Description

“Ravishing and provocative.”-Olivia Laing *** “Stunning and powerful.”-Andre Aciman

The example of the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who lived “a dog’s life,” sleeping, teaching, having sex in the public square, sets the tone for this extraordinary, genre-bending memoir. Posing crucial questions about what drives certain individuals to risk physical suffering in the name of freedom, Bite Your Friends also asks what we ourselves might learn from such examples to become braver, more authentic individuals.

From a Roman amphitheatre in the 4th century, where martyrs are fed to wild beasts, to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s and the programmatic defiance of groups like Pussy Riot, this sinuous and illuminating mix of memoir and social history explores the lives of uncommonly brave men and women-saints, philosophers, artists-who have used their own wounded or stigmatized bodies to challenge society’s mores and entrenched power structures. Running through her narrative of the body militant is Eberstadt’s own story and the vivid story of her mother, a New York writer and socialite of the 1960s, whose illness-scarred body first led Eberstadt to seek connections between beauty, belief, and the truths taught through the body.

Publisher Review

“A stunning and powerful book. In it Fernanda Eberstadt describes the hardscrabble lives and death of militant souls, homosexuals, saints, philosophers, and despised others who refused to bow to what those around them called normalcy and truth. Their legacy and this work is the bite that cures.” * Andre Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name * “Ravishing and provocative, Bite Your Friends is in an invitation into bodily power as well as a history of resistance, deviance and refusal of all kinds.” * Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely City * “A literary insurrection: exuberant, visceral, headstrong, and never less than highly addictive….. Bite Your Friends is a remarkable act of self-haunting, a work of art that reminds us that the job of the writer in society is to Make it New and be always out front.” * Robert McCrum, The Independent * “Fernanda Eberstadt is blessed with more gifts than any one writer should be […]. Her prose is exuberantly, obscenely rich.” * Lauren Elkin, author of Art Monsters * “At once philosophical and narrative, comical and profound, nostalgic and angry, disarmingly vulnerable and seductively powerful, [Bite Your Friends] will enrich anyone’s understanding of the nuances that allow us to transmute suffering into wisdom, even joy.” * Andrew Solomon, author of Noonday Demon * “Fernanda Eberstadt sings the body aesthetic — the body magnetic — the body pathetic — in a book that, in more ways than one, made me crack up. It’s a book that clads airy notions of the relation between flesh and spirit with the bodies of real people, and as the body count rose, so did my love and admiration for one of the best writers around.” * Ben Moser, author of Sontag: Her Life and Work * “Thrilling, absorbing and true. It’s like having the best, most fascinating conversation: a book that you don’t so much read as inhabit. Bite Your Friends is simply extraordinary.” * Cressida Connolly, author of Bad Relations * “With a thrilling combination of erudition and wit, Fernanda Eberstadt takes us on a journey across decades, centuries, and millennia to explore the ways in which artists and activists have used the body as a site of political, religious, and personal resistance. Eberstadt unearths little known stories from antiquity and elegantly draws connections between these and contemporary examples, mapping a vast territory of ideas that are as captivating as they are convincing. Bite Your Friends is a knockout.” * Marisa Silver, author of Little Nothing * “I loved this book. Often funny, unsparing of self as of others, Bite Your Friends is fuelled by genuine curiosity about what leads some to discount physical pain and transform their harmed bodies into instruments of communication. This curiosity is joined by intelligence, kindness, and a precision of observation which makes Eberstadt’s singular subjects knowable and, occasionally (though that is not the point) likeable.” * Elizabeth Cook, author of Lux * “A masterful study by a great journalist: Roman arena to New York piers at night with Stephen Varble, Pasolini, Eberstadt’s mother’s body scars to Pussy Riot. A fearless look into Man’s journeys on this earth: our joys and darkness, our wars.” * Adrienne Kennedy, author of Funnyhouse of a Negro * “The diverse stories of Eberstadt’s subjects illuminate the complex ways in which bodies can constitute contested political terrain. Incisive and philosophical, this intrigues.” * Publishers Weekly * Praise for Fernanda Eberstadt

“No other writer has captured our recent American past… so vividly or with such detail and force.” Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, on The Furies

“Fernanda Eberstadt is blessed with more gifts than any one writer should be…Her prose is exuberantly, obscenely rich.”-Lauren Elkin, The Washington Post

“Eberstadt’s skills bring to mind the early A. S. Byatt (the darting, foxlike intelligence; the searing judgments), and her dissection of class differences has a physical urgency that lifts her characters above their schematic limitations.”-The New Yorker on The Furies

“Eberstadt writes with nearly unbearable honesty about womanhood; the passion and

astonishment of motherhood; the distance that separates women from everything

and everything else.”-Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut, on The Furies

“Eberstadt is an expert, sensual, and at times truly breathtaking conjurer of New York City.”-New York Observer “Eberstadt weaves personal narrative with biographies of the Greek philosopher Diogenes, Michel Foucault, members of the Russian group Pussy Riot and others.” * New York Times * “Eberstadt takes her reader to the Roman amphitheatre where fourth-century martyrs are fed to wild beasts, to the S&M leather bars of New York in the 1970s, and to the waiting zone of Europe’s largest prison. Her central question: what drives certain individuals to risk pain, disgrace, even death, in the name of freedom – and how can we use their example to become braver?” * European Review of Books * “The text weaves in and out of these stories and Eberstadt’s own seamlessly and in doing so creates something of an alternative memoir/studious examination of both self and other, accentuating within it how the body can be utilized in protest. It’s a fascinating romp through eras and across individuals, providing more than a little insight as well as any number of places to branch out for further study.” * Under the Radar Magazine * “Shuffling through references high and low, Eberstadt, rebuilding a sense of self after her children have entered adulthood, makes her own bold reach for significance.” * Vulture * “Melding memoir and history, Bite Your Friends looks at the lives of saints, philosophers, and artists – including the author and her mother – whose bodies became sites of subversion and rebellion. From Diogenes to Pussy Riot, Eberstadt asks what it means to put our bodies on the line, and how our bodies can liberate us.” * The Millions * “Fun and fascinating… Bite Your Friends poses crucial questions about what drives certain individuals to risk physical suffering in the name of fame or freedom.” * Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art * “This unusual and strikingly written memoir combines history and cultural criticism to tell the author’s own story, that of her glamorous mother, and of an eclectic band of saints, philosophers and artists who have used their own wounded or stigmatised bodies to challenge society.” * The Bookseller *