Customer Reviews

Myra Breckinridge & Myron

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One of the 1001 Books you must read before you die, but I was very uncertain what this would be like, to judge from the reviews and the cover.

In fact Myra is a glorious comic novel with throwbacks to earlier styles of writing - a journal written in episodes, with "tapes" dicated by Uncle Buck thrown in periodically - so in some ways like an epistolary novel. Myra is a great comic creation - and while it would be too much to describe this as a novel in which we willingly suspend disbelief - the fact that Myra operates accordingly to her own logic is critical - the whole narrative coheres as well as offering continual surprises.

Myron is a sequel - and if you like Myra, you will want to read this too. There are some jarring narrative discontinuities with the earlier work (the Myron of Myron is very different from the Myron of Myra, and Myra's feelings change too between the two novels, about Mary-Ann). And the work is, I suppose, more frankly post-modern, with much of it taking place both within a television set and in 1948 as well as in the (then) present. The appearance of Richard Nixon in person in one episode also jars. But this is more of Myra and both Myra and Myron Mark II hold the interest continuosly. And this one improves as it goes on, with a hilarious denoument.

Myra is Myron's alter ego, his hard edged, stiletto clad screen siren (picture Kathryn Hepburn crossed with Jayne mansfield with perhaps more then a bit of Tallula Bankhead thrown in for good measure). It is SHE who must be obeyed, she who creates an army of castrati known as the fun loving amazons and she who bends the laws of physics in pursuit of fame and glory. Join poor Myron- who gets pulled through the small screen and sucked into the plot of a B movie to save his manhood. No wonder his shrink is a millionaire! This is time bending, space bending, gender bending, taboo bending romp around reality. I love it every time I read it. Dahling.

Myra Beckenridge is a handbag weilding superstar who IS very similar to Dame Edna. This book made me laugh and although it was written in the 70's there are many similaritys to today....that is in terms of sex change operations and silicone. Myron is quite surreal and sometimes hard to picture all the timezones and events all happening at the same time but it is capturing and Myra again triumphs (with her handbag coming to her defence once or twice) well worth the read.