Cathay Che

This book positions Harry centrally in New York and shows how she and her band branched out first to Los Angeles and then the rest of Europe and Australia. The author's theme is that she was quintessentially a New Yorker but not always embraced as such. This signals a repeating personal challenge which Harry had to assimilate in different forms over the years: fashion, pop music, evolution of feminism, professional courtesies. This book is over-attuned to the reader already familiar with Harry's work. Because of the contextual details, it might be not so entertaining to the general reader. To a person who already thinks highly of Harry's work, this book is light reading. This book spends some time on the LA reception of Blondie and the role played by the radio station KROQ's Rodney Bingenheimer. Contains some nice larger than usual photos. One of these is the brilliant portrait piece by Robert Williams, "The Three Faces of Deborah Harry."… (mer)