“My father probably spent time there,” Dancyger writes. His was the voice in her ear, the influence on her earliest attempts at writing, and the invisible hand that seemed to guide her through the streets of the East Village. After his untimely death at the age of forty-three, his life and its meaning was an irresistible riddle for Dancyger. From Joe Schactman’s impact on the New York gallery scene to his enduring influence on his wildly talented daughter, Negative Space is an emotional archive of an unbearable loss and the proof-and detritus-of the value of love.Ī sculptor, wild man, and heroin user, Joe Schactman was a force in life. What begins as an unimaginable loss is transmuted into an unforgettable story about love, artistic influence, addiction, and legacy. The book meticulously examines the raw, nervy exit wounds her artist father created when he died in 2000. This is the magic that Lilly Dancyger performs in her debut memoir, Negative Space. The monster, tamed, is banished-soothed, defanged. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Lean closer, analyzing the details, and after a while, the heartbreak that swallowed them in its maw begins to make sense again. Any writer knows that when something hurts, the ache dissolves only under scrutiny. The alchemy of memoir transforms pain into story.
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