The dead ladies project: exiles, expats, and ex-countries PDF
Preview The dead ladies project: exiles, expats, and ex-countries
THE DEAD LADIES PROJECT THE DEAD LADIES PROJECT exiles, expats, and ex-countries Jessa Crispin The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Jessa Crispin is the editor and founder of the magazines Bookslut and Spolia. She has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR.org, the Chicago Sun-Times, Architect, and other publications. She has lived in Kansas, Texas, Ireland, Chicago, Berlin, and elsewhere. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by Jessa Crispin All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 27845- 2 (paper) isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 27859- 9 (e- book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226278599.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crispin, Jessa, author. The dead ladies project : exiles, expats, and ex-countries / Jessa Crispin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. isBn 978-0-226-27845-2 (paperback : alkaline paper) — isBn 978-0-226-27859-9 (ebook) 1. Crispin, Jessa. 2. Cities and towns—Psychological aspects. 3. Celebrities—Homes and haunts. 4. Aliens—Biography. 5. Place (Philosophy). I. Title. ct120.c75 2015 920.073—dc23 [B] 2015013597 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper). for Honeybee Contents Prelude / Chicago 1 Berlin / William James 5 Trieste / Nora Barnacle 29 Sarajevo / Rebecca West 55 South of France / Margaret Anderson 85 Galway / Maud Gonne 107 Lausanne / Igor Stravinsky 129 St. Petersburg / W. Somerset Maugham 153 London /Jean Rhys 177 Jersey Island / Claude Cahun 201 Coda / Zakynthos 223 Suggested Reading 237 Prelude / Chicago There are two Chicago cops standing in my kitchen. They are here to take me away, and I am trying to talk them out of it. I don’t know if I am doing a very good job, though, as it is hard to form a logical argument when my primary focus is on moving slowly to position myself between the cops and my oven to block their view of my stovetop. I am somehow more embarrassed about the pot of macaroni and cheese from a box, the cheap one with the sickly orange powder, than I am about their reason for being here. The reason being that I made some threats against my life on the phone with a friend. After that I kind of bailed. It is not that I did not mean them—I was in a pretty unwashed and terrified state—it’s just that saying them out loud was not part of the plan, and I felt like I could avoid the consequences of the con- fession simply by turning off my phone. When my friend could not get me back on the line, she called my sister, who called the police. The police came to take me to the emergency room. The emergency room doctors would then lock me away in the psych ward for observation. And I did have a plan. The suicidal brain is good at only one thing, and that is constructing elaborate plans for doing away with itself. My plan included not telling anyone there was a problem, so that they would not interfere. Now that they had, I had to consider them in my decision. That untimely blurt is really messing things up for me. 1
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