“In most love stories, a man pursuing a woman is depicted as gallant, noble, and deeply romantic. When a woman pursues a man, we call her 'crazy,' 'obsessed,' and 'unstable.' Why one gender is gallant and the other nutso, I’m not sure, but one thing is clear: the female gone mad with love makes for one hell of an unconventional narrative”
—Like a Woman Scorned: On James Lasdun’s Give Me Everything You Have by Jessica Freeman-Slade
“She fascinates me because she is someone whose worst fears constantly come true... through the power of dark will and imagination. ”
—via Waiting for Nasreen- Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics
“At a certain point I realized I was becoming as obsessed with Nasreen as she was with me - no doubt just what she wanted.”
—via Waiting For Nasreen- Guernica / A Magazone of Art & Politics
"I wasn’t thinking about the effects of silence on someone who is obsessed with you."
James Lasdun has been stalked, and has written about it in a new book, Give Me Everything You Have.
My first uncharitable thought is that this sounds way more interesting than any of his fictional tales of middle-class psychological jousting in 2009’s It’s Beginning to Hurt.
My second thought is that I have marshaled vast silences.
James Lasdun — author of disturbing and brilliant novel The Horned Man — had his life turned upside down when he acquired an unhinged cyberstalker who, in her words, planned to “ruin him” and almost did. Lasdun’s gripping memoir about his living nightmare, which I reviewed at The Daily Beast, is out tomorrow.
James Lasdun, “Chainsaw I”
ashokkarra.comAs though you held in your hands
the severed head of Orpheus
crying his own sparagmos;
the mutilated bower
falling, still in flower -
or your own split kingdom’s
hybrid of lion and unicorn:
at once dismembering tooth
and clarifying horn.
