If Mary Gaitskill and Henry Miller had written a novel together, it would have been Spectacle.
In 1969, inspired by the radical writings of real-life French revolutionary Guy Debord, 27-year-old student, stripper, and fetishist Nanette drops everything and flies to Paris. Once there, she finds work as a dominatrix and love with a new client, Guy Debord.
The passion between Nanette and Guy grows in the vibrant scene of late 1960s Paris, where he rants and rallies, and she – an Amazonian Brigitte Bardot – cinches her waist and drinks vermouth in smoky cafés. But as the graffiti from the May 1968 Student and Worker Riots is being washed off the buildings, their mismatched compulsions – his revolutionary dogma and her growing heroin addiction – rise up to destroy them.
Twenty years later Nanette returns to America to be the legal guardian for her two orphaned nieces, who she has never met: Cedar, a lonely and mild-mannered 18-year-old, and Sanford, a brilliant and troubled 16-year-old rebel. As Sanford unravels further in her grief, she hatches a plan to use Nanette’s continuing drug addiction and instability to change her aunt's memories and, therefore, her reality. Eventually, if all goes as planned, Nanette will believe she is Sanford’s mother - a happy family again.
Spectacle is a story about how families create themselves out of necessity and seek to rescue one another
OR THIS After 20 tumultuous years in Paris, Auntie Nanette returns to America to be the legal guardian for her two orphaned nieces: Cedar, a lonely and mild-mannered 18-year-old, and Sanford, a brilliant and troubled 16-year-old who is not processing the death of their mother. As Sanford unravels, she hatches a plan to use Auntie Nanette’s continuing addiction and instability to change her memories and, therefore, her reality. If all goes as planned, Auntie Nanette will believe she is Sanford’s mother – and they will be a happy family again. However, once Cedar discovers that she is left out of this family, things might not go as planned.
Punching Dead Highways is a story about how families create themselves out of necessity and seek to rescue one another.
(MAY 1968 RIOT POSTER: "A Youth too Often Disturbed by the Future")
In 1969, inspired by the radical writings of real-life French revolutionary Guy Debord, 27-year-old student, stripper, and fetishist Nanette drops everything and flies to Paris. Once there, she finds work as a dominatrix and love with a new client, Guy Debord.
The passion between Nanette and Guy grows in the vibrant scene of late 1960s Paris, where he rants and rallies, and she – an Amazonian Brigitte Bardot – cinches her waist and drinks vermouth in smoky cafés. But as the graffiti from the May 1968 Student and Worker Riots is being washed off the buildings, their mismatched compulsions – his revolutionary dogma and her growing heroin addiction – rise up to destroy them.
Twenty years later Nanette returns to America to be the legal guardian for her two orphaned nieces, who she has never met: Cedar, a lonely and mild-mannered 18-year-old, and Sanford, a brilliant and troubled 16-year-old rebel. As Sanford unravels further in her grief, she hatches a plan to use Nanette’s continuing drug addiction and instability to change her aunt's memories and, therefore, her reality. Eventually, if all goes as planned, Nanette will believe she is Sanford’s mother - a happy family again.
Spectacle is a story about how families create themselves out of necessity and seek to rescue one another
OR THIS After 20 tumultuous years in Paris, Auntie Nanette returns to America to be the legal guardian for her two orphaned nieces: Cedar, a lonely and mild-mannered 18-year-old, and Sanford, a brilliant and troubled 16-year-old who is not processing the death of their mother. As Sanford unravels, she hatches a plan to use Auntie Nanette’s continuing addiction and instability to change her memories and, therefore, her reality. If all goes as planned, Auntie Nanette will believe she is Sanford’s mother – and they will be a happy family again. However, once Cedar discovers that she is left out of this family, things might not go as planned.
Punching Dead Highways is a story about how families create themselves out of necessity and seek to rescue one another.
(MAY 1968 RIOT POSTER: "A Youth too Often Disturbed by the Future")