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335th out of 349 books
—
180 voters
After Claude
by
Iris Owens
Harriet is leaving her boyfriend Claude, “the French rat.” That at least is how Harriet sees things, even if it’s Claude who has just asked Harriet to leave his Greenwich Village apartment. Well, one way or another she has no intention of leaving. To the contrary, she will stay and exact revenge—or would have if Claude had not had her unceremoniously evicted. Still, though...more
Paperback, 232 pages
Published
November 9th 2010
by NYRB Classics
(first published 1973)
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This was an enjoyable read, you have to love Harriet, at least if you're a masochistic feminist like myself. At first she seems like a smart strong woman, but to my disappointment she isn't one. Anxious to read another by Owens. Some lines I liked are; "Claude pretended not to hear me, an act of male intelligence that never fails to impress me", there's nothing that warms a girl's heart like a smile on the face of a sadist", and "I have.. learned never to be amazed at what men will resort to whe...more
AFTER CLAUDE looked like just another confessional memoir of the 70s in the wake of the women's rights movement, but a mere page into it will reveal something entirely different and hilariously revelatory. Harriet, a twenty-something slacker a good couple of decades before those became a "thing," fights perpetually with her snooty French photographer boyfriend Claude as they live in New York City. Claude eventually becomes exhausted by the constant bickering (or can't deal with Harriet's earthy,...more
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I’d not heard of this book, first published in 1973, or writer but found it browsing in a bookstore’s section reserved for New York Book Review books and was seduced by the blurbs and publisher. For example, from Leonard Michaels, “I haven’t read a more wittily offensive serious novel…” Truth be told it doesn’t disappoint. Harriet, the anti-hero of this acerbic comedy of mis-manners is a train wreck of a character and our very unreliable narrator. But her unreliability as a narrator takes a back...more
This is what happens to Harriet after Claude breaks up with her and wants her out of his apartment:
She decides she isn't going anywhere
Then she gets locked out of the apartment
Harriet calls the locksmith and he breaks down the door and changes the locks
Claude, understandably, is furious when he can't get in and calls the cops
The cops break down the door, dragging Harriet along who tries to save face by telling Claude she's breaking up with him!
Harriet is an "independent" woman of the times. Her...more
She decides she isn't going anywhere
Then she gets locked out of the apartment
Harriet calls the locksmith and he breaks down the door and changes the locks
Claude, understandably, is furious when he can't get in and calls the cops
The cops break down the door, dragging Harriet along who tries to save face by telling Claude she's breaking up with him!
Harriet is an "independent" woman of the times. Her...more
Initially, I thought the writing style was interesting and I wanted to see where the story would go. However, I ended up not wanting to finish it because it was really not very good.
The narrator is clearly a troubled individual, self-centered and yet dependent on others, but it wasn't funny or interesting. A lot of the things she said or thought or did were offensive or twisted in some way. I couldn't really find much redeeming about her, especially with all the uses of the word "fag" and other...more
The narrator is clearly a troubled individual, self-centered and yet dependent on others, but it wasn't funny or interesting. A lot of the things she said or thought or did were offensive or twisted in some way. I couldn't really find much redeeming about her, especially with all the uses of the word "fag" and other...more
I really liked this book. The protagonist is hilarious and the least self-aware character I've ever read. She is the kind of person who would be great as a friend in very small doses and only as long as you were willing to tiptoe around her idiosyncracies. You weren't won over by her, you weren't really rooting for her, you just wanted to see what was going to happen to her next. The Rhoda/Regina scenario that started the whole affair with Claude was SO bizarre that you had to wonder if the righ...more
This is sharp, terrifying, depraved, and laced with incredible moments of clarity. Other readers have called it funny, and while I don't think I'd go so far as to agree, I can see the shades of it. This chick Harriet is losing her mind and it's twisted and sad--what makes it interesting is the feeling you get that she's sometimes fighting it, sometimes inviting it.
In the intro Emily Prager says it well: "if every woman's fears and frailties can be hysterically articulated in one book, this is it...more
In the intro Emily Prager says it well: "if every woman's fears and frailties can be hysterically articulated in one book, this is it...more
In After Claude, the main character and first-person narrator, Harriet, recounts the final days of her relationship with the titular Claude and the aftermath of their breakup. This book was first published in 1973 and has just been reprinted by New York Review Books.
My first impression of Harriet was that she is hilarious. Offensive, very offensive, but hilarious. Before long, though, I realized that her snarkiness is really just a piece of Harriet’s extreme self-centeredness and meanness in whi...more
My first impression of Harriet was that she is hilarious. Offensive, very offensive, but hilarious. Before long, though, I realized that her snarkiness is really just a piece of Harriet’s extreme self-centeredness and meanness in whi...more
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Maybe it's because I wasn't alive in the early 70's. Maybe it's because I'm a yuppie and not a hippy. Maybe it's because I'm a modern feminist. Maybe it's because I like working and don't understand idle people. But this book was awful.
A lazy, self-grandizing, sociopath lives with a French documentary maker after her last roommate was committed (with the help of the heroine of course). French documentary maker gets sick of her lack of joie de vivre and says he's throwing her out. She refuses to...more
A lazy, self-grandizing, sociopath lives with a French documentary maker after her last roommate was committed (with the help of the heroine of course). French documentary maker gets sick of her lack of joie de vivre and says he's throwing her out. She refuses to...more
This novel is delightfully profane, a jujube set in advance of political correctness yet staunchly in the middle of the cultural wars that spawned it. Yes, the language is off-color, and certain episodes would shock a libertine, but it's all worth the blush. A portrait of a desperate mind, After Claude follows recently repatriated Harriet (she got kicked out of France) as she freeloads first off her former best friend Rhoda-Regina and then her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Claude, "the French rat." He...more
After Claude is an odd little portrait of a woman going off the rails. At times funny, at times very sad, it's a fascinating character study and an interesting early attempt at creating a female anti-hero. Iris Owens writes like a dream - too bad she wasn't more prolific (I'm not likely to seek out any of the pornographic stuff she wrote under her pseudonym of Harriet Daimler). I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would when I started it. After the first few pages of Harriet's "mad and...more
Started out funny, then you realize she's only got one track: bitter and acerbic. It gets old really quickly and devolves into Confederacy of Dunces style ickiness. Then for the last 10 or 20 pages it gets good. Then it's over.
This book was written in the '70s and it may be a product of its time (hence the similarity to Dunces), but it's just not funny. The "jokes" are just depressing. Harriet is completely self-unaware, and yeah, I get that's supposed to be part of the "humor," and she's not su...more
This book was written in the '70s and it may be a product of its time (hence the similarity to Dunces), but it's just not funny. The "jokes" are just depressing. Harriet is completely self-unaware, and yeah, I get that's supposed to be part of the "humor," and she's not su...more
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this book was incredible. i tend to have a problem with first person stories, as the voice they're told in stays the same throughout and hence the change never really feels complete; they always make me feel really claustrophobic and irritated by what generally amounts to a glamorization of idiosyncrasy. not that i don't tend to enjoy them in the beginning; in the beginning first person is always fun. it just tends to wear on me after a while. but this book, holy shit, it just plows on through a...more
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I hadn't heard of Iris Owens until the night Mike Young gave me this book, and a few pages in I knew she was a legend. Here is the oddness of Purdy and Jane Bowles, and the dreamy inner life of Lore Segal's Lucinella, but this book stands on its own legs, led by the sassiest narrator I've ever met. A bit much at times, and offensive to many, this gem has the most exciting sentences I've read since Gaetan Soucy's The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches. The descriptions in this book occasiona...more
Very funny, strange book. Narrator is a trip, a frustrating mess who pleas with us to see her side of things when she is clearly behaving like a selfish little girl whose lost all her sweets. Funny how she tells conversations how they actually did happen, which makes her contradictory narration about the events even more hilarious. Very simple narrative and interesting progression undone by the strange (but not unsuccessful) final two chapters, where Harriet encounters the charismatic leader of...more
Infuriating, hilarious account of Harriet who is obviously mentally ill. Claude finds her on a stoop in Greenwich Village and takes her in. After six months, he has had enough and tries to get rid of her, but she will have none of it. This was written in 1973 and republished in 2010 by NYRB. The cultural references from 1973 are terrific. Harriet is completely annoying, which as an idea starts well and is quite entertaining, but ends up being tiring by the end of the book.
This book is not for ev...more
This book is not for ev...more
Aug 18, 2012
hirtho
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
laughers and cryers, lovers and liars
Shelves:
nyrb,
best-of-my-2012-reading
8/18 - A stunning book with an hilarious anti-heroine so hateful and needy yet the book's style keeps us pressed against her qualities as they rampage out of control and it is never not simultaneously endearing and frightening and hysterical. The title is a misnomer since she's actually breaking up w/ Claude almost the entire book and then once she isn't she's in this finale free-for-all which still sees her in relation to her relationships with others, but that's maybe the most impressive feat...more
Another book that could have been spoiled by the dust jacket, but I'm conscientious now. Don't know anything, be ignorant and let it all spill out across the pages.
I'm writing this on my phone from South Carolina. My phone suggests after "don't" I'll type "beget".
But the book jacket says, "At last, out of the chorus of wounded, depressed, and suffering female voices so frequently heard in our current 'women's books' comes the outraged and outrageous voice of Harriet."
First edition apologies. The...more
I'm writing this on my phone from South Carolina. My phone suggests after "don't" I'll type "beget".
But the book jacket says, "At last, out of the chorus of wounded, depressed, and suffering female voices so frequently heard in our current 'women's books' comes the outraged and outrageous voice of Harriet."
First edition apologies. The...more
How can anyone say this book is funny? or witty? It's about a sociopath who sees the world through delusions of grandeur. She gets kick out of France and her passport confiscated, finds a friend to welch off, drives her off the deep end, shacks up with whatever weirdo picks her up ( Claude), gets the boot from him for being weird, and then takes up with a cult recruiter who shows her how to masturbate. That's it. The whole book...a better title would be “My Life Before I Became a Cult Girl”.
Hilarious but offensive! You can't be too PC and like this book. Kind alike Confederacy of Dunces.
As an aspiring writer, the thing I found most fascinating about this book is how you come to quickly realize the narrator is totally delusional about herself and the way Iris Owens communicates that without ever saying it straight out. A friend who is a real writer informed that this is called an "unreliable narrator" and it's hard to do.
As an aspiring writer, the thing I found most fascinating about this book is how you come to quickly realize the narrator is totally delusional about herself and the way Iris Owens communicates that without ever saying it straight out. A friend who is a real writer informed that this is called an "unreliable narrator" and it's hard to do.
Compulsively stomach-turning story of a parasitic, snobby, lazy, contemptuous, bitch of a heroine who abuses everyone around her while maintaining that she herself is the victim.
This is a richly original comic story that I find myself quoting over and over again.
And I think I am the only one who remembers the TV commercial for it from my childhood. I wanted to read it at age 10. I finally did.
This is a richly original comic story that I find myself quoting over and over again.
And I think I am the only one who remembers the TV commercial for it from my childhood. I wanted to read it at age 10. I finally did.
1 like · like · see review
WTF. Couldn't really put it down. In this circumstance that wasn't a good thing. Like reading the novel version of Martha Marcy May Marlene. I will repeat: WTF. The dialogue and intelligence of the narrator was hilarious and awe-inspired, so why did it have to go and be such a disappointment in regards to its pathos and themes. Damn. I really was hoping for better.
Seriously, deliciously bitchy fun. You will be horrified by Harriet, but if you're anything like me, you'll also be a bit in awe of a person playing it entirely straight, speaking her mind and being terrible, regardless of the consequences. Called to mind the mother in Alina Bronsky's "Hottest Dishes of the Tatar Cuisine."
this book is crazy, crazy and great. Written in the 70s and set in new york (half of it in the chelsea hotel)harriet has left 'that rat Claude' on page one, but she is still trying to hang on to him about 100 pages in. it's kind of offensive, wicked and awesome. (bit of a warning...some of the language is 'of it's time')
So goddamned funny. I love fucked up, delusional narrators. She's sort of like Sarah Silverman's comedy persona? First published in 1973, the author mostly wrote a bunch of porn for Olympia Press, and wrote one other novel besides this one under her name. So much shit in here made me laugh.
I devoured this book in one day, mostly because it was an easy, quick, intriguing read. Harriet, the protagonist is witty, bitchy, insensitive, sharp and at times completely fucked-up. Which I admittedly adore. This book is definitely not for everyone. In fact, I think people who read it will either love it or hate it.
I recently had houseguests from Europe stay with me for four long nights and three long days. It was hellish for me. I won't go into what gross habits they had, what social graces and good manners they lacked, or ponder any further why people would keep their luggage in a guest bathroom, so I'll just say that having the houseguests invade my home, my sanctuary while at the same time reading this book, I could not muster any admiration for Harriet. Not even a little.
In fact, not only did I NOT em...more
In fact, not only did I NOT em...more
This was a very odd book. The main character and narrator, Harriet, is insane...that's for sure but her thought process is entertaining. The story ended in a rather strange way. I would have enjoyed a little less mystery as to where she ends up staying.
This book seems painfully dated, it takes sarcasm for wit, and unless I am completely misreading it, seems like one of those appallingly misogynistic works that women themselves occasionally turn out. I really don't know why it merited a reprint.
from NOÖ [14]:
Read this on the bus past regal mid-Atlantic trees in Baltimore and also past pockmarked row houses. This is a novel about a woman in New York who has a French boyfriend who gets exasperated. The woman is the one talking the whole time. Her name is Harriet. She ends up in the Chelsea Hotel. You start out thinking she’s annoying and lovable and you end up walking around in her clothes while she’s in a cab outside, still talking to you over a walkie-talkie but also somehow asleep. Ma...more
Read this on the bus past regal mid-Atlantic trees in Baltimore and also past pockmarked row houses. This is a novel about a woman in New York who has a French boyfriend who gets exasperated. The woman is the one talking the whole time. Her name is Harriet. She ends up in the Chelsea Hotel. You start out thinking she’s annoying and lovable and you end up walking around in her clothes while she’s in a cab outside, still talking to you over a walkie-talkie but also somehow asleep. Ma...more
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Iris Owens (née Klein) (1929–2008) was born and raised in New York City, the daughter of a professional gambler. She attended Barnard College, was briefly married, and then moved to Paris, where she fell in with Alexander Trocchi, the editor of the legendary avant-garde journal Merlin and a notorious heroin addict, and supported herself by producing pornography (under the name of Harriet Daimler)...more
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Mar 18, 2011 07:53pm