[book review]
“The Lisa Diaries”, by Lisa Carver
Review by Kent Manthie
Watching CNN or reading the NY TIMES can really exacerbate depression and after a while, just to stay sane you have to turn the damn television off and crawl in bed and stare at the ceiling.
OR – you can open a book and find some kind of escape or catharsis and maybe even learn something. Instead of wallowing in the mire of reality and depressing stuff, why not do a little checking in on middle America – take your voyeuristic sensibilities on a vacation and go through someone’s diary. Well, now you don’t have to break into some hip apartment in a downtown, happening area, to steal some young, beautiful party girl’s diary. Now for a nominal price you can read all about several years of the sex life of Lisa Carver. More up-to-date and modern and so much more fun to read than Anais Nin, Carver has woven together four years of diaries and journals into this compact tome, “The Lisa Diaries: Four Years in the Sex Life of Lisa Carver & Co.”.
Post-post-post modernist liberated feminine hipster, diarist, magazine do-er and punk rocker, whose band SUCKDOG, just came out with their latest album, “Drugs Are Nice”, a noise-art-punk cabaret, with big teeth. Carver’s other works include a one time magazine of hers, Rollerderby; a book of compilations from said magazine, “Rollerderby: The Book” various other essays, articles, sexual adventures, an appearance on HBO’s “Real Sex” series and just an ultra-hip scene maker whose cutesy-pie photo on the cover of “The Lisa Diaries” belies a super-freak, a woman who is completely unfettered, sexually secure, unafraid to try anything once and – watch it! – she doesn’t mince words.
“The Lisa Diaries…” started out as a column in the online magazine, nerve.com, which you can link to, if you want, at http://www.nerve.com; a typical process – popular column or set of columns turns into a book.
Luckily for her, she finds a great complement in Dave, about whom we get to know, whether we want to or not. He really floats her boat, makes her have ecstatic, satori-like orgasms. Sadly, though, all this intense bliss doesn’t last and somewhere, midway through the book we read of a divorced talked about but evaded and a noticed change in the relationship ever after. The candle that burns brightest burns quickest.
Well, all in all it’s, at the least, a text with which to live vicariously through; a kind of catharsis for spinsters, sadly aged and inexperienced. For others, it can be a voyeuristic peek into the sexploits of a healthy nymphomaniac. The thing that sets it apart from other stuff like it is the quality of the writing. Carver brings a loquaciousness that doesn’t just fill up the pages with word-porn. Lisa brings us inside her head (and the rest of her body), painting murals with words that give us all the sexual escapades but besides that, we get to hear about extraneous curiosities, her emotions, the ideas swirling about in her head. One’s eyes may glaze over at times, but to be sure, you’ll be jolted again quickly. To order online and/or to get back issues of Rollerderby, go to http://www.blackbooks.com – KM.