Olivia Laing is the author of Crudo, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and translated into fifteen languages.

Mueller was married to Vittorio Scarpati, who died of AIDS in September 1989. [4] [5] Death and legacy [ edit ]Dorothy Karen " Cookie" Mueller (March 2, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress, writer, and Dreamlander who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters' early films, including Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living. Bonetti, David (November 23, 1992). "How I bought 2 Nan Goldins at auction". San Francisco Examiner. p.Part Z-B4 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com. The last of Mueller's quotes, an elegy of her intent and existence, was written shortly before her death:

A lot of people got tattoos that summer. Some got hooked,” she wrote. “That following winter, in Provincetown, tattoo fever overtook the town… It was better than hanging in a bar, more sociable than Canasta, more exciting than Monopoly, as challenging as Scrabble, and cheaper than gambling at poker. In the old traditional New England way, it was an arty masochist’s version of a sewing bee.” We have Mueller to thank—or blame—for the cottage industry of Brooklyn handpoke artists. She was also prophetic. She featured Jean-Michel Basquiat in her very first column for the magazine, and accurately predicted that one day the East Village art scene would be studied in art history classes. The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition. Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p.Part II/4 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.By the time the collection arrives at Mueller’s fiction, what’s true and what isn’t seems irrelevant. For Mueller, truth was in permanent parentheses. Mueller explores how to handle loss in “Valerie Losing 2,” a story about a woman who woke up one day to find one of her toes was mysteriously missing. Mueller's unflappability, her refusal of stasis and self-pity, her hunger for beauty, her readiness to find it where few else would look—all of it adds up into a singular code for living, in which the worst thing a person could do is flinch. The reissue is a gift to Mueller’s longtime fans who have hungrily consumed every piece of her published writing to date, as well as newcomers looking for an entry point into her vast oeuvre. In an era dominated by the cult of personality that is often so hyper-curated it becomes sterile, Mueller’s refreshingly gritty and uncensored approach to documenting her life is more relevant than ever. “I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely,” she writes. It’s not just the stories that are exciting, it’s the revelation they contain—that we might allow such wildness to stumble on to our own paths, even just for an afternoon. I love her for reminding me, with gentle pressure between the lines, to go out tonight, to see what happens, to live a little harder.” Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p.Part II/5 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com.

Before she joined the cast of Waters’ Dreamlanders (the name for recurring cast members of his films), and later New York’s downtown art scene, Mueller’s story began in the suburbs of Baltimore. She was born there in 1949, and grew up a self-proclaimed “alien” among her parents and childhood friends: an otherworldly child, destined to explore the world. “I was always leaving,” she writes early on. “It’s natural. It’s a biological urge. Like birds testing their wings. I can’t help myself.”I appreciated -- in fact, felt inspired by -- Cookie's lavishly dégagé attitude toward life. Hers is the kind of nonchalant style of describing ridiculous events that lesser writers, like myself, try to emulate but fail to even touch. She treats rape in several points in the book as a kind of fact of life -- something awful, yes, but also as something she can exploit to turn the tables on her rapists and abuse them in the best way she possibly could: through her writing, with sharp, eviscerating humor. The story of her road trip abduction in the South was the best one, and the funniest one, in my opinion. Overall, Cookie was empowered, drunk with empowerment even. It's upsetting how young she died. After several trips to Italy, Mueller fell in love with an artist named Vittorio Scarpati. The two were married in New York in 1986. At the time, she was writing “Ask Dr. Mueller” for the East Village Eye, offering health advice without any professional qualifications. The column begins with queries about cellulite and apple cider vinegar. Then, in a response to one correspondent who complains of a small penis, Mueller abruptly writes, “I’m not going to talk about AIDS ... I’ve had too many beloved friends die lately from diseases contracted when the immune system breaks down. I’m tired of going to wakes. I miss these people.” Her chronicles of the last days of American countercultural life New York’s downtown scene bursts with energy.” Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. Boch, Richard (2017). The Mudd Club. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. pp.144–145. ISBN 978-1-62731-051-2. OCLC 972429558. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year ( link)

MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. Mueller, Cookie (1997). Scholder, Amy (ed.). Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller. New York: Serpent's Tail High Risk Books. ISBN 1-85242-331-5. Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free. No matter what she was doing, Mueller recorded her life with an original combination of optimism and nihilism. She recollects harrowing experiences—accidentally burning a house down, surviving a car crash, and the time she was abducted and raped while hitchhiking with her two friends—with the same aplomb she uses to describe lighthearted events, like a summer spent tattooing beachgoers in Provincetown, or falling in love in Italy. Her chronicles of the last days of American countercultural life New York's downtown scene bursts with energy.In 1959, with eyes the same size, I got to see some of America traveling in the old green Plymouth with my parents, who couldn't stand each other, and my brother and sister, who loved everyone. [Cookie's brother Michael actually died in an accident on March 20, 1955.] I remember the Erie Canal on a dismal day, the Maine coastline in a storm, Georgia willow trees in the rain, and the Luray Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where the stalagmites and -tites were poorly lit. It's not just the stories that are exciting, it's the revelation they contain—that we might allow such wildness to stumble on to our own paths, even just for an afternoon. I love her for reminding me, with gentle pressure between the lines, to go out tonight, to see what happens, to live a little harder. Griffin, Chloé; Waters, John; Stole, Mink; Indiana, Gary (September 30, 2014). Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller. Bbooks Verlag. ISBN 978-3-942214-20-9. Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p.Part II/20 . Retrieved March 20, 2022– via Newspapers.com. Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller, an oral history of Mueller's life, was published in 2014. [8] Bibliography [ edit ]