LOVE, LOSS, AND LONGING IN THE AGE OF REAGAN: DIARY OF A MAD CLUB GIRL
by Iris Dorbian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
It's the
early 1980s, MTV is in its infancy, the Internet does not exist, Ronald Reagan
is president and yuppies are ruling Wall Street. Edie is a naïve NYU student
desperate to lose her virginity and to experience adventure that will finally
make her worldly, setting her further apart from her bland suburban roots. But
in her quest to mold herself into an ideal of urban sophistication, the New Jersey-born
co-ed gets more than she bargained for, triggering a chain of events that will
have lasting repercussions.
It
was an era before cell phones, the Internet did not exist, disco was dying,
about to be swallowed whole by New Wave and AIDS, which hadn’t yet broken into
the mainstream, would soon become a death sentence ending a person’s life
within two years of infection. Carter had only one year left of his failed,
one-term presidency. Reaganomics—and yuppies—were looming.
Though
still heavily ravaged by the urban blight that had nearly decimated it earlier
in the decade, New York City was starting to undergo a period of renewal and
rebirth thanks to its new feisty mayor Ed Koch.
Into
this fray I entered as an NYU student, naïve, curious, not knowing what the
future would bring. But then I didn’t care, choosing to live in the present.
Willful obliviousness suited me just fine.
Peter,
my first real boyfriend (translated into the vernacular: the first guy I slept
with), used to always tell me I was an existentialist. But that confused me
especially because I knew that underneath this veneer that classmates used to
say was so deep and cerebral lurked a fluttery airhead, more influenced by
appearances and artifice than she let on.
I
had briefly studied existentialism when I was a high school senior taking
advanced humanities with Mrs. Stein at Fair Lawn High School, an unusually good
public school made possible by the enormous taxes levied against its local
citizenry.
Mrs.
Stein was very eclectic with the syllabus. We read Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the
D’Urbervilles,” (a book about wronged
innocence that resonated strongly with my callow self), Homer’s “The Odyssey,”
Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” and Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” the
latter considered both a literary classic and a benchmark of the existential
movement.
“The
Stranger” was about an emotionally impassive Frenchman, Mersault, who experiences
all sorts of tragedies—he even murders someone and goes on trial for it—while
remaining curiously detached throughout. Was he a sociopath? Did he feel any
kind of remorse for his actions? Why didn’t he cry when his mother died?
When
Mrs. Stein would describe the protagonist as someone who embodied the
existential doctrine of self-determination and assuming responsibilities for
one’s choices, all I could think of was a sleek and tall Frenchman, fashionably
attired in black from head to toe, wearing a beret and sitting in a Parisian
café, sipping lattes and eating croissants while having animated philosophical
discourses with friends and borderline foes. It was an image of sophistication
I was desperate to emulate ever since my parents took me two years earlier to
Café Feenjon on MacDougal Street to hear Israeli musicians play cheesy
Middle-Eastern music.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Iris Dorbian is a former
actress turned business journalist/blogger. Her articles have appeared in a
wide number of outlets that include the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Venture
Capital Journal, DMNews, Playbill, Backstage, Theatermania, Live Design, Media
Industry Newsletter and PR News. From 1999 to 2007, Iris was the
editor-in-chief of Stage Directions. She is the author of “Great Producers:
Visionaries of the American Theater," which was published by Allworth
Press in August 2008. Her personal essays have been published in Blue Lyra
Review, B O D Y, Embodied Effigies, Jewish Literary Journal, Skirt! Diverse
Voices Quarterly and Gothesque Magazine.
https://twitter.com/irisdorbian
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Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Loss-Longing-Age-Reagan-ebook/dp/B00TTOMNAS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430908209&sr=8-1&keywords=love%2C+loss%2C+and+longing
Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Loss-Longing-Age-Reagan-ebook/dp/B00TTOMNAS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430908209&sr=8-1&keywords=love%2C+loss%2C+and+longing
Iris Dorbian will be
awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during
the tour. Use the link below to enter. You can find her schedule at http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/04/book-blast-love-loss-and-longing-in-age.html
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for hosting my book on the blast tour! It's much appreciated. Question: In one word how would you describe your college years?
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