After Claude

by Iris Owens

Other authorsEmily Prager (Introduction)
Paperback, 2010

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Collection

Publication

NYRB Classics (2010), Paperback, 232 pages

Description

"Harriet has left her boyfriend Claude, the French rat. At least that is how she prefers to frame the matter. In fact, after yet one more argument, Claude has just instructed Harriet to move out of his Greenwich Village apartment not that she has any intention of doing so. To the contrary, she will stay and exact her vengeance or such is her intention until Claude has her unceremoniously evicted. Still, though moved out, Harriet is not about to move on. Not in any way. Girlfriends circle around to give advice, but Harriet only takes offense, and you can understand why. Because mad and maddening as she may be, Harriet sees past the polite platitudes that everyone else is content to spout and live by. She is an unblinkered, unbuttoned, unrelenting, and above all bitingly funny prophetess of all that is wrong with women's lives and hearts until, in a surprise twist, she finds a savior in a dark room at the Chelsea Hotel."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ateolf
This is a very good, very funny book. Harriet, our narrator, gives us a glimpse of her world through a screen of wit dripping with venom. The farther we venture into the book, however, the more this wit can be seen as an extension of her psychosis (this word probably sounds more dramatic that I
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intend, but I do mean it literally: she is highly delusional and has a tenuous grasp on reality). The humor gets sparser as the book progresses, as well. As an unreliable narrator, the best way to gain glimpses of the "true" Harriet are in her biting insults towards other people. Many of her jabs at her "ex-best friend, Rhoda-Regina," are perfect descriptions of her own self. Many people here seem to be put off by her offensiveness. She spouts anti-Semitisms (while denying and very much being a Jew). After going on about race/sex to Rhoda-Regina's black boyfriend, she's sure the reason he avoids her in the future is due to his passion for her. Even the book's title and first sentence, "I left Claude, the French rat." are perfect highlights of the disparity between Harriet's voice and the world around her. The title claims "After" when the largest part of the book is her desperate attempt to cling to and stay with Claude. She doesn't "leave" him until he has her physically removed from his apartment. The writing of this book is very skilled and subtle. The prose is light and it's a quick read, but nothing is spelled out on the surface. In the end, I even started to feel sorry for Harriet, as nasty as she is (though, it must be said, she's always an enjoyable sort of nasty), but when it was all over I started to think: does she end up running into a terrible fate or, sadly, is it the only way she'd be able to function in this world? I'm still not really sure and maybe that's a good thing.
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LibraryThing member sarahzilkastarke
Maybe it's because I wasn't alive in the early 70's. Maybe it's because I'm a yuppie and not a hippy. Maybe it's because I'm a modern feminist. Maybe it's because I like working and don't understand idle people. But this book was awful.

A lazy, self-grandizing, sociopath lives with a French
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documentary maker after her last roommate was committed (with the help of the heroine of course). French documentary maker gets sick of her lack of joie de vivre and says he's throwing her out. She refuses to accept it. For 224 pages it's all being with Claude is exhausting. He really needs to stay with me. I can really get up and clean if I wanted to. I know everything everyone needs my help.

Don't read it. Save yourself the headache.
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LibraryThing member janeajones
This is the first NYRB I have read that I disliked. And I disliked this one heartily. Perhaps I am not the right audience for it, but, honestly, I don't know who would be. Despite the back-cover blurbs from the NYTBR and Kenneth Tynan declaring that it exhibits "exhilarating talent and
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intelligence" and that it is "barbed, bitchy, and hilariously sour," I found it boring and rather ugly. The protagonist/narrator is a self-serving leech who excoriates and torments those who have helped her and ends up begging to be admitted to "The Institute," some sort of EST-y type cult. Ugh. Don't waste your time.
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LibraryThing member Capybara_99
Adding my review primarily because of the reviews on the site ahead of me. My own opinion, unlike the run of expressed opinion here, is that the book is hilarious, and the narrator/protagonist a joy to behold in her simultaneously sharp observation and total self-delusion, all expressed with
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vicious humour unleavened with any eye to the proper, acceptable or decent. Of course she would be a horror in real life; she's a horror in the book, too.

The end of the book is strange, I think, and I don't know what to make of it, quite. But we can recognize how lost Harriet is all the better for it.
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LibraryThing member SuzyK222
From the introduction by Emily Prager: "The hilarious story of a breakup as it takes place in the dissolving mind of a brilliantly funny, parasitic ne'er-do-well. As the blurb from Kenneth Tynan on the back cover states: "barbed, bitchy and hilariously sour." Harriet, the anti-heroine, is someone
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you'd love to sit next to at a tedious dinner party -- as long as you don't have to take her home with you!
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LibraryThing member pitjrw
The first half of the book detailing the run up to Harriet's break up with her French boyfriend is very amusing. Harriet reveals herself to be thoroughly disagreeable. Her obnoxiousness is only offset partially by the pretensions of her boyfriend and the other targets of her disdain. This disdain
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is expressed with absolute fearlessness. It lacks all sense of proportion or appropriateness.Harriet is a strong - if addled - character whose antics amuse and disgust simultaneously. The second half centers on the jilted Harriet's pathetic efforts to be accepted by a new man and the cult to which he belongs. This Harriet bares little resemblance to the Harriet of the first half, She's weak and subservient. I could not accept the change as I did feel the author had prepared me for the change. If the book had ended immediately After Claude I would have been more positive about it
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LibraryThing member Imprinted
I'm so glad to have discovered Iris Owens. She was a tremendously funny and witty writer and I laughed aloud from page 1 of "After Claude"! But unfortunately, the last quarter of the book was disappointing, not up to the quality of the earlier section. I agree with the previous reviewers who said
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the book should have ended with the breakup with Claude and that If it had, I would have rated it with more stars.
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LibraryThing member Hebephrene
One of the funniest novels I have read in a long time. Harriet as her friends and enemies keep telling her has got to stop insulting everyone and complaining. But how can she when she can get off such zingers. Self absorbed, scheming, complaining of imaginary illness and giving everyone what for
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with both barrels, she is out to show that competitive women are the rack and ruin of the world. Harriet is so delightfully nasty to everyone you can't wait to see who she runs into next. But then the book takes a wholly unexpected turn and deepens at the end. I never saw it coming but Harriet in the Chelsea Hotel runs into some new age con artists and their guru Roger. Such a great Manhattan novel and such a great comic send up of the 70's and feminism. it's astonishing it has been so neglected. Good on the New York Review of Books for reviving it. Structurally it stays very close to Harriet, most of the scenes are her reactions but then it all changes and we have a real scene.
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LibraryThing member PensiveCat
I haven't really gotten far in this book yet. I got this as an Early Reviewers book, and I either must not have read the synopsis carefully or gotten a book I didn't request. Either way, in the first chapters the dialogue has enough to offend a number of different groups of people, including
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myself. And it's not exactly riveting to me, either.
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LibraryThing member almigwin
The writing is brilliant and witty but I am too much of a feminist to tolerate the heroine's dependence on masculine approval and support. It is an old form of 'she shops, cooks and cleans' and he supports her but wants out. This is the saga of a gazillion breakups in the fifties. Claude claims he
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cannot be monogamous, but it seems that he is just disgusted with her sloppiness, laziness, and dependency. I would have enjoyed this book forty or fifty years ago, but not anymore. Claude was not worth bothering with. The ARC was missing the introduction by Emily Prager, a writer I like very much. I'm sorry I missed it.
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LibraryThing member Y2Ash
This is what happens to Harriet after Claude breaks up with her and wants her out of his apartment:

She decides she isn't going anywhere
Then she gets locked out of the apartment
Harriet calls the locksmith and he breaks down the door and changes the locks
Claude, understandably, is furious when he
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can't get in and calls the cops
The cops break down the door, dragging Harriet along who tries to save face by telling Claude she's breaking up with him!

Harriet is an "independent" woman of the times. Her personality is very abrasive. She is highly opinionated and unrelenting. She rebuffs off her friends' useless platitudes. She is very aware about almost everything but herself.

So what happens to Harriet after Claude leaves her in the Chelsea Hotel circa 1970's New York?

She meets a cult leader.

After Claude was an interesting read. I was laughing throughout the novel but I will admit went through equal parts of liking and hating Harriet. I loved her unflinching opinions of the times of women, religion, and politics but then hated that she was very needy. Harriet needed that validation from others, mostly men, to feel something for herself. She couldn't live on her own as she got panic attacks during her first night there. It wasn't a surprise that she latched on so severely to a very creepy cult leader because he showed her a little love.
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LibraryThing member Y2Ash
This is what happens to Harriet after Claude breaks up with her and wants her out of his apartment:

She decides she isn't going anywhere
Then she gets locked out of the apartment
Harriet calls the locksmith and he breaks down the door and changes the locks
Claude, understandably, is furious when he
Show More
can't get in and calls the cops
The cops break down the door, dragging Harriet along who tries to save face by telling Claude she's breaking up with him!

Harriet is an "independent" woman of the times. Her personality is very abrasive. She is highly opinionated and unrelenting. She rebuffs off her friends' useless platitudes. She is very aware about almost everything but herself.

So what happens to Harriet after Claude leaves her in the Chelsea Hotel circa 1970's New York?

She meets a cult leader.

After Claude was an interesting read. I was laughing throughout the novel but I will admit went through equal parts of liking and hating Harriet. I loved her unflinching opinions of the times of women, religion, and politics but then hated that she was very needy. Harriet needed that validation from others, mostly men, to feel something for herself. She couldn't live on her own as she got panic attacks during her first night there. It wasn't a surprise that she latched on so severely to a very creepy cult leader because he showed her a little love.
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LibraryThing member kylekatz
1973. Harriet, the main character, is truly a laugh-riot. She's a user, who lives with her boyfriends and doesn't work. She seems to hate everything and complain about everything. She's annoying and unpleasant, very manipulative. She's funny, but cruel, and she desperately needs therapy for
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whatever made her so messed up. Her boyfriend Claude tries to throw her out of the house. She refuses to leave. He gives her $100 dollars and tells her to go to the Chelsea Hotel, but she uses the money to change the locks on his apartment and buy even food to last out the siege, until he changes his mind and lets her stay. He finally gets a policeman to kick her out. She goes to the Chelsea, which is a wild scene of sex and drugs, and immediately latches on to a new guy. It seems like he's part of a cult, referred to only as The Institute, which is in Vermont, but recruits from the Chelsea's lost souls. She is more than willing to go to Vermont with him, but the book ends before he takes her there. While it was funny, I didn't like any of the characters. I thought they were making bad choices, and it wasn't clear why there was no one with any common sense.
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LibraryThing member jfetting
In short, I thought this book was terrible. I didn't find Harriett funny at all - she is awful, as are every single other character in the book. It was originally written in 1973, I think, and much of the humor (especially the constant use of the word "fag") does not translate to today. A rare miss
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from one of my most trusted publishers, NYRB Classics.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
Harriet is leaving her boyfriend, Claude, after six months together. Or at least that is what we are expected to understand of the situation, only it transpires that Harriet is a lot more work than she makes herself out to be...

The title, 'After Claude,' can be read in two ways (always a good sign
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with titles). Does it mean 'what comes after Claude', or does it mean 'I'm chasing after Claude'?

Sometimes the book is too clever for its own good, and Harriet's overbearing personality weighs a little heavy - but on its own terms I would say that the novel is a success. If you ever wondered what 'Portnoy's Complaint' would be like if it was written by a woman, you'd have 'After Claude.'
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LibraryThing member mandarella
I devoured this book in one day, mostly because it was an easy, quick, intriguing read. Harriet, the protagonist is witty, bitchy, insensitive, sharp and at times completely fucked-up. Which I admittedly adore. This book is definitely not for everyone. In fact, I think people who read it will
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either love it or hate it.
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LibraryThing member Y2Ash
This is what happens to Harriet after Claude breaks up with her and wants her out of his apartment:

She decides she isn't going anywhere
Then she gets locked out of the apartment
Harriet calls the locksmith and he breaks down the door and changes the locks
Claude, understandably, is furious when he
Show More
can't get in and calls the cops
The cops break down the door, dragging Harriet along who tries to save face by telling Claude she's breaking up with him!

Harriet is an "independent" woman of the times. Her personality is very abrasive. She is highly opinionated and unrelenting. She rebuffs off her friends' useless platitudes. She is very aware about almost everything but herself.

So what happens to Harriet after Claude leaves her in the Chelsea Hotel circa 1970's New York?

She meets a cult leader.

After Claude was an interesting read. I was laughing throughout the novel but I will admit went through equal parts of liking and hating Harriet. I loved her unflinching opinions of the times of women, religion, and politics but then hated that she was very needy. Harriet needed that validation from others, mostly men, to feel something for herself. She couldn't live on her own as she got panic attacks during her first night there. It wasn't a surprise that she latched on so severely to a very creepy cult leader because he showed her a little love.
Show Less
LibraryThing member BibliophageOnCoffee
So sharp and witty. I am certain that I even missed a lot of the witticisms just because they were constant and delivered so quickly. The last quarter of the book felt a little out of place for me, almost like a different novel, but I still loved this over all. Funny, bitchy, unique, and smart.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1973

Physical description

232 p.; 7.8 inches

ISBN

1590173635 / 9781590173633

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