Bye-Bye - Hardcover

Ransom, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814774903 ISBN 13: 9780814774908

Publisher: New York University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Jane Ransom's Bye-Bye is a darkly comic first novel, both sexy and profoundly philosophical. The protagonist/narrator is a bisexual divorcee in Manhattan who assumes a false identity in an effort to escape the past and to spy on her own life. While exploring issues of gender and self, Bye-Bye deals provocatively with performance art, S&M, personal ads and art in the 90s.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Ransom is the author of Without Asking, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and was lauded by, among others, The Village Voice and The Los Angeles Times. Ransom has lived in Madrid, Paris, and Puerto Rico, and now resides in New York.

From the Back Cover

Bye-Bye lures us into the mind of a sexually adventurous New Yorker in her mid-30s haunted by memories of her mother and of her own failed marriage. Her too-perfect husband threw her out three years before the novel opens, because of her infidelities. Partly in an effort to wrench herself out of depression, she "disappears" by changing her appearance and assuming a false identity as Rose Anne Waldin, or Rosie. Rosie boasts three lovers: two women - one an S&M pornographer, the other an aloof "Personal Ad" - and one man, whom she meets at a book-burning. The books being burned are by a celebrated Chicano poet who (an angry public has discovered) was apparently never Chicano at all. The scandal involves an elusive performance artist known only as the "Andorgenie", whose identity-bending perversities mirror Rosie's. We gradually learn about Rosie's not-at-all-rosy past, of her compulsive, often darkly comic behavior, and of her obsession with murder. Soon it grows apparent that Rosie is preparing to commit some dramatic, possibly violent, act. Poking fun at the Soho scene, Bye-Bye explores what makes art Art at the end of the millennium. And it implicitly asks, what kind of aesthetic gesture can still deliver a serious punch in a mass-media culture infatuated with sex crimes and notoriety, without degenerating into a knee-jerk defense? Bye-Bye is itself of course one answer.

Reviews

Often grim, sometimes droll debut (winner of the 1996 New York University Press Prize for Fiction) by poet Ransom. The bisexual narrator can't forget her ruthlessly intelligent mother, whom she helped die with a morphine overdose, and can't escape the ambiance of her ex-husband, who divorced her for infidelity. She also has a schizo brother who thinks he's God, and an alcoholic father she hasn't seen in 18 years. Her fallback is My Lover, a woman who photographs lesbians for the slicks. In a last- ditch attempt to escape her many entanglements and seize control of her life, the narrator changes her identity (becoming Rose Ann Waldin), dyes her hair red, gets a new Social Security number and driver's license, moves, lets no one know who or where she is, and lives off her inheritance. Her loathsome new apartment is decorated with grungy sub-Disney paintings by top serial-murderer John Wayne Gacy--who sold his works by mail before he was executed. New acquaintances or lovers include Personal Ad, an icy high-toned lesbian with a psychology degree (``How do you feel right now?'') whom ``Rose Ann'' meets through a personals ad, and The Bartender, a blithe male lover. Rosie is obsessed by a mysterious performance artist known only as Andorgenie, an androgyne who appears every few months with a new identity, male or female, then discards it. Who or what Andorgenie is, no one knows. Not much happens as Rosie agonizes and flits between lovers, though the admittedly fairly bizarre waiting time has amusing moments: ``While returning the waiter's stare, I had blinked, which My Lover probably mistook for a wink because my Maybelline Extra-Thick Marathon Mascara eyelashes momentarily stuck together.'' The climax: Rosie pulls off her own performance artistry as a bloodsoaked murderess. More flash than fun. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ransom won the 1996 New York University Press Prize for Fiction for this first novel about a young woman's sexual escapades and search for identity. No one in this novel has a name except for the narrator, Rosie, but even that is just a name she chooses when she decides to change her identity. The other characters are "My Lover," a woman she met after seeing her photographs in a porn magazine; the Bartender, a man who made her a drink at a performance art happening; and the Personal Ad, a bizarre woman she meets through the personals. The author is trying to challenge the reader about conceptions of identity but gets so caught up in trying to be cutting edge that she fails to make the narrator interesting or appealing. The saving grace is Ransom's gift for description and her keen observations. Recommended only where there is an interest in bisexual, literary erotica.?Editha Ann Wilberton, Kansas City P.L., Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814774903
• ISBN 13: 9780814774908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198