Cleans Up Nicely

A Novel

Linda Dahl Vogl

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781938314391
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction

When twenty-something artist Erica Mason moves from laid-back Mexico to Manhattan in the mid-1970s, she finds a hard-edged, decadent, and radically evolving art scene. Peppered with characters who could only come from the latter days of the "turn-on-and-drop-out" '60s in then-crumbling New York (a spaced-out drummer who's completely given up on using or making money, a radical feminist who glues animal furs to her paintings of vaginas, and icons in the making like Patti Smith), Erica's New York is fast-moving, funny, and heartrending—just like the city itself. Ultimately, her rite of passage is not only a love affair with art, men, alcohol, drugs, and music in the swirl that was the downtown scene in a radically evolving era in New York, but also a resurrection from addiction and self-delusion. More than the study of a celebrated period of artistic expression, Cleans Up Nicely is the story of one gifted young woman's path from self-destruction to a hard-won self-knowledge that opens up a whole new world for her—and helps her claim the self-respect that has long eluded her.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• 1 - The Clean Up
• 2 - The Rathole
• 3 - Azure Bar
• 4 - Third World Redux
• 5 - Cleaning in the Dark
• 6 - Seeing Red
• 7 - Tiny Italy
• 8 - Sista
• 9 - More Middle East
• 10 - Holy Man
• 11 - Sisterhood II
• 12 - Pink Slip
• 13 - Passing
• 14 - Can't Go Home
• 15 - Lover Man
• 16 - The Park Thing
• 17 - Aftershock
• 18 - Brownstone Brothel Gig
• 19 - Mojo Working
• 20 - Feels Like Fame
• 21 - Like Father
• 22 - Too Bloody Brilliant
• 23 - Ask Alice
• 24 - Be Where Now
• 25 - Blackout Squared
• About the Author