“A true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.”
May 12, 2016 6:08 PM   Subscribe

Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, has passed away. Katherine Dunn, whose best-selling novel Geek Love was a National Book Award finalist in 1989 and became a cult classic, died at age 70 in her Portland home on May 11.
posted by Windigo (40 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 


Dunn took up boxing training in her 40s, and in 2009 she made the news for fighting off a mugger less than half her age.

I... hats off, everyone, a Titan has passed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:11 PM on May 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


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posted by djseafood at 6:11 PM on May 12, 2016


Oh shit, no. I had no idea she was 70 either; she has always been some eternally 30-ish person in my head since I was a teen.

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posted by Kitteh at 6:14 PM on May 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Well dang.
posted by Glinn at 6:24 PM on May 12, 2016


One of my all-time favorites. Sad.
posted by anshuman at 6:34 PM on May 12, 2016


Also: A sequel? I can't imagine.
posted by anshuman at 6:36 PM on May 12, 2016


Oh, that's sad. Geek Love is one of those life-defining books. I didn't know I needed that book when I picked it up, but I did.
posted by xingcat at 6:36 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I picked up Geek Love in the library when it was pretty new--probably 1990 or 1991. I was in my late teens. As I recall, I had no idea what it was about--something about a nerd who has a romance, maybe, which would have appealed to me at the time. But it had enough buzz that I had heard it was good, even in the Texas backwater I lived in. So I grabbed it, took it home, and have never forgotten that experience of reading it. It really is indelible.

Haven't read it since then, but I've thought of it often. This would be a good time for a long-overdue re-read.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:40 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can turn slightly from where I'm sitting now and point exactly to where my copy sits on the shelf. Because Geek Love is not a book to lose track of.
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posted by rewil at 6:48 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


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posted by jim in austin at 7:27 PM on May 12, 2016


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posted by doctornemo at 7:32 PM on May 12, 2016


I've probably given away more copies of this book than any other.

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posted by echocollate at 7:47 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


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posted by praemunire at 7:59 PM on May 12, 2016


Huh, I've never read this. I guess I should.

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posted by limeonaire at 8:08 PM on May 12, 2016


I've had this book for the longest time (probably more than a decade), but have never gotten past the first chapter for whatever reasons.

High time I read it.

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posted by FarOutFreak at 8:32 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm someone else who's only read Geek Love once, but who has thought about it often. What a great work.

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posted by TwoStride at 8:57 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


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posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 9:09 PM on May 12, 2016


I read Geek Love much too young because my parents left it lying around, and it was burned into my brain for decades -- but the parts that stuck with me were so lurid that I sort of assumed it must be sort of a pulpy book in general. When I came back to it as an adult and realized that it was subtle and gorgeous and heartbreaking and beautifully written, I was probably as surprised as tween-me had been by the idea of a woman with two feet of pubic hair.

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posted by babelfish at 9:20 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


No! No, no, no, no, no, no. Aw, Hell.

I didn't cry over Prince, or Rickman, or Eco, or Shandling, or even Bowie, but I am crying now.

Dammit.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 9:26 PM on May 12, 2016


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posted by cleroy at 9:33 PM on May 12, 2016


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posted by annathea at 10:01 PM on May 12, 2016


Oh jeeze, Geek Love was the book of my early 20s. I recommended it to everyone and bonded with anyone who had already read it.

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posted by lovecrafty at 10:10 PM on May 12, 2016


There are very few books that I read more than a decade ago where I can instantly visualise the cover, Geek Love is one of them. Thank you, Katherine.
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:20 PM on May 12, 2016


I know Chip Kidd did the orange cover, but my copy is green and old and has a painting of a tent with a sign for Arturo the Wonder Boy and I always felt like everybody else was a little deprived. Geek Love is everything you want a novel to be, and I was so excited to find it on iBooks so I could carry it around with me, ready for a 5th read when that moment strikes.
posted by Brainy at 10:22 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Brainy: my copy has that same cover. After seeing the boring Kidd cover, this one is much better!
posted by bendy at 10:49 PM on May 12, 2016


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I discovered Geek Love because of this thread a few years ago.
posted by chococat at 10:53 PM on May 12, 2016


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posted by benzenedream at 11:05 PM on May 12, 2016


The first time I read Geek Love, I had to scrape together the remains of all the old candles into my one little reading light until the sun finally came up, and I could go finish it on the porch.
posted by St. Sorryass at 11:22 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


When I first read Infinite Jest I got the version that has the Dave Eggers intro, where he describes that book as a shiny spaceship with no discernible doors, welds or bolts, or something like that. I read Infinite Jest, and I enjoyed it a lot, but I never really felt like that description suited it well. I read Geek Love last year (it was passed on to me by a friend who had it passed on to him by another friend of ours, and I’ve since passed it on myself) and I thought about that description again, because here was a book that I truly didn’t understand how it worked, and that not even in the sense of my understanding being defied by some hermetic alien artifact but by a throbbing, wet, ungainly organic thing that you have a hard time accepting is even capable of living until you see it run faster than a cheetah and jump many times its own height with improbable grace. I think Katherine Dunn and this book are the same in one respect: it too will surprise you and then knock your ass out right there on the street. I’m so glad she gave of herself to make it.

Still hate that orange cover, though.
posted by invitapriore at 12:02 AM on May 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


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posted by bibliotropic at 12:43 AM on May 13, 2016


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posted by acb at 1:02 AM on May 13, 2016


This is one of the few books that I have repeatedly recommended to others. It is certainly one that sticks in your brain.

My mom and I share the green-covered version.

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posted by Halo in reverse at 6:21 AM on May 13, 2016


I ran across Geek Love in high school. I was wandering a library aisle when a BRIGHT ORANGE cover grabbed my attention, so I pull it down and it's still in my top 5 books of all time.

After seeing the boring Kidd cover, this one is much better!

The Kidd cover has the sneaky 5-legged dog logo that replaces the regular Knopf dog, which he snuck past the publisher until it was already printed (or so I read).
posted by Windigo at 6:37 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


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posted by elizilla at 7:38 AM on May 13, 2016


gahhhhh

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posted by Theta States at 8:58 AM on May 13, 2016


I was assigned to read this in a college class (albeit at art school) and for the longest time didn't encounter anyone else who had even heard of it.

Somehow I don't remember the orange classic cover, and it looks like I have the book with the black Jeffrey Fisher cover.
posted by sweetmarie at 9:02 AM on May 13, 2016


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posted by nobody at 9:32 AM on May 13, 2016


Am reading my copy of "Death Scenes: a homicide detective's scrapbook" for which Katherine Dunn wrote the text.

"This book is too dark for human eyes to endure. These dead have not lost their human identity no matter how desperately skewed or mutilated. Jack Huddleston's expert anger and our own mesmerized revulsion are rooted in the same fear. Fear is neither a disease nor a perversion. Fear is our most essential survival mechanism."
posted by goofyfoot at 1:54 AM on May 14, 2016


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posted by klausness at 2:15 PM on May 16, 2016


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