Candy Darling
Dreamer, Icon, Superstar
by Cynthia Carr
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Mar 19 2024 | Archive Date Apr 08 2024
Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A Best Book of the Year (So Far): W magazine
A Must-Read: The New York Times Book Review, Nylon, Star Tribune, Ms., Kirkus Reviews, The Bay Area Reporter, Town & Country, InsideHook, San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] monumental biography.” —Hilton Als, The New Yorker
“A rich portrait of a glittering, communal, and bygone NYC . . . [and] of the glamorous queer icon.” —Arimeta Diop, Vanity Fair
From the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar Candy Darling.
You must always be yourself no matter what the price . . . Don’t dare destroy your passion for the sake of others.
The Warhol superstar and transgender icon Candy Darling was glamour personified, but she was without a real place in the world.
Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max’s Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.
Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: “I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me.” Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, just as conversations about gender and identity were beginning to enter the broader culture. She never knew it, but she changed the world.
Brimming with all the fizz and wildness of New York in the 1960s and ’70s, this is the first biography of this extraordinary figure—an unintentional pioneer who became an icon. Cynthia Carr’s Candy Darling is packed with tales of luminaries, gossip, and meticulous research, laced with Candy’s words and her friends’ recollections, and signals Candy’s long-overdue return to the spotlight.
Includes 16 pages of color photographs
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“The most compelling and complete portrait of the late Warhol Superstar and LGBTQ+ pioneer to date.” —Jordan Runtagh, People
“The definitive record of [Candy Darling’s] life, shading in the vulnerable, gritty, and deeply soulful individual behind the fabulous façade . . . An essential read for anyone interested in queer culture and New York history . . . Such a gift.” —Mel Ottenberg, Interview magazine
★ “[An] incandescent portrait . . . Carr resurrects a trans icon whose life, artistry, and struggle speak directly to our moment.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An unparalleled close-up of a pop culture icon.” —Publishers Weekly
“Sensitive and complex . . . A fascinating portrait of a trendsetter.” —June Sawyers, Booklist
“A richly detailed and thoughtful portrait of Candy Darling, an innovator during an era that, although on the cusp of change, had not yet evolved far enough beyond the limited boundaries of conformity.” —Carol J. Binkowski, Library Journal
“I first heard her name in a Lou Reed song; I first saw her face in a Peter Hujar photograph, looking glamorous, dying; I first heard her voice in an Andy Warhol film. And now, how wonderful to be taken, with care and delight and plenty of spectacle, behind the myth for a peek at the beating heart of Candy Darling. Cynthia Carr has written an absorbing account of an unforgettable woman in a fascinating time, a lonely icon who tried to find a place for herself in a world that couldn’t hold her.” —Justin Torres, author of Blackouts
"I love, love, love the deliciously rich telling of Candy’s life, and downtown New York in the 60s and 70s—all the haunts, the denizens, the stars. It’s clear Cynthia Carr fell in love with Candy Darling. Now, at long last, so shall we all." —Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us
“What an inspiring book! First you think, ‘I know that.’ But then you think, ‘Oh I didn’t know that, or that or that.’ The very identity of Candy Darling, what it was like to be a trans kid growing up in the 1950s, and the landscape surrounding her, gets renovated in this wake-up take on gender in the ’60s and ’70s. The web of detail assembled by culture sleuth Cynthia Carr is quickened by the fact of Candy’s tireless beauty, charm, and charisma—and oh so much pain. Complexly wrenching, startling, entirely fresh, and frankly alive, Candy Darling delivers an altogether frank and shimmering portrait of a self-made American female deity, more than a bit of a prophet, constructed whole cloth from her own and everyone else’s desiring dream. Omigod, what a trip!” —Eileen Myles, author of a "Working Life"
“Candy Darling willed herself to be beautiful, and she succeeded: she was uniquely, spectrally beautiful. But the world made her pay for it. The prejudice against gender choice kept her poor, beholden to others, shunned, disrespected, disinvited, and locked up within herself. Cynthia Carr’s minute reconstruction of her life is brilliant and profoundly sad. As if Candy’s ghost were dictating the terms, it keeps her an enigma, a consummate life actress who never dressed down.” —Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name
“Deftly reported and full of fresh facts and interviews as well as glittering gossip, Cynthia Carr’s Candy Darling allows us to see—truly, for the first time—this celluloid wisp of a Warhol superstar in all her humanity and in all her doomed performance art, trying to pass 24-7 as Kim Novak or Marilyn Monroe, existing 2D in a 3D world. Updating all the camp and vamp, Carr is a trustworthy, sensitive guide to the nuances of Candy’s experience as she emerges as a historical trans pioneer, caught between gender dysphoria and her own blonder gender euphoria.” —Brad Gooch, author of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781250066350 |
| PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 432 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Media/Journalist 171075
Stunning and heartbreaking, a much needed and expansive portrait told with care and nuance and generosity.
Summer M, Reviewer
As I was reading and progressing through this book I was dreading the ending of it. I didn’t want to be without it. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Candy Darling. You’re immersed in her and her world more than I ever thought possible. This is a thoughtful and careful exploration. It’s one of the best and thorough biographies I’ve come across. Everything that was put into this book is a nice tribute to her and everything she wanted to do and be. Captivating and heartbreaking.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
