MUELLER, Cookie. Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls.

MUELLER, Cookie. Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls.
New York and Madras: Hanuman Books 1988 

12mo (105 x 67 mm). [7], 8-79 pp, offset color illustrations. Smyth-sewn in card wraps with pictorial dustjacket. Fine.

FIRST EDITION of Cookie Mueller’s first entry into the Hanuman series. A work of fictional letters and telephone call transcripts between public and private personas, this was one of the series’ two titles that resulted in obscenity charges in India. Mueller, a writer, actress, and micro-celebrity of the downtown New York scene, led a freewheeling life of intensity, refusal, and large doses. Her life and work intersected with John Waters, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana, David Wojnarowicz, among numerous others known and countless forgotten. She died due to AIDS-related illness at only 40 years old.

Founded in 1986, Hanuman published pocket-sized, handmade books, in a format influenced by Indian prayer books. While the press was run out of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, the volumes were printed in Madras (now Chennai), where they were produced on handmade paper utilizing vibrant vegetable dyes, and bound by local fishermen. 

The series featured the contemporary avant-garde, queer literature, experimental art, and lesser-known texts in translation, and was particularly notable for its international and intergenerational editorial vision.

PROVENANCE: Ira Silverberg.

#1068