Word: arensberg
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...drenched in genital imagery, the skill with which he did this might seem almost quaint. But in Demuth's day, the public atmosphere was, of course, very different, and he, like Marcel Duchamp and other artists in the avant- garde circle that formed around the collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, took a special delight in sowing his work with sexual hints. The handlebar of a vaudeville trick rider's bicycle turns into a penis aimed at his crotch; sailors dance with girls in a cabaret but ogle one another; in some still lifes, the flowers and vegetables acquire a nudging...
...novel reads like a breeze, and its strength is Arensberg's spoofing of two ostensibly glamorous worlds, publishing and theater. The author once worked as an editor at Viking Press, and she writes of the industry with affectionate exasperation. There is a wonderful Mad Hatter editorial meeting, propelled by reasoning of the most tangential sort. There are the elusive editors who dread authors as "walking vessels of petty grievance and conceit." An especially funny cameo is Allan Schieffman, the macho editor who boasts to Frances that "Norman Mailer had punched him in the stomach, an affectionate punch, and a tribute...
...Arensberg's first novel, Sister Wolf (1980), was a darker work of spooky psychological chill. If Group Sex is slightly less successful, the reason is that Frances is not quite clearly drawn. At one point we are told that she never blushes, but she already has, on an earlier page. There are in fact two Franceses, and only one of them blushes. The other one, spunky and with a rich sense of irony, is too smart to fall for a one-man traveling circus like Paul Treat. But comedy is a tough taskmaster, and it seems that Arensberg, like...