punk dyke named Jim who is addicted to heroin and in love with a stripper. Oh and she's a bike courier. She was a really cool character, but the writing style seemed like it was trying too obviously hard to be cool. At first I thought it was cool, but then it just seemed wearing. A randon sample:

"That's when the orange syringe cap on the street looms godlike. It show more disappears in a blur under wheels and feet. It rewinds and plays back again and again thirty times, the same piece of plastic, block after block, burning bush, big as shit, alert alert right there in the street, saying, Hi, you need to get fucked up."

Also the ending seemed a little weak. Would she get the stripper, would she meet someone else? No, she biked off into the sunset. Lame. Part of it takes place in NYC, when she's a roadie with a lesbian punk band, the rest is in San Francisco. It captures the scene pretty well I think, from a totally drugged out point of view anyway. I think this type of heroine (no pun intended) is needed in literature, but I wish someone could take it a little further than this book does. As it is, it is a colorful look at the life, with a weak plot and a 'cool' chip on it's shoulder. show less