Cat Power: A Good Woman
Cat Power: A Good Woman
How Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, Survived Herself–and Became the Indie Rock Queen.
Chan Marshall’s stark lyrics, minimal arrangements,and wounded, smoky vocals, were an instant indie hit in the nineties–but her mental instability nearly derailed her career. How this sensitive but headstrong Georgian daughter of an unstable mother and a relatively unknown musician father–managed to make it big, burn out, and rise up again to become not only the darling of the indie music scene but also a fashion and Hollywood icon is the fabric of this irresistible story.
Covering her musical beginnings in the south and her booze-soaked rise to fame in New York City to her eventual breakdown and subsequent reclamation of herself and
List Price: $ 13.95
Price: $ 7.04
Not understanding the controversy,
As pointed out in reviews below, there’s not much new here to people who’ve already dug up all the other articles ever written about Chan other than more information about her Cabbagetown era and early NYC days and an appalling confirmation of why exactly Chan’s father kicked her out at age 16 to make her own way in life (i.e., to make room for a new main squeeze, not because Chan was flunking high school). The fact “divulged” in the book that Chan has outright lied about many things is not surprising to anybody who has read her various interviews and realized that what Chan said in one interview contradicts what she said in a previous interview. Chan appears to have a pathological desire to please her interviewers by telling them whatever she thinks they want to hear, whether it’s true or not, probably a defensive mechanism from growing up with a crazy mother where the goal is to tell crazy mom whatever will keep her from going off into crazy abusive behavior. The lie about moving to NYC to escape drugs is typical (she moved to a drug-riddled part of NYC where drugs were everywhere) — most of her early band members from Atlanta are either alive or died in ways that did not involve drugs (such as auto accidents). The truth was probably that she was bored, would always have been “that cute girl at the pizza parlor” if she’d stayed in Atlanta, and the opportunity arose when her Cabbagetown room-mate died in an auto accident and a friend who had moved to NYC said “I have room here, why not come to NYC?” and she jumped on the opportunity as a way to re-invent herself. Nothing unusual there. But the drug thing was more exciting, a detail that would please interviewers, and Chan loves to please interviewers. Same deal with her supposed meeting with Steve Shelley and Tim Foljahn at the Liz Phair concert. According to the book neither Steve nor Tim remember it that way, rather, they remember that they’d heard of that strange girl who worked at the copy shop who had some really interesting tunes and went searching her out, not that they saw her accidentally at the Liz Phair concert. Neither even remembers being at the Liz Phair concert. But the Liz Phair story makes a great story for interviewers, they love it, they eat it up, so Chan gives them what they want.
Going beyond the “warts” Ms. Goodman finds, the psychological speculation in the book is interesting but ignores one of the most obvious theories (other than the crazy-mom one) about Chan’s sometimes-awkward behavior – i.e., that she is undiagnosed ADHD. She certainly seems ADHD in every video interview I’ve ever seen of her, she has more twitches than a tweaker and skips from subject to subject like her brain is working at a million miles per hour, but she doesn’t have the ravaged skin-and-bones body of a tweaker. ADHD also would explain Chan’s academic difficulties in her school days despite her obvious intelligence (let’s face it, you don’t maintain a career in music for 15 years and write a ton of music that has critics jumping all over themselves to praise it if you’re an idiot).
Other than that it’s a standard rock star hagiography by a Chan fan, relatively inoffensive and certainly not worthy of the vitriol slathered upon it by some of the other reviewers. Insofar as this book corrects the record it’s an interesting read, if incomplete (who, exactly, was the father of the baby that Chan supposedly aborted when she was 20 years old? We never learn the answer to that, any more than we learn about the diamond mine and the child laborer there who supposedly inspired “Cross Bone Style” during Chan’s visit to Africa). If you’re a fan, you’ll be fascinated if maybe not agreeing with Ms. Goodman’s conclusions and a bit unsatisfied that it doesn’t resolve more of the mysteries of Chan’s life. But that is a limitation which the book itself admits. Ms. Goodman says that for someone who has made so many horrifying things public about her personal life, other things (such as the father of the aborted child) seem quite off-limits and Chan seems to be using her selective revelations as a defensive mechanism to distract interviewers.
Still, there isn’t anything better out there, so (shrug) if you’re a Chan fan, buy it. If you’re not a Chan fan, don’t bother, you’ll read it and be disgusted by Ms. Goodman’s obvious girl crush on Chan, a girl crush that seems curiously unhindered by the difficulties she had in getting information for the book and the things she found out. Or, more properly, Ms. Goodman’s girl crush on *young* Chan, the one who dressed like a boy and had short hair and wrote strange and mysterious almost anti-songs that went in circles and whose stage presence was nervous breakdown as performance art. Ms. Goodman seems rather ambivalent about current Chan, the accomplished singer-songwriter and stylish model who seems quite comfortable, if a bit awkward, up on stage. So it goes.
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|Disappointing,
As a long time fan of Cat Power I was excited to see that a Chan Marshall biography had been released and so I ordered it immediately. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the good sense to use the ‘Search Inside’ feature. Had I done so, I very much doubt I would have bought the book. The book is very disappointing for the following reasons:
1. The author, Goodman, makes it clear from the start that Chan Marshall, the subject of the book, doesn’t want this biography to be written. She has refused to be interviewed for the project and has communicated indirectly with the author through her lawyers stating her disapproval. Chan’s mother also refused to be involved. Despite this, Goodman uses cod-psychological reasoning to come to the conclusion that Chan actually DOES want the book to be written. To me, this shows a lack of respect for the privacy and wishes of the subject and an arrogance bordering on delusion regarding her interpretation of Marshall’s wishes. It is not as if this is a book exposing political corruption or social inequality. It is not a book that desperately needed to be written. It is *just* a music biography. This leads me to the conclusion that writing the book was more about Goodman furthering her career than wishing to do justice to the subject. As a fan of Cat Power I feel it does a dis-service to Marshall and I think it reflects badly on Goodman’s integrity.
2. The writing itself if very poor. It is reminiscent of high-school journalism and is rife with the kind of stylistic and semantic cliches common to the immature writing of a teenager. The use of language made me cringe at least every couple of pages and certainly marred the reading experience. Goodman may write for several high profile music magazines (I have not read her other work) but a well-developed writer she is certainly not. A full-length biography was certainly beyond her, as the quality of writing in this book demonstrates.
3. Goodman’s construction of narrative is equally naive. Through her eyes everything about Marshall is a contradiction – she is always simultaneously one thing and its opposite. Goodman is never afraid to go way beyond the available evidence and make huge generalisations about Marshall’s past, present and even future. She regularly seems to suggest that she knows Marshall better than her subject knows herself. Again, this reeks of immature writing and the undeveloped thinking of an adolescent.
That being said, fans of Marshall are unlikely to be completely unrewarded by reading this book. It does collect together material from many interviews with Marshall that even the most ardent follower may not have kept up with. There are also extracts from other musicians, such as Thurston Moore, that are interesting in their own right. Extracts from conversations with Marshall’s family members who did cooperate with Goodman will also provide valuable information for those fans interested in her upbringing and early career. However, in order to access this information the reader must be prepared to suffer the problems with the text highlighted above. And I’m not convinced it’s really worth the candle.
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|Never heard of Cat Power until this…,
I happened to come across Cat Power: A Good Woman at the library. It looked interesting, so I grabbed it. I absolutely enjoyed this book from beginning to end. The reason my review may differ from the negative reviews….this is the first time I’ve heard of Cat Power. I found this book intriguing to say the least. The author did an excellent job writing about Chan, she remained objective throughout. Of course Chan’s resistance to the publication helped Goodman delve deeper into understanding Chan in a way that,as a fan, she may have looked over. Chan Marshall’s inner conflict goes unresolved, her soul seeks resolution while her mind is distracted by fame. She is her own worst enemy.
I don’t think it was disrespectful for Goodman to write about Chan Marshall, she didn’t exploit her in anyway that wasn’t already known. Goodman doesn’t attempt to disect the illness schizophrenia – she states a couple times in her book that the onset of schizophrenia is usually in late adolescence. She does state that if you have a genetic disposition to the illness, you will always have some risk of developing it even after the frontal lobes are formed. Research has shown schizophrenia can start between ages 16-30 years old. Bad research? Not in this book.
Chan Marshall obviously has had many inner struggles that played out in her music & performances. Elizabeth Goodman did an excellent job putting together pieces of a puzzle that would almost seem impossible. Goodman didn’t have much to go from considering the lack of cooperation from her subject. I applaud Goodman for her determination to continue on with this project. Recognizing the deceptive nature of Chan’s tactics, piecing together Chan’s statements vs. Chan’s actions – having a time line to put things into sequence – brilliant. Logic comes out of this emotional mess, almost to the point of Chan becoming predictable. I highly recommend this book to those who are new to Cat Power, or want some additional insight and perhaps answers to the contradicting nature of Chan Marshall.
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