Poison and Antidote
Bohemian Stories
by
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Devin "Basically, there are two kinds of people on the San Francisco art scene—and I want to show them both in the movie, but kinda from my perspective, or the perspective of the protagonist—sort of my persona. As I see it, there are the speed people and there are the Europe people. The Europe people work in these prestigious jobs that don’t pay very much, like bookstores and art galleries, until they get enough money together to go to Paris, London, Berlin, or wherever, to become great artists. They go, most of them—well, some of them never even make it, and I guess some of them do do something—but most of them seem to come back eventually and I don’t think they really gain anything over there. A lot of them come back feeling like they somehow failed in Europe. The speed people are more into making money: They need these high-paying jobs to keep themselves in drugs all the time. They’re like waitresses and construction workers, stuff like that. They’re not “cool” at all on their jobs, but they’re always doing some kind of art on the side and going to all of the openings and to the right nightclubs and stuff. They’re always moving in circles, you know, around and around and around."
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About the Book
It’s the first half of the 1980s: there’s a stupid old man in the WHITE HOUSE rabid to destroy the American MIDDLE CLASS: the NEW WORLD ORDER is crushing ART with IRONY, and our most recent resistance to Capitalist Conformity, PUNK ROCK, through co-option; selling out is suddenly de rigueur while hipness shrinks to a synonym for posing as if neither ART nor LOVE had ever existed in the WESTERN WORLD. POISON AND ANTIDOTE is nine interrelated stories of the artists, the musicians, the writers, waitresses, and druggies who negotiated the shark-infested waters of 1980’s SAN FRANCISCO a la HENRI MURGERE, JAMES JOYCE, MORRISSEY and FLIPPER!
About the Author
LEE FOUST is a fiction writer and performer from OAKLAND, CA, who has lived in FLORENCE, ITALY, since the mid-1990s. He teaches literature and Creative Writing for various US universities abroad and is the father of one. The author of SOJOURNER, a collection of short stories and poems about the mystery of place, FOUST’s poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in the USA and ITALY.