Negative Space
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4.3 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Despite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him—despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against a world that had taken her father away. As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her father—the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father's work to find the truth of who he really was.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this heartfelt and sometimes shocking memoir, a woman sets out to learn about her parents and instead discovers herself. Lilly Dancyger grew up in New York’s bohemian ’90s East Village as the daughter of acclaimed sculptor Joe Schactman; she remembers loving it. Dancyger knew that her folks were both heroin addicts, and that the drug was the reason she lost her beloved dad when she was just 12 years old. But only upon looking back at the chaos of her parents’ world does Dancyger start to accept just how less-than-perfect her childhood really was. It’s tricky for a writer to truthfully present two selves—carefree child and wounded adult—but every line of this wise memoir hits hard. Dancyger pulls no punches about the dirty secrets of the arts community her father called home. But despite all the darkness in Negative Space, it reads like a testament to the power of family love.
