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"Travel poetry is the worst, at more than one reading about Italy or South America I've whispered cattily s/he should never have left San Francisco." -Dodie Bellamy, Pink Steam (2004). This is such a fantastic book. It would take a spatula to pull me off it. The idea that gossip can make good art might not sell with everybody. But good art, which happens here in a fusion of memoir and experimental fiction, makes any old kind of gossip seem like the most important thing in the world. It helps naturally that Bellamy knows we are suckers for poetry gossip. I wonder how some readers feel about actually appearing in these pages? Is it like a flattering picture in the society pages? The line above is in the chapter about her reading tour. Get the joke? Now I want to read The Letters of Mina Harker.