Cookie Mueller wrote like a lunatic Uncle Remus—spinning little stories from Hell that will make any reader laugh out loud. She was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art-hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl.
John Waters
People fall in love with Cookie when they read her stories (I loved her first!). As she did, the stories move through different worlds, from heavy drug use to writing a health column (at the same time); from go-go dancing to art criticism to film and theater acting, from boyfriends and girlfriends to S&M and marriage, etc., etc., etc. With Cookie there was no boundary between hersef and her writings. Which isn't to say she didn't work hard on her stories—she did, the same way she worked on her hair. She was a matchless beautician of the word.
Richard Hell, author of I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tram
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is a cult classic for writers... the reissue's new (to us) pieces demonstrate Mueller's artistic process. They also map out her singular approach to life.
Natasha Stagg
Bookforum
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.
Jia Tolentino
The New Yorker
Her chronicles of the last days of American countercultural life New York's downtown scene bursts with energy.
Zoe Dubno
The Nation
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.
Eva Wiseman
The Guardian
Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, a newly expanded collection of her complete stories (some true, some not, some in between), provides many opportunities to fall in love with Mueller.
Jessica Ferri
Los Angeles Times
Every art writer girl in New York wishes she was Cookie Mueller, even if she doesn't know it. Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, published after Mueller died in 1989, collected the essays and short stories of the woman beloved from the Haight-Ashbury to Mudd Club to Capri. Semiotext(e)'s reissue, out April 26, more than doubles the text, including her Dr. Mueller advice column, a novella, and four recently discovered, previously unpublished works. It is a guidebook for a life lived freely but with care, fleeting but sublime. If a vibe shift toward hedonism is real, then total surrender to adventure—as in, not just taking pictures of friends smoking cigarettes inside, but actually breaking the rules—should be the blueprint.
Greta Rainbow
W Magazine
I love Mueller the actress, but I return to Mueller the writer. Her writing makes me feel the way many of her contemporaries did about her: hypnotized by the generosity she afforded others and how quickly she found humanity in mayhem.
Sasha Frere-Jones
4Columns
Cookie's writing is like hearing American slang echo in the marble halls of a Florentine museum. Every sound is magnified. And there's no room for squares. Read her for all the drugs you'll never take, for all the people you'll never fuck. Read her as a reminder to seek out those beyond the church gate, the artists, alley dwellers, and freaks. She will take you for a ride on her Moto Guzzi and crush you with the will to live.
Nathan Dunne
Los Angeles Review of Books
A writer of rare voice and imagination.
Negar Azimi
The New York Review of Books
