Reena Spaulings

By Bernadette Corporation

A novel set in post-9/11 New York City about a supermodel and the ultimate Broadway blockbuster.

Set in post-9/11 New York City, Reena Spaulings was written by a large collective of writers and artists that bills itself as The Bernadette Corporation. Like most contemporary fiction, Reena Spaulings is about a female twenty-something. Reena is discovered while working as a museum guard and becomes a rich international supermodel. Meanwhile, a bout of terrible weather seizes New York, leaving in its wake a strange form of civil disobedience that stirs its citizens to mount a musical song-and-dance riot called "Battle on Broadway." Fashioned in the old Hollywood manner by a legion of professional and amateur writers striving to achieve the ultimate blockbuster, the musical ends up being about a nobody who could be anybody becoming a somebody for everybody. The result is generic and perfect--not unlike Reena Spaulings itself, whose many authors create a story in which New York itself strives to become the ultimate collective experiment in which the only thing shared is the lack of uniqueness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158435030X
• ISBN13: 9781584350309
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Semiotext(e)
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The Strangest and Most Compelling Artist Book in Years

Though in some ways it's more of an art piece than a novel, I couldn't help but notice the above reviewer rather missed the point of the whole project, and the short piece smacked of the kind of philistinism one sees often witnesses in relationship with contemporary art. "I don't get it, it must be bad" (Insert sound of palm slapping on forehead.) But Reena Spauling's created by collective the Bernedette Corporation, mixes the mania of late capitalism with the derive, wry wit of the intellectual in crafting a piece of writing that's stranger and more delightful than all of the shoddy realist fiction of the last few years combined.