'Dora: A Headcase' by Lidia Yuknavitch
Discussion has officially started!
Synopsis: Dora: A Headcase is a contemporary coming-of-age story based on Freud’s famous case study—retold and revamped through Dora's point of view, with shotgun blasts of dark humor and sexual play.
Ida needs a shrink . . . or so her philandering father thinks, and he sends her to a Seattle psychiatrist. Immediately wise to the head games of her new shrink, whom she nicknames Siggy, Ida begins a coming-of-age journey. At the beginning of her therapy, Ida, whose alter ego is Dora, and her small posse of pals engage in "art attacks." Ida’s in love with her friend Obsidian, but when she gets close to intimacy, she faints or loses her voice. Ida and her friends hatch a plan to secretly film Siggy and make an experimental art film. But something goes wrong at a crucial moment—at a nearby hospital Ida finds her father suffering a heart attack. While Ida loses her voice, a rough cut of her experimental film has gone viral, and unethical media agents are hunting her down. A chase ensues in which everyone wants what Ida has.
About the Author: Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of The Chronology of Water: A Memoir and three works of short fiction: Her Other Mouths, Liberty’s Excess, and Real to Reel, as well as a book of literary criticism, Allegories of Violence.
Her work has appeared in Ms., The Iowa Review, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Fiction International, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Her book Real to Reel was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets and Writers and Literary Arts, Inc. Her work appears in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Forms At War (FC2), Wreckage of Reason (Spuytin Duyvil). Yuknavitch teaches writing, literature, film, and Women’s Studies in Oregon.
Discussion has officially started!
This book had a huge media push. And I know a lot of people here loved her first book, the memoir The Chronology of Water. I'm sad to say that I haven't been able to get to that one yet, but I've been really excited to get my hands on a copy of Dora.
Get to reading!
Sweet. I haven't bought this yet, so looks like November would be a good time to get it read for. I was planning on sitting out the Exorcist discussion so I was hoping November's pick would be something I was eager to read.
TCOW was very good, as was Real To Reel and I have heard nothing but positive stuff about this one.
Nice choice!
YES!
Sweet!
I didn't make it past the dedication without crying, because I am tough like that.
Must … resist … premature discussion …
^^ditto.
Ohhhh. Yeah.
I am in.
Ohhhh. Yeah.
I am in.
In and on.
mmmmm great choice.
I'm will be attempting to join in discussions
awesome choice Pete.
Will Lidia be joining us?
I've been wanting to read this, looks like the perfect reason just came into play.
Pete, I gave her a heads up, so fingers crossed.
About half way though this baby. It helps to know that it's autographed ;)
If anybody knows her - link her, invite her, whatever. It would be great if she posted.
I haven't seen any activity from her really, since the meet-up, but her email (primary?) got hacked around then - I have the spam message as proof - so maybe that has something to do with her lack of responses.
She's SWAMPED this year. As in really truly swamped.
surprise, i'm here.
naked.
naked
Best. book. club. EVER.
do we get wordfucked, too?
Sweet! Great to have you along.
Yay! Thanks for joining us Lidia.
Wow.
and wow.
Very cool.
Ok. I have to get that book. Would love to join the club next month and it sounds like a great one to start with
Surprised you're here, not surprised you're naked. YAY!
well WHAT do we want to talk about? cuz as some of you know, i'm willing to talk about pretty much ANYTHING....so lemme know and i promise to chime in -- el buffo!
I got this ordered the other day, should be delivered soon. I'll get started reading pretty much right away.
Lidia: Why the oedipus and Frued themes?
Should we just post the definition of FARCE up here and get it over with, Lid?
Jack: I could be talking out my ass here, but I think (based on what Lidia has told me) that she's trying to give Dora (who was really one of Frued's case studies) a voice, and to show other people in that life-stage (or not) that sexuality and individualism are normal.
Hi, Lidia.
I would like to discuss the ending a bit and a question.
You gave Dora a happy ending (hee hee, because I am twelve) and in real life, despite Freud's allegations that Ida MUST have been a lesbian to have resisted the real Mr. K's advances, like, gosh, she must not like men, she went on to marry and have a child; she certainly was not the "hysterical" bat in the attic Freud predicted. You've sided with Cixous on Dora as a "silent revolt against male power over women's bodies and women's language...a resistant heroine" except, your Dora orchestrates a beautiful rebellion, offering little resistance in becoming a heroine. (I love her righteous anger!)
So, to the ending, because I think I know why your Dora gets her happy ending, for the sake of fiction and farce (or set me in a proximity of straight if I'm wrong), but l'd like to talk real life and the millions who never ever get their windfall or their windpipes.
What are some ways you personally would encourage silent/vocal revolts against not just women's bodies and languages, but the bodies and languages of all the marginalized, especially in a society that is so driven by momentum and materialism?
Thank you! <3 <3 <3 and ridiculousness,
Drea
I am so terrible at rules.
Pete runs a tight ship. ;)
Thanks for that answer Chuck. Checking out that case study now.
Good stuff Andrea.
Grr, stupid Royal Mail being crap again. Didn't get my package delivered in time before I am away from home a few days - will have to wait until next week to start reading now.
i'm holding my answers in like pee until the first week of november. i'll try not to dribble.
x
o
x
I think pee is possibly dripping on me, but I don't think I care. That book trailer wowed me! MUST READ!
i must say that in all my classes this term there have been mentions of Dr Sig, and readings of noir cinema for phalic symbolism, and Sampson having a fear of Delilah castrating him. It's very odd to be reading this version of Frued, where the vagina has all the power.
Frued. Frude. Frood.
I read the book in a day. Quick read. I was then wiki the original case, and wow.
Lidia,
If it's okay, I would like to talk about the Acknowledgements page (is that a little weird?)
The "Gemini stuff" am I right in thinking this is the non-biological twin kind like you and Lance Olsen?
Also, now I will always picture Chelsea Cain singing her way through your writers meetings whether this is truly her Ave Maria character trait or not :)
I would also like to talk about the differences between your Dora in Loving Dora and Dora in Dora: A Headcase and why you chose to keep certain elements over others.
Finally, i am a little in love with the name Obsidian.
Thank you
Emily xo
I've been wondering why you chose to set the story in modern day with analogues of the therapist/patient instead of putting it in the time/setting and writing about Freud/Ida as a fiction of what it might have been like for Ida?
Here's a little lube to steam y'all's piss jets:
I might also add that I fucking love Geminis. They keep you on your toes.
Finished. I will try to add some more thoughts and questions as the month goes on.
For now though.
I thought it was good, at times brilliant, and it is deserving of the big release push it had. Her putting this out the year after Chronology doing so well makes me predict a higher and higher profile for Lidia. Seems she is really on the up right now.
She really does write a mean sentence. Taken by themselves, some snippets could be awesome bits of microfiction. Like this. Lines like this are why people like her writing so much.
All kinds of hell is happenng on the other side of my bedroom door. It sounds like the opposite of family.
Hmm.
I found the characterisation of Freud very amusing. My old feminist theory lecturers would eat this book up. I find Freud is an interesting name in science. There is such a duality in his legacy. His work is babble at times, and he is a great source of parody - as Lidia shows in this story. And then his influence has been harmful in many ways, which is tragic.
But he did pioneer ideas and research methods that have since been adapted to good use in the hands of more rational thinkers. He and his collegues were a spark that got a stagnant field of thinking moving again. They weren't exactly headed the right direction, but they were at least moving, and better drivers have had the chance to take over the wheel. Freud's mistakes have been costly, but they have also been valuable - within the resurgence of femininst theory and within the advancements of social psychology there have been people attempting to rebuild Freuds ideas from the ground up and removing the old biases.
I will say, I have been led to believe in the past that the old school analytic thinking hangs on a little tighter in the US compared to most other places, and maybe certain wounds run deeper there. Firsthand I have no evidence one way or the other on that though. Certainly people seem angry there about certain things. More so than here in the UK? Yeah, possibly.
I am babbling myself now. Long story short - The Sig was a brilliant characterisation.
I look forward to seeing how this thread pans out. Great book club pick.
paradox
I don't know about you, but that's the best inscription I've ever seen.
Therapee
hey!
sorry for the delay. i was stricken with a gut virus from hades while in eugene.
first of all, THANK YOU (and any other humans) who read Dora. i'm always shocked people read what i write. still.
the idea for dora came from 3 places:
1. when i was in undergraduate women's studies class we read Freud's famous case study, "Dora: a Case History of Hysteria" -- and i remember sitting there looking around going WHAT THE FUCK? is this guy for REAL? is anyone else fucking PISSED? contrary to his analysis in the text, i read the story as a doctor literally stealing the story of a girl right out of her throat. if you look it up you'll see what i mean even if you don't agree with my assessment. by the way, she quit "therapy" after 3 months, and freud always considered it a "failure". ha ha. so even though i had to wait to be a good enough writer to write her story back into her throat (approximately 25 years), i always knew i'd write her back alive.
2. i was a "dora." angry unresolved damaged teen girl monster who got the wrong "help" from her culture and was "punished" for her energy and sexuality and what was most likely her own creative expression getting born. example: i used to paint on walls, floors, tables, anything when i was young--in houses, churches, schools--and i'd get in trouble. punished. until the day i met this 70 year old woman painter who showed me a 7 x 9 foot white blank canvass. one of the happiest days of my life. how come she was the only person in the universe who recognized my desire to express and didn't treat it as teen bad dog behavior? still a question i have.
3. when my son was young i had to watch like a gazillion dora the explorer cartoons. one night i woke up and BAM. the name DORA and my past haunting of Dora melded, and Dora: A Headcase was born. Um, also, that night? I could hear her voice. Yes, really.
love lidia