The Compleat Purge

Overview

Trisha Low is just another feminist, confessional writer trying to find a good way to deal with all her literary dads. She siphons the remix culture of social media into the binge and purge cycle of an engrossing read, with the emphasis on gross. She reads the diaries of teenage girls, their blog comments and love letters; she dresses like one in performance then throws up fake blood on herself. She once surveyed the reactions of Catholic fathers to scripted confessionals she made regarding rough sex with men, secretly recorded the conversations, and transcribed the tapes. The results were anthologized by a major university press. Her first book, THE COMPLEAT PURGE, consists of the last will testament of one Trisha Low, who seems to commit suicide annually; the legal documents accumulate into a coming of age story. It goes on to chronicle the sexual fantasies of indie rock fangirls, who may or may not be exorcising the effects of abuse through their blithe avatars (the guy from The Strokes, etc.). Then Trisha Low finds herself trapped in an 18th century romance novel in the most punishing way, but for whom--we're not really sure. "How is Poetry complicit in the urge to falsely 'heal' societal wounds into the silent fixity of It Gets Better? What better place to look than the teen girl, whose cut wrist is an abject fuck-you; whose cute Band-Aid and its artificial 'healing' is really just your sentimental fantasy." "Like hands reaching out from the grave in the final scene of Brian Di Palma's Carrie, Trisha Low's THE COMPLEAT PURGE reaches out to beg the question: 'what's happened to the real Trisha?' In Low's epically eloquent new book, she hands us the keys to a crypt wherein identity is theorized as an act of para-suicide and girlhood a version of being buried alive. THE COMPLEAT PURGE reframes Freud's infamous query: 'What do women want?' by breathing new life into shifting ideals of feminine identity, sexuality, and erotics before the culturally determined ones land us in a coma."-Kim Rosenfield

Reviews

"…being a teen who learned to masturbate to the internet, talking to strangers in chat rooms while assuming false identities for the thrill of feeling you could become anything without moving from your chair. Trisha Low’s The Compleat Purge might be one of the most complete internet-age archives of that feeling."--Blake Butler

Author Biography

Trisha Low is the author of Socialist Realism (2019). Her first book, THE COMPLEAT PURGE, yokes confessional and conceptual writing.