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60
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
77/100Critics
44/100Scholars
Author:
Lilly Dancyger
Publisher:
Santa Fe Writer's Project
Date:
May 1, 2021
What happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? ... As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her fatherâthe brilliant artist, struck down in his prime.
What The Reviewers Say
The book meticulously examines the raw, nervy exit wounds her artist father created when he died in 2000. What begins as an unimaginable loss is transmuted into an unforgettable story about love, artistic influence, addiction, and legacy. From Joe Schactman’s impact on the New York gallery scene to his enduring influence on his wildly talented daughter, Negative Space is an emotional archive of an unbearable loss and the proof—and detritus—of the value of love.
Dancyger carries us back to New York City’s gritty East Village in the 1980s as she investigates Schactman’s tumultuous life. She pages through her father’s old notebooks that she saved after his death.
A double biography that tells Dancyger's story while simultaneously discovering her dead father's life.
... part-memoir, part-art criticism debut in which a bildungsroman-esque narrative of the author’s journey from 'a fatherless girl' to 'a fatherless woman' is braided with an investigation into her deceased father’s art, as well as his past.
