The End of San Francisco

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Published by: City Lights Publishers

Imprint: City Lights Publishers

192 Pages, 5.50 x 8.00 in

Paperback
9780872865723
Published: March 2013

$18.95

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Description
Praise

The End of San Francisco breaks apart the conventions of memoir to reveal the passions and perils of a life that refuses to conform to the rules of straight or gay normalcy. A budding queer activist escapes to San Francisco, in search of a world more politically charged, sexually saturated, and ethically consistent—this is the person who evolves into Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder and anti-assimilationist commentator. Here is the tender, provocative and exuberant story of the formation of one of the contemporary queer movement's most savvy and outrageous writers and spokespersons.

Using an unrestrained associative style to move kaleidoscopically between past, present and future, Sycamore conjures the untidy push and pull of memory, exposing the tensions between idealism and critical engagement, trauma and self-actualization, inspiration and loss. Part memoir, part social history and part elegy, The End of San Francisco explores and explodes the dream of a radical queer community and the mythical city that was supposed to nurture it.

"Mattilda is a dazzling writer of uncommon truths, a challenging writer who refuses to conform to conventionality. Her agitation is an inspiration."—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

“Author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the artistic love child of John Genet and David Wojnarowicz, deconstructing language swathed in unbridled sensuality, while flinging readers into a disrupted, chaotic life of queer anarchy.”—Gay and Lesbian Review

"Bring on The End of San Francisco! And Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, whose new book has reinvented memoir without the predictable gloss of passive resolution. This book is undeniably brave and new, and the internal energy churning at its core is like nothing you've seen, heard or read before. I swear."—T. Cooper, author of Real Man Adventures

"We hear so much about coming-of-age narratives that we seldom think about going-of-age—the shutting down and closure, the making sense of where we've been. Written with grace, reserve and the honest tremblings that come when things matter, Mattilda shows us that The End of San Francisco is really the beginning of joy."—Daphne Gottlieb, author of 15 Ways to Stay Alive

"It would be easy to describe The End of San Francisco as a Joycean 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Queer' (although the book's intense stream of consciousness is reminiscent of the later, more experimental, Joyce) . . . but this is misleading. This journey of a life that begins in the professional upper-middle class (both parents are therapists) and the Ivy League and moves to hustling, drugs, activism—Sycamore was active in ACT UP and Queer Nation—and queer bohemian grunge, is profoundly American. At heart, Sycamore is writing about the need to escape control through flight or obliteration."—Michael Bronski, San Francisco Chronicle

"But, some of my favorite writers and people released books this year. Like Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's beautiful book about queerness and community and lack of and disappointment and marginalization and gentrification and sex, The End of San Francisco. God, I love that book, on a sentence level it is just heartbreaking."—Jessa Crispin, Bookslut

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the editor of four anthologies, including Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots, That's Revolting, and Nobody Passes, and two novels. She writes regularly for a variety of publications, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Bitch, Bookslut, Alternet and Time Out New York, and is the reviews editor at the feminist magazine Make/shift. She lives in Seattle, WA.

"A blisteringly honest portrait of a young, fast and greatly misunderstood life . . . An outspoken, gender-ambiguous author and activist reflects on her halcyon days as a wild child in San Francisco."—Kirkus Reviews
" . . . one of the most important memoirs of the decade . . . The End of San Francisco is one of the most vulnerable memoirs I've read."—Ariel Gore, Psychology Today
"It is so difficult to assess The End of San Francisco because it is a work of such blazing originality that one cannot compare it to anything else and say 'this is more or less successful than that.' The experience of The End of San Francisco simply bears no comparison."—Charles Kruger, Litseen
"The End Of San Francisco, published by City Lights, is activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's denunciation of assimilation . . . This book is a useful reminder that the gay community is far from monolithic and that it is especially important to listen to the voices of resistance."—June Thomas, Slate
"Sycamore’s associative, non-linear narrative is filled with sparkling language that illuminates the importance of reaching for connection and alive-ness in the face of brutality and loss."—Wendy Elisheva Somerson, Tikkun
"The result is brilliant, a collection of unstructured vignettes about sex abuse, dying parents, feminism and veganism, Tracy Chapman and Le Tigre, dyke bars and gay tricks, AIDS and ACT UP that all weave together a life of hope in ’90s San Francisco and the disappointment that follows."—Diane Anderson-Minshall, The Advocate
"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's whip-raw memoir The End of San Francisco is all about . . . the need to discover who you are by defining yourself in a place. She avoids the cliches of other angry young memoirs by sharing her protagonist role with San Francisco."—Paul Constant, The Stranger
"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s long awaited memoir The End of San Francisco will rip you open, crack your rib-cage and pour glitter into your heart. It’s hard and captivating, a book that truly pulls you in and won’t let you go. Brutal and brilliant, the memoir weaves in and out of time, bringing readers into the intimate details of Sycamore’s adolescence and early activist days."—Sassafras Lowrey, Lambda Literary
"The End of San Francisco could be the most insightful break-up memoir the city has ever received."—Ingrid Rojas Contreras, KQED San Francisco
"Searing, funny, maudlin, elegiac, infuriating, and confessional, The End of San Francisco is a deliberately disordered collection of vignettes dealing mostly with Sycamore's span living in the city . . . a brilliant writer . . . "—Marke B., SF Bay Guardian
"The End of San Francisco is the opposite of nostalgia. Nostalgia is fundamentally conservative, and its conservatism is often embedded in the form in which stories are told. The End of San Francisco seems to me radical, not just in content, but formally, in insisting on other ways of remembering and documenting."—Jessica Hoffman, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The 'infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder, and anti-assimilation commentator' brings you the story of her escape to San Francisco. This is a wonderfully messy mix of memoir, social history, and elegy."—Alexis Coe, SF Weekly
" . . . a fin-de-siècle late '90s narrative that captures the city's underground demimondaine of artists, punks, activists, anarchists and addicts whose ranks will soon be, if not completely swept away by the tech boom's false promises, then severely thinned by gentrification."—Tomas Mournian, Huffington Post
"The End of San Francisco recounts both joyful days and dark nights, and it's an important socio-historical account by someone who's been there and done all that."—New York Journal of Books
"A trenchant observer, her denunciation of racism, classism and homophobia is fierce and she does not spare queer communities for their refusal to reject hetero-normativity—marriage and children—or capitalist consumption."—Eleanor Bader, Truthout
"It's a trippy read—in multiple senses of the word—but at the same time profoundly honest and raw. Unlike many queers today, Sycamore doesn't write or live with a chip on her shoulder…and that's really refreshing and just nice to experience as a reader."—Velvetpark
“The End of San Francisco has potential to enlighten individuals within a generation that has been told that 'marriage equality' is the ultimate right to be won by the LGBTQ community. Some readers won’t like Sycamore for her social and political critiques, but she is an important figure who encourages a critical look at social action, and, for that, The End of San Francisco is an important book."—Capitol Hill Times
"This memoir oozes devastation and glamour, twirling around the Nineties like it's San Francisco, and San Francisco like it's the Nineties! Back when queers and anarchists fueled the political momentum in the Mission. But, honey, things are different now. The Nineties are over, and so is San Francisco. Maybe disillusionment and rejuvenation aren't so different when you're ready to go deeper still."—Dave at Elliott Bay Books
"This autobiography is a story of the way people fail each other, whether out of malice or exhaustion or just not knowing how to be there. It's a chronicle of the ways that we need each other, and the way that need can be turned around, inside-out, torn in all the wrong places but still the only blanket that you have. It's about critiquing out of love and loving despite critique, despite failure, until you can't do it anymore, until you genuinely feel as though an entire city has come to an end."—Maximumrocknroll
"Sycamore identifies the complicated messiness of identities wrestling with belonging, activism and being instruments of gentrification . . . Her style—emotional and conversational—creates a rich, satisfying, evocative and deeply relatable world."—Broken Pencil
"It is so difficult to assess The End of San Francisco because it is a work of such blazing originality that one cannot compare it to anything else and say 'this is more or less successful than that.' The experience of The End of San Francisco simply bears no comparison."—Charles Kruger, Litseen
"Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has a model for relationships that says: 'First you reveal everything, and then when you can't think of anything else to reveal you go deeper.' In The End of San Francisco, Sycamore lets the reader feel the bitter sweetness of that relationship model, the "push-pull of intimacy" that makes the process of excavating memories so painful but so cathartic, so difficult but so urgent."—Mariana Roa Oliva, Rain Taxi
"Author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the artistic love child of Jean Genet and David Wojnarowicz, deconstructing language swathed in unbridled sensuality, while flinging readers into a disrupted, chaotic life of queer anarchy . . . Images cascade and collide with one another in an accomplished literary cadenza of salvation."—John R. Killacky, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide
Praise for Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s previous work:
“Brutal, raw, cathartic and redemptive.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Startlingly bold and provocative.”—Howard Zinn
“You may have thought you understood human nature before you read this book; after reading it you will be humbled by all you failed to grasp until now.”
—Edmund White
“You're not going to be reading anything similar elsewhere."
—The Times of London
“Alternately moving and sprightly, contemplative and outraged.”
—Publishers Weekly

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