Hi Jax \u0026 Hi Jinx: Life's a Pitch, and Then You Live Forever by Dame Darcy

Hi Jax \u0026 Hi Jinx: Life's a Pitch, and Then You Live Forever Reviews

• 
  Thurston Hunger

  The book is a beautiful mess, thought I 'spect her life is even more beautiful and even messier. Dame Darcy actually first hit my ears before my ears, her singing saw and murder ballads and what sounds like a miniature ice cream truck are sweeter than Molasses. Stories in here connect her to Caroliner (yikes on the Irish vomit) and Suckdog (I didn't know about that) and her love of Adam Ant is heartfelt and may have turned her from a mermaid into a pirate.
  
  Plenty of Meat Cake add flavor to the collection, and recollections spice it up as well, she meets both Edward Gorey *and* Alan Moore. She is not far from the Guy Maddin crowd, she does have an old-timey love of many things, and looks like a silent movie star.
  
  I pretty much believe everything she says, and even things that I'm not sure what she said, or her doll said. The book can bounce between New Age and Near Death moments, as well as cook book and travelogue.
  
  If you cannot find the box, look harder....or maybe just listen to this over and over for awhile until you imagine it.
  https://vimeo.com/30168089
• 
  Trilby O'Farrell

  Incredible! A memoir that is also a work of art. The style is elegant, witty, and at times, very funny.
  Includes inspiration and advice from someone who is honest about the trials and tribulations of their life and doesn’t sugar-coat the nasty bits. Covers everything from the spiritual to the practical.
  Her mother’s story – the mini-bio within the auto-bio – was itself awe-inspiring and made me think about how much people in our lives influence us and make us who we are.
  For those of us who have trod rough terrain, it’s a reminder that even the mighty fall and then get back up again.
  Many photos and illustrations.
  
• 
  Sarah

  What can I say about this book? It’s amazing. If you’re a fan of Dame Darcy, you probably know what you’re in for here—a long rambling autobiography with lots of entertaining digressions for comix, recipes, political rants and notations about DDs own obsessions, heroes and recommendations for artists and books and films—basically my favourite type of book from one of my favourite artists ever. Totally entertaining and inspiring and you should buy and read it and also support her on Patreon it you can afford it! She’s the best.
• 
  Sabrina Eads

  Maybe if I had been a fan instead of just picking this up off a shelf, intrigued by a mermaid, I would've enjoyed it. I stuck with it about half way and then just gave up.
• 
  Bill

  Dame Darcy’s autobiography. Lots of illustrations. Who could ask for more?
• 
  J M-B

  I read this in three big gulps over the couple of days after it was delivered. My only criticism is that I would have liked more. This book is a manifesto for decency and the social values that support the power of the imagination and creativity. The recipes are also just about within my range of kitchen competence.
  
  Dame Darcy has been a presence in my reading life from the first glimpses given in Rollerderby, then the book-form of 'Meat Cake' and the later text-based works, 'Gasoline' and 'Handbook for a Hot Witch'. What is valuable, endearing and brave about the current book, however, is that it supplements Darcy's exercises in magical thinking with an account of the material basis for her fictions - the plans, the promotions, the contracts, remuneration and domestic insecurity that is a consequence of living by art that is not (yet) picked up by the mainstream. It is a small masterclass in running a small business where the brand is yourself. Memoir is a radical and demystifying genre for the artist, letting all of us see the price tag attached to the commitment to living by producing art. Lisa Carver showed much of the same in her 'Drugs are Nice', but Darcy goes into the money, the struggle to meet rent and the side jobs.
  
  On a superficial level, memoir also lets the reader nosebag on the "who knows whom" minutiae of the rarefied beings whose works we consume and admire. So - it is common knowledge that DD hung out with Courtney Love, and it is no surprise that she knows genesis p-orridge and has toured with rasputina (I wish Melora would write a book) - but I was surprised and pleased that Darcy liked, and met, Tiny Tim and also had friendly dealings with Glass Candy. There is a lot of stuff like that in these pages and it is great to think of the artists we like all living together in some kind of Art Town, a smarter suburb inaccessible to us except through their product. But Art Town is really just an all too thin network stretched across an increasingly antagonistic landscape where forces of racism and misogyny grow in strength, globally and locally. Darcy's world of glamour and imagination does not seek to deny the reality of those changes in America and all over Europe. She tells us that she lives in the South where some of the people won't let go of the Confederacy and threaten and harass both her and her black boyfriend. Darcy confronts those threats, in her writing and in life.
  
  As I read, I was reminded that Laura Veirs, in one of her podcasts about being a mother and a performer, speculated about having to leave the USA for somewhere like the Netherlands to escape the post-Trump strengthening of the far-right. Darcy raises the same possibility, mentioning that she is learning Dutch and that the Netherlands is her partner's second home. There are lots of good reasons to learn Dutch, but Europe is also in trouble and the Netherlands has Thierry Baudet and Geert Wilders. This is a courageous book and I hope lots of people buy it.