Walking Papers

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's first novel, Walking PapersFirst published by Viking Press in 1971, Hochman's widely-praised novel is about a messy divorce told with a poet's verve.From the Viking Press edition: Diana Balooka: "e;Out of my womanhood is my madness woven."e; And, for Diana, out of marriage has divorce arisen. With four children, a pet Zulu-Terrier (a rare breed), and a wheeler-dealer love affair to boot.Diana Balooka: "e;We are babies. Watched by our elders. Like the dangerously Insane and deaf we invent our own language We gesture in our own mudras. We understand each other."e; Breaking into herself, Diana is a sanity robber armed with cupfuls of tears and lots of laughs. How can pain be amusing?Sandra Hochman's novel is how.This is a madcap erotic journal of the very separate parts of one woman's life. It is played out with a great personal intensity, a kind of tape-recorded reality that stuns and amazes upon the sound of her own voice; fast forward to Juarez. Mexico; reverse to her flamboyant grandfather's used stageprop farm, or to life In Paris with a hypnotist; hold, for a moment of tormented reflection, on Jason, the nonhusband; then slowly spin forward again, frantic and funny, turn, turn, to everything there is a season . . . . Should the tape chance to break. she bends and splices it together, twists it and sets it to reel on a little further.Miss Hochman pulls and tugs her heroine-a mother, tapdancer. writer, and partner in an affair that stretches from an ocean beach to real estate on Seventy- second Street-as she is caught to a bizarre parade of men on the hunt in New York City. Her invention, sensuality, and poetic gifts lend to Walking Papers a totally original novelist's voice belonging, in Diana's words, to "e;a woman obsessed with essentials."e; A women to be read.