The Princess of 72nd Street

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‘A cult classic … A high and a comedown at once – a paroxysm of sex and booze and, above all, colour … wryly funny … it is also devastating’ The New Yorker 
 
An unforgettable portrait of a smart, sensitive, yet deeply troubled young woman fighting to live on her own terms 
 
‘I don’t need LSD for things to look pretty.’ 
 
Ellen is an artist living alone on New York in the 1970s. She is beset by irritating ex-boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by ‘radiances’ – episodes of joyous, reckless unreality during which she becomes Princess Esmerelda, a brightly-dressed star ruling over her kingdom of West 72nd Street. Yet there are those around her, particularly the men in her life, who are threatened by this incarnation, and wish to curtail the giddy freedom it brings her. A rhapsodic work of exuberant invention and deadpan humour, The Princess of 72nd Street sees female liberation and mental health through new eyes. 
 
With an Introduction by Melissa Broder 
 
‘One of literature’s hidden gems … demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen’ Sarah Rose Etter

Bold, challenging, beautiful and charming... Kraf balances Ellen’s account beautifully, keeping us simultaneously intimate and detached from her as Ellen’s crowded surroundings make her seem all the lonelier, and her antic enthusiasm shields a sadness... Insofar as comparison is possible with such an idiosyncratic book, Princess recalls two other New York novels of the 1970s – Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights and Renata Adler’s Speedboat

A raggedy genius is finally queened, bringing a fairy-tale ending to this cracked dark story of the old West Side

Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

If one were to imagine a perfect specimen of a ‘forgotten classic’ by a woman writer from the 1960s and ’70s, you might come up with The Princess of 72nd Street... it’s a slender, accomplished and frequently funny work told from the perspective of a lively and bruised female consciousness….Its first-person narration feels essayistic, full of bold declarations about heterosexual love, gender roles and aesthetics

Had Nora Ephron written while on LSD, she might have read a little like this wryly devastating novella, the rediscovery of which feels overdue

Elaine Kraf’s The Princess of 72nd Street lyrically details the seventh ‘radiance’ experienced by a young figure painter named Ellen who, during fits of seeming psychosis, believes herself to be the sovereign ruler of West 72nd between Broadway and Central Park. Ellen/Princess Esmerelda makes witty observations about creativity, femininity, and public life with a voice that feels startlingly modern

For a novel that is in many ways about fantasy, there is a bracing wind of keen discernment that sweeps through from the first pages to the last. Though Ellen is transported into an alternate (and preferable) reality by what she calls her radiances, she maintains an eagle eye on the world she's in and the people around her: their habits, their hypocrisies, their desires, their wounds. It is one of the marvels of this book that Elaine Kraf manages to be so recklessly fantastical and so coolly perceptive at the same time

A frenetic and glittering manifesto, wherein a woman wrestles—or dances—with the most misunderstood parts of herself. A well-deserved reintroduction of what is bound to be a beloved classic for contemporary young women

An electric portrait of one woman’s blazing unraveling. Kraf is one of literature’s hidden gems — that rare writer who refuses to let us look away from her bright, transcendent suffering. Her work demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen

A provocative 1970s novel…. Almost half a century after it was first published, The Princess of 72nd Street sounds like a contemporary cry for freedom from the expectations of others

This slender novel immerses us in the brilliance of its world... Comparisons have been made to the work of Jean Rhys; I thought too of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet

Elaine Kraf (1936—2013) was a writer and painter. She was the author of four published works of fiction: I Am Clarence (1969), The House of Madelaine (1971), Find Him! (1977) and The Princess of 72nd Street (1979)—as well as several unpublished novels, plays and poetry collections. She was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts awards, a 1971 fellowship at the Broad Loaf Writers’ Conference and a 1977 residency at Yaddo. She was born and lived in New York City.

Ellen is a single artist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s. She is beset by old boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by 'radiances' - episodes of joyous, reckless unreality. Under the influence of 'radiances' she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street becomes the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a liberating experience for Ellen, who, despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda, and by the freedom that it gives her. 
 
The Princess of 72nd Street is Elaine Kraf's witty, dizzyingly inventive take on female liberation and mental health, a work of immense literary power and unbridled energy. Provocative at the time of its publication in 1979 and thoroughly iconoclastic, it is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.

Elaine Kraf

For Clarence’s mother, life revolves around her young son; she takes him to see specialists to find the cause of his blindness and developmental delays, protects him from the cruelty of other children, and loves him tenderly. But she has her own struggles too. Her sanity is precarious and fractured, making caregiving increasingly difficult. 
 
When her mental health reaches a breaking point, she checks herself into an institution so that she can get better and, she tells herself, be a better mother to Clarence. As she is forced to decide between his well-being and hers, Elaine Kraf poses the essential question: can a mother’s love for her child soothe her own emotional upheaval? How much can she sacrifice for her son? 
 
Through this unforgettable journey into one woman’s mind and relationships, Kraf paints a harrowing portrait of motherhood which remains timely and inventive over fifty years after its initial publication.

Elaine Kraf

Books by Elaine Kraf

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