Screen Tests, Kate Zambreno
Screen Tests, Kate Zambreno
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Screen Tests
Stories and Other Writing

Author: Kate Zambreno

Narrator: Mia Barron

Unabridged: 6 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 07/23/2019


Synopsis

In Screen Tests, an astoundingly original and stylish collection, Zambreno has once again created new categories of writing, of vivid and surprising language and thought. In the first half, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatches from a life lived inside a brilliant mind, meditating on aging and vanity, fame and failure, writing and writers, and the dailiness of a woman and an artist, along with Warholian portraits of everyone from Susan Sontag to Amal Clooney, Maurice Blanchot to Louise Brooks. The series of essays that follow, on figures central to her thinking, from Kathy Acker to Shulamith Firestone, David Wojnarowicz to Barbara Loden, are passionate manifestoes about art, that intersect and chime with the stories that came before them. Throughout these philosophical investigations is the quintessential Zambreno voice, unable to be imitated—witty and morbid, serious and playful, poetic and profane, doubting yet radiant.

About Kate Zambreno

Kate Zambreno is also the author of two novels and three books of nonfiction. She lives in New York and teaches writing at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Olivia on September 05, 2019

We have the same taste in artists so I enjoyed reading her quips about those people but sometimes her voice as a writer reads like a 2010 tumblr text post......more

Goodreads review by Derek on March 16, 2025

As always, Kate Zambreno delivers a witty, creative, funny, smart, innovative, and insightful product. Although this book is a bit of a hodgepodge of different types of writing, and sometimes drips with apparently unwarranted self-pity, it’s filled with interesting ideas about gender, popular cultur......more

Goodreads review by Tash on October 09, 2019

I am a pretty big fan of Zambreno. I read what she writes, I see myself in it, I see myself writing like her, I feel like I could read her writing about the process of unclogging a drain and find it brilliant. That being said, I didn’t *love* “Screen Tests”. The book is made up of essays, and the sc......more

Goodreads review by Laura on January 23, 2020

I don’t know. There were some fragments that I really enjoyed (the trifecta of Tallulah Bankhead / Heiress / Louise Brooks in a Mint Green Housecoat was a really interesting examination of like fame, femininity, and aging). But for the most part, I just felt like I was reading a journal that someone......more

Goodreads review by Ben on April 04, 2020

Screen Tests is an artfully poised lineup of quasi-Warholian novels and films. Kate Zambreno makes a strong case for each of these put-upon female artists, while the collection is also a shimmering delight in and of itself.......more