First of all, in case you don’t know who Dodie Bellamy is, Sonic Youth reference her.

Second of all, Sonic Youth are fans of Dodie Bellamy’s work.

OK. So I’m a huge fan of Sonic Youth and Dodie Bellamy so their friendship excites me on many levels.

A few months ago I was able to go to the book launch for “Barf Manifesto” and then I went home to visit my family a few days after. I finished reading the book on the plane then gave “Barf Manifesto” to my mom and cousin to read to see what their reactions would be since both are avid readers – neither had heard of Dodie and neither really looks at books as having any weight outside of what the Oprah Book Club says a book is worth (so basically book burning isn’t happening – which Sarah Palin is for btw – but making sure pop culture only sees that Oprah Book Club books are important is just as good as burning as far as I’m concerned because no other ideas are tolerated). After they both read the book they each looked at me a bit bewildered and said they’d need to know a lot more about the movements she is apart of to understand what she is talking about, unfortunately both will most likely remain more obsessed with putting gas in their cars than caring to think about art and contemporary ideas.

Anyway, if you aren’t well versed in feminist theory, critical theory, contemporary poetry, ect then Dodie’s “Barf Manifesto” will projectile all over you and if you are well versed then I’m sure you sat open mouthed as the reigning Queen sprayed all over you – you water sport slut – Dodie Bellamy barfs on that idea – a good old fashion chunky barf that I’m sure Sally Jessie Raphael would take the time to try and understand.

HERE IS AN EXCERPT:
“Passion in writing or art—or in a lover—can make you overlook a lot of flaws. Passion is underrated. I think we should all produce work with the urgency of outsider artists, panting and jerking off to our kinky private obsessions. Sophistication is conformist, deadening. Let’s get rid of it.”
—Dodie Bellamy, from Barf Manifesto

The image on the cover of Barf Manifesto is a Raymond Pettibon image, when I asked Dodie about her cover choice she said she wanted the cover to represent a disheveled crazy women so she could, in theory, pass out her newest chap book on street corners. I pictured a Valerie Jean Solanas type character passing out their manifesto and working the street corners as I included the above image of me, naked, holding the book, I admit it, I do look fat in the image but that is because I had yet to finish reading and projectile vomit all over my signed collectors copy (OK – I didn’t barf on it but I did puke in the ocean, it’s only cause I ate a gigantic burrito before opening up the essay and my petite bod couldn’t handle the ridiculous amount of beans and cheese I dumped into it but the fish ate the puke, I’m sure and I know cause I put on a snorkel and watched)! I couldn’t write a review of Barf Manifesto without somehow including myself because I want to be an extension of her new call to literary vomit, I sat through plenty of college English courses and I’ve talked to enough pompous assholes to know this conclusion is not unwarranted. Dodie Bellamy is the professor everyone goes to college wishing for, she fights Academia and all the boundaries and hierarchies they perpetuate. Check out Academonia!

In Barf Manifesto, Dodie Bellamy challenges one of the last places in the literary world where subjectivity has yet to be considered appropriate – the academic essay. Dodie was asked to write an essay about alternative forms to memoir and she chose to discuss a work by Eileen Myles. Dodie doesn’t believe readers must sit through objective essays alone, instead she has brought her innards into the world of the essay – the food yet digested. Readers watch her struggle with Eileen Myles essay, “Everyday Barf” and with Eileen herself, as they battle over a toilet bowl with pleasure and power and barf. The end product is a conversation between two female writers about the very things writers discuss; each other, fiction, toilets, pets, egos, narrative forms, and more.

So basically, get yourself a copy of the book, head to the beach, stock up on some food and alcohol along the way, grab yourself a notebook that you plan on writing in, then get there, get naked, read the damn essay “fingers down throat, one, two, three, bleh” then send me your own manifesto as you step into the squiggly circle inhabited with all those that are a part of the barf that is “feminist, unruly, cheerfully monstrous…. The Barf is messy, irregular, but you can feel in your guts that its going somewhere, you can’t stop it, can’t shape it, you’ve just got to let it run its course.”

PS. I didn’t cite where in the essay the quotes come from intentionally.