Review:
"A fascinating read." -- W Magazine
"Steinke shows palpable admiration and respect for her proto-feminist protagonist. This is an intelligent, spirited work that stimulates interest in the baroness's work and times."--Publishers Weekly
"Steinke's book reminds us why Elsa's frenetic, avant-garde world is worth remembering."--Time Out New York
"A fascinating read."--W Magazine
"The baroness's antics make the Andy Warhol crowd seem tame by comparison."--Playboy
"Steinke is a consummate prose stylist. She has a poet's ear for words...."--BookForum
"Steinke's graceful prose adds intimate texture to a woman so cutting-edge that Duchamp called her 'the future.'"--Entertainment Weekly
"Steinke has drawn a fully realized character whose Dadaist impulses, even though the filter of time and fiction, still startle."--Chicago Tribune
Steinke shows palpable admiration and respect for her proto-feminist protagonist. This is an intelligent, spirited work that stimulates interest in the baroness s work and times. --Publishers Weekly"
The baroness s antics make the Andy Warhol crowd seem tame by comparison. --Playboy"
Synopsis:
After running away from home and living a scandalous life in Berlin, the beautiful Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven arrives in New York City with her husband. The marriage soon flounders and Elsa finds herself on her own. An unusual and talented woman, she takes up modelling and sculpting and exhibitionism, become more and more outrageous. She's often arrested for public nudity and shoplifting, but she's so good at jumping from the police wagon that she usually escapes. At the centre of the Dadaist circle, she even transforms herself into a work of art. In love with the artist Marcel Duchamp, she makes him the subject of several of her sculptures and poems, one of which reads "Marcel, Marcel, I love you like hell, Marcel." She's an early version of Madonna or Courtney Love. In addition to telling the story of a fascinating woman, the novel also depicts a time of cataclysmic change--through a world war, the popularization of technology, the advent of the automobile, the proliferation of cities, and enormous changes in the lives women.
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