So Real It Hurts

by Lydia Lunch

"So Real It Hurts is the perfect title for this collection. It's a mission statement. A few bleeding slices straight from the butcher shop. A sampler from an enormous archive of work that will, no doubt, be pored over by grad students, book lovers, film historians, music nerds and straight-up perverts a hundred years from now." —Anthony Bourdain, from the Introduction

Through personal essays, interviews, and poetic verse, punk musician and cultural icon Lydia Lunch claws and rakes at the reader's conscience in this powerful, uninhibited feminist collection. Oscillating between provocative celebrations of her own defiant nature and nearly tender ruminations on the debilitating effects of poverty, abuse, and environmental pollution, along with a visceral revenge fantasy against misogynistic men, Lydia Lunch presents her exploits without apology, daring the reader to judge her while she details the traumas and trials that have shaped her into the legendary figure she's become.

Inserted between these biting personal essays, Lunch's thoughtful cultural insights convey a widely-shared desire to forestall inevitable cultural amnesia and solidify a legacy for her predecessors and peers. Her interview with Hubert Selby Jr. and profile of Herbert Hunke, her short unromanticized histories of No Wave and of the late Sixties, and her scathing examination of the monetization of counterculture (thanks, Vivienne Westwood!) all serve to reinforce the notion that, while it may appear that there are no more heroes, we are actually just looking for heroes in the wrong places. The worthy idols of the past have been obscured by more profitable historical narratives, but Lunch challenges us to dig deeper.

So Real It Hurts pulls the reader into a world that is entirely hers—one in which she exacts vengeance against predators with an enviable ease and exerts an almost-sexual dominance over authority, never permitting those with power to hold on to it too tightly.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music, Essays, Poetry, Memoir, Feminism, Short Stories

112 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2019

About the author

Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Koch) is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress.

In the mid-'80s, Lunch formed her own recording and publishing company called "Widowspeak" on which she continues to release a slew of her own material from songs to spoken word.

Later, she was identified by the Boston Phoenix as "one of the 10 most influential performers of the '90s", Lunch's solo career featured collaborations with musicians such as J. G. Thirlwell, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Billy Ver Plank, Steven Severin, Robert Quine, Sadie Mae, Rowland S. Howard, Michael Gira, The Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Die Haut, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Black Sun Productions and french band Sibyl Vane who put one of her spoken words into music. She also acted in, wrote, and directed underground films, sometimes collaborating with underground filmmaker and photographer Richard Kern (including several films such as Fingered in which she performed unsimulated sex acts), and more recently has recorded and performed as a spoken word artist, again collaborating with such artists as Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Don Bajema, Hubert Selby Jr., and Emilio Cubeiro, as well as authoring both traditional books and comix (with award-winning graphic novel artist Ted McKeever).

In 1997 she released Paradoxia, a loosely-based autobiography, in which she candidly documented her bisexual dalliances, substance abuse and flirtation with insanity.

Reviews

[Casey Kiser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lydia’s writing is a drug to me. If I go very long not reading her, I get the shakes, I snap at people and I have flashbacks of meek and timid me back when I let the machine work me instead of the other way around. I inhale her fearlessness deep into my lungs and I remember what I love about this insane, upside down life- writing about it. That I am free when I write. I am in control.
Lydia’s writing is also graceful to me. The way she strings sentence after sentence of raw truth together, strips everyone, including herself to the bone and makes it look easy. She leaves no hiding places of humanity unchecked. Always showing us the high art of giving no fucks and owning it. And that no matter what happens to you in this life, you can choose to turn the tables and take back your power. Before I discovered Lydia, I couldn’t make eye contact with people. I never read a poem of mine out loud, even to myself. I was a prisoner. Of shame. I arrested myself daily and tortured myself. Those days are long gone and the praise she is getting from this little compact collection of her monster archive is well deserved. I fucking Love this woman. She cast a spell on me long ago and adopted me and I am grateful. She has ruined me for other modern women writers as no one can compare. I will be reading something and feel a tidal wave of boredom rush over me and I long for Lydia’s gutter wisdom- my drug. Though, lately, i have read a couple handfuls of exciting writers that make me feel this way again and are filling my heart with hope. They are out there.
This book is a gem. My fave in this collection is ‘Elusive Bitch’. Insomniacs will devour this piece and feel the depths of her soul so relatable.

[Laura Brower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Brilliant.

[OutlawPoet · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, the very first thing you need to know is that almost all of these essays were originally published elsewhere. This means if you're a huge fan of Lydia Lunch, you may have read almost all of these before.

Now, I picked this up knowing almost nothing about Lydia Lunch. I started reading and I stopped. You see, I wasn't sure what I was dealing with. Was this some rage-filled mash up of Holden Caulfield and Milo Yiannopoulos with a far left bent? Or was this authentic?

So I decided to read *about* Ms. Lunch before going back to this. And I'm so glad I did. I discovered a funny, raw, brash woman who bleeds authenticity in everything she does.

And then I settle in to re-read this one.

In So Real It Hurts, Lunch bares her soul in these essays. She doesn't care if you like them or not. She doesn't care if you agree or not. She simply tells her truth as she sees it and it's wonderfully refreshing.

Some of the essays do betray a bit of sadness, many anger, but most have a slant, sarcastic view of the world that shows some innate humor.

And then there's her essay about Trump. Here she leaves the humor and the wicked slant aside and she says everything she feels. And it is blistering.

I like her. I want to learn more about her. And I'm very glad I read this

[Jonathan Katabira · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking for easy and laidback do not read this. But if you're looking for brash, caustic, cunty, beautiful prose, pick this up and let these razor-sharp truths cut you to the bone. Writing this review, right after the Trump re-election feels especially prescient now more than ever because Lydia Lunch is right about most things as pertains to the state of the world. The world is shit and trust me, things can only get worse from here but as long as we are aware and don't allow ourselves to get sucked into the "dicktatorship", we're good for the most part or are we? Because whatever is taking place in this moment in time is not new. As humans, we've failed to learn from the past and Lydia is here to set us straight when it comes to that in one of my favourite essays in the book aptly titled "Real Pornography":

"Are we all suffering from collective induced fiction, an ambushed memory? Have we been the unwitting victims of a historical lobotomy? Are we all stuck wallowing in Orwell's memory hole?"

The chaos may be here to stay but that doesn't mean we have to accept bullshit. And Lydia knows it. And for Trump's America, I will end with this beautiful quote from the queen herself:

"Maybe war is just menstrual envy. If men bled every month as much as I do, maybe they wouldn't have such incredible bloodlust."

[Ebony Earwig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Read this in less than two days. Really inspiring and the title completely fits with the contents, though it also works an artistic mission statement for Lydia.

[Mason Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short pieces has some real standouts, but is also a bit unfocused due to the breadth: from poetic stream-of-consciousness rants to an interview with Hubert Selby Jr (a highlight), autobiographical tidbits to a short bio of Herbert Huncke, an appropriately brief blast of history about No Wave and its short heyday in the hell of 1970s Manhattan, and a few concluding tirades about, well, society, war, men, and -- of all things -- Trump. Bitter, angry, entertaining, unstinting, uncensored, violent, poetic, the pieces are all of those. I had a little trouble finding my way through some of them, which feel like they were likely written to be performed, and would of course be far more impactful in person. Bracing nonetheless, and Lunch continues, thankfully, to be herself.

[Ashley Gleiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

More and more lately, I find myself buying certain books based entirely on someone who reviews it, or in this case, writes the introduction. I absolutely picked this up because Anthony Bourdain’s name was on the cover. And I absolutely understand the reason why it was. They are clearly complementary characters.
Lydia Lunch is one of a kind, take no shit, and no holds barred. She has an interesting, caustic, cynical outlook and tells things just as they are in her world. I appreciate that. I admire that. I enjoyed reading it. Glad that I did.
All that said, I’d probably enjoy her work more in bits and pieces. Most of these writings appeared as individual works that had previously been published, and I can see that on their own each would stand out. It’s just that her view is so... MUCH, I found that it got a bit mind-numbing after about 10 chapters.
She writes as well as a person can conceivably write. I noticed that the long sentences and their structure made me want to read quickly, like a rushing train of thought. I had to go back and read a lot of them a second time to absorb all she is saying and appreciate how well she is saying it. Technically, she is in rare air.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic LL. Extremely thought provoking, disturbing, and honest.

[Niklas Pivic · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read Lydia Lunch's autobiography, "Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary", I kept thinking two things: a. wow, she's been through a lot of things in her life so far, and b. she's not on planet Earth.

This book, which is a short collection of articles, ruminations, interviews, and monographs on a variety of subjects—including some poetry—is much more bound down.

Lunch being Lunch, is not dinner; nor dog food. Caustic is the word that drips throughout these different stories. As Anthony Bourdain says in his introduction:

Lydia Lunch has, she says, never felt shame. She has loudly, consistently, and with astonishing persistence told the world what she thinks—giving exactly zero fucks what the world thought in return. Since arriving in New York in 1976, the product of an abusive and epically awful childhood, she has been nobody’s victim. She became, instead, a self-described predator, never stopping, always hunting—cutting a swath through the cultural jungle as the leader of the band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, a performance artist, an underground film icon, and a truly extraordinary writer.

During a period that is still considered a golden time for art, music, and transgression, she was always the smartest person in the room, which is rarely a comfortable thing to be. She continues to write sentences so ballistically perfect, so lethally designed, that they always hit their targets—and with deadly effect.

It's easier to get into Lunch's oeuvre by digging into it:

We did not need an election. We needed an insurrection. An absolute overthrow of a corrupt cabal, a kleptocratic corporate cock-ocracy that pisses on the poor, wages endless wars, bankrupts entire nations, and has an incarceration rate that is in itself criminal: 5 percent of the world’s population; 25 percent of the world’s prisoners; 65 million Americans with criminal records, mostly for petty drug charges; 2.3 million in correctional facilities; 6.5 million on parole. And you wanted me to vote. You’re fucking joking, right?

That paragraph, to me, is indicative of Lunch's main strength as a writer; she's straightforward, almost exact, and doesn't give a toss about others think. She gives herself off as libertine, multi-dimensional, and manifest.

Even some of her one-liners are exact and cut away debris:

I admit it: the American way of life has turned me into a death-defying murder junkie where all the killers are heroes.

At the worst of times, I think Lunch wants to kick up dirt just because she's bored; her writing bears the hallmarks of the easily bored and ready-to-burst person. At the best of times, just that works to her advantage. Her writing is also a lot more on point nowadays than it ever has been, and more coherent:

My maternal instincts kick in to spite me. I hate to hear babies cry. Hell, I hate to hear anyone cry. It’s the most obnoxious form of noise pollution. And if all it takes to temporarily abate this skin-crawling caterwaul is one fell swoop and a snatch that lifts the little bantamweight crying time bomb into my arms, a quick tight squeeze, and a peck on the cheek, who am I to argue? After all, “mother” knows best.

Which both amazes and horrifies the real birth mother, who enjoys the respite, yet whose first instinct is to grab the little critter and flee as far away as humanly possible from this obviously over-sexualized baby freak, rescuing her precious little angel from unforeseen and imaginary evil, fearing an even more [re]percussive backlash, a rendition of The Terror of Tiny Town’s latest lung-busting operetta. Mommy usually gives in, baby wins out, and I’m stuck playing bouncy-wouncy with the twenty-pound flesh ball for the next eight hours. Not a problem. I understand children. It’s their mothers I can’t fucking stand.

Her monograph about insomnia recalled William S. Burroughs for me:

I gave up nicotine, sugar, and spice, and I even tried a light box. Didn’t help. I quit coffee. Ha! Anyone who has suffered from decades-long insomnia knows damn well that that ain’t gonna last. You need all the caffeine you can suck down to function above that semi-somnambulant state of dream-deprived sleep that results in a numb narcosis, a permanent twilight zone, rarely fully conscious, never completely asleep. Exhausted, but jacked up, like an electric rigor mortis that short-circuits the neurotransmitters, creating a dense fog of chronic irritation that can cloud even the simplest of tasks.

Some of her paragraphs read like the best of Hunter S. Thompson:

I woke up bloody and puking. Projectile vomiting. All over the table. All over his dope. All over his boots. Down the front of my slip. Great heaving waves of gelatinous funk shooting out of my mouth and nose. Thick rich fists of sour phlegm cascading in golden arcs all over the room. I pissed myself and started to laugh. The bastard had almost killed me. I’d never done heroin. He knew that. It just wasn’t my trip. I wasn’t looking for nirvana, a velvet womb, or a soft euphoric haze of interstellar space to melt into. I dug the shit that jacked up the irritation level. Barbs and booze. Coke or speed. LSD. Something that accelerated my already jacked-up metabolism. I wasn’t interested in slowing shit down. Smoothing it out. Softening the edges. I wanted to keep the edges rough, like the one I had just hit my head against. The one that had finally banged a bit of sense into my thick nugget. Never, under any circumstances, will I ever again answer the door at 5:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Sure, she may lack the erudition that both blighted and elated writing from people like Jean Genet, Burroughs, and even Hubert Selby Jr.—an interview with whom is included in this book—but that often works for her, when she keeps her mind together; that's merely how I personally feel.

Her monograph about Herbert Huncke enlightened me of his existence. Her short interview with Selby Jr. is nice, mainly because it's good and doesn't drag on. I don't know if she has it, but I think her seeming sense of getting bored quickly is something that also is her biggest self-made blessing.

Ladies, how did we manage to devolve from sacred prostitutes to corporate whores? From warrior queens to pop porn princesses? We’ve gone from Kali to Courtney Love, from Medusa to Madonna, from Lilith to Liv Tyler, from Emma Goldman to Uma Thurman, from Angela Davis to Lil’ Kim, from Patty Hearst to Paris fucking Hilton.

Her public speech on Donald Trump and his running legacy of kleptocracy is beauteous to read:

And how fucking appropriate for this blustering baboon to name his son Barron. BARRON! More like barren, which is what this country is going to be after instating an idiot pawn, who denies climate change while sucking on big industry’s dick for the better part of his so-called career, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency as floods, mudslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes and natural disasters proliferate, incurring billions of dollars in disaster relief that will never be paid to average homeowners, who barely have $500 of savings in their bank accounts. As the criminal cabal in the White House just passed a $700 billion defense budget, making America’s military larger than that of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UK, France, India, and Japan combined.

All in all, this is a short, highly potent, and not-giving-a-fuck anthology of writing from Lydia Lunch. Read it, act, and move on to her music.

[Kareem · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I've been called insane, a sociopath, out of my fucking mind, a lunatic, deranged, demented, heart-less, a bitch, cunt, slut, whore, manic-schizophrenic paranoid; an evil, cold, calculating, controlling alien-robot. All by people who loved me or said they did or thought they did. Although they probably didn't ever really know me. Didn't know the real me.
Knew only what I'd let them know. Knew only so much.
I was very open, loving, responsive, supportive, giving, and generous when I wasn't a deranged, schizo-phrenic, sociopathic heartless cunt, possessed with an incredible ability to fluctuate wildly at any given time under any given circumstance." -Lydia Lunch


Vile, frantic, aggressive— the offensive toxicity is euphoric. Writing too good to give up.
Imagine your mind knowing something is troubling and the perverse pleasure of overtaking it, even being fueled by that very disregard of decency. From the first paragraph, I was hooked by her.
Lydia writes as if her room is in a blazing inferno. But the world is on fire, isn't it?

Not only is her style provocative to the extreme, the stories are fascinating, morbid, and most importantly, real. The raw truth is so desperately lacking in the world lately. I don't believe that if Lydia Lunch were not so talented and self-aware, this writing would hold up.

I could not help but think of Hunter Thompson the entire time I was reading this, who she does mention. I'm not saying Lydia is as great as Hunter, but I will say the reasons I love his work are the same reasons I'm now a Lydia Lunch fan. Perhaps it's also because how closely her introspections remind me of my own

"I was always vain. My vanity saved me, kept me sane, kept me from falling overboard. I suffered from extremes of passion, insatiability, and gluttony. But I always knew when to pull away, to pull out; knew how far I could go before being swallowed, before sinking into the pitfall of self-loathing, addiction, and depression."

[Krista Danis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a few quick notes here, as others have offered some really amazing reviews of this collection. I have been intrigued by Lydia Lunch ever since hearing her collaboration with Sonic Youth many years ago. Brilliant! I am happy to have recently found her writing in an independent Chicago bookstore.

Chapter 19, "Dust and Shadows," is a poetic reflection on death and dying that had me in a state of gasping obnoxious sobs. Her repetition of "Death is just the shadow" and "I won't forget you" had an unexpected impact. This was definitely one of the major highlights in So Real it Hurts.

I love her commentary on the revolutionary power of pleasure, as she states, "Pleasure is the ultimate rebellion. The only true rebellion is pleasure. Pleasure at the mouth of the abyss. Pleasure at the brink of the apocalypse. Ecstasy at the brink of disaster." So perfectly incongruous and feminist!

There are some low points here, but this collection packs such a powerful punch that they sort of morph into indispensable supplementary material to the strong pieces.

[Sabrina Chapadjiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking love Lydia Lunch.

The pieces collected in this slim volume are an excellent primer to delve into her other work. As most of these pieces are re-published from other places (a fact I didn't realize when I picked this up), it's a bit of a sampling of her rage, brutal intellect, and violent heart.

There is something so simply mouth-watering about Lunch's rage, mostly because it picks up where Valerie Solanis's left off - but hits the bulls-eye with a more refined arrow. As shameless as she is, there are no shadows with Lunch - she eviscerates everyone in her line of view, including herself.

Each of the selections is long enough that they feel like shots you're taking at a bar. These little gut punches of truth are necessary, invigorating, and an excellent way to kickstart your rage and lust for life.

Just buy it - or any of her work.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lydia Lunch, the musician, poet and pioneer of the No Wave music genre (that rejected commercial New Wave music) was hailed by the New York Times as "the angriest punk of '70s New York." So Real It Hurts proves that more than 40 years into her career, she's lost none of her blistering anger and astringent eloquence. In his introduction, the late Anthony Bourdain wrote, "During a period that is still considered a golden time for art, music, and transgression, she was always the smartest person in the room."

This slim collection of potent essays, profane rants and astute cultural critiques sometimes reads like the writings of a hypnotic Beat poet. On her insomnia, she writes, "Exhausted, but jacked up, like an electric rigor mortis that short-circuits the neurotransmitters, creating a dense fog of chronic irritation that can cloud even the simplest of tasks." Elsewhere, her opinions are strong and original. Ruminating on war, she opines, "Maybe war is just menstrual envy. If men bled every month as much as I do, maybe they wouldn't have such incredible bloodlust."

Lunch's lacerating autobiographical essays detail her history of sexual and substance abuse and mental health problems. The powerful essay "1967" describes the post-traumatic stress she suffered from the ages of five to eight from the race riots raging outside her front door, as well as the war inside her home "as the favored daughter of a door-to-door salesman who couldn't keep his hands to himself." These take-no-prisoner essays are not for the faint-hearted, but they are confrontational, confessional, electrifying and unforgettable.

Confrontational singer/poet/activist Lydia Lunch's "So Real It Hurts" collects her electrifying and unforgettable essays, rants and cultural critiques.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half stars, actually. For fans this is what we've come to expect, love, and admire. For the newly initiated, you might wish to check your physical and psychic health before proceeding as you are about to be transformed as Ms. Lunch takes you on a journey through truth seeking and myth making as distilled her forever toxic, forever cleansing mind, body, and soul. This is a narrative of her ride through life, her experiences, the horrors, the triumphs, the humor. I find her use of language and narrative intoxicating. The essays are general short. Many have been published elsewhere. The book is an excellent, quick read that had me smiling throughout. I'm glad that it was concise and sad that it has ended.

[Genesis Britigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully filthy!!! Stark raving mad woman who is NOT afraid to lay it down like it is! Truly enjoyable!

[Steven Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, Lunch doesn't disappoint, opens up and bleeds...Whether Spoken Word, Her films, recordings or writings...Picked up a copy from her when she passed thru town...Always get my $'s worth.
SJD

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing is like Lydia Lunch. She never disappoints. 🖤

[neen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes she could just stop talking.

[Brie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seriously am not sure what to think about this book. It is written like that nice but strange woman who sits down in the waiting room or on the bus next to you....and then shows you how not of the norm they are by telling you wild stories. It can be entertaining but I have met women like her in real life so it is was weird seeing that whole experience replicated in book form. It is not quite what I enjoy in a book and I know many people who would love this book but for me it was not that interesting.

A solid 3 star book.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woo that was a whirlwind! I went into this wanting to see more of Lydia and how she thinks since I know people either love or hate her. Glad to say I came out of it liking her! I know this is probably why a lot of people don’t like her, but I love how anger riddled her words are. Need more of this.


I could not believe how her thoughts on pregnancy are exactly like mine. This is the first time I’ve seen a woman openly say how irked out she is by it, she really is so real.

[Andrea Janov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I expected this to be much more shocking. I am not sure exactly what that says about me, Lydia Lunch, or this collection of essays. I flew through this nodding my head in agreement and cheering her on. Her raw, honest, unrestrained voice is always a source light among the fog.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic amalgamations of biography/memoir, journalism and fiction in these often startling, profound, nostalgic essay glimpses.

[Si · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where can I buy the official Lydia Lunch lexicon?

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two words; FUCK YES!! A cathartic read especially when you are pms-ing. That rage!! The last chapter had me cackling!

[Lilivette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not expect to enjoy this nearly as much as I did.

[Gillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes you just need a thick slice of Lydia to keep you grounded.

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

lydia cuts and bites and refuses and the prose reflect it like damn its nice to read a writer that seems like they have real opinions on things that may not be the most in vogue.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag, mostly good.

[Gdalena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw, pure and hot as fuck

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

she’s so real