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Paradoxical Undressing
Kristin Hersh was a preternaturally bright teenager, starting university at fifteen and with her band, Throwing Muses, playing rock clubs she was too young to frequent. By the age of seventeen she was living in her car, unable to sleep for the torment of strange songs swimming around her head - the songs for which she is now known. But just as her band was taking off, Hersh was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.
Paradoxical Undressing chronicles the unraveling of a young woman's personality, culminating in a suicide attempt; and then her arduous yet inspiring recovery, her unplanned pregnancy at the age of 19, and the birth of her first son. Playful, vivid, and wonderfully warm, this is a visceral and brave memoir by a truly original performer, told in a truly original voice.
Paradoxical Undressing chronicles the unraveling of a young woman's personality, culminating in a suicide attempt; and then her arduous yet inspiring recovery, her unplanned pregnancy at the age of 19, and the birth of her first son. Playful, vivid, and wonderfully warm, this is a visceral and brave memoir by a truly original performer, told in a truly original voice.
319 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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487 people want to read
About the author
Kristin Hersh
16 books148 followersKristin Hersh (born August 7, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter and author.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
September 15, 2014
"I know a lot of bands who're candy. Or beer. Fun and bad for you in a way that makes you feel good. For a minute. My band is...spinach, I guess. We're ragged and bitter. But I swear to god, we're good for you. "
Throwing Muses and, in particular, Kristin Hersh (primary songwriter and singer) have been profoundly important, precious, (dare I say it) sacred, to me since I first discovered them at age 15.
I had, for many years, been unable to sleep properly - fear and panic would bubble up through me as soon as I pulled up the blanket - I was shy, sad and lost - all that usual rubbish. Then, one Monday in May 1994, I bought Select Magazine (this one, in fact - http://selectmagazinescans.monkeon.co...) and listened to the tape.
On it was this: http://youtu.be/aCsIHI-q0YY
(pretty good tape actually - http://www.discogs.com/Various-Secret...)
I listened to it 10 times in a row.
I went out and bought Hips and Makers, her solo album.
I listened to it non stop for a month.
I made a mix, and played it every night as I lay in bed. I slept peacefully, I felt calmer.
I tracked down everything I could about Kristin and her band, I bought all the albums, saw them and her live whenever possible.
Their music is angular, muscular, broken and breaking and full of strength.
They remain my favorite band. Why? Well check this out:
http://youtu.be/uz5wLTFETZc
or this
http://youtu.be/4vNshSi8LSU?t=5m20s
or this
http://youtu.be/YgTHbKtBAGM
or this
http://youtu.be/1exb_Uk-i-M
I found the first web forum devoted to her, and posted regularly. I became one of her Strange Angels, as she called us, and continue to provide whatever financial support I can to her and her music making.
All this is to say that it is unsurprising I loved this book as much as I did. However, I still ask that you believe me when I say it is one of the very few (with Patti and Bob perhaps the only others) biogs written by musicians with genuine literary value, and which contain well crafted prose and all the rest of those things we book-snobs insist upon.
And no one, absolutely no one, talks about music and songs the way Kristin does.
So - firstly, go listen to her music, then give this a read.
Throwing Muses and, in particular, Kristin Hersh (primary songwriter and singer) have been profoundly important, precious, (dare I say it) sacred, to me since I first discovered them at age 15.
I had, for many years, been unable to sleep properly - fear and panic would bubble up through me as soon as I pulled up the blanket - I was shy, sad and lost - all that usual rubbish. Then, one Monday in May 1994, I bought Select Magazine (this one, in fact - http://selectmagazinescans.monkeon.co...) and listened to the tape.
On it was this: http://youtu.be/aCsIHI-q0YY
(pretty good tape actually - http://www.discogs.com/Various-Secret...)
I listened to it 10 times in a row.
I went out and bought Hips and Makers, her solo album.
I listened to it non stop for a month.
I made a mix, and played it every night as I lay in bed. I slept peacefully, I felt calmer.
I tracked down everything I could about Kristin and her band, I bought all the albums, saw them and her live whenever possible.
Their music is angular, muscular, broken and breaking and full of strength.
They remain my favorite band. Why? Well check this out:
http://youtu.be/uz5wLTFETZc
or this
http://youtu.be/4vNshSi8LSU?t=5m20s
or this
http://youtu.be/YgTHbKtBAGM
or this
http://youtu.be/1exb_Uk-i-M
I found the first web forum devoted to her, and posted regularly. I became one of her Strange Angels, as she called us, and continue to provide whatever financial support I can to her and her music making.
All this is to say that it is unsurprising I loved this book as much as I did. However, I still ask that you believe me when I say it is one of the very few (with Patti and Bob perhaps the only others) biogs written by musicians with genuine literary value, and which contain well crafted prose and all the rest of those things we book-snobs insist upon.
And no one, absolutely no one, talks about music and songs the way Kristin does.
So - firstly, go listen to her music, then give this a read.
October 24, 2013
In light of the new Throwing Muses album being released next week (rapture!!) I just thought I'd write a couple of words on this autobiography. I picked up a signed copy of this book by Kristin Hersh at the Throwing Muses gig at Shepherd's Bush in 2011. I devoured the book eagerly a couple of days later.
Kristin Hersh has been my musical goddess since I was a teen and her novelistic approach to autobiography is exhilarating and quietly profound. It's a travesty the Muses' music is not more widely known but I also appreciate them as being a gift bestowed on the few lucky enough to value them. I dare anyone to listen to their In a Doghouse compilation and not view it as some of the most unique, troubled and exciting music of the 1980s. If their debut album came out now it would still shock and surprise.
I hope Kristin Hersh never tires of creating music, but if so, I'd love her to get into writing novels. From lyrics, to album liner notes, to autobiography, she is like a Rumpelstiltskin where everything she touches turns to gold.
Essential.
Kristin Hersh has been my musical goddess since I was a teen and her novelistic approach to autobiography is exhilarating and quietly profound. It's a travesty the Muses' music is not more widely known but I also appreciate them as being a gift bestowed on the few lucky enough to value them. I dare anyone to listen to their In a Doghouse compilation and not view it as some of the most unique, troubled and exciting music of the 1980s. If their debut album came out now it would still shock and surprise.
I hope Kristin Hersh never tires of creating music, but if so, I'd love her to get into writing novels. From lyrics, to album liner notes, to autobiography, she is like a Rumpelstiltskin where everything she touches turns to gold.
Essential.
August 24, 2014
I read Paradoxical Undressing just before reading a book which is in some ways comparable, in that it's also a memoir by an American alternative rock icon: See A Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould. Over the years, Kristin Hersh's music -- mostly Throwing Muses' early output, to be honest -- has meant a great deal to me, and so has Bob Mould's, especially his work with Husker Du and Sugar but also his first couple of solo albums. Of the two books, Hersh's is about one year in her life, apparently her nineteenth, in which her band first got a record deal, she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and she became pregnant with the first of her four children. Mould's book is an apparently straightforward autobiography: the tale of how Bob Mould, self-hating teenager from Macalester, New York, got to be Bob Mould, alternative rock star and benign gay icon. Hersh's book, which is based on her diary of the period, is self-consciously artful; Mould declares his book to be a reckoning, an attempt to tell the truth about how he's lived his life. Hersh makes no such claims.
Okay, anyone with the slightest awareness of the pitfalls and triumphs in autobiographical writing should not be surprised to learn that Hersh's book is far, far better than Mould's. Not just because it's better (because more vividly) written, funnier, more moving, more insightful. It's also more honest about the difficulty of writing about yourself. Mould's book is a bald, meat'n'potatoes chronicle, occasionally enlivened by the odd anecdote, but above all it suffers from the fact that Mould is apparently unaware of the traps that memoir can lead the writer into. Precisely because his recall is apparently so good, we can't help but mistrust it. The far more diffident Hersh, on the other hand, self-consciously writes her own history with a literary flourish; she can't help recounting the adventures and conversations of the teenage Throwing Muses with something like the same style of affection that JD Salinger lavished on his own creations, the difference being that the Muses were not fictional. Her accounts of what it was like to write songs and rehearse and perform them live are not exactly lavish in technical detail, because only nerds like me would want to know e.g. where she got the idea to write the last section of 'Call Me' as a country waltz -- but they are painfully vivid, because of the way she describes her own songwriting as being deeply involved with her bipolar disorder. See A Little Light makes you feel bad for angry young Bob, but it's clear that he's never going to be able to tell you what it was like to write and record Zen Arcade, because of all the beer and drugs he was doing at the time.
One of the weirdest things about Paradoxical Undressing is Hersh's account of her peculiar friendship with Hollywood actress Betty Hutton, who (as an old lady) attended the same college as the teenage Hersh and who befriended her. Hersh recognised at the time that Hutton, with her constant advice to Hersh to not let herself be exploited by rich moguls, clearly regarded Hersh as in some ways her younger self, and Hersh bittersweetly and somewhat ominously felt bad that of all the younger selves Hutton could have chosen, she picked the young Kristin Hersh, who even then was battling the mental problems that land her in hospital half way through the book. If anything, Hersh downplays her own struggles with bipolar disorder. Compare Henry Rollins, another non-mainstream rock icon of the 80s and 90s, who in his Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag reprinted swathes of his own early-20s diary without the benefit of his older perspective, and who seems more like somebody who would have dearly liked to be genuinely crazy but had to compensate for it by being suffocatingly intense instead. Fortunately, Rollins matured into a wiser, funnier and more sensible person; like most people with a chronic illness, Hersh never seems to have got any sort of kick out of her own maladies.
Paradoxical Undressing progresses in brief flickers. Insofar as there is an overall narrative, it consists of the run-up to and the recovery from a suicide attempt; I've read that there have been others, but there's only one in this book. What shines out of it most inspiringly, if you want to be inspired, is Hersh's devotion to her fellow musicians. She honestly admires the fact that her bandmates are willing to help knock her tortured and sometimes 'evil' songs into shape, and one of the most touching bits of the book is when she first plays a new song to them and then is blown away when they join in the second time around; Kristin in the book experiences her own songs as devastating visitations, but when her bandmates join in, she feels less lonely because they inhabit the song with her.
Rock memoirs tend to be self-justifying, or score-settling, or grandstanding. They tend not to be love letters. Paradoxical Undressing is, among other things, Kristin Hersh's love letter to Throwing Muses. Simultaneously very funny and utterly harrowing, it's probably the best-written rock memoir you will ever read. As I write this, Throwing Muses have a new album out (Purgatory / Paradise); Hersh herself is just this side of fifty, and I calculate that the baby born at the end of this book, her eldest son, must be not far short of thirty. She's still grappling with her demons and still making brilliant music. (Dave Narcizo, one of the great comic characters in this book, is still the drummer in the Muses.) Throwing Muses have long been underrated, at least by comparison with their more cartoonish labelmates, the Pixies, whose output was far less consistent. Hersh, in the book, puts it down to her conviction that her band was like spinach, 'ragged and bitter', but 'good for you'. The Pixies were like takeout pizza; instantly satisfying, but you can't live on it. Throwing Muses' best stuff goes on being good, and this book does a great deal to illuminate the extent of the sweat, viscera, puke and tears that went into why that's so.
Okay, anyone with the slightest awareness of the pitfalls and triumphs in autobiographical writing should not be surprised to learn that Hersh's book is far, far better than Mould's. Not just because it's better (because more vividly) written, funnier, more moving, more insightful. It's also more honest about the difficulty of writing about yourself. Mould's book is a bald, meat'n'potatoes chronicle, occasionally enlivened by the odd anecdote, but above all it suffers from the fact that Mould is apparently unaware of the traps that memoir can lead the writer into. Precisely because his recall is apparently so good, we can't help but mistrust it. The far more diffident Hersh, on the other hand, self-consciously writes her own history with a literary flourish; she can't help recounting the adventures and conversations of the teenage Throwing Muses with something like the same style of affection that JD Salinger lavished on his own creations, the difference being that the Muses were not fictional. Her accounts of what it was like to write songs and rehearse and perform them live are not exactly lavish in technical detail, because only nerds like me would want to know e.g. where she got the idea to write the last section of 'Call Me' as a country waltz -- but they are painfully vivid, because of the way she describes her own songwriting as being deeply involved with her bipolar disorder. See A Little Light makes you feel bad for angry young Bob, but it's clear that he's never going to be able to tell you what it was like to write and record Zen Arcade, because of all the beer and drugs he was doing at the time.
One of the weirdest things about Paradoxical Undressing is Hersh's account of her peculiar friendship with Hollywood actress Betty Hutton, who (as an old lady) attended the same college as the teenage Hersh and who befriended her. Hersh recognised at the time that Hutton, with her constant advice to Hersh to not let herself be exploited by rich moguls, clearly regarded Hersh as in some ways her younger self, and Hersh bittersweetly and somewhat ominously felt bad that of all the younger selves Hutton could have chosen, she picked the young Kristin Hersh, who even then was battling the mental problems that land her in hospital half way through the book. If anything, Hersh downplays her own struggles with bipolar disorder. Compare Henry Rollins, another non-mainstream rock icon of the 80s and 90s, who in his Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag reprinted swathes of his own early-20s diary without the benefit of his older perspective, and who seems more like somebody who would have dearly liked to be genuinely crazy but had to compensate for it by being suffocatingly intense instead. Fortunately, Rollins matured into a wiser, funnier and more sensible person; like most people with a chronic illness, Hersh never seems to have got any sort of kick out of her own maladies.
Paradoxical Undressing progresses in brief flickers. Insofar as there is an overall narrative, it consists of the run-up to and the recovery from a suicide attempt; I've read that there have been others, but there's only one in this book. What shines out of it most inspiringly, if you want to be inspired, is Hersh's devotion to her fellow musicians. She honestly admires the fact that her bandmates are willing to help knock her tortured and sometimes 'evil' songs into shape, and one of the most touching bits of the book is when she first plays a new song to them and then is blown away when they join in the second time around; Kristin in the book experiences her own songs as devastating visitations, but when her bandmates join in, she feels less lonely because they inhabit the song with her.
Rock memoirs tend to be self-justifying, or score-settling, or grandstanding. They tend not to be love letters. Paradoxical Undressing is, among other things, Kristin Hersh's love letter to Throwing Muses. Simultaneously very funny and utterly harrowing, it's probably the best-written rock memoir you will ever read. As I write this, Throwing Muses have a new album out (Purgatory / Paradise); Hersh herself is just this side of fifty, and I calculate that the baby born at the end of this book, her eldest son, must be not far short of thirty. She's still grappling with her demons and still making brilliant music. (Dave Narcizo, one of the great comic characters in this book, is still the drummer in the Muses.) Throwing Muses have long been underrated, at least by comparison with their more cartoonish labelmates, the Pixies, whose output was far less consistent. Hersh, in the book, puts it down to her conviction that her band was like spinach, 'ragged and bitter', but 'good for you'. The Pixies were like takeout pizza; instantly satisfying, but you can't live on it. Throwing Muses' best stuff goes on being good, and this book does a great deal to illuminate the extent of the sweat, viscera, puke and tears that went into why that's so.
September 15, 2012
This is a book I picked up prepared to be disappointed. Nearly 20 years ago, a schoolfriend lent me a green cassette by a band called Throwing Muses. I'd never heard of them, and given her long campaign to persuade me of the merits of Iron Maiden, I'm not quite sure why I listened, but she was insistent that I should check them out. It remains one of my all time favourite records.
But do I really want to read about it's creator? Sometimes I find knowing too much about an artist can spoil the enjoyment of their work. A magic trick usually loses its allure when you figure out how it's done. And besides, the appeal of Throwing Muses' eponymous debut (the green cassette in question) was all in the time signature changes, the vocal gymnastics and the fact that David Narcizo is one of the best drummers in rock music. But anyway...
The book was a pleasant surprise. It reads more like a novel than a biography or a diary - and there are bits which I suspect are artistic invention - can Kristin Hersh really recall the detail of conversations with her bandmates on the way back from gigs at a quarter century's distance? It's also surprisingly funny - there's a great little aside where she describes the yuppies at her antenatal classes, and she's good on the subject of the inanities of rock journalists - "so, tell me about self-expression..."
Yes, there are bits that seem rather self-indulgent and self-obsessed, but then this is a book about a teenager and so perhaps that's only fitting, and whether it's her 18 year old self or her 40-something editor, the line about self help books is great: "So I'm reading every psychiatry book I can find. These aren't written for me. Most of the books intended to help you to help yoursef are in the self-help section, and you don't want to go there. You'd think helping yourself would be a ballsy thing to do, but self help's the whiniest section of all."
Worth a read, and it probably doesn't matter whether you like Hersh's music, or think it an infernal atonal racket.
But do I really want to read about it's creator? Sometimes I find knowing too much about an artist can spoil the enjoyment of their work. A magic trick usually loses its allure when you figure out how it's done. And besides, the appeal of Throwing Muses' eponymous debut (the green cassette in question) was all in the time signature changes, the vocal gymnastics and the fact that David Narcizo is one of the best drummers in rock music. But anyway...
The book was a pleasant surprise. It reads more like a novel than a biography or a diary - and there are bits which I suspect are artistic invention - can Kristin Hersh really recall the detail of conversations with her bandmates on the way back from gigs at a quarter century's distance? It's also surprisingly funny - there's a great little aside where she describes the yuppies at her antenatal classes, and she's good on the subject of the inanities of rock journalists - "so, tell me about self-expression..."
Yes, there are bits that seem rather self-indulgent and self-obsessed, but then this is a book about a teenager and so perhaps that's only fitting, and whether it's her 18 year old self or her 40-something editor, the line about self help books is great: "So I'm reading every psychiatry book I can find. These aren't written for me. Most of the books intended to help you to help yoursef are in the self-help section, and you don't want to go there. You'd think helping yourself would be a ballsy thing to do, but self help's the whiniest section of all."
Worth a read, and it probably doesn't matter whether you like Hersh's music, or think it an infernal atonal racket.
June 27, 2019
Paradoxical Undressing is a phenomenal memoir, but also an amazing novel. When I started reading it, I knew nothing about Kristin Hersh apart from the fact that she founded Throwing Muses as a teenager. I was never a huge Throwing Muses fan, even though I appreciate their early music. I had listened to it in passing over the years, was moved in the moment, but it had never stuck to me, the forgetful person that I am with my head constantly buzzing in multiple directions. Still I absolutely loved the book and couldn't let it out of my hands or my mind.
If you're looking for the author's account of events that took place in the time span that the book is "set in", 1985 through 1986, you will probably be disappointed. If you feel up to being sucked into the mind of an 18-year-old synesthesiac around the time they get diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you will most likely find this reading experience fulfilling way beyond the occasional psychedelic imagery. The structure of the book is compellingly episodical, the narration very human. Hersh's descriptions of her experiences of even the most mundane of things are very relatable if one is inclined to relate to what goes on inside an outsider teenager's head, bipolar or no.
Kristin Hersh's is a voice that deserves to be heard. Her reality deserves to be witnessed through the lens that she uses in her writing, be it songs or prose.
If you're looking for the author's account of events that took place in the time span that the book is "set in", 1985 through 1986, you will probably be disappointed. If you feel up to being sucked into the mind of an 18-year-old synesthesiac around the time they get diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you will most likely find this reading experience fulfilling way beyond the occasional psychedelic imagery. The structure of the book is compellingly episodical, the narration very human. Hersh's descriptions of her experiences of even the most mundane of things are very relatable if one is inclined to relate to what goes on inside an outsider teenager's head, bipolar or no.
Kristin Hersh's is a voice that deserves to be heard. Her reality deserves to be witnessed through the lens that she uses in her writing, be it songs or prose.
January 10, 2024
Titled Rat Girl in the US where it enjoyed a Beto Hernandez cover image, Paradoxical Undressing is based on Kristin Hersh’s own diaries from 1986. That year was a big one for Hersh as her group, Throwing Muses is signed to seminal Indie label, 4AD. What follows is a raw and honest account of that year and all it’s battles: mental illness, the artists poverty in the underground music scene and her pregnancy throughout. The beauty of this book being based on diary entries rather than a straight-up A to B type narrative, is that it comes across as that much more heartfelt. Although often funny with a beautiful, wide-eyed optimism (which somehow isn’t annoying), the text is an even greater testament to the artist’s strength. Combine all that with her unique voice, then you are really talking next level. If you didn’t love Kristin Hersh or Throwing Muses before, you certainly will after reading this book. Compelling.
February 19, 2013
Paradoxical Undressing was originally published in the USA as Rat Girl: A Memoir but has been given a new (and I think better) title and cover for its British release. In case you didn’t know, Kristin Hersh is a musician, best known for her work as vocalist and guitarist for the band Throwing Muses. They are not an easy band to slip into a genre (which, by the way, is a good thing) but the book’s jacket refers to them as ” art punk” and Kristin says in its pages that they are labelled alternative (which she thinks is meaningless – alternative to what?), so that hopefully gives you some idea (or you could just check them out on youtube). I had only heard a few isolated songs by the band before, mostly on mixes made by friends, but Paradoxical Undressing (named after the phenomena whereby people dying of hypothermia rip off their clothes, believing that they are burning hot) inspired me to give it the full headphones treatment. Even if you’ve never heard of Kristin or her band before there would be much to enjoy here – I’m by no means alone in finding the process of starting out in, and the behind-the-scenes-of, the music business fascinating; and this is also a mental health memoir as it transpires that Kristin’s songs come to her whilst she is in states of psychosis. Her experience of this mental health condition, and her inner struggles between medicating herself and being ostensibly ”better”, but also slower and less creative, form a major part of the book and will be familiar to anyone who has experienced a mental health condition that has made them feel more creative, and/or made them wonder what is “illness” and what is their personality. Kristin also finds herself unexpectedly pregnant as her band are gathering momentum and notoriety, and her handling of this situation is integral to the book.
...[For my full review, please go to my blog]
...[For my full review, please go to my blog]
December 11, 2013
Kristin Hersh's memoir is a poignant and moving read. Always honest, sometimes startling, often funny, it takes the reader through her traumatic and redemptive eighteenth year. The supporting cast of band and family members, friends and acquaintences furnish the memoir with a wealth of stories and anecdotes, but it is when Hersh describes the overwhelming nature of her own creativity that the writing really hits the high marks. Hersh is compassionate, confused by life and always seeking. This is a compelling read, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
August 7, 2011
As I was informed by my highly-informed sister, this is the same memoir as Rat Girl, published in England as Paradoxical Undressing. I just reiterate everything I said in my review of Rat Girl. Kristin must be called out as one of the most talented and inspirational women of my generation. I am so not-so-secretly impressed with myself that the first cd I purchased for my new and cutting-edge cd player was Hunkpapa, right after I saw them in May of '89 at Mabel's in Champaign.
January 4, 2013
I have adored reading this, and will again. I felt that the ending just kinda floats off but does leave you wanting more. I've been a fan of Kristin's work in its many guises, for many years, and listening to Muses again after reading this has put the work in a slightly different context. You don't need to be a muses-muso to get something from this. Just being, or having been, a teenager is probably enough for you to find something that resonates. Brilliant read!
November 10, 2020
2.5
I usually like music memoirs even if I do not know much about the musician but I couldn't connect to Hersh's story.
The structure of this was brilliant though, it is nearly up there with Patti Smith. I also wish I could use this in one of my chapters for my dissertation.
I usually like music memoirs even if I do not know much about the musician but I couldn't connect to Hersh's story.
The structure of this was brilliant though, it is nearly up there with Patti Smith. I also wish I could use this in one of my chapters for my dissertation.
March 22, 2023
Some music is healthy, anyway. I know a lot of bands who're candy. Or beer. Fun and bad for you in a way that makes you feel good. For a minute. My band is...spinach, I guess. We're ragged and bitter. But I swear to god, we're good for you.
AKA Rat Girl in the US. I don't generally read rock memoirs, so I can't compare it to others in the genre. I'm a massive Kristin Hersh fan -- I've seen her perform four times, she's one of the best songwriters and musicians of her generation, and criminally underrated -- I'm definitely biased! It's not at all a straitforward memoir, but any Throwing Muses fan would expect that. It's just like her music, an impressionistic, kaleidoscopic, intense collage. Based on the diary she kept when she was 18, it loosely follows a year of her life, in which she alternately sleeps in her car or a squat, befriends a former Hollywood star during her college classes, performs with her band in bars while they're still underage, lands a recording contract, and gets pregnant. Meanwhile her mental health deteriorates severely, her music taking the form of auditory and visual hallucinations that overwhelm her. It's beautiful and heartbreaking in equal measures. But, strangely, never bleak. It's not sensational or melodramatic; it's downright funny most of the time. There isn't a lot of context (the father of her child is never mentioned even once), and the structure is non-linear, interspersed with childhood vignettes and lyrics from songs much later in her career, so I don't know how well this would work for someone not already familiar with her music. Her perspective really resonated with me, I underlined so many quotes, it's hard to narrow it down for this review ("Bad music is angrifying and good music is so painfully intense"). Hersh's commitment to Music for Music's Sake, and her hostility to music as a business, is very much the core of the book. So if you like sort of Beat-style, punk culture writing, you might like this. But go listen to Throwing Muses first (and her solo stuff, and her other band 50 Foot Wave...). Her second memoir arrived today so I know what I'm reading next.
A real song doesn't count listeners; it doesn't even give a shit about the musician who plays it -- it exists only for itself. So spiritual that it's physical, so basic that it doesn't say 'look at me', it says 'look at us.' "
February 25, 2021
this was so beautiful and comforting and she writes exactly how it feels but its made me think that i have six months to get teen pregnant to cure my bipolar disorder
"high and low, fast and slow? how is that not life? this planet gets very high and very low; it moves so fast sometimes and then so slowly. sometimes it resonates intensely, sometimes it's all so strange, it leaves us in the dust. how could it ever be appropriate to feel less than too much?"
"it sounds to me like manic depression is.... soul sickness. like sometimes your soul is too big to fit inside you and too magic to follow earth's rules. / and then sometimes your soul is too small to find. too small to fill your sad little outline."
"i think you need something in your life that is both beautiful and necessary. a person or a mission or a place. beautiful might not be pretty, and necessary might not be understood, but, still.... i think caring, not death, is a passport to heaven."
"personalities are more reliable, of course, even though they seem to be.... processes. processes of building up and tearing down. construction and reconstruction."
"high and low, fast and slow? how is that not life? this planet gets very high and very low; it moves so fast sometimes and then so slowly. sometimes it resonates intensely, sometimes it's all so strange, it leaves us in the dust. how could it ever be appropriate to feel less than too much?"
"it sounds to me like manic depression is.... soul sickness. like sometimes your soul is too big to fit inside you and too magic to follow earth's rules. / and then sometimes your soul is too small to find. too small to fill your sad little outline."
"i think you need something in your life that is both beautiful and necessary. a person or a mission or a place. beautiful might not be pretty, and necessary might not be understood, but, still.... i think caring, not death, is a passport to heaven."
"personalities are more reliable, of course, even though they seem to be.... processes. processes of building up and tearing down. construction and reconstruction."
September 9, 2020
A rock bio like no other - an eventful year in the life of an 18 year old woman working out what it means to be an adult and an artist. Like her songs it manages to be intensely personal yet obtuse at the same time.
May 21, 2019
Wow
Rollercoaster book, takes you on a mesmerising, surreal journey through the early years of Throwing Muses. I didn't want it to stop.
Rollercoaster book, takes you on a mesmerising, surreal journey through the early years of Throwing Muses. I didn't want it to stop.
February 26, 2021
Want to give this 4.5 stars. Loved this book's honesty about mental health, and its fascinating ability to describe music and the creation of it.
February 28, 2023
A fascinating glimpse into the life of an amazing artist. A must read for anyone with a passion for music. Especially players and writers.
March 20, 2012
Well, made a startling discovery with this book: when it comes to falling in love with music autobiographers, I am bisexual. Like Nicks Hornby and Coleman before her, Kristin Hersh swept me completely off my feet with her passion, her sweetness, her honesty, her humour. I swear the Kindle became heart-shaped in my hands as I read.
If this had been fiction, I'm pretty sure I would have loved it almost as much. But the fact it was written by the creator of two of my favourite albums of all time - Sunny Border Blue and Strange Angels - actually about her life just blew me away. (Still can't get into Throwing Muses, but that doesn't matter.) Also grateful for the fact that it got me out of the hole I was in musically; since going to Mark Lanegan's Glasgow gig last week, I found myself quite unable to listen to anything other than his gut-trembling baritone; a 'Loop of Lanegan', if you will.
Also managed to pinpoint why it is that I have developed a massive crush on one of my ageing university lecturers, with Hersh's line about their producer Gary's love of architecture: "His enthusiasm alone is beautiful". Yep, that's exactly why I fancy him.
Jeez, bisexuality, student crushes. What the hell's going on with me? I'm 35, FFS! It's just as well my husband is not on Goodreads...
N.B. Another huge advantage of the Kindle - it's so much easier than a regular paperback to smuggle into boring lectures, i.e. ones NOT taken by the object of my desire...
If this had been fiction, I'm pretty sure I would have loved it almost as much. But the fact it was written by the creator of two of my favourite albums of all time - Sunny Border Blue and Strange Angels - actually about her life just blew me away. (Still can't get into Throwing Muses, but that doesn't matter.) Also grateful for the fact that it got me out of the hole I was in musically; since going to Mark Lanegan's Glasgow gig last week, I found myself quite unable to listen to anything other than his gut-trembling baritone; a 'Loop of Lanegan', if you will.
Also managed to pinpoint why it is that I have developed a massive crush on one of my ageing university lecturers, with Hersh's line about their producer Gary's love of architecture: "His enthusiasm alone is beautiful". Yep, that's exactly why I fancy him.
Jeez, bisexuality, student crushes. What the hell's going on with me? I'm 35, FFS! It's just as well my husband is not on Goodreads...
N.B. Another huge advantage of the Kindle - it's so much easier than a regular paperback to smuggle into boring lectures, i.e. ones NOT taken by the object of my desire...
May 14, 2012
I liked this book, I really did, but I found it slightly lacking in detail. On the plus side, the writing is beautiful and for a diary it is interesting.
I guess I was expecting more of a biography (I don't know why, really, being familiar with throwing muses and Kristin's solo work! Yes, I am a fan). This runs more like small snippets of Kristin's life than a tell all book.
It took me a while to realise that "Tea" here was Tanya Donnelly. And the unplanned pregnancy part, she never even mentions that she has been seeing anyone, in fact the father isn't mentioned at all. To me these things were a little strange. I guess that depends on whether this was a real diary, or just written diary style.
The mental illness part was handled pretty well. Again, no great detail, but I did get a real sense of what it must have been like.
This is a very unconventional story, but fans of Kristen should enjoy it.
July 29, 2016
I'm a Throwing Muses fan so you could say this was always going to appeal to me - but the book certainly deserves a wider readership than music fans. 'Paradoxical Undressing' ('Rat Girl' in the US) charts a 12 month period between 1985 and 1986 - an expanded version of a diary kept during this period. It is a great insight into how a band and the music scene worked in that era and how four "chaos people" worked together as comrades with spirit and passion but no blueprint. But the real focus is Hersh herself and her inner/outer life in this period. She writes such eloquent prose - occasionally comic, often heart-breaking - about mental health, about being possessed by song-writing, about trying to make sense of the world and at the end of the book about motherhood. It is an intense read with no formal chapters to break the intensity of living inside Hersh's world but it is an extraordinary and ultimately life-affirming experience.
July 22, 2015
You know when you go out to a restaurant and have an amazingly rich meal, you find yourself thinking about all of the flavors and textures, new experiences for your taste buds? This book was like that for me. Of course, I love indie and alternative music, the Throwing Muses were always one of my favorites. They were instrumental in shaping my musical tastes. But this book was such a rich experience, a memorable glimpse into a short period of time of a truly incredible artist. I am not a writer myself and lack the vocabulary for good descriptions of work, but I cannot say how much I enjoyed reading this. I hope that she continues to pursue writing as Kristin has that gift as well. I believe I read that she is releasing a book about the late Vic Chestnutt which will be at the top of my reading list.
December 17, 2012
I wanted to absolutely fall in love with this book, the way I did with a few of KH's solo albums, but it just didn't happen for me. I found it hard to connect with at times, whether that is because her life was so totally different from mine or some other reason I don't know. I find it odd to read such deep contemplative writing from teenagers, I know I never thought that way or analysed life like that when I was a teenager.
Anyway, it was an interesting book that left me wanting to know more about some parts of her life and story that I probably never will. I wish it had gone on a bit longer about what life was like with a baby and a band but it ends with the birth of her first son.
The scattered and vague review kind of sums up my thoughts and feelings about the book I guess!
Anyway, it was an interesting book that left me wanting to know more about some parts of her life and story that I probably never will. I wish it had gone on a bit longer about what life was like with a baby and a band but it ends with the birth of her first son.
The scattered and vague review kind of sums up my thoughts and feelings about the book I guess!
February 6, 2017
this is the same book as Rat Girl, it's just the UK version.
May 30, 2011
The story of a young woman whose unusual lifestyle makes sense to her. Sleeping in her car or a squat, shunning winter clothing to enjoy the cold weather, Kristin's bandmates are her family and creative partners. Her band get signed, she attempts suicide, is diagnosed bipolar and discovers that she's pregnant. She is 19. You don't need to be a fan of Kristin Hersh or the Throwing Muses to read Paradoxical Undressing - this book is quirky, enlightening and funny. It covers mental illness, creativity, friendship and motherhood and left me feeling positive!
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March 18, 2014For a lover of the Muses but with little prior knowledge of the inner components that make-up this legendary band, this book is just as stark, melancholy and raw as any Muses record, whilst at the same time both touching and truly compelling in the writers telling of the numerous battles with her own personal demons.
April 5, 2015
I've been a fan of Throwing Muses for a long time and have to admit that I wasn't sure about reading a book by the lead singer but it was fabulous! The music comes through- the poetry - amazing. I rarely like music books but this one was different. Kristen can write and her year was jam packed. I have new found admiration for her.
February 7, 2025
I just finished my second read of Paradoxical Undressing (I’m glad my copy of the better-titled and Vaughan Oliver-designed UK version somehow found its way to me in the US!) and can confirm that it remains one of the best memoirs I’ve read, one of the best music books I’ve read, AND one of the best coming-of-age novels I’ve read — despite not actually being a novel — all at once.
July 8, 2016
Love this book. I grew up on the Muses and Kristen's solo albums. It is a fascinating story and most importantly for me, it is authentic. Some books I'd give away if I was moving house... not this one.
February 3, 2015
I loved this book, and I loved Kristen Hersh after reading it. I was never a Throwing Muses fan, but because super interested in Kristen after reading this.
November 20, 2011
I bought this and Rat Girl and found they're the same book. Glad I didn't buy a signed copy at a Throwing Muses gig a couple of weeks ago!
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