In Close to the Knives, David Wojnarowicz gives us an important and timely document: a collection of creative essays -- a scathing, sexy, sublimely humorous and honest personal testimony to the "Fear of Diversity in America." From the author's violent childhood in suburbia to eventual homelessness on the streets and piers of New York City, to recognition as one of the most provocative artists of his generation -- Close to the Knives is his powerful and iconoclastic memoir. Street life, drugs, art and nature, family, AIDS, politics, friendship and acceptance: Wojnarowicz challenges us to examine our lives -- politically, socially, emotionally, and aesthetically.

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

Biographies & Memoirs

Wojnarowicz, David

Arts & Literature

Vintage

The late author, a gay activist, artist, and writer, presents a collection of his early works--never before published--of autobiographical fiction, written as short monologues delivered by a variety of characters from the highways and byways of America.

The Waterfront Journals

Literature & Fiction

United States

Grove Pr

Chronicles the life of an introspective writer, filmmaker, radical artist, and AIDS activist from age seventeen until his AIDS-related death at thirty-seven.

In the Shadow of the American Dream: The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz

Scholder, Amy

Essays & Correspondence

Before his death from AIDS in 1992, David Wojnarowicz became known in the 1980s as an outspoken AIDS activist, anticensorship advocate, artist, and writer. Written as short monologues, each of these powerful, early works of autobiographical fiction is spoken in the voice of a character he stumbles upon during travels throughout America.

GROVE PRESS

A powerful and evocative retrospective collection of an artist's life. Flaring with immediacy and unbridled intensity, David Wojnarowicz's work embraces and illuminates the repressed, the unspeakable, and the intolerable. This collection of Wojnarowicz's paintings, photographs, and writings also includes essays by Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, Fran Lebowitz, and Karen Finley, among others.

David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape

Aperture

Not content to be a tremendous photographer, painter, filmmaker, performance artist and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954-92) was also the author of three classic books: Close to the Knives, The Waterfront Journals and Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, now back in print from Artspace. This volume collects four tales--"Into the Drift and Sway," "Doing Time in a Disposable Body," "Spiral" and the title story--interspersed with ink drawings by the artist. "Sometimes it gets dark in here behind these eyes I feel like the physical equivalent of a scream. The highway at night in the headlights of this speeding car speeding is the only motion that lets the heart unravel and in the wind of the road the two story framed houses appear one after the other like some cinematic stage set..." From these opening sentences of the book (in "Into the Drift and Sway"), Wojnarowicz lets loose a salvo of explicit gay sexual reverie harshly lit by the New York cityscape.

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Artspace Books

Vertigo Verite: 7 Miles a Second

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

DC Comics

David Wojnarowicz's use of photography, often done in conjunction with writing or painting, was extraordinary—as was his way of addressing the AIDS crisis and issues of censorship and homophobia. Brush Fires in the Social Landscape, begun in collaboration with the artist before his death in 1992 and first published in 1994, engaged what Wojnarowicz would refer to as his tribe or community. Contributors—from artist and writer friends such as Karen Finley, Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, Vince Aletti, C. Carr and Lucy R. Lippard, to David Cole, the lawyer who represented him in his case against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association—together offer a compelling, provocative understanding of the artist and his work. Brush Fires is also the only book that features the breadth of Wojnarowicz's work with photography. Now, on the twentieth anniversary of Brush Fires, when interest in the artist's work has increased exponentially, this expanded and redesigned edition of this seminal publication puts the work in front of an audience all over again while maintaining the integrity of the original. Through the lens of various contributors, the book addresses Wojnarowicz's profound legacy: the relentless censorship and ethical issues, alongside his aesthetic brilliance, courage and influence.

David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992, and drawn by James Romberger with colors by Marguerite Van Cook. The graphic novel depicts Wojnarowicz's childhood of prostitution and drugs on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. Romberger and Van Cook's visuals give stunning life to Wojnarowicz's words, blending the gritty naturalism of Lower East Side street life with a hallucinatory, psychedelic imagination that takes perfect advantage of the comics medium.

7 Miles a Second

Romberger, James

Van Cook, Marguerite

Fantagraphics Books

Audio journals that document Wojnarowicz's turbulent attempts to understand his anxieties and passions, and tracking his thoughts as they develop in real time.
In these moments I hate language. I hate what words are like, I hate the idea of putting these preformed gestures on the tip of my tongue, or through my lips, or through the inside of my mouth, forming sounds to approximate something that's like a cyclone, or something that's like a flood, or something that's like a weather system that's out of control, that's dangerous, or alarming.... It just seems like sounds that have been uttered back and forth maybe now over centuries. And it always boils down to the same meaning within those sounds, unless you're more intense uttering them, or you precede them or accompany them with certain forms of violence. ―from The Weight of the Earth
Artist, writer, and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) was an important figure in the downtown New York art scene. His art was preoccupied with sex, death, violence,and the limitations of language. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Wojnarowicz began keeping audio journals, returning to a practice he'd begun in his youth.The Weight of the Earth presents transcripts of these tapes, documenting Wojnarowicz's turbulent attempts to understand his anxieties and passions, and tracking his thoughts as they develop in real time.
In these taped diaries, Wojnarowicz talks about his frustrations with the art world, recounts his dreams, and describes his rage, fear, and confusion about his HIV diagnosis. Primarily spanning the years 1987 and 1989, recorded as Wojnarowicz took solitary road trips around the United States or ruminated in his New York loft, the audio journals are an intimate and affecting record of an artist facing death. By turns despairing, funny, exalted, and angry, this volume covers a period largely missing from Wojnarowicz's written journals, providing us with an essential new record of a singular American voice.

Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

History & Criticism

Semiotext[e]

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wojnarowicz, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wojnarowicz, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wojnarowicz, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

The Waterfront Journals

In the Shadow of the American Dream: The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz

The Waterfront Journals

David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline

Vertigo Verite: 7 Miles a Second

David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

7 Miles a Second

Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)