num_pages: 208
description: Sister Carrie is a first novel by a woman writer possessing such an original voice and slashing, surrealistic wit that she is sure to take her place at the forefront of cutting-edge fiction writers. Carrie Meeber leaves her stifling Florida home for Chicago, where she enters the related fields of advertising and prostitution. As an unflappable narrator makes inquiries into her bizarre life, a cartoonish, hyperkinetic, blaring street world envelops the reader. Depraved characters parade themselves and their crass literary leanings; many keep journals, out of which Carrie is revealed with stylistic pyrotechnics. Fairbanks's scrappy, fantastic, debauched characters reveal themselves as well in hot rapid monologue and dialogue. There is something of Kathy Acker in Sister Carrie, something of Ronald Firbank, William Burroughs, Mark Leyner perhaps, even the Joyce of Finnegans Wake. (And Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie? revamped, accessorized, given riot grrrl attitude). But it is finally a tour de force from a young woman writer with a voice all her own and a sardonic world-view perfect for the irony-clad nineties.From Publishers Weekly:"Written in gaudy postmodern prose that bears absolutely no resemblance to Theodore Dreiser's magisterial naturalism, this often hilarious first novel emulates its famous predecessor only in being an account of Carrie Meeber's experiences after she runs away from home (this time in Miami) to discover her own identity in Chicago. Both protagonist and author play with language, taking the placid cliches of everyday life and shocking them into audacious, often bawdy images. Questioned by a curiously detached narrator, Carrie describes a world of fantasies, delusions and ego trips peopled by characters like Queenie, Zenobia, Bro (the prime minister of the count of Nogs), Valmouth and Englebert Humpherifyoucan. Her journey to self-realization is chronicled in her journals and the jottings of her friends. She finds a job with the advertising agency Pimp &amp; Co. and falls in or out of love. She may or may not be a prostitute, a pimp, or a madam; she may or may not have been an actress, a filmmaker, or a model--"Good old reality," Carrie says. "The only perfect thing. Subject to perception." Fairbanks struts her stuff through this satyricon of self-revelation in a world gone cynical. Perhaps not to everyone's taste, this is an exhilarating debut by an enormously gifted writer."Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.From Library Journal:"Dreiser fans beware: this Carrie, a prostitute-advertiser, resembles his heroine far less than she does Stephen King's twisted sister. Fairbanks excels in spewing out rapid-fire imagery, wrenching irony, bizarre juxtapositions, and clever wordplay. She ambitiously attempts to describe Carrie and her world from several points of view, but the result is a disjointed jumble lacking in any apparent purpose other than to shock and confuse. As the narrator observes: "The problem with these last few pages is... there doesn't seem to be much truth or anyone willing to get on track." Fairbanks passes the Beckett test of minimalist despair and the Kathy Acker bodily fluids count but fails the pre-postmodernist Mr. Ed dictum of never speaking unless one has something to say. This first novelist's flash and dash might be better suited to short fiction and poetry. Recommended only for literary punksters, Acker fans, the terminally post-hip, and comprehensive collections."- Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., ChicoCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
language: English
title: Sister Carrie
titlecomplete: Sister Carrie
ratings_count: 11
publisher: Dalkey Archive Press